Archive of Our Own

Carmel, California
Six Weeks After Leaving New Orleans

Louis woke to the muffled sound of water. Alone in the coffin. Suspicious lack of Lestat’s heartbeat beside him. He let his eyes flutter open to the blackness and shoved at the lid until it opened.

He inhaled the scent of saltwater. He took in the sight of the massive walk-in closet that was currently doubling as their coffin room. Beyond the open closet door, he could see the sun was gone. And the double doors that led from the bedroom to the patio were standing open. Louis rose and stepped out of the coffin. Stood beside it listening to the sound of the Pacific in the distance for a moment or two. Hungry white-capped waves that licked the jagged cliff face where their property met the ocean.

Beyond the crash of the water, Louis found the sound he was really looking for. Followed the beat of it outside the closet, padded lightly across the bedroom floor. He walked through the open double doors and stepped out onto the patio and—

Moonlight fell in a silver-blue veil over Louis’ skin. He was wearing nothing but pajama bottoms and he shivered against the cool night air. Lestat was sitting in one of their oversized patio chairs with a cigarette clutched in his fingers. Puffing on it lazily as he set his gaze on Louis. Watched in silence as he approached. The sound of his heart rising above the roar of the water and syncing with Louis’ at once.

“Mon cheri…” Lestat offered the softest hint of a smile. He plucked a cigarette from the little silver case on the table beside him and held it out to Louis. “Hello.”

“Hi.” Louis took the cigarette with his eyes fixed firmly on Lestat’s. He gave a little pinch of his brows, popped the cigarette into his mouth and spoke around it. “You’ve been awake for a while?”

Lestat was dressed in one of the outfits Louis had bought for him back in New Orleans. His hair freshly styled and falling soft waves that kissed the broad expanse of his shoulders. Reaching up with his lit cigarette and pressing it to the tip of Louis’ the moment he leaned close.

“The sun has been gone for hours,” Lestat said as Louis inhaled and the end of his cigarette flared to life. Sucking the fire from Lestat’s and drawing it into his own. Like breath passing between them. Like fresh blood moving from one mouth and into the other. “You asked to be left alone in the coffin.” He pinched his brows at Louis, gave a near-imperceptible tip of his head. “You don’t remember?”

Louis gave a little shake of his head. Took a long, deep drag on his cigarette, huffed out a veil of smoke. “Talkin’ in my sleep I guess,” he said, trying to think back. Finding nothing from the hours between falling asleep draped on top of Lestat in the coffin and the moment he’d blinked awake alone. “Make room.”

Lestat took a final, lingering drag on his cigarette. Stubbed it out in the ashtray on the table beside him. Opened his arms with his eyes fixed and unblinking on Louis. Arms like wings, arms like doorways drawing Louis home. At once, Louis crawled into his lap, tucked his legs up, threw one arm around Lestat’s neck with his cigarette chugging like a smoke stack between his fingers.

He sighed with his whole chest, pressed his face to Lestat’s neck and breathed the scent of him in. “You fed already,” he said, smelling the blood pumping hot and thick in the font of his artery. Louis’ fangs fell down just a hair before he forced them to pop back in.

“I saved some for you,” Lestat said with a hum, sweeping one of his big warm hands over Louis’ naked back. “It’s still fresh, but you should drink it soon, cheri.”

Louis lifted his head, popped the cigarette into his mouth and took a drag. On the table next to them, a heavy crystal decanter half-filled with blood sat shimmering beneath the light of the moon. “Oh,” he said, a little thread of something warm and nameless tugging at his heart. “Thank you.”

Louis took one last drag on his cigarette and popped it into Lestat’s parted mouth. Watched his eyes light up when their gazes slid together. Watched him register the action. Watched him take the cigarette between his fingers and smoke.

“You’re unhappy with me,” Lestat said, thin wisp of smoke falling from his mouth. He stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray, end of it flaring its goodbye with a final gasp of white.

Louis pinched his brows, leaned close again, ran a hand along the nape of Lestat’s neck, nosing against his temple. “Don’t care you ate without me,” he said, a little shiver running through him when Lestat’s warm hand settled against his waist. “Ain’t your fault I—”

“That’s not what I mean, mon cher.”

Lestat’s voice sounded so small. So weak. So pitiful. Almost sounded like the thing he’d been in the first broken nights they’d spent together in that hotel suite in New Orleans. Louis shut his eyes. He had both arms thrown around Lestat’s neck, breathing in the scent of his hair, letting himself remember—

Last night. The first night in so many weeks they miraculously hadn’t argued. Hadn’t spent hours on end bickering about the same pointless, unimportant shit they’d been bickering about since arriving in California: the new curtains in the living room; the thread count of their new bed sheets; the light fixtures in the en suite bathroom. And they’d talked. Not about everything—not even close. But they’d been open and honest and real with each other. And after—oh. Louis shivered just to think about it now. Worshiping each other’s bodies for hours on the living room floor…

“I’m not unhappy, Lestat.” Louis drew a long, deep breath. Lestat. Night air. Saltwater. Breathing in the scent of his home. “You can’t seriously think that after last night.”

He slipped a hand along Lestat’s nape, slipped fingers up into his hair, fingernails dragging over his scalp gently, gently. The heat of his body under his clothes so warm next to Louis’ cool bare skin. Warm like a bath. Warm like human skin baked under sunlight in summer. Their hearts beating strong and slow in that way they only could when their bodies were pressed together.

“I’ve treated you monstrously these past weeks,” Lestat said very quietly, one big warm hand petting Louis’ waist, the other cradling the nape of his neck. “Some nights I wonder if it would have been better if you had left me back in New Orleans.”

“Don’t say shit like that.” Louis pulled back a little, set his eyes on Lestat’s moonlit face. “I’m serious, Lestat, why would you—”

“I only mean…” Lestat’s hand on the back of Louis’ neck went tight for a handful of seconds before relaxing again. Fingernails playing up into his scalp, teasing along the downy hair at his nape. “This should be our honeymoon, mon cher. I had hoped…”

Lestat looked powerful and small all at the very same instant. Fresh life pumping in his veins like a wild network of rivers beneath the surface of his skin. His strong, lean muscles could move mountains in a blink, but his eyes were windows made of the most delicate glass. They were mirrors—shattered. His spirit reduced to nothing more than a vellum-thin reflective surface.

“I had hoped it would be.” Lestat blinked. His eyes were damp. He gave Louis a smile that was even softer than the press of his hands.

Louis drew a breath and tried to choose his words very carefully. Playing the six weeks of nights they’d spent together in this place like a film reel spinning in his head. Though they’d been arguing about the silliest things, the love making hadn’t abated. The two of them crashing together two, three, sometimes four times every night before the sun came up. Even when they could barely speak to each other, Louis would still draw Lestat down on top of him on the bed. Kiss him until they were both hard and breathless. Guide Lestat deep inside him in a way that always—always—felt like coming back home.

“Has been that. It is that. It’s—” Louis drew a hand over Lestat’s head, his soft pale hair, twirling a few errant strands around the length of one finger. “Just ‘cause it’s been other things doesn’t mean it isn’t that too.”

Lestat gave an infinitesimal nod of his head. In the distance—the ocean roared, kissing the jagged edges of the place they now called home. Salt wafting on the cool night air. The heat of Lestat’s blood under his clothes pulsing in all the spots they were pressed together. The blood in his body like music, like salvation at long last washing over Louis’ bare skin.

Louis took Lestat’s face in his hands. Nuzzled the ends of their noses together. And kissed him.

—

New Orleans
Seven Weeks Earlier

Louis, generally speaking, didn’t like the idea of purchasing real estate he hadn’t seen in person first. But when you’re wealthy you can afford to be reckless. When you have more money than God and you’re desperate for a fresh start, you can make things happen quickly, as though by magic. You can pay a team of others to do all the hard work for you and save the worrying for later. From clear across the country, with little more than a single email or phone call, you can bend the world to your will.

“It’s exactly what we said we wanted.” Louis puffed on his cigarette once before passing it to Lestat. Swiping through the photos the realtor had sent him on his phone. The same pictures they’d been looking at every day for over a week. “Private. Gated community. Right on the coast. Picturesque views.” He let his mouth soften in a smile as he turned his eyes from the phone to Lestat. “Ideal dumping grounds. Wouldn’t even need an incinerator. House is practically in the ocean. Plus—” He fought the urge to roll his eyes. He was repeating himself, but he couldn’t help it. It was like Lestat hadn’t absorbed any of the information about the place that was soon to be their home. “Seller’s lookin’ to get out quick so it comes fully furnished.”

Lestat pinched his brows at the phone, gave a thoughtful little hum. He seemed content to pretend as though he hadn’t seen the pictures before. Like they hadn’t decided on this property together. “It just seems a little too…” He gestured airly with the cigarette chugging away in his hand. “Comment ça se dit…” He raised his eyes to Louis, gave a little tip of his head. “Coastal.”

Louis couldn’t fight the urge to roll his eyes this time. He let the phone screen go black, set it down on the bench beside him. “Yeah, well, it’s on the coast, Lestat. Kinda the whole point.”

Lestat pressed the cigarette to his mouth and smoked, let his eyes wander over to St. Louis Cathedral in the distance. It was the time of night when Jackson Square was near-deserted and it felt like their shared heartbeat was the only sound in the world. “I don’t care for the furniture, cheri.”

Louis took the cigarette from Lestat’s hand and almost rolled his eyes again. “We can change it. We will, it’s—” He sighed with his whole chest. Too many things inside him at once. Fresh blood and love and spiking irritation. He took a drag on the cigarette and huffed it out. “It’s more convenient this way. It’ll get us outta here sooner. I know you’re gettin’ sick of that hotel. I am too. It’s time. Place’ll be ready for us next week. Windows are being coated with sun protection as we speak.”

Slowly, Lestat turned his eyes from the cathedral and settled his gaze on Louis. Considered him carefully. Sparking animal gaze. Sparking blue, sparking with so much love. He slung an arm around Louis’ shoulders and pulled him close. “I’m not sick of being anywhere with you, mon cher,” he said. And pressed a kiss to Louis’ temple.

—

Carmel, California
Six Weeks After Leaving New Orleans

Louis pressed a final, reverent kiss to the scar in the corner of Lestat’s mouth before he pulled back. He nuzzled Lestat’s temple gently, he pressed a kiss into his hair. Louis felt like a once-deprived child rolling around in a pile of candy. What did it matter if they were destined to fall back into their nightly routine of bickering eventually? If things were always going to be hard and they’d spend half their eternity annoyed with each other? What did it matter? It didn’t. I’ve got you now, Louis thought, pulling back so he could gaze at Lestat’s face sparking silver in the light of the moon. I’ve got you. I get to touch you anytime I want. I can fall asleep every sunrise with my face pressed into your hair.

“If you’d like separate coffins, mon cher—”

Louis pressed a finger to Lestat’s mouth at once to shush him. The idea of such a thing now, after everything—“Why would you say that?” He pulled his finger away and pinched his brows. “Lestat, what the fuck are you—”

“You didn’t want to wake with me,” Lestat said, and swept a palm along the slope of Louis’ cheek. Let his hand slide slowly downward, settling on the curve of his neck. “You wanted to be alone. And I’ve been thinking—”

“Stop.” Louis narrowed his gaze. His heartbeat stumbled over itself inside the cavern of his chest. Falling momentarily off-rhythm before finding Lestat’s again. “Just…” He forced a long, deep breath and slowly let it out. “Not interested in sleepin’ without you and that’s final.”

