Chapter Text
Louis feels ridiculous walking in there again.
Not scared. Not even particularly nervous anymore. Just—humiliated in a dull, exhausting way that settles somewhere behind his ribs and stays there. Like he has failed at something embarrassingly basic.
Normal people break up.
Normal people block numbers, avoid certain streets for a while, maybe complain to their friends over drinks and move on with their lives.
Normal people do not end up in police precincts often enough to recognize the receptionist.
The building smells faintly of old coffee and industrial cleaning products. The lights are too bright, flattening everything into something tired and gray. Louis keeps his sunglasses on for a moment too long after stepping inside, mostly because removing them feels like admitting he’s really here.
Again.
He finally slides them up into his hair and approaches the desk.
The woman behind it looks up with the expression of someone already anticipating inconvenience.
“Yes?”
Louis opens his mouth.
And suddenly he feels absurdly young.
Like a child reporting playground problems to an adult. Like he should be capable of handling his own life without dragging strangers into it. There is something deeply inappropriate about sitting in a police station because someone loved you too much or too wrongly or too persistently.
“I want to file a restraining order.”
The sentence comes out practiced.
That’s the worst part.
Not shaky. Not emotional. Just tired.
The receptionist glances at him more carefully now, eyes flicking briefly over his face in that subtle moment of recognition people sometimes have around him. Louis braces for it automatically—the pause, the realization, the shift in tone.
“…alright,” she says slowly. “Against who?”
Louis lets out a quiet breath through his nose.
There’s a pause long enough to become awkward.
“Which one?” he mutters before he can stop himself.
The woman blinks.
Louis closes his eyes briefly.
“Sorry,” he says, rubbing at his forehead. “That sounded insane.”
It was insane.
The receptionist, to her credit, does not visibly react, though something in her expression tightens into professional caution.
“Do you have a prior case number?” she asks.
Louis laughs softly.
Humorless.
“Several.”
The woman straightens slightly in her chair now, reaching for paperwork with slower, more deliberate movements.
“Name?”
Louis gives it automatically.
She types for a few seconds.
Then stops.
Looks back up at him.
“Oh.”
There it is.
Recognition.
Not from television or tabloids exactly—though there had been enough articles over the years—but from records. Repetition. Familiarity.
“You’ve been here before,” she says carefully.
Louis leans one elbow against the counter, exhausted already.
“Unfortunately.”
____________________________________
The first time—God, he sounds so ridiculous—the first time was Lestat. Louis was young and stupid and easily impressionable and completely, utterly in love. Lestat was like a ray of sunshine—no, he was the sun, burning so bright it stung.
Louis was nineteen. Lestat was twenty-five. They were together for officially five years, then a few more years of an on-and-off relationship because strong was something Louis never claimed to be. In total, it was ten years of having Lestat in his life before it led to that.
You know.
That.
The restraining order.
Louis was in college for the first time ever, slightly less under the judging eyes of God and his mother. Louis was ambitious as fuck, and smart, and honestly greedy. Well, nobody gets the amount Louis has without being a little greedy, a little unethical, and Louis was a money-making machine since the day he was born.
Louis was ambitious and excited and living… new experiences. Experiences that—fuck it, yes—it meant gay sex and lots of drugs, but fuck you, it was fun, even if sometimes he threw up after.
And if there was something Lestat had experience in, it was fun.
They met at a party, and Lestat was a dick. Lily was the one throwing the party—they were really close friends—and Louis went to greet her with their usual kiss and hug only for Lestat to suddenly materialize by her side and for Lily to want to introduce them.
Lestat was glued to Lily’s side, his hand roaming all over her and his lips kissing her neck.
Guess Louis didn’t need to wait until after to throw up.
Lestat later admitted it was to provoke him, which worked, since later that night he had Louis bent over a bathroom sink.
Lestat liked provoking him and teasing him and drawing out, savoring, every reaction he could get out of Louis. If Louis was dead, Lestat would probably bring out some machine like an evil genius just to shock him right back to life.
For three years, it was honestly bliss.
Not perfect—Lestat was incapable of perfect in the normal sense of the word—but bliss anyway. Loud and overwhelming and messy and intoxicating. Louis had never met anyone who made life feel so alive. Everything with Lestat felt heightened. Food tasted better, music sounded better, parties lasted longer, sex felt world-ending. Even their arguments had this strange electricity to them, this sense that something was always happening, always moving.