They said nothing for a long stretch of seconds. Louis kept his eyes on Lestat’s moonlit face, that golden beauty of his that had endured for centuries. The heat of him a shocking contrast to the currents of cool ocean air. Louis tried to remember—had he wanted to stay in the coffin alone? He hadn’t. There was no way. Not for the reason Lestat seemed to be implying at least. It was only that—

Well. It had been the first stretch of rest they’d gotten in six weeks without either of them waking from a nightmare in the middle of the day. Without either of them talking to the dead in their sleep, or—once—screaming. Or bolting upright from a corpse-like sleep and shoving at the lid of the coffin. Or winding up on their knees gasping for air in the middle of the bedroom, the faintest hint of orange from the sun-proofed windows just evident beyond the tiny gaps in the curtains.

“I just think…” Louis turned the words over in his head before he spoke. Swept a loving hand over Lestat’s blood-warm neck, fingers slipping down inside the open collar of his shirt. “I’ve been bone-tired, Lestat. We both have. Can’t keep our hands off each other at night, and all those bad dreams keepin’ us up half the day.”

A throb bloomed in Louis’ chest right under his heart. Flashes of memory coming to him, the terror his brain would conjure up when he was lying with Lestat in the dark. The taste of coffin rocks in his throat; a yellow dress filthy with char; two molten eyes staring into his own.

“But…” Louis drew a long, deep breath, trying to steady himself. He listened to the music of Lestat’s beating heart. “We finally went a whole day without ‘em. So maybe I was just…” Lestat’s blood drummed like waves on the ocean. Louis let it wash over him gently. Lestat’s shining eyes were unblinking and locked with his own. “If I wanted to stay in the coffin it was because I was enjoying my rest. And I need you to believe me when I say it wasn’t anything more than that.”

Lestat averted his gaze, and swallowed, and offered Louis a nod of his head.“I am trying, mon cher,” he said. “I had thought it would be easier. When we were still back in New Orleans.”

Louis wrapped his arms around Lestat’s neck. Precious blood under his skin. Precious, precious life of his maker. Eternal, endless rhythm of his lover’s heart. “Yeah,” he said, and pressed a kiss to Lestat’s drumming temple. “Me too.”

—

Six Weeks Ago

Orgasm rang in Louis like his body was a big brass bell. Lestat played his flesh like an instrument, nerve ends firing like a hundred-thousand skilled sopranos all singing in him at once. It crested with a shout in him. Lestat’s hot mouth on his neck, lapping at the puncture wounds that remained in the wake of his feasting.

Lestat came inside Louis with a sob against his neck. Spilling himself completely with stuttering little snaps of his hips. Falling out when he started going soft, Louis’ whole body still ringing, ringing. Vision in the dark of Lestat’s head bobbing as he licked the come from Louis’ chest before collapsing on the sofa beside him.

Their hearts rang out and filled the room, rising and falling like waves on the ocean. The whole house was flooded in dark and the night beyond the windows glowed a subtle silvery-blue.

“Welcome home,” Louis managed, the softest puff of laughter in his throat. Home. Uttering the word made his stomach ache and his heart swell all at the very same instant.

Lestat turned, hummed, pressed himself to Louis’ side. Hand sweeping over Louis’ chest, cradling the soft peak of his ribcage. “This couch isn’t terribly comfortable, is it?”

Louis drew a long, deep breath and huffed it out. “Fine for now,” he said, lazily slipping one hand through Lestat’s hair, all those golden threads falling like water between his fingers. “We don’t have to go over this again, okay? You already know we’re gonna—”

“We could have stayed in New Orleans.” Lestat traced the tip of one finger over Louis’ ribcage like he was hoping the action might produce a sound. Flats and sharps underneath him, Louis’ body his piano. “Took our time selecting each piece for our home from—”

“If you wanted to stay in New Orleans you should’ve said that, Lestat.” Louis forced himself to breathe around the thick spike of irritation in his throat. He wound his fingers in Lestat’s hair. He held on and didn’t let go.

“You said you wanted to come to California, mon cher,” Lestat said after a long, tense moment of silence. He pressed his mouth to Louis’ throat. He planted a kiss against his pulse, offered the faintest curl of his tongue.

“I said—” Louis tugged Lestat back by his hair until their eyes locked together. Annoyed and devastatingly in love all at the very same instant. There he was—blue eyes shining like distant planets in the dark. Louis drew Lestat roughly forward. Kissed him on the mouth. Once, slow and steady and heated. “Said the West Coast sounded nice. You’re the one who said California.”

“And you are the one who contacted a realtor right away, cheri.”

“And you.” Louis paused, clenched his jaw, guided Lestat’s mouth to his neck and shuddered when he kissed it. “Said—” Sharp inhalation through his nose when Lestat’s teeth scraped against his artery. “You said you wanted to make our home here. You—”

“I said…” Lestat lifted his head. Eyes on Louis. One big warm hand coming up to cradle his neck and jaw. “There is nowhere you could go to make a home that I would not follow.”

Louis narrowed his gaze. He pressed his hand between the crests of Lestat’s bare shoulders, feeling his heart beating sure and strong and true. “Whatever,” he said, fighting the urge to pull his hair again. “Point is we’re here. And if you didn’t wanna be here you had plenty of chances to—”

“I want to be where you are, Louis.” Lestat knocked their foreheads together, sweetest little snarling sound bubbling up in his throat. “Have I not already made that abundantly—”

“Stop worrying about the furniture, then.” Louis drew a deep breath and slowly let it out. Living flesh and familiar blood a grounding force under his fingers. He felt like he was cradling Lestat’s heart in the palm of his hand. “We’ll get—”

“There is also the pressing issue of the curtains.”

“Lestat—”

“The rugs, the light fixtures, that dreadful tile in the—”

“Lestat.”

“Mon cher.” Lestat kissed Louis on the mouth. Once, slowly. Offered the softest scrape of his teeth as he pulled back. Golden in the blue dark that was settled all around them. “If this is to be our home, don’t you think it should be perfect?”

“I think…” Louis touched Lestat on the side of his neck. Blood-warm hum of his pulse like music. Like the ocean churning up a storm there in the palm of his hand. “I think it’s our first night here and you need to relax.”

A subtle shift in Lestat’s lovestruck expression. Dark little twitch in the corner of his mouth. He swallowed. He watched Louis. He didn’t blink. And for a long stretch of seconds Louis was thrilled at the thought they were finally going to have a real go at each other. Finally, finally let it out. Christen every room of their new home with their anger just as they had with their love. Spill vitriol like blood all over the couch Lestat seemed to hate so much. Shout themselves ragged in English and French. Shatter the windows with their voices just to see the glass glittering like stars on the floor. But then—

Lestat’s mouth softened in a smile. He drew the point of one finger over the bow of Louis’ mouth, gave a little tip of his head. “Well, I suppose… just for tonight. The dreadful tile will have to do.” He pecked Louis on the end of his nose and drew back, popped up to his feet, pale naked body like a candle guttering in the dark. “Shall I draw us a bath?”

Louis’ eyes fell over him from head to foot and back again. Preternatural vision seeming to cut down to the very essence of him. He was fire raging in the deadest part of night. “Bath sounds great,” Louis said, hardly managing to get the words to come. Wholly transfixed by the sight of his maker. Utterly consumed by the great choking force of his love. “Right… right behind you.”

Lestat turned. Pale skin, naked back. Louis rose to his feet as though floating. And followed Lestat to the bathroom.

—

Six Weeks After Leaving New Orleans

Louis clutched the decanter of blood in both hands. Watching moonlight dance on the crystal. Lestat popped the top off for him and set it on the table.

“Thank you,” Louis said. And kissed Lestat on the mouth. “You really didn’t have to Postmates me blood though, baby.” He let the endearment settle. Watched it fall like the tide over Lestat’s golden face. He’d been trying it out in recent weeks and it always—always—made Lestat’s pulse pick up. Increased his respirations. Hit him like a lance to the heart. “I could’ve—”

“Don’t be silly, mon cher. Ce n'est rien.” Lestat gave a casual little wave of his hand. His heart was still beating too quickly in his chest. A look in his eyes like he wanted to swallow Louis whole. “I would present the blood at your feet in a chalice every moonrise if you asked me to.”

Louis offered a smile that quickly faded. His chest ached. His stomach burned. He inhaled deep and scented the blood, his veins and arteries howling with hunger. Behind his eyes, flashes of memory—Dubai, the long stretch of a dining room table. Blood served in bowls and ferried to him on platters. He raised the mouth of the decanter to his lips and said—“And I would much rather hunt with you. Had enough of…” A shudder moved through him when Lestat’s hand caressed the bare expanse of his back. “You don’t have to do that.” He tried a laugh, tried to feel it. Tried to rip himself from the memories of his life before. “But it’s good to know I have options.”

He tipped his head back. He drank. The blood was cold and thick but sufficient enough to sustain him. And when he was finished he set the decanter down on the table. Wrapped his arms around Lestat’s neck, nuzzled into his hair, drew the scent of him in. Salt on his skin, salt in his blood, salt on the cool air wafting from the ocean.

They stayed like that for a long stretch of minutes, maybe a quarter of an hour. Just breathing together. Holding each other wrapped inside the sound of the ocean, the sound of their selfsame heart. Lestat’s big warm hands like little fires kissing Louis everywhere. But after a while, when Lestat began to tremble beneath him—Louis pulled back. Hooked his fingers under Lestat’s chin and tipped his face up. Blood tears rimming his eyes. Blood tears tumbling in fat rivulets down both his cheeks.

“Hey,” Louis said. He cupped Lestat’s face in his hands. He swept his thumbs through the bloody tracks on his cheeks. “Lestat. What is it?”

“I am sorry, mon cher,” Lestat tried a sad little laugh, tried to turn his face away but Louis wouldn’t let him. “Look at me…” He drew a shuddering breath and let it out. Tried a laugh again. He drew his hands up and down the length of Louis’ back like he was trying to memorize the shape. “Ruining another perfectly lovely—”

“Hey. No.” Louis shook his head. “Baby. Hey…” He leaned close and knocked their foreheads together. Breathed deep, exhaled slowly. Got his hands in Lestat’s hair and drew his fingernails over his scalp. Like he was trying to soothe a wounded beast, or an infant. “You’re not ruinin’ anything.”

Lestat sobbed. A terrible choking sound he tried to repress the moment it slipped out. “Louis,” was all he could manage, the tips of his nails dragging against the planes of Louis’ bare skin. “Louis…”

Louis didn’t have to ask his question again. He understood perfectly well it was the tenderness that always broke Lestat the most. The gentle touch of a hand on the back of his neck, the utterance of an endearment. His powerful beast of a man reduced to a figment with four simple letters falling from Louis’ mouth.

Louis soothed him through it, muttered love in French and English into his golden hair. Took Lestat by the nape of his neck and held him close. And let him sob.

—

Four Weeks Ago

The sun had only just set but they’d already been up for an hour. They were standing in the living room on the rug that had been delivered while they were sleeping. The thick pile soft and plush beneath Louis’ bare feet. Lestat was splitting his time between frowning down at it and frowning over at Louis.

“This won’t do, mon cher. It’s too…” He gestured airily with one hand, sharp nails gleaming in the artificial light. “French country. Were we not going for coastal?”

“I’m gonna ban you from watching those home reno shows on the iPad if you don’t—” Louis drew a breath and huffed it out. “Thought you hated coastal.”

Lestat hummed, tipped his head to one side, scowled down at the rug. “Even so, is it not the aesthetic we are striving for here in our coastal home?”

“You picked out the rug, Lestat. You—”

“It looked different in the online pictures, cheri.”

“Buy another one, then.”

Louis sighed with his whole chest. He didn’t care about the rugs or the lamps or the curtains. Not really. Though he was starting to get antsy about picking art for the walls. Had been itching to pull pieces from his collection since that first night the realtor sent him the pictures of what was now their home. As soon as Lestat decided to stop being difficult on purpose, he could make it work.

Lestat let out a sound, the tiniest hint of a growl in his throat. Louis watched him gazing down at their bare feet nestled into the pile. “We need to find a proper boutique. Better yet an auction house. Why are we scouring web pages on an iPad for pieces for our home?”