Lestat consumed life like he was terrified of wasting a single second of it, and Louis, despite himself, got swept right into it.
And God, Lestat loved him.
Openly. Excessively. Almost violently sometimes.
Lestat wanted Louis all the time—his attention, his laughter, his anger, his body, his reactions. If Louis walked into a room, Lestat’s eyes found him immediately, every single time, like instinct. Louis would complain about it to Lily sometimes, half-annoyed, half-embarrassed, and she would just laugh and tell him that most people would kill to be looked at like that.
Maybe they would.
Louis didn’t know.
Sometimes it felt less like being loved and more like being illuminated under a spotlight that never shut off.
Still, it worked. For a while.
Because Louis was young too, and ambitious, and full of hunger for absolutely everything the world had to offer him. He liked the attention. He liked being adored. He liked walking into rooms with Lestat and feeling people look at them. They were beautiful together in a way that made strangers stare.
And Louis was happy.
That was the stupid part.
He really, genuinely was.
Then college started ending, and real life started creeping in.
Louis was about to graduate, and suddenly everything became serious all at once. He was getting into real estate, and he had to bust his ass working for people to take him seriously. Louis had always known he was smart, but smart wasn’t enough in the circles he wanted to enter. He had to be sharper than everyone else, more disciplined, more ruthless.
Work became everything to him.
It was all he thought about. All he spent his energy on. Every mood he had became directly tied to it. If a deal went wrong, his whole day curdled. If things went well, he felt untouchable. He stopped sleeping properly. Stopped showing up places on time. Started taking calls during dinners, checking emails in bed, zoning out halfway through conversations because his brain was somewhere else entirely.
Lestat noticed immediately.
Of course he did.
At first, he tried to make fun of it.
He would dramatically close Louis’s laptop while Louis was working and throw himself across his lap complaining that he was being abandoned for capitalism. He would interrupt phone calls just to make Louis laugh. He would drag him out to parties insisting that if Louis became boring this young he might as well die.
And at first, Louis laughed too.
Until he didn’t.
Because work stopped being exciting and started being necessary.
Louis wanted stability. Success. Power. He wanted enough money that nobody could ever control his life again. Nobody could ever look down on him again.
Lestat didn’t understand that.
Or maybe worse—
he did understand it, but he didn’t respect it.
That was where the cracks started.
Small at first.
Lestat getting annoyed when Louis worked late. Louis snapping when Lestat interrupted him. Lestat accusing him of not caring anymore. Louis accusing Lestat of acting like a child.
And the worst part was that they still loved each other through all of it.
Maybe too much.
Then came the cheating.
Came Lestat wanting “variety” all of a sudden, by the way—as if that was something Louis was supposed to accept gracefully. As if monogamy had suddenly become oppressive specifically to him after years together.
Lestat always had explanations.
That was the problem.
He could explain anything until it almost sounded reasonable.
He would sit there smoking cigarettes on the balcony, beautiful and exhausted-looking, talking about freedom and honesty and how love should not feel like ownership, and Louis would stare at him thinking:
then why does this feel exactly like betrayal?
And Lestat would somehow make that into a philosophical discussion too.
Then came the dead bedroom.
Not immediately. Not all at once.
Just slowly.
Insidiously.
Sex stopped being easy between them. Every touch became loaded with resentment, suspicion, exhaustion. Sometimes Lestat wanted him and Louis was too tired. Sometimes Louis wanted him and couldn’t stop thinking about work long enough to stay present. Sometimes they touched each other almost angrily, like trying to prove something.
Eventually the only time they really spoke to each other was to argue.
About cheating.
About work.
About attention.
About time.
About commitment.
About fucking dishes sometimes because people in failing relationships always ended up screaming about dishes like that was the real problem.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, Louis stopped talking to almost everyone else.
Which, in hindsight, should have terrified him more than it did.
Lestat managed to drift away Lily, who had been Louis’s ride or die for years. Managed to drift away Jonah, who Louis had known practically from the womb. Managed to scare off his mother, which admittedly was not the hardest task in the world, but still.
And the strange thing was that Lestat never seemed particularly upset by it.
That was what Louis hated remembering now.
Not even the fights.
Not even the cheating.
Just the quiet satisfaction Lestat seemed to take in becoming the center of Louis’s world.
Like isolation was intimacy.
Like if Louis had nobody else, then at least he would always come back to him.
Except for Claudia.
Lestat never managed to scare off Claudia.