“Easier that way,” Louis said with a shrug. There was an ache in his stomach he couldn’t give a name to. “We can always just hire someone to do this shit for us, Lestat. I know designers, decorators. Artists. I can call some people—”

“You don’t care about our home.”

Louis’ stomach twisted itself into a knot so quickly it nearly doubled him over. “What the fuck—” He couldn’t help it when the words flew out of his mouth. Seriously—what the fuck. “Why would you say somethin’ like that to me, Lestat?”

Lestat set his gaze on Louis. The set of his jaw was hard and tense. He had that look in his eyes like a cat about to do something very, very stupid. “You cared so much back at Rue Royale. Firm opinions on every piece of furniture. The art on every wall—”

“I got art lined up. You know that. You know I’m gonna handle the—”

“Do you remember that lamp you hated? Wanted to throw it in the incinerator the moment I—”

“Don’t see what point you’re tryin’ to—”

“dared to bring it home to replace the one—”

“I don’t remember the lamp. I remember you—”

“that had been badly damaged—”

“being impossible about everything exactly the way you are—”

“when we knocked it from the table—”

“right now.”

“making love. And I—”

“Lestat!”

“Louis.”

Louis drew a long deep breath and huffed it out. The tension in his chest abated just a little, just enough. “I don’t remember the lamp,” he said. And clenched his jaw. And shook his head.

Lestat was gazing at Louis with wide eyes that didn’t blink. The centers of them huge black voids Louis could have tumbled down into in seconds. He leaned close. So close the ends of their noses brushed together. “How convenient for you,” he growled, one corner of his mouth twitching up.

Louis growled back, showed his teeth, tiniest hint of his fangs poking out. “You’re insufferable, you know that.” He reached forward at once and let his mind go dark. Took Lestat by the hair with both hands. And crashed their mouths together.

—

Six Weeks After Leaving New Orleans

They were kissing. They’d been kissing for minutes or hours. Louis couldn’t be sure how much time had passed. His body was warm all over, it was like sinking down into a bath. All he knew was one second Lestat had been crying, and the next Louis had been licking the blood from his face. Whispering love into his skin like Hail Marys. Counting the thumps of Lestat’s pulse underneath him like rosary beads slipping through his fingers.

And now—they were kissing. And Louis was straddling Lestat’s lap in the chair. And Lestat’s face was nestled inside the cupped palms of Louis’ hands. And the ocean beyond the bounds of their property was kicking up a fit with the wind. And Lestat’s hands were gripping Louis’ ass like he might die if he ever let go.

Filled with blood, filled with life to the very brim. The cozy, familiar tug of desire hounding their bodies again. Louis licked across the seam of Lestat’s mouth as he pulled back and knocked their foreheads together. Chests heaving with breath, Louis could feel the blood beating inside Lestat’s veins surely as he could feel his own.

“I want you to fuck me right here,” Louis’ lip twitched back. His fangs were poking out. Every drop of blood in his body was suddenly rushing to his dick. “Right now.”

Lestat’s hands moved slowly upward, licking hot as flames all along the dip of Louis’ back. “Do you think, mon cher…” He started and stopped. His heart stuttered a step in his chest. And he suddenly felt so fragile beneath Louis again. Shivering a little. Vulnerable as a human. “I know how much you want it all the time. And you know I am always more than happy to give it to you. Always, cheri. But…”

Louis drew a breath, tried to quiet the throb inside him that begged to be filled to the brim. That needed to be filled to the very limit of itself with Lestat. That needed to feel their heartbeats syncing deep inside him. “But,” he said very quietly. Cradling Lestat’s neck in his hands. Waiting for him to continue.

“I was hoping tonight… perhaps.”

Lestat shifted underneath him. Thrust a hand between their bodies, started groping Louis’ hard cock through the fabric of his pants. At once—a sound fell out of Louis. A cry, a gasp. Something feral and entirely inhuman. Pleasure rolling like a wave all down the length of his back.

“I had my first sweet dream in weeks last night, mon cher.” Lestat purred, voice thick and dark as pitch in his throat. “Do you want to know what I dreamed about?”

Louis snarled. A surge of violent hunger moving through him as Lestat pawed at his dick through his pants. Gliding up along the length of it, caressing the glans with his thumb. He nodded his head. He tried to speak. Nothing came out but a whimper.

“I dreamed of your sweet cock throbbing inside me.”

Louis drew a shuddering breath and let it fall back out. Oh. He got his hands in Lestat’s hair and held on. Body so light it was like they were floating. The air bobbing all around him, Lestat’s hands gliding over him as though Louis were the ocean and they were swimming. Ever since that first night they’d fucked back in New Orleans, every time they’d come together had been the same. Louis wanting Lestat inside him, utterly insatiable, needing it endlessly. Begging for it with his body and his eyes and his words. Drawing Lestat down on top of him or straddling his lap and guiding him inside, inside…

A pang of something like guilt hit Louis for a fraction of a second. He knew how badly Lestat had been craving it, wanting it, needing it just as badly as Louis. And he’d wanted to give it to him. Truly he had. It was only that Louis’ own need was so strong now that he’d been permitted to have it again he felt like an addict. Needing his fix three times a night lest withdrawals set in.

Lestat pulled his hand away. He wrapped both arms around Louis’ middle and held him impossibly close. “If you don’t want to…” Tiniest nod of his head. One big hand tracing along the ridge of Louis’ spine. “I can be patient. I can…” Another nod. He pressed the softest, sweetest kiss to Louis’ chin. “I can wait until you’ve truly had your fill, cheri. I can wait for centuries. You only need to say—”

“I want to.” Louis drew a breath and trembled all over. Suddenly imagining the warmth of Lestat’s body all snuggled around him. Thrusting deep enough to feel the throb of his heart. Their flesh like links on a chain that could never be broken. “Take me to bed.”

—

Three Weeks Ago

Louis jolted awake, he bolted upright with a gasp in his throat. The coffin lid was standing open and he blinked at the closet coming into focus all around him. He was naked and alone, chilled from the lack of Lestat’s body heat beside him. Beyond the open closet door, he could see the curtains had been parted and the sun-proofed windows were exposed. Every object in the room was tinged with a subtle orangey glow.

He stood up and walked into the bedroom. His heart felt like it was beating all wrong. Lestat was standing near the foot of the bed with his head bowed and his hair obscuring his face in a thick pale curtain.

“Lestat?”

Lestat didn’t respond. He was muttering nonsense under his breath. Broken syllables, English and French. His hands were gnarled fists hanging at his sides like weapons.

Louis approached as a human might approach a wounded animal. Slowly, slowly. Gently, gently. “Baby?”

Lestat’s hair was like a shower of sparks raining from the top of his head. Shoulders lifting and falling with the force of his breathing. He was locked in a dream standing there in the blunted sun the color of almost-death. Swaying like some fragile thing chained down by his own two feet.

Louis started to reach out but thought better of it almost at once. Had Lestat ever been a sleepwalker before? He racked his brain, he tried to remember. Concluding almost at once that he hadn’t. Louis had never even considered such a thing might plague a vampire before. Rising from the grave while still sleeping. A dead thing dragging its flesh around the living world. Some horrid landscape of dreams spurring its body mindlessly forward.

“Lestat,” he said very quietly. So quietly he could hardly hear it over the hammering of their hearts. “Les—hey…”

He reached forward and didn’t stop this time. He touched Lestat on the curve of his shoulder. His naked skin clammy and chilled beneath the palm of Louis’ hand.

Lestat whipped his head back at once, hair like sparks that tailed a comet. Something growling from his throat as his eyes flew open. Something terrible and broken. Something that almost sounded like—

“Claudia!”

“Hey.” Louis drew an enormous breath and huffed it out. Waiting for Lestat’s eyes to stop darting around the room and focus on his before he offered his other hand. Took Lestat by the shoulders. Said—“Hey. Lestat. There you are.”

The set of Lestat’s jaw was sharp and tense. He stared at Louis with wide wet eyes that didn’t blink. “Louis,” he said, and audibly swallowed.

“Hey. Yeah…” Louis touched Lestat on the neck, finding the skin there cold and damp. “You were…”

Lestat’s eyes unfocused and his gaze began to dart all around. “Sleepwalking,” he said, rolling the syllables around on his tongue like he’d only just invented the word. “So I am. I used to…”

He settled his gaze on the windows. He furrowed his brows, his whole body a frown. His pale skin soaking up the muted light.

“I haven’t…” Lestat started and trailed away again. He shot his gaze up at the ceiling. He let it fall slowly down to the floor. “Not since I was…”

“Lestat.” Louis put his hands on Lestat’s face and forced his attention. Clammy skin, pulse like a drum pounding under the surface. “Not since when?”

He drew his hands away and waited for Lestat to continue. Resisting the sudden urge to wrap him in a big fluffy blanket and carry him back to the coffin. Or dress him in warm clothes, or feed him, or bathe him. Treat him like the broken thing he’d been in that shack in New Orleans.

“When I was a boy. In the monastery. I would wake sometimes in random places on the grounds with no memory of ever leaving my bed.”

Lestat reached forward and touched Louis’ bare waist like he was trying to ground himself. To remind himself he was awake and Louis was really standing across from him. Something in his eyes—sorrow or longing or confusion. And Louis tried to picture what those same eyes must have looked like back when Lestat was human. When he was that hopeful child in the monastery believing in a god that might save him. He wondered if they had been as deep and shining and blue.

“I was happy there,” Lestat said. And drew his hand away. And gazed down at his feet again.

“Yeah,” Louis said, taking Lestat by the arm and drawing him gently forward. “I know you were, baby. Come on. Let’s get you back in the coffin.”

Lestat allowed himself to be led to the coffin without protest. Louis shut and bolted the closet door behind them. He stepped into the coffin and lay flat on his back, gazing up at Lestat’s pale face gazing down at him. He gestured for Lestat to join him, and Lestat lay right on top of Louis without making a sound. The glorious full weight of him providing instant relief. It was like letting out a breath Louis had been holding for centuries. Lestat’s cool skin against him warming a little more by the second.

Louis reached up, tugged the lid shut on top of them. Folding their naked bodies in the safety of the dark. “Who were you talkin’ to?” he asked after a minute or two. And pressed a kiss into Lestat’s pale hair. “When you were out there dreamin’ on your feet.”

Lestat was silent for a long stretch of seconds. Breathing. His heart beating much slower now than it had been outside of the coffin. He pressed a kiss to Louis’ neck. And nuzzled against it. And sighed.

“I was talking to our daughter.”

—

Six Weeks After Leaving New Orleans

Louis was floating. Bobbing like a bubble on a gentle gust of wind, floating up into the cool night air with all the ease of a balloon. He was wrapped around Lestat with arms and legs, kissing his jaw and his neck. Eyes closed, he was being carried. Cradled in Lestat’s arms as though he weighed no more than a feather.

Lestat carried Louis inside through the open double doors. Stole his mouth in a sweet, languid kiss before depositing him onto the bed. Stood gazing down at him for a long moment after. Golden hair, golden face. His pupils big and dark as some mindlessly hungry predator’s. His giant paw of a hand touching Louis’ bare waist so gently.

“Sit up, mon cher,” Lestat said after a long, aching moment of reverence. He pulled his hand away. He turned and went to the nightstand.

Poleaxed with lust, Louis sat up without a sound. He gripped the edge of the mattress. He pressed his feet to the floor. He watched Lestat reach for the nail file they kept on permanent standby next to the bottle of lube.

Moonlight poured in through the windows and silvered Lestat’s skin as he knelt at Louis’ feet. There he was—this creature, this thing. This powerful beast in the skin of a man falling to his knees just for Louis. “Cheri,” he said very quietly, taking one of Louis’ hands and pressing his mouth to the knuckles. Lingering with it with his eyes closed. Louis had never felt like such a precious thing.