Louis had three siblings, but Claudia was the youngest and the only one he still consistently talked to while dating Lestat. Maybe it was because she was so young at first, but honestly Louis did not think Lestat was above trying to intimidate children if he felt possessive enough.
It just never worked on Claudia.
She stuck to Louis like glue.
Practically lived in their house some weeks.
And when Louis wasn’t working, he was usually with her.
Helping with homework, driving her places, watching terrible movies with her half-asleep on his shoulder while Lestat sulked dramatically somewhere in the background pretending not to care.
It annoyed Lestat endlessly.
Not because he disliked Claudia exactly.
Lestat could even be oddly charming with her sometimes.
But he hated sharing Louis’s attention with anyone, and Claudia was one of the few people who never treated Lestat like the center of the universe. She would walk straight past him to talk to Louis, interrupt him mid-sentence, steal Louis away for hours, and act completely unimpressed by all of Lestat’s theatrics.
And Louis thinks now, sitting in that cold precinct years later, that maybe Claudia surviving the relationship should have told him everything.
Everyone else drifted away slowly, carefully, exhausted.
Claudia refused.
Like she saw the danger before Louis ever did.
Lestat had a temper.
He was alive in every possible way, burning in every emotion he felt like fireworks. Joy, desire, excitement, anger—it all came out of him too loudly, too intensely, too fast. There was nothing restrained about Lestat. Nothing measured.
Including his rage.
It was complicated because Louis simultaneously walked on eggshells around him and pricked at him every chance he got. Louis had always been a confrontational person, always defensive. He had to be. He did not know how to simply yield during conflict, did not know how to soften himself enough to avoid escalation.
And Lestat—
Lestat was explosive.
If Louis was a slap, Lestat was a fucking gun to your head.
Lestat yelled often.
That part honestly did not even register as abnormal to Louis for a long time. Louis yelled back. Or worse, sometimes, he went cold and silent and withholding in ways that drove Lestat absolutely insane. Louis could make himself emotionally unreachable with terrifying efficiency when he wanted to. He would stop responding, stop reacting, stop engaging, and Lestat would spiral trying to drag a response out of him.
Sometimes it worked.
Sometimes Lestat just stormed out of the apartment halfway through screaming, slamming doors hard enough to shake the walls.
And somehow, after every horrible fight, they still ended up tangled together in bed afterward, exhausted and shaky and pretending survival was the same thing as resolution.
There was one time, though.
Louis still didn’t even fully feel like it was that big of a deal, which probably said something deeply concerning about him.
Claudia and Lestat didn’t really get along—did he already say that?
Claudia disliked Lestat with reason, even though Lestat was almost as present in her life as Louis was. She grew up around him. Lestat drove her places sometimes, helped pay for things, sat through school events looking visibly miserable but still attending anyway because Louis asked him to.
But Claudia never trusted him.
And she made absolutely no effort to hide it.
Sometimes she joked about it.
Sometimes she whispered it like she might get caught.
Leave him.
She asked it casually sometimes, like it was obvious.
Other times she pleaded.
Begged.
Louis remembers one night specifically, Claudia sitting at the kitchen counter while he made coffee after another horrible argument upstairs. Lestat had stormed out hours earlier, tires screeching dramatically down the street because of course they did.
And Claudia had looked at him with this exhausted expression no teenager should know how to make.
“Please leave him,” she said quietly.
Louis laughed at first.
Not because it was funny.
Just because he genuinely did not know what else to do.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “You sound like a wife in a mob movie.”
“I’m serious.”
Louis kept stirring sugar into his coffee even though he didn’t take sugar in it.
“He’s not that bad.”
Claudia stared at him for a long moment.
Then:
“You always say that after he leaves.”
That one sat ugly in his stomach.
Because the thing was—
Lestat wasn’t always bad.
That was what made everything so difficult to explain later.
People always wanted clean narratives after breakups like theirs. Wanted obvious monsters and obvious victims.
But Louis remembered Lestat laughing so hard he cried at terrible movies. Remembered him carrying Claudia asleep from the couch to bed because Louis’s back hurt. Remembered him kissing Louis’s forehead while he worked late nights, bringing him coffee without asking how he took it because after years together he already knew.
Lestat loved him.
Lestat just also exhausted him.
Consumed him.
Terrified him sometimes.
Sometimes he was too rough.
One time it was too much.