Lestat opened his eyes and shot his gaze up at Louis. Liquid blue rings with their shining blackhole centers. He winked, and Louis felt it like a kick to his throat. Desire pulsing thick and hot with blood between the spread of his legs. His hand trembling like that of a mortal’s when Lestat began to file the nails away from his fingers.

“Probably don’t need to do ‘em all,” Louis said, laughing when Lestat started in on the other hand the moment he’d finished with the first. Making no effort to pull away. Watching moonlight paint its effervescent patterns all over Lestat’s pale hair.

“Well, I know how much you like to keep your options open, cheri,” Lestat said, shooting Louis a smile that was dark and playful all at once. “There.” He tossed the file carelessly onto the nightstand when he’d blunted the last of Louis’ fingers. He pressed another lingering kiss to the back of Louis’ hand. “C'est fini.”

The moment Lestat let go of Louis’ hand—Louis was on him. Taking Lestat by the collar of his shirt. Hauling him swiftly upward to steal his mouth in a snarling kiss.

—

Two Weeks Ago

“Tu es impossible,” Louis snarled, bared his teeth, the ends of his fangs poking out. They’d been arguing for so long his jaw was starting to ache. “Tu es un enfant.”

He spit the words with his eyes fixed on Lestat’s burning face. Hoping to see them land. Hoping to see them hurt. It felt good to let the anger out. To not expend a single ounce of energy trying to hold it in.

The ache was good. He wanted more. Craved it like blood and sex and money.

“Oh, I’m the child?” Lestat let a bitter laugh fall from his pretty pink mouth. “Well, that may be, mon cher. But what do you suppose that makes you, hm?” His lip twitched like he was fighting with everything he had to keep his fangs in his mouth. “The schoolyard bully? Telling me I have bad taste when I dared to—”

“I never said you had bad taste. I said your taste and my taste are clearly two different—”

“It was implied in your tone, my saintly Saint Louis. Because heaven forbid I have an opinion on the artwork we will be hanging in our—”

“You can’t be serious. You can’t—” Louis pushed a hiss from his throat. Squeezed his hands into fists until they burned. “You’ve had nothing but opinions, Lestat. And then gave me hell for not having one. And now that I have somethin’ I’m passionate about—”

“The Winslow Homer doesn’t go with the new bedding. The piece that hangs over the mantel in our bedroom should be—”

“We’ll change the bedding if you don’t—” He clenched his jaw, he let it hurt. His voice was lightly slurred from his fangs half-filling his mouth. “It complements the space. Pulls from the blue in the—”

“It’s a nocturne,” Lestat cut in with a flippant little wave of his hand. Gesturing to the blank space over the mantel where Louis intended the painting to go. One from deep in his archives. One he’d had in storage since Paris. In all the homes he’d owned, he’d never found the perfect place to hang his Summer Night. “I was thinking we should do something more cheerful.”

Louis couldn’t help but laugh at that. “We’re nocturnal, Lestat. I’d say a night scene hangin’ over a mantel in a room with a coffin in the closet—oh my god. What the fuck are you—” He pinched the bridge of his nose to keep from yelling too loud. Even though the yelling felt so good. Felt like home. Felt like his birthright to simply let it out. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

Lestat narrowed his gaze. His eyes like those of a cat watching its prey from a distance. “Yes, mon cher, I am. And the purpose is making sure our home is—”

“Don’t say perfect.” He flashed his fangs, some feral sound bubbling up in his throat. “That word doesn’t mean shit anymore. Not when you say it. ‘Cause nothing’s ever—”

“Perfect.” Lestat growled, wielding the word as a weapon. A poison dart aimed directly at the center of Louis’ throat.

Louis drew a long, deep breath. Held it. Pushed it out like a bullet and said—“Might have a chance at makin’ it that way too if you weren’t so insistent on being a child.”

Lestat’s whole face began to tremble. Mouth wobbling, tears welling in great red gouts in both his eyes. He looked like he wanted to shout and crumble to the floor all at once. Opening his mouth as though to spit some terrible curse in Louis’ direction, but all that came out was a growl. The sound of it pitiful and broken.

He turned away from Louis at once. Marching in the direction of the doors that led to the patio and throwing them open with his mind. He left them gaping to the night after disappearing beyond them. And Louis could only stare at the dark like it was some great veil he couldn’t pass through. Letting the anger drain from him like blood from a precious living fountain. Finding nothing but a yawning hole of sadness in its wake.

After a while, he sat down on the edge of the bed. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted in from the patio. Lestat wasn’t far. He was only just there. Louis could still feel his heart beating hard and angry and true. He lay down on the bed with his back to the open doors. Wishing he could will himself to fight just a little bit longer. It was always easier that way. When the fighting would roll right into the fucking until they were both so pleasantly empty.

He shut his eyes. He drifted with exhaustion but couldn’t sleep. There was so little comfort to be found in that big bed with artificial light blaring all around it. No warmth or familiarity to soothe him in a wide open space all alone.

He huffed, opened his eyes, rolled over onto his back and gazed at the ceiling. Lay there with his arms hanging limp at his sides like a dead thing. He felt Lestat coming back before he saw him. Pulse of his heartbeat wafting through the open double doors. The smell of cigarette smoke and salt on his skin. Louis moved his eyes from the ceiling just in time to see Lestat’s approach.

Pink veil of blood tears on his cheeks. Cigarette smoke on his mouth as he crawled up onto the bed and straddled one of Louis’ thighs. He opened his mouth as though to speak. And said nothing. And clamped it shut again.

Louis touched him on the hip over his clothes. What had they been arguing about? Nothing that mattered. The most important thing in the world. Whatever. Lestat tugged at Louis’ shirt until it slipped free from his waistband. Shoved at the fabric until the bare flesh of his belly was exposed. His eyes on Louis’ eyes, then falling down to drink in the sight of all that naked skin. Bending forward he—

Pressed his mouth to Louis’ belly just beside his navel. Soft, warm, reverent. He nuzzled his nose against it. He sat back and gazed down at Louis with a tuft of pale hair tumbling over one of his eyes.

“Will you make love to me?” Louis asked, so softly it was like he was melting.

Lestat’s blood pounded like a promise deep inside him. The great red river of his artery throbbing against the side of his neck. His lips parted, his fangs were poking out. Slowly, he nodded his head. “Oui,” he said. And fell down on top of Louis. And crashed their mouths together.

—

Six Weeks After Leaving New Orleans

Louis had his eyes squeezed shut. They were kissing slow and deep and languid. He felt like he was floating even as he was being pressed down into the bed. Lestat a solid weight on top, he had Louis’ knees hooked over his shoulders. Pressing forward until Louis’ body was entirely folded in two. Rocking together like their bed was a boat, the room all around them the ocean. Lestat’s hard cock rubbing against Louis’ ass through the fabric of their pants.

“Thought…” Louis was panting hard when the kissing ended. He pawed at Lestat’s hair and cursed their pants for getting between them. They should have been naked. Why weren’t they already naked? “Thought you wanted me to fuck you?”

Lestat snarled. It was a sound of hunger. A sound that wanted to devour Louis whole. “Oh, cheri…” Licking into Louis’ mouth again, nipping at his bottom lip with hungry teeth. “I do.” Kissing, kissing. His fangs were falling down. Louis couldn’t help but draw his tongue against one lovely pointed tip. “I do. I do…”

Louis could feel the blood thumping in Lestat through their clothes. Could almost taste it under his skin, veins and arteries like rivers rushing the holy sacrament to and from his heart. He growled when Lestat pulled back, all that precious heat taken from him, his body unfurling like the saddest flag. Louis whimpered. Desperately seeking his gaze through the veil of hair that was tumbling over Lestat’s eyes.

“I do.” Lestat drew one hand down the center of Louis’ bare torso, following the path with his gaze slowly, slowly. His hand finally coming to rest against the tented front of Louis’ pajama pants. Gripping his cock through the fabric, holding it firm at the root. “I do.”

Louis gasped and pressed up into the touch. Legs spreading wide, back a deep arch rising up from the mattress. He reached forward, gripped the front of Lestat’s vest, tugging at the fabric until one of the buttons popped. Lestat grinned at once, showing Louis his teeth, the sharp white ends of his fangs poking out.

“You truly want to?” Lestat asked, the sound of his voice slightly slurred from the fangs that were filling his mouth. He tipped his head to one side, eyes on the space where he was thumbing Louis’ cockhead through the thin fabric of his pants. “You want to fuck me, Louis?”

“Yes,” Louis said, some pathetic, broken sound falling out of him. He tugged on Lestat’s vest again, felt another of the buttons pop. Wild vampire strength barely contained beneath the force of his hunger. “I want to—baby…” Slipping his hand inside the half-open front of Lestat’s vest to paw at the fabric of his shirt. Bucking up into the friction as Lestat’s hand continued its teasing. Watching his face as the endearment slowly landed. “Yes. Baby. Let me fill you up.”

Lestat’s pupils bloomed, two dark flowers desperately seeking the kiss of the sun. Blackholes with brilliant rings of blue all shimmering around them. Lestat made a sound that was almost a growl. Pulled his hand from Louis’ dick and immediately started tugging at his pants. Getting them off so quickly Louis hardly registered it had happened at all.

His cock thwacked hard against his belly. Lestat tossed Louis’ pants away and was on him at once. Forcing his fangs to retract and bending forward to drag his nose along the line of Louis’ cock from root to tip. A beast scenting the blood of his prey. His tongue darting out to swirl around the head, devouring a pearl of pre-come like Holy Communion.

“Lestat.” Louis breathed, and ached. He wound a fist in Lestat’s golden hair and tugged hard. Watching through a veil of tears as Lestat’s mouth parted and sealed around the head of his dick. “Baby. Fuck—you want—”

Blood pounded like a rhythm section inside him. He could hardly speak or think. They were nothing but flesh writhing in a slick mass of blood and lust on the bed, they were nothing but this. Two monsters so in love the force of it could swallow the world. The gale of his breath moving out and in, out and in, out and—

“You want my cock inside you? You want…” Louis growled, then moaned. Got both his hands in Lestat’s hair just as he started sinking down on the shaft of his dick. Taking the throbbing length inside until the head began to nudge at his throat. “Les—baby—do you…”

Lestat pulled back, gripping Louis’ cock at the root and pressing a kiss to the head. His lust-dark gaze tipping upward, his pink mouth twisting itself in a grin. “I do.”

Louis watched Lestat’s fangs drop all the way down. His cock throbbed, understanding deep in his marrow what was coming next. Lestat moved so quickly Louis hardly registered the movement. Suddenly—he was latching onto the flesh of Louis’ inner thigh and his fangs were sinking in. One hand holding firm to Louis’ dick as he began to drink his fill. Stroking sweet and steady from base to tip, slicking him all over with pre-come and the remnants of his spit.

Pleasure throbbed in Louis. It was the most unfathomable thing. Every time—it was like Lestat was drinking the pure, unfiltered emotions straight from the chambers of his heart. Pushing his own emotions inside in their wake, filling Louis right up to the brim. Their hearts finding the beat of each other in the center of that ever-looping circle. Their veins and arteries like rivers feeding from the very same spring.

Louis’ cock pulsed in Lestat’s hand once, twice. His toes curled against the bed beneath him. It was maddening how close he already was. How close he always was when Lestat took him like this. “Baby—I’m so—don’t—please.” He snarled, both hands wound in Lestat’s hair, all those strands like pure gold slipping through his fingers. “Feels too—too good. I’m so—I’m gonna—”

Lestat pulled away with a dark-throated growl. He released his grip on Louis’ cock and let it thud against his belly. Slick and shining with pre-come at the tip. A little streak of it falling against Louis’ skin like a comet tail.

It was shocking, really. The sight Louis got to behold when Lestat sat back on his heels between the spread of his legs. Like seeing past the veneer of his skin to the raw, quivering heart of him. Lestat de Lioncourt stripped of his vanity and splayed before Louis in all his messy glory. Hair a wild spray of waves mussed from Louis’ hands on top of his head. His fangs tinged pink beyond the gash of his mouth. A little wisp of Louis’ blood dripping down from one corner. His open shirt collar exposing the most tempting bit of flesh at his throat.

Hungry beast, lovesick animal. Something entirely unconcerned with anything but what his flesh was starving for.

“Louis…” Lestat bared his teeth in a devious grin, his fangs half-filling his mouth. “Mon cher…”

Lestat climbed on top of Louis and straddled his hips. The pulse of his body under his clothes like a siren song. Caging Louis in with arms and legs, the deep black wells of his eyes drawing Louis down into their centers.

“Beloved,” Lestat purred, and pushed closer, and licked across the seam of Louis’ lips. “Take me. I am yours.”

Louis’ hands found Lestat’s ass and roughly drew him forward. Lights blooming in his head, and flickering, and dying away. He didn’t need a mind anymore. He let his flesh take over. Spurring him onward until he’d flipped Lestat onto his back and pressed him down into the mattress. His hard, leaking dick pressing to Lestat’s through the unrelenting barrier of his pants.

“Never shoulda bought you these clothes.” Louis laughed, half delirious and entirely in love. He nipped at Lestat’s bottom lip with his teeth. Gasping when Lestat gripped his bare ass and two fingers fluttered over his hole.

“Then I suppose you’re just going to have to fix your mistake, mon cher,” Lestat said, and gave Louis the softest swat on the ass. “And ruin them.”

Louis’ fangs popped out at once. He snarled, pressed his nose to Lestat’s neck, scented the blood pumping hot and quick up under his skin. Resisting the urge to bite down hard and drink his fill. He needed Lestat naked. He needed it now.

Pulling back—Lestat like a blushing spark in his vision. Louis gripped the front of his vest in both hands and tore it the rest of the way open. Sending buttons flying, sound of shredding fabric. Lestat’s hands soothing up and down the flesh of his bare thighs as Louis tore at his shirt. “Get these off,” he thought he heard himself saying, suddenly on his feet by the side of the bed rending the fabric of Lestat’s pants.

His clothes were in strips by the time Lestat was fully naked. Louis stood at the side of the bed, watching him. Letting the drumming of their shared heart wash over him in blood-warm waves. Lestat said his name once—Louis—and that was all it took to get him moving. Spurring Louis mindlessly forward until he was on the bed and completely covering Lestat’s naked body with his own.

“Lestat,” Louis breathed the sound of the name. His lover, his maker, his heart. He buried his face in Lestat’s neck and scented the throb of his blood. “Baby.”

“Louis.” Lestat wrapped arms and legs around him, drew Louis impossibly close. Their cocks snuggled against one another like old friends, thumping in time with their hearts. “S'il te plaît…”

Louis pressed his mouth to Lestat’s neck and tasted the thump of his pulse. He started rocking his hips without even meaning to do it. The friction he found so delicious he couldn’t help but moan. His hands in Lestat’s hair, sucking a bruise against the side of his neck. His fangs piercing the flesh and opening the precious font of his artery.

Lestat’s hands were on Louis’ ass roughly spurring him forward. His blood was life itself. Louis drank from him slowly, letting the feelings rush into him easily as drawing breath. Pleasure pulsing in him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. So utterly connected they were like a single being. One heart, one mind, one soul that could not be severed even by the hand of death.

“I wanna eat your ass before I fuck you,” Louis said the moment he ceased his drinking, the taste of Lestat’s blood warm and red in his mouth. He lingered with the puncture wounds, sucked a bruising kiss to the side of his neck.

Untangling themselves from each other was always a Herculean task. To pull away from that heat felt like madness. Louis could have stayed pressed to Lestat forever drowning in the sound of his blood. He forced himself to start moving, planting a line of kisses from Lestat’s neck slowly, slowly downward. Pausing for a good long while to suck kisses against each of his nipples. Drawing the nubs between his teeth, making love to his flesh.

“Louis,” Lestat growled, then moaned. Pawing at Louis’ neck and shoulders, hands dragging down the line of his back. “I will be finished before we even begin if you continue that much longer.”

Louis let a laugh rumble through him, trained his eyes slowly upward. Mouth right over Lestat’s beating heart, so close he could practically taste it. “Well, in that case,” he said, planting a slow trail of kisses down Lestat’s naked torso. Stopping just shy of where his dick lay hard and quivering against his belly. “I wanna see your knees touch your shoulders, baby.”

Sitting back on his heels, he shoved at Lestat’s thighs until they opened wider. There was a confidence rising in him so true and it was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. The knowledge he could do no wrong was a wildly intoxicating thing. Lestat wanted everything Louis would give him. Lestat wanted everything.

Louis watched Lestat’s knees tip back, his body an opening door. Blushing pink skin, reflective blue eyes with their deep black centers. Louis touched Lestat on the backs of his thighs, the tips of his blunted fingers pressing in. Letting his eyes sweep from Lestat’s watchful face down and down and down…

“Cheri,” Lestat said, his voice an utter ruin in his throat. He reached forward. He touched Louis in the center of his chest very gently. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

Louis’ breath caught in his chest for a fraction of a second. He pushed at Lestat’s thighs, shoved his knees back as far as they would go. A thousand memories of a thousand nights from over a hundred years ago crashing over him like waves on the ocean. Memories of being adored, being worshiped. It felt like a triumph to cherish such memories now. Like a new beginning, like a burden lifted.

“Yeah, well, you ain’t so bad yourself,” Louis said, and tried a laugh, his whole body seeming to burn, burn.

Lestat gripped the covers beneath him with both hands, a slick of red covering his eyes. He blinked, and a single tear fell down one cheek in a rivulet of crimson. His mouth quivering slightly, lips parting as though to speak, but all that fell out was a broken little sigh.

Louis’ mouth curled up in one corner. There he was—his man, his beloved monster. He put both hands on Lestat’s ass and spread him impossibly wide. Their shared heartbeat cracking on the air like thunder. Louis bent forward slowly, nuzzling into the space where Lestat’s groin met his thigh. Pressed a kiss to the shaft of his cock, peppered a sweet little line of them all the way down to his balls. Reverent, lingering with it. Pulling back just a little and spitting down onto the clench of Lestat’s blushing hole.

Tracing the tips of two fingers against it, eyes on Lestat’s face to relish the fact of his ruin. Yes. There it was. Those eyes, the twist of his mouth. With just this simple act alone Lestat looked like he could shatter apart.

Lestat muttered Louis’ name like it was lyrics in a song. Louis, Louis, my sweet Louis. The rhythm of it was nothing short of intoxicating. Louis bent forward and licked a stripe right down the center of Lestat’s spit-slick hole. Rolling his tongue and pressing a soft, sweet kiss against it. His cock pounding hard between his legs in response to the sound it pulled from Lestat. A growl that rolled into a moan. A violent, hungry sound. A sound like crashing water.

Louis had his eyes squeezed shut. He let himself tumble down into the gushing sound of their blood. Oh—that blood under Lestat’s skin pumping life like a fountain. That blood Louis could still taste hot and thick in his mouth. He rolled his tongue against Lestat’s entrance, that tight clench yielding to Louis a little more by the second. His palms caressing the backs of Lestat’s thighs, the skin he found there like velvet. Fucking the tip of his tongue inside just to hear the sound of Lestat utterly falling apart.

Dark-throated rumble; beautiful, shattering monster.

“Louis.” Lestat sobbed and growled all at once. As though the curl of Louis’ tongue was more than his immortal body could take. Deadlier than the sun at morning. Paralyzing as a stake to the heart. “Cheri, that is so—”

“Hey…” Louis pulled back, pressed a kiss to Lestat’s thigh, trained his eyes upward on his sparking, tear-soaked face. “I’ll stop if it’s too much. It’s okay, baby, I can—”

“Mon cher, if you stop my bones will turn to dust.” Suddenly, Lestat was laughing. His whole body shaking with it, his mouth turning up in a grin. He hooked his arms up under his knees and spread himself wider. “You overwhelm me, Louis,” he said. And snarled. And flashed Louis the tips of his fangs. “But I do not wish for you to stop.”

Louis smiled. His body swollen with desire to the point of madness. Down between his legs his cock was throbbing with blood. “Okay,” he said, and bent forward, eyes trained upward on Lestat’s face as he pressed a kiss to his hole. “I won’t stop.”

Eyes squeezed shut, point of his tongue like a weapon. Spearing into Lestat as deep as he could possibly go. Pulling out, fucking in. Licking a delicate circle all around the slowly yielding flesh of his hole. Letting the French endearments that fell from Lestat’s sobbing mouth wash over him in waves. Mon cœur. Mon trésor. Je t'aime, je t'aime, je t'aime. He licked, he sucked, he peppered Lestat’s blushing flesh with kisses. Coaxing his body open until he was wrecked, until he was absolutely soaked.

Louis pulled back with stars in his eyes. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t wanted this sooner. How had he been so foolish? Filling Lestat up sounded like the most wondrous thing in the world. It sounded like salvation for his damned soul. It sounded like being invited at last inside the gates of heaven.

He snatched the bottle of lube from the nightstand, turned his eyes to fully focus on Lestat’s burning, blushing face. Tear stained, blood-flecked crimson, moonlight dancing on his skin like magic.

“Louis,” Lestat said, his arms still hooked up under his knees, still holding himself wide open. “Cheri. Please.”

Louis smiled, showed the ends of his teeth as he popped the cap on the lube. “I know what you want, baby,” he said, holding two fingers up to the moonlight, slicking them both with a generous amount of lube. “And I’m gonna give it to you.”

He snapped the lube shut and tossed it down onto the bed. Drew the lengths of both his fingers over Lestat’s hole slowly, slowly. Watching his face the whole time, watching his eyes, those blue rings shifting like magic tricks in the light.

“Louis,” Lestat said, like he was trying to cast a spell with the name. Like he was summoning Louis inside him. Summoning Louis home. “Louis…”

“Lestat,” Louis purred. And pressed the pads of his two slick fingers to Lestat’s blushing hole. “Relax. I got you…”

He gripped the curve of Lestat’s bare ass with one hand and thrust the tips of his fingers inside. Open, he thought. Or maybe he said it. He couldn’t be sure of himself anymore beyond the deafening sound of their blood. Open.

A sound cracked out of Lestat like a force of nature. Like lightning, a furious wind. Beyond the open double doors, the Pacific Ocean roared her song. Louis drew the ends of his fingers out and thrust them forward again. Giving Lestat half the length of them this time. Open, open. Holding them steady, feeling him quiver. Watching the flush deepen on Lestat’s pale face in the moonlit dark.

“Donne-m'en plus,” Lestat whined. Give me more. And pulled his knees back even more. Somehow—more, more. Shaping his body into a tight little pocket of flesh on the bed. “S'il te plaît, Louis. Spear me in two with your beautiful fingers.”

A growl bubbled in Louis’ throat of its own volition. Yes. And he plunged the full lengths of his fingers inside Lestat all the way, all the way. Pulling out quickly and thrusting back in. A smile tugging at his mouth when Lestat began to sob. Yes.

In and out. In and out. Over and over and over. He bent forward and pressed a kiss to Lestat’s bare thigh as his fingers fucked. He spit on Lestat’s hole and added a third finger just to hear him howl. Just to watch the beast fall to pieces. To watch his blood-fat cock twitch hard against his belly. To hear him begging in English in French. To sob, to mutter Louis’ name.

Louis Louis Louis.

Louis pulled his fingers free and sat back on his heels, his chest heaving with the force of his breath. Let his eyes sweep over Lestat slowly, slowly, slowly. His blushing face, his chest that beat with the song of his blood. That space where he was still holding himself wide open for Louis. The space where Louis’ fingers had been. The space where he was gaped and shining slick with spit and lube.