Louis couldn’t walk properly afterward. Could barely see straight. He remembered sitting on the bathroom floor dizzy and nauseous while Claudia hovered nearby looking horrified in that stiff, silent way people do when they are trying not to panic.
So Claudia had to take care of him.
Claudia had to see him like that because nobody else would.
Lestat had disappeared.
Ran away, almost, like he was the one who couldn’t bear what he had done.
Louis remembered Claudia helping him clean blood off his face with trembling hands while trying very hard to act calm about it. Remembered how quiet the apartment felt without Lestat in it, the silence sharp and ugly after years of noise.
“Leave him,” Claudia said.
Not joking this time.
Not whispering.
Not pleading.
Just serious.
So Louis did.
Or at least, he tried to.
But Lestat was persistent.
Did he forget to mention that?
How persistent Lestat was?
Louis remembered the first time they slept together. Afterward, Louis didn’t seek him out again. Honestly, he assumed that would be it. A weird intense hookup at a party with an insanely beautiful man who talked too much and laughed too loudly.
But then Lestat kept appearing.
Repeatedly.
Meeting him in places Louis never even told him about. Cafés, bars, events, campus buildings.
Louis still genuinely did not know how the fuck Lestat always knew where he was going to be.
And Louis was not an easy person to get close to. He was closed off even back then, careful with himself in ways people often mistook for confidence. It took effort to get Louis to soften. To trust. To open up emotionally instead of just physically.
Lestat treated that like a challenge.
And Lestat loved challenges.
He flirted relentlessly. Provoked him constantly. Talked to him like they already knew each other intimately before Louis had even decided whether he liked him. He inserted himself into Louis’s routines piece by piece until eventually Louis got used to him being there.
It took real work to get Louis to date him.
And Lestat had worked for it.
So when Louis finally left, Lestat did not give him up easily.
At first it was flowers.
Voicemails.
Long dramatic texts alternating between apologies and accusations and declarations of love intense enough to make Louis feel exhausted just reading them.
Then came the showing up.
Outside Louis’s office.
Outside his apartment.
At restaurants.
At parties.
At Claudia’s school events once, which made Louis furious enough to nearly hit him.
And every single time, Lestat looked genuinely confused that Louis was upset.
Like love itself should have excused the behavior.
Like wanting someone badly enough made boundaries negotiable.
That was the thing that still unsettled Louis years later when he thought about it too hard.
Lestat never acted like he hated him.
Not once.
Even at his worst, Lestat loved him so intensely it became unbearable to stand near.
And somehow that made everything harder, not easier.
And Lestat had access.
A lot of it.
That was how he got Louis the first time too.
Lestat always had a shit ton of money. Old money, family money, the kind of money that made consequences softer around the edges. Even when they were young, Lestat moved through the world with this careless confidence that only rich people seemed capable of. He spent absurd amounts on dinners like it meant nothing, bought drugs for entire parties because he was “feeling generous,” disappeared for weekends on whims.
Back then, Louis found it glamorous.
Exciting.
A little disgusting too, honestly, but mostly exciting.
Then a few years later Lestat got something even more dangerous than money:
fame.
And God, Lestat was built for fame in the most catastrophic way possible.
People loved him instantly. Cameras loved him. Audiences loved him. Lestat walked into rooms like he had been specifically designed to be looked at. Beautiful, loud, magnetic, impossible to ignore. He drew attention from people the way heat drew moths.
Music first.
Then interviews.
Television appearances.
Magazines.
Public scandals.
Suddenly Louis could not go anywhere with him without somebody recognizing him.
And Lestat adored it.
Not in a shallow way exactly. It was deeper than vanity. Lestat genuinely needed attention the way some people needed oxygen. He wanted to be seen constantly, wanted reactions, admiration, outrage, obsession—it barely mattered as long as people looked.
Louis remembered sitting in restaurants watching strangers stare openly at Lestat while he talked with his hands and laughed too loudly and charmed entire rooms without trying.
And Louis remembered the ugly little feeling that sometimes appeared in his stomach afterward.
Not jealousy exactly.
More like the realization that Lestat belonged partially to the world now.
Which made the breakup worse.
Because once fame entered the equation, Louis could never fully disappear from him again.
Lestat had resources.
Connections.
Fans.
Information traveled strangely around famous people. Somebody always knew somebody. Somebody had seen Louis somewhere. Somebody recognized his car. Somebody overheard something.
And Lestat—
Lestat always knew things.