Lestat released his hold on himself at last. He let his legs tumble down. His feet pressing flat to the bed as he whined—“Louis.” His cock was the color of a bruise where it pressed to his belly. He reached forward, he touched Louis on the curve of his waist. “I fear I’m on the edge of being finished already.”

Louis reached for the lube without taking his eyes from Lestat and popped it open. “It’s okay, baby,” he said, and slicked his cock from base to tip. A spike of pleasure rising in his throat, choking back a growl. “Just as long as I finish you with this, hm?”

He tossed the lube away without care and held his slicked up cock in his hand. Stroking himself with his eyes on Lestat, desire beating in him wild and frantic. Lestat touched him on his hips with both hands and it felt like he’d been set ablaze.

Louis bared his teeth, flashed the pointed tips of his fangs. He shoved at Lestat’s thighs until his knees were tipping back again. Turning his eyes fully downward to that warm, wet space he’d carved for himself. His cock in one hand, holding Lestat open with the other. Licking sweetly with the head of his dick over Lestat’s slick hole.

“Oui,” Lestat said, the sound of it all shattered glass in his throat. He held Louis by the waist as he started sinking in, in. “Oui. Mon cher—”

Louis snapped his hips and the gates of heaven opened to him all at once. The stars in his head went supernova and died away. And bloomed to life all over again. His brain felt like it was strobing. Beneath him—Lestat made a sound that was part way between a sob and a howl.

“Yeah,” Louis breathed. Desire spun inside him wild as a hurricane. “That’s it.”

He drew Lestat roughly toward him, draped one of his legs up over his hip. Took his other leg quickly and slung it over his shoulder.

“I got you.”

Rocking forward, drawing back. His eyes on Lestat’s burning face. His hands cupping the line of Lestat’s narrow waist, listening to the sound of his blood. Feeling their synced pulse beating hard in the head of his dick. Rolling forward until he was buried inside Lestat all the way, all the way.

“Cheri…” Lestat touched Louis in the center of his chest. Touched his neck, his collarbone. His fangs were filling his mouth and his voice came out all slurred. “My sweet…” He laughed. A bubbling sound in his throat like he was desperately trying to get more words to come. But couldn’t.

Louis turned his face inward, pressed a kiss to Lestat’s calf where it was draped over his shoulder. Dragging his nose against it, scenting the pulse of his blood. “You’re okay now, baby,” he said. “I got you.”

Louis started to move. Slow, calculated little rolls of his hips. Pulling out half his length before bottoming out again. Over and over. Steady, steady. Watching the tears well in Lestat’s big wide eyes a little more with each passing second.

“Louis,” Lestat begged. “Louis. Louis.”

Louis snarled, showed his fangs. Pleasure trilled in him like his nerves were flats and sharps. He spit in his hand, not a single thought spinning around inside his empty head. He was only flesh doing as flesh was wont to do. Gripping Lestat’s cock, he stroked it slow and sweet and steady. Playing the body of his maker like an instrument. Turning his sobs to melodies, his begging like some old familiar song.

“Louis.” Lestat whined. He moaned. He pawed at the flesh of one of Louis’ thighs with his sharp-tipped fingers. “Mon cher, I won’t—if you touch me like that I won’t last.”

“Try.” Louis gripped Lestat’s cock and balls at the base. He gripped hard. He rolled his hips, feeling the beat of Lestat’s blood so very deep inside him. “Just a little longer, baby. Feels so—” Pleasure cracked up the base of Louis’ spine, pulsing in the very center of him like a brand new heart. “It’s so good. You’re so…”

Louis moved both hands to Lestat’s waist and hauled him closer. He pressed his face to the leg slung over his shoulder, sucked a bruising kiss to the flesh of Lestat’s inner thigh. Biting down just enough to draw the tiniest pinpricks of blood. The bed howling like a beast underneath them as Louis’ rhythm went from a trot to a gallop. Driving into Lestat as he sobbed out Louis’ name, watching the way his blushing cock drooled in a sticky line all over his belly.

He was drawing Lestat’s other leg up over his shoulder and tumbling forward without even thinking to do it. Allowing the hungry god in his belly to take hold and come to claim its sacrifice. He pressed himself to Lestat, shoving his knees back until they nearly touched his ears. Hips snapping, fangs popping all the way out. His cock driving into Lestat’s dripping gaping flesh again and again and again and—

They were kissing, growling. Licking into each other’s mouths and offering messy little scrapes of their teeth. Lestat’s hands reaching down to grip Louis’ ass hard and drive him ever-forward. Sobbing into the kisses as Louis bottomed out inside him over and over. “Louis, Louis,” he muttered, he begged. His nails biting into the flesh of Louis’ ass hard enough to draw blood. Fingers fluttering over Louis’ hole, his cock twitching hard where it was pressed between their bellies.

“Louis.”

Louis bottomed out one last time and stilled his hips completely. Forehead pressed to Lestat’s, their mouths panting hotly together. Louis kissed Lestat on the tip of his nose, the burning slope of his cheek.

“Louis.”

Slowly, Louis drew back, let Lestat’s body unfold, kept going until his cock slipped out. And Lestat snarled, growled, whimpered. Reached for Louis and pawed at his chest, his neck, his shoulders.

“S'il te plaît. Mon cher—”

“You’re close.” Louis sat back on his heels, took Lestat’s cock in his hand and thumbed at the tip, smearing pre-come all over. “You’re so fuckin’ close, baby, I can feel it.”

“Oui,” Lestat said, bared his fangs, his hair a golden halo spraying out from his head. “I am holding on by a thread, cheri.”

Lestat huffed a broken laugh. And Louis couldn’t help but smile. Stroking Lestat’s cock once, twice, three times before pulling his hand away.

“You wanna ride me?” Louis’ voice was thick in his mouth. Fangs aching, ever-thirsty for the taste of his lover. Through the moonlit dark, he watched the blood throb in the side of Lestat’s pale neck.

Lestat didn’t hesitate for even a second. He moved like a cat on the prowl, pouncing on Louis at once and shoving him roughly down onto the mattress. Straddling Louis’ hips with a beastly sound pouring out of his throat. The sight of him streaking bright as a comet tail as he bent forward to devour Louis’ mouth in a kiss.

Rocking together slowly, their hard cocks thudding in time with their hearts. Lestat licked into Louis’ mouth and pricked his tongue on the point of one sharp fang. The sweet sting of blood trickled into Louis’ mouth, ratcheting his desire up to the point of madness. Hands on Lestat’s ass, fingers teasing over the slick, gaped flesh of his hole. Fucking the tips inside, pulling back for just a moment before spearing him with the full lengths of two, then three, then—

Louis plucked his fingers free, and Lestat instantly pulled back with a growl. Pale hair in his eyes as he gazed down at Louis and groped around on the bed until he found the bottle of lube. Neither of them spoke. Their hearts were racing like they were trying to break the speed of sound, like they were trying to break free from their bodies and rocket all the way to the moon.

Lestat slicked Louis’ cock quickly and tossed the bottle down on the floor. Eyes on Louis’, bracing one hand on his chest as he lifted up and teased the head over the sloppy, slicked-up flesh of his hole. Snarling as he sank down, both hands on Louis’ chest, the bone-white glint of his fangs protruding from his mouth in the light of the moon.

Pleasure bubbled in Louis’ belly so hard and quick his vision whited out for a second. Head swimming and diving down into the depths of full delirium. He heard a voice that very much sounded like his own say—“That’s it, baby. Take what you want. Make yourself come on my dick.”

The whole world melted around them as Lestat started to move. They weren’t levitating but it felt like they were, the bed underneath them turning liquid as pleasure washed over Louis in blood-warm, lovesick waves. Pleasure was a bath and Louis was sinking down in it. Nerve ends all alight as Lestat fucked himself on the full, throbbing length of Louis’ dick. His own dick bobbing and blood-fat and shockingly rigid.

“Louis,” Lestat sobbed, his rhythm that of an unmoored ship being tossed about the ocean. He slammed himself down on Louis’ dick over and over. The bed underneath them howled and shook. “Do you know—do you…”

Rocking his hips, a sob like shattering glass in his throat. Lifting up and slamming down again and again and again. Lestat’s hair was a shock of filaments dancing all around him. Spun gold spraying out from the top of his luminous head.

“Louis, mon cher…” Lestat laughed, snarled, showing Louis his teeth, his fangs like bone-white daggers nestled behind his lips. “Do you know how much I—” Growling into his laughter as all at once he started to come. “How much I love you.”

Louis’ blunted fingers pressed into Lestat’s hips hard enough to bruise. Lying there and allowing himself to be taken. Feeling the orgasm moving in Lestat, eyes on his blood-fat cock pulsing warm and sticky all over Louis’ belly. Raucous hips faltering a little but never once ceasing their rhythm. Up and down, up and down, up and—

Louis could feel his own orgasm blooming like a promise inside him. Lestat fell forward and pressed their middles together, latched onto the side of Louis’ neck and let his fangs sink in. Pleasure moving like a freight train from Louis’ neck to his dick. All nestled inside the heat of Lestat, Louis’ cock jumped hard. And he sobbed. And just like that—he started to come. Arms wrapped around Lestat’s middle and drawing him impossibly closer. Fucking up into him with hips that were quickly losing the thread to their plotting.

Lestat took slow, gentle sips from Louis’ artery until his orgasm fully abated. Drawing back, he lapped at the puncture marks with the curl of his tongue. Louis felt like his whole body had been dipped in stars. The two of them shimmering together for a long moment after. Eventually—Louis’ soft cock slipped out. And Lestat whimpered at the loss like he’d been wounded. Louis knew that feeling well, how terrible it was to be empty.

Lestat maneuvered himself down onto his back. Beautiful and golden; naked and sticky. He pulled Louis over to lie on top of him. Drawing Louis’ head to his chest with a contented little sigh.

Louis tipped his gaze up slowly when he felt his mind return. Eyes catching on the spark of Lestat’s face painted silver from the light of the moon. “Hello,” he said, and laughed, corners of his mouth turning up.

“Hello, cheri,” Lestat said, voice lightly slurred and thick in his throat.

Louis pressed his mouth to Lestat’s jaw, nuzzled his nose against it. “Was it everything you dreamed it’d be?”

“No,” Lestat said, and laughed a little. The corners of his mouth curling soft. “A dream could never be as sweet as what you just gave me, Louis. It was…” Little shake of his head. One big warm hand trailing slowly down the length of Louis’ naked back. “As though your soul was pushing into me. Touching my soul, breathing its breath. An act of flight shared together right here in our marital bed.”

Louis couldn’t help the laugh that rumbled in his chest. “That what this is?” He drew a breath. He felt happy and sad all at once. Then—happy. So happy. Only happy and safe and in love. “Our marital bed.”

It wasn’t a question, really. Of course that’s what it was. Hadn’t they been married for over a hundred years? Bound together in their blood.

“What else would it be, mon cher?” Lestat hummed, his hand falling down to cup the swell of Louis’ bare ass “Tu es mon mari,” he said. “Et je suis à toi.”

Louis opened his mouth, tried to speak. For a long moment it was like all the air had been knocked from his lungs. Sometimes it hit him so hard in moments like this—the fact that they were really, truly back together. The knowledge that even when things got hard, loving Lestat would never again have to be a burden.

He pressed his face to Lestat’s neck and listened to the hum of his blood. “An act of flight,” he echoed Lestat’s words softly, speaking half to himself. Mouth hovering just over the hum of Lestat’s gentle pulse. Something was tugging at him now he’d been thinking of off and on for weeks. Something he’d been happy to mostly shove to the back of his mind. Something spurred by nightmares of falling only ever half-remembered. But now that it’d been spoken—well. “Can I ask you to do somethin’ for me now, baby?”