Louis would switch gyms and somehow Lestat appeared there two weeks later smiling like it was coincidence. Louis would start frequenting a new café and suddenly flowers would arrive there addressed to him. Once, after moving apartments without telling anyone outside immediate family, Louis opened the building door to find Lestat leaning against the wall downstairs holding groceries like he lived there.
“What the fuck?” Louis had asked immediately, heart pounding so hard it made him dizzy.
And Lestat, completely calm, had just smiled.
“You forgot your favorite olive oil at the old place.”
Like that explained anything.
Like showing up uninvited at someone’s new apartment was normal if you brought groceries.
And maybe the worst part was that sometimes, for one terrible embarrassing second, Louis still felt relieved seeing him.
Because nobody had ever paid attention to him the way Lestat did.
Nobody had ever made Louis feel so thoroughly wanted.
Which was probably why it took him so long to realize that being wanted and being consumed were not the same thing at all.
The actual restraining order happened after the breakup should have already been over.
That was the humiliating part.
Louis had already left him. Already moved out. Already divided furniture and blocked numbers and sat through enough screaming matches to last a lifetime. Their relationship had ended so many times by then that Louis genuinely thought this was just another cycle they would eventually survive.
Until it stopped feeling dramatic and started feeling frightening.
At first, people around him didn’t understand the problem.
Because if Louis complained that Lestat kept sending flowers, people laughed.
If Louis said Lestat showed up at events uninvited, people rolled their eyes and called it romantic.
If Louis admitted Lestat left voicemails at three in the morning crying and threatening to disappear forever, people said:
“Well, he’s heartbroken.”
And Louis almost believed that too for a while.
Because Lestat always sounded devastated.
Always sounded sincere.
That was what made him dangerous.
Lestat never acted like a villain. He acted like someone in unbearable pain.
But then things escalated.
Lestat started appearing outside Louis’s work constantly. Sitting in his car for hours. Waiting outside buildings pretending it was coincidence. Louis would leave meetings and find him smoking on sidewalks nearby like some haunting.
Sometimes Lestat was calm.
Sometimes he was furious.
Sometimes he acted perfectly normal, which honestly unsettled Louis more than the screaming ever did.
Once, Louis woke up and found Lestat asleep in the hallway outside his apartment door.
Not drunk.
Not injured.
Just sleeping there quietly with his coat folded under his head.
Louis stared at him for almost a full minute trying to process what he was seeing.
Then Lestat opened his eyes slowly and smiled up at him.
“Good morning.”
Like they were still together.
Like this was ordinary.
Louis remembered feeling something cold settle into his stomach then.
Not anger.
Fear.
Real fear for the first time.
Because suddenly it became obvious that Lestat did not understand the breakup as something final. To him it was just another phase, another punishment, another emotional game they were trapped inside before eventually finding their way back to each other.
And Louis—
Louis realized with horrible clarity that Lestat might genuinely never stop.
The final straw was Claudia.
Of course it was Claudia.
Lestat had started showing up around her too.
Not threateningly. Never directly threatening.
That was what made everything so difficult to explain.
He would just appear.
Outside her school.
Near her job.
Offering rides.
Asking questions about Louis in that soft charming voice that made strangers trust him instantly.
Claudia called Louis one night furious and frightened at the same time.
“He keeps acting like I’m still his fucking sister,” she snapped over the phone. “Louis, this is weird.”
And hearing fear in Claudia’s voice did something to him instantly.
Because Louis could tolerate a lot directed at himself.
Always had.
But Claudia—
No.
Absolutely not.
So Louis went to the police station.
And even then he almost left three separate times before speaking to anyone because the whole thing felt absurd. Embarrassing. Dramatic.
Like he was betraying someone he had once loved more than anything.
The officer taking his statement kept asking questions in this painfully neutral tone.
“Has he threatened you physically?”
“…”
“Has he attempted forced entry?”
“…not exactly.”
“Then what exactly is the concern?”
And Louis remembered sitting there exhausted beyond belief trying to explain how terror could build slowly.
Quietly.
How Lestat loved him with such intensity that Louis sometimes felt like he would never fully exist outside of it again.
The officer looked skeptical for most of the conversation.
Until Louis started listing incidents.
Then another.
Then another.
Then another.
And eventually even the officer went quiet.
At the end he asked:
“Why didn’t you come sooner?”
And Louis almost laughed.
Because the honest answer was:
because he loved me.