When Louis tipped his face up, Lestat was staring at him with an adoration so earnest it would have been lethal to a mortal. Like the face of the sun gazing down at him. It was a wonder he didn’t turn to dust.

“Anything, mon cher,” Lestat said, and gave Louis’ ass a gentle squeeze. “What is it?”

—

Last Night

Louis had been doing his best not to think about it: all the many complications of his life before. Armand, Dubai, the penthouse, the interview. The laptop he’d burned in some halfhearted attempt at ridding the world of the recordings he knew had already been backed up on the cloud. The ten million dollars he’d parted with gladly hoping Daniel would simply move on with what was left of his life and ditch the book.

Back in New Orleans, he and Lestat had been living in a lovesick, dreamy haze together. That hotel suite had been like a womb. Nothing on the outside was real; nothing on the outside could get them. But now, sitting on the new couch in the living room—the one they’d argued about for three nights after having it delivered from the boutique on Mission Street—Louis looked at Lestat reading on the iPad beside him. Looked down at the book he had open in his lap and let his eyes unfocus. Inky black letters all smudging together, melting to insignificance inside the boundaries of their pages.

“So…” Louis started, drew a breath, shut his book and tossed it onto the coffee table. Where to even begin? It all felt like the tangled mess of someone else’s life bouncing around inside his head. “Have you heard from Armand?”

Not what he’d been expecting to say, but—well…

Beside him, Lestat’s heartbeat picked up at once. It galloped like a racehorse in his chest even as he remained silent and still. His back rod-straight as he flipped the iPad shut and slowly set it down on the coffee table.

“No, cheri, I have not heard from the gremlin.” Lestat turned his entire body in Louis’ direction. He offered a calculated tip of his head. His pupils blooming wide, sucking light down into the blackness. “Have you?”

Louis drew a breath. Fighting the urge to crawl into Lestat’s lap and inhale the scent of his blood against the side of his neck. If they started that now they’d only end up having sex, and Louis would end up telling himself they didn’t really need to talk about it. “No,” he said. “I’m just…”

“Just…” Lestat rolled the word to the end of his tongue, held onto it like an endearment. Like love, like Louis. The rest of the sentence coming out like a curse. “Thinking about him?”

Here we go, Louis thought, annoyed and thrilled all at once. They hadn’t argued once all night. They were overdue. “Don’t say it like that,” he said, studying Lestat’s face, the thin blue rings of his eyes, the faint scar slashed between his brows. “I’m just tryin’ to…” Breathing in, breathing out. Feeling the weight of the moment like a stone in his belly. “There are some things we need to talk about. Or—well, I guess… some things I need to tell you.”

“About Armand?” Lestat’s mouth twitched when he said the name. It was a wonder his fangs didn’t pop out.

“Not necessarily,” Louis said, and touched Lestat’s shoulder, trying to will a little of the tension out. “I told him to leave our penthouse. Suppose I should go back at some point to see that he actually did. Get the rest of my things. He and I, we—”

“I’ll go with you,” Lestat chimed in, and Louis felt the spike in his pulse like an electric current.

“Not what this is about.” Louis pinched his brows, and breathed, and touched Lestat on the neck. “Let me finish, baby.”

Lestat frowned when Louis drew his hand away, a look in his eyes like he wanted to argue. But he only offered Louis the tiniest nod of his head.

“We… owned property together. But we were never technically married and our finances were separate, so I’m…” He reached for Lestat’s hand, and held it, and listened to the hammering of his frantic heart. “Not really worried about him too much right now. He has no power over my life anymore.”

“Never… technically married.” Lestat’s blood roared hard and angry. Like his heart was trying to break free and sink its teeth in someone’s neck.

“Lestat.” Louis puffed a laugh from his nose, couldn’t help it, well past the point of incredulous. “You’re not seriously jealous. Not after everything I told you back in—”

“I am not jealous, cheri,” Lestat cut in. His voice was thick and low. All the features of his face seemed to drop. He let go of Louis’ hand. “I am filled with regret at the very utterance of the name. That I ever… gave you to him. Thinking you might be better off even when…” He offered Louis a sad little twitch of his mouth. “When I knew what he was capable of.” Tension pulled at his neck. Louis could see he was fighting with all he had to keep the tears at bay. “I should have never let him have you. I should have never—”

“None of that matters now.”

Lestat’s face turned from sad to steely almost at once. And Louis braced for something bratty to come flying from his mouth. Half-wished for it so they could move onto the fighting so they could move onto the fucking so they could move onto the realization that maybe having big hard conversations was always going to be a mistake for them. But then—

Lestat’s face softened again. Louis could feel the wild switch of emotions throwing deep inside him. Too many all at once. Always, always too many. “Okay, cheri,” he said. Simple as that. Nothing more. Though his heart was still beating hard and frantic. “But tell me why you asked about him.”

Louis knotted his hands together in his lap. Chose his words very carefully. “I guess I was just wonderin’ if he reached out and told you…” Having distance from it now and looking back—there were too many variables, too much left still unknown. He should have made sure the recordings were truly gone. “What happened before I came to New Orleans. How I found out that you saved me.”

“Oh.” Lestat narrowed his gaze. “Of course. I’d been meaning…” He shook his head, reaching forward to thumb at Louis’ chin gently. “Tell me, mon cher.”

Louis turned his gaze down to the palms of his hands. “I was talking to a journalist,” he said. Heartlines and lifelines like roadways to the past. Hidden passageways spilling the secrets of his life before. “Told him all about my life. About…” He lifted his gaze to Lestat slowly, slowly. “About us. A lot of the… bad parts.”

He studied Lestat’s face intently. Tried to read the pull of his mouth, tried to read the thud of his heart.

“I see,” Lestat said after a long moment of silence. Their eyes stayed locked together. Neither of them blinked. “And why did you do that, Louis?”

Louis searched the fuzzy well of his brain. The weeks and months before he’d finally decided to reach out to Daniel all seeming to run together. Weeks and months that melted back into decades of numbed-out misery. The blank spaces in his memory like he had a hole in his head.

“Because,” Louis started and stopped. And drew a breath. And held it. And let it come slowly back out. “Because I needed to tell it to someone. What I could remember. Someone who could help me find the things I wanted to forget. The things I’d lost. The…” A soft little shake of his head. “Someone who could see the whole picture for what it was and decide for themselves if it was the truth.”

When Lestat said nothing—heart like an ocean swell in his chest, eyes wide as two big blue moons—Louis blinked at him. And drew a long, deep breath. And let it out. And continued.

“This journalist. I had talked to him before. Back in 1973. San Francisco.” Louis watched Lestat’s face shift, watched the realization land. “Before I… did what I did. I had been talking to him, and… it didn’t go well. He—”

“Louis.” Lestat’s voice cracked. He reached forward and touched Louis on the neck with both hands. “Cheri—”

“It’s okay.” Louis shook his head, a little chill finding his neck when Lestat drew his hands away. “That’s not what I’m tryin’ to tell you about. Our second interview was… different.” He nodded, watched Lestat’s expression as it continued to shift. “He was gonna write an article. Then he said we probably should make it a book.”

Louis blinked at Lestat. And Lestat blinked back at Louis. His blood was roaring so loud Louis felt like he was swimming in it. The moment seeming to stretch out into eternity all around them. It was as though time itself had stopped. As though the Dark Gift had willed it that way. It felt like the world had stopped spinning. Like neither of them would ever be able to move or speak again. But then—

Lestat started to laugh.

Laughing so hard the whole couch underneath them shook. His face twisting with mirth that quickly rolled into something more like hysterics. Eyes narrowed to slits with a network of lines spraying out from the corners. The entire lower half of his face seemingly nothing but teeth.

“Louis,” Lestat managed after a long, drawn-out moment in which it seemed he might never stop laughing. “Mon cher…” Reaching out, he took Louis’ face in both his big blood-warm hands. “You had someone write a book about me?”

Louis couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his mouth. What the fuck. Sometimes he couldn’t believe this was the man he married. This ridiculous creature that would forever remain tangled up in his soul. “Nothing has been written, Les. Or it hadn’t been before I—that’s not what I’m sayin’. But it might…” He ached to chase the heat when Lestat pulled his hands away. “I tried to stop it after he helped me figure out what you’d done, but my head was so—” He huffed. “I didn’t do enough. So this journalist, he could—in the future, I mean, it’s possible he’s gonna…”

Lestat considered Louis carefully, tipped his head to one side with a thoughtful little hum. “I suppose publishing such a thing would anger quite a few of our own.”

“Yeah,” Louis said, and let a nervous fit of laughter out. Of all the things they should be arguing about—“Kinda thought you’d be angry too.”

Lestat hummed again, dragging his knuckles down Louis’ cheek softly. “About the series of events that led you to return to me?”

“Not exactly what I meant,” Louis said with a sigh. “But if it ever comes out—”

“Tell me the name of this journalist, cheri. I will pay him a visit and—”

“No.” The set of Louis’ jaw went hard and tense. A sudden wave of guilt hitting him when he remembered he’d never even called to check on Daniel after leaving him with Armand. He’d just been so wrapped up in Lestat. He’d just been so—“Absolutely not. You will not touch him, Lestat. I don’t—”

“I wasn’t suggesting a bloodbath, Louis, merely—”

“I don’t care.”

Lestat tipped his head to one side, then the other. Pulling a face that said to Louis he was weighing his options carefully. Thinking of being a brat, thinking of yelling about it. Maybe thinking of laughing again. Letting the wild switch of his emotions flip over and over. But then—

“Very well.” Lestat drew a deep breath and sighed it out. His heart was beating calmer now. So calm it was almost suspicious. “No visiting your mysterious biographer, then.”

Louis narrowed his gaze. This wasn’t supposed to be easy. In one shadowy corner of his mind he thought—This simply will not do. “Why are you not tryin’ to argue with me about this, Lestat?”

Lestat raised his brows, gave a little shrug of his shoulders. “We can argue if it would please you, mon cher.”

“What would please me,” Louis said, rolling the words around on his tongue like he was trying to make sense of their shapes, their syllables, “is if you could explain why…” He drew a breath and let it slowly leak back out. “I tell you something serious, and you laugh. But we get a new rug and you whine. Nonstop. For two whole nights…”

It was like watching a shadow fall over the moon. Like Lestat had been eclipsed. Suddenly—his expression was falling. Placid ease shifting into something more fraught, the grand spark of his face going dim. He lowered his eyes, puffed a sad little laugh through his nose and shook his head.

“I have been…” Lestat’s voice was so hushed it only just barely crawled out. “Thinking. About that. About…” Another shake of his head, another sad little bit of laughter. “Why I’ve been so… why we’ve both…”

Lestat raised his eyes to Louis slowly. They were damp, red-rimmed and nearly spilling over with a sudden swell of tears. He smiled, and it was the saddest expression in the world.

“It’s hard, cheri, don’t you think? Making a home without her.” A single moment’s pause to let the words sink in. “Our daughter.”

“Oh.” Louis felt it like a kick to the heart. He inhaled, felt the air catch like shards of glass in his throat. “Yeah, uh…”

He lowered his gaze, he looked at his hands. Maybe in another century or two, Louis thought, it would hurt a tiny bit less to talk about it.

Louis huffed all the air from his lungs in one big go. “Yeah,” he said, the word breaking hard in his throat. Slowly, he offered Lestat his gaze.

Lestat had a single fat red tear tracking its way down each of his cheeks. And before Louis could even think to do it—he was lunging forward, depositing himself in Lestat’s lap and burying his face in his throat. Knees tucked up tightly, making himself as small as he could manage. Sighing out an enormous breath when Lestat’s strong arms wrapped all the way around him.

“Cheri…” Lestat soothed a hand along the length of Louis’ back. “Oh, Louis. My sweet. I didn't wish to upset you.”

Louis drew a long, deep breath and let it shudder back out. Listening to the rhythm of Lestat’s blood thump. Letting the warm, familiar presence of it soothe him. His maker, his husband, his heart.

His home.

The one true thing he would always, always come back to.

Slowly, Louis pulled back. There were tears on his cheeks to match Lestat’s when their eyes slid together. “It is hard,” he said, voice a breathy figment wobbling in his throat. “But I…”

“Louis…” Lestat touched the side of Louis’ face, nuzzled the ends of their noses together. Kissed him very, very gently on the mouth.

“It’s hard but I wanna do it, baby.” Louis pressed his face into the side of Lestat’s neck. Fingers carding through his golden hair. Blood so close he could taste it. “You and me.”

They stayed like that for a very long time. Just holding each other, just breathing. Louis let Lestat weep softly against the top of his head. Shivering all over when Lestat untucked the back of Louis’ shirt from his pants and pushed his hands up under the hem. Hands like two animals with minds of their own absolutely ravenous for skin.

“There are…” Lestat began to speak into the silence at last. His palms on Louis’ back moved like they were trying to coax their way in. “So many things I’d like to tell you, Louis. So many things you deserve to know about… my life. Before we met. Things I should have told you a hundred years ago.”

Louis pulled back, touched Lestat’s face, thumbing shiny red filaments of blood tears from his cheeks. “Okay,” he said. “You wanna tell me now?”

Lestat shook his head, averted his gaze. “No, cheri,” he said. And Louis didn’t think he’d ever heard a voice that sounded so broken. “But one day.”

“Okay, baby,” Louis said. He nodded slowly, pressed his face to Lestat’s neck again. And breathed him in. And allowed himself to be held. To feel small. To feel broken. “It’s okay. I got you.”

—

Six Weeks After Leaving New Orleans

“Cheri…”

They’d cleaned themselves up and gotten dressed. Were standing just inside the open double doors that led out onto the patio. Close, but not touching. Their hearts thudding softly and perfectly in rhythm inside the caverns of their chests.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Louis’ mouth quirked up in one corner. He stepped closer, reaching forward with one steady hand. Tucking a few errant strands of hair back behind Lestat’s ear. “Was an hour of arguin’ about it really not enough to convince you?”

He almost wanted to roll his eyes. They’d argued for well over an hour in truth. They’d argued for what felt like a century. Although arguing was maybe not the right word exactly. It was probably more like a deadlock, an outright refusal on Lestat’s part to hear what Louis was trying to convey. His hopes, his trust, his reasons. Like the words were flowing into one ear and straight out of the other without ever once touching his brain. Well over an hour of nothing but—

No, cheri, I will not—I would never ask that of you. I would never—

Last I checked you weren’t the one askin’, Lestat. I’m—

I would never ask you to—that you would even think I would, that you would ever trust me to—

You really think I don’t trust you? You can’t be serious, Les. I wouldn’t ask for this if I—

And how could I trust myself? How could I—

You don’t seriously think I’m worried you would ever—I wouldn’t say I wanted—

You don’t—Louis, cheri, you don’t know what you’re—

Have you considered that maybe I need this? That maybe that’s why I’m—

I can’t, Louis. I won’t.

You’re being impossible, Lestat.

C'est impossible, ce que tu demandes.

Only impossible because you’re—

No.

Lestat.

Louis.

They’d stayed tangled up together naked in bed the whole time. And after they’d both fallen silent, Louis let a few minutes pass before he started thinking in earnest about getting up and getting dressed and doing something better with the rest of his night. But just as he was about to do it, just as he was about to pull away and leave Lestat all alone to his deadlocked sulking in their marital bed—

“This would make you happy?” Lestat had asked him, and pressed a kiss to Louis’ temple. And nuzzled his nose against it. “What you’re asking of me?”

“It would make me…” Louis weighed a thousand responses in his head all at once. How could he possibly explain that for which no words existed? How could he explain a shapeless longing? Something that went far beyond the concepts of love or trust. “Yes, Lestat,” he settled on saying at last. “It would make me happy.”

After that, Lestat had only sighed. And kissed Louis on the mouth. And said, “Okay, cheri,” very very quietly.

Now—

Lestat nodded his head. Threaded their fingers together and led Louis in silence through the double doors and out into the dark. They walked together slowly until they were standing on the big patch of green that made up their backyard. A wide swath of what at first glance appeared to be grass but was in fact mostly mossy vegetation with nothing but rocky coastline down below.

In the near-distance, the ocean called with its furious swell. Blue-black beneath the light of the moon. The sky up over their heads dotted with so many stars it would have been impossible to count them even with a vampire’s eternity. His all-seeing eyes perceiving them as a human’s never could. The interconnected roadways of light. Glowing threads like arrows all pointing in the direction of home.

There was the tiniest stone of trepidation in his belly. Some old, long-buried fear crawling out when he thought about the ground falling out from underneath him. Remembered the way the air had felt rushing over his skin all those years ago. Something from a nightmare calling. But then—

Oh. All he had to do was look at Lestat, and he was calmed in an instant.

Lestat let go of Louis’ hand, immediately took him by his waist and drew him closer. Pressed their foreheads together and kissed Louis on the mouth. Once, softly. “Do you promise to hold on and not let go?”

The wind picked up. Cool ocean breeze like a lover’s hand on the back of Louis’ neck. “What kinda question is that?” He tried a laugh. Pulling back a little to take in the sight of his lover—otherworldly and radiant—beneath the light of the moon. “Why would I ever let go? Besides, even if I did, I know you got me.”

Lestat’s mouth twitched. He offered a smile, but Louis could feel in his bones he didn’t quite mean it. “Do you really think—” He puffed a laugh through his nose and shook his head. Averting his gaze when Louis pressed close again and cradled his neck with both hands. “Am I truly deserving of such trust, cheri?”

“If I don’t trust you with every part of me,” Louis said, drawing his thumb along the line of Lestat’s drumming pulse, “I don’t know what we’re even doin’ here, baby.”

Slowly, Lestat offered Louis his gaze again. One of his big warm wonderful hands caressing Louis’ back over his shirt. He opened his mouth as though to speak, but nothing came out but a breath, then a sigh. And he nodded his head, he blinked. The shared sound of their blood roaring wildly between them. Roaring so true and so loud it nearly drowned out the sound of the ocean.

And then, suddenly—the ground was falling out from under Louis’ feet. Lestat was scooping him up in his arms as though he weighed nothing at all. Louis threw his arms around Lestat’s neck and he thought—bridal carry. He thought—I am your bride. He thought—Carry me beyond the threshold of the world. He thought—This is the night of our wedding

“Hold on, my sweet,” Lestat said very quietly. So quietly Louis could only just hear it over the roar of the ocean. Then—

Wind kissing over his skin. He tightened his grip on Lestat’s neck as the sensation of lifting upward entirely took him over. Their bodies rising like warm air until they hovered maybe ten feet above the ground. Louis could feel Lestat’s heart in his chest racing very quickly.

The sensation of hovering was strangely thrilling and disarming all at once. There would have been no damage to his body falling from such a height, it would have been a simple jump from Lestat’s arms to the ground. Still—he didn’t fight the mindless fear when it came. He let it move over him quickly and then flutter away.

Lestat gripped him tightly. The shining gem of his face radiant beneath the light of the moon. “Are you okay, cheri?” he asked.

Louis nodded his head. Said—“Yes. I’m okay.”

And he breathed in, breathed out. Truly knew he meant it. Looking out over the water in the distance and taking the endless stretch of it in. Black waves capped in silver-white like they’d been gilded by the moon. The sky above them bursting with stars—they were golden neurons flaring in heaven. The water, the sky, Lestat’s blood beating against him. Louis had never felt more like some tiny but essential part of some unfathomable celestial thing.

“Take me higher,” Louis said, and nuzzled his nose against Lestat’s wind-kissed cheek. “Take me out over the water, baby.”

Lestat tightened his hold on Louis, gripping his waist and the back of one leg like they’d been melded. As if he were in any danger of ever losing hold. As if he didn’t have the strength of a thousand men inside him. When their eyes met, Lestat opened his mouth as though to protest. And Louis imagined them arguing right there—hovering ten feet above the ground holding onto one another—and he had to bite back a laugh. They would, he knew it. One day they were probably going to.

But Lestat just closed his mouth, his face gone stony and serious. He nodded once, and slowly, slowly—

They were moving. And it didn’t feel like flying, really. It was far too languid for that. Didn’t feel like being carried by something propelled by its enormous flapping wings. There was only the sense of up and forward. Twenty feet in the air, thirty, forty. The Cloud Gift willing them onward until they crossed beyond the jagged coast to hover out over the ocean.

Lestat spun them around to face the house. The motion of it like a little doll turning in her music box. The night air was chilly but Louis was so warm, soaking up the heat of Lestat’s skin spilling from under his clothes. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Somewhere that couldn’t reach them—he found the scent of rain.

They looked at each other. Hovering there high above the churning Pacific. So high now they would have cleared the roof of the house with plenty of room to spare had Lestat decided to will them that way. They said nothing, but their eyes said all the words of their hearts their mouths couldn’t manage to speak. So connected it almost felt like they’d found a way to surpass that wall between their brains and freely share their thoughts with each other. Almost.

Lestat willed them higher. The water beneath them felt like an altar, the air a holy sacrament whirring all around them. All they were missing were the rings. He looked at their home, growing increasingly smaller in the distance and thought—I take thee, Lestat de Lioncourt…

I do I do I do.

Lestat stopped when they were maybe three-hundred feet in the air. Their home in the distance looking like a miniature of the place Louis had thought it to be. Like a doll’s house with little fairy lights illuminating its matchbox windows. A microscopic snapshot of the place the two of them had picked to make their home.

“Shall I take us down, mon cher?” Lestat asked after a long moment of hovering. The wind was rustling his hair. His eyes were wide and shining and spilling over with affection.

“No,” Louis said, and pressed a kiss to Lestat’s cheek. He searched his heart for fear and found nothing but perfect trust. “I wanna fly.”

Lestat offered a thoughtful little hum. “Is that not what we’re presently doing?”

“Hoverin’ like hummingbirds.” Louis laughed, nuzzling Lestat’s cheek gently. “Come on, baby. I know this ride’s got more horses under the hood than you’re lettin’ on.”

One corner of Lestat’s mouth twitched. He was trying very hard not to argue, Louis knew. “Is that your way of saying you’d like to hop on my back and ride me like a pony, cheri?”

“Oh, I’m gonna ride you, don’t worry. Just as soon as we’re back on the ground…” The words dripped out of Louis dark and low. He laughed again, a distant crack of thunder cutting through the drum of their hearts. “Come on.” He slipped fingers into Lestat’s hair, gave it the softest, sweetest tug. “You can be a brat all you want after you show me what you got. I know you’ve been dyin’ to show off lately. Here’s your chance.”

Louis buried his face in Lestat’s neck, kissed the drumming point of his pulse. Listened to the sound of the wind and the ocean and the rhythm of their blood—their blood. That which they’d exchanged all those years ago in place of rings or vows. The blood that would bind their bodies together for all eternity, and after. The blood that would bind them together even when they were ashes on the ground.

Louis picked his head up. His eyes locking with Lestat’s in the split second before they started to move. From stagnation to acceleration so quickly Louis hardly registered what was happening at first. They were just—zipping forward. Propelled southward at once as though they were being pushed by some giant, invisible hand. As though they’d transformed from physical beings into something more like wind.

His mouth twitched in a smile, he laughed. They were flying. Well and truly. All the houses dotted along the coast whirring by so fast they appeared to him like confetti, streaked behind them in fits of gold like comet tails. Like their bodies were suddenly nothing but light. Like they were falling stars.

Louis rested his head on Lestat’s shoulder. He listened to the drum of his heart. Shutting his eyes, he could have fallen asleep right then. The sensation of flight like falling into a dream, or sinking down into the comfort of a bath.

Flying free as a wish in the arms of his lover—Louis had never felt more at home.