Chapter Text
Louis woke up alone. This wasn't much of a concern, considering he and Lestat had yet to come up with a permanent sleeping arrangement they were both comfortable with. Some days Louis would try to join Lestat in his coffin but these times were few and far between (no matter how hard Lestat tried to distract him, Louis could not avoid feeling as if the air in his lungs was actually thousands of rocks trying to choke him). Most of the time, Lestat would just join Louis in the bed. Whilst this was about as close to a decent sleeping arrangement as they could get (because, as Lestat had made clear time and time again: the worst torture in the world was any distance between them), it was not without flaws. Of course, Louis was not able to address these flaws or even know exactly what they were because, according to Lestat, he "need not bother himself with them". That being said, if one were to ask Louis, he would argue that he certainly did have to bother himself with whatever it was leading to him being woken up some days by the sound of Lestat retching or screaming or sobbing fitfully in another room.
But this dynamic with Lestat was new, fragile. Lestat was more fragile— softer than he'd been in New Orleans. The tour had only finished a couple of months prior, Louis had successfully goaded Daniel into taking a hiatus from the documentary, and things were starting to go well. (In this case "well" simply meant that no murderous rampages had happened and Lestat had yet to pull away from Louis entirely).
Alas, whilst Lestat took every opportunity to sleep beside Louis possible, every now and again he would ask meekly if it was alright to sleep in his coffin, as if Louis would deny him that. That day had been one of those occasions and, as Louis slid from the bed he assumed Lestat must have gone out for a walk (after all, the house was deathly quiet where it would normally be filled with warm humming).
He'll be back soon, Louis thought to himself, walking to the shower, showering, and getting dressed. The kitchen, when he eventually made his way downstairs, was also empty. It wasn't uncommon for Lestat to wake up before Louis, nor was it strange for him to go for a walk in the time before Louis awoke. However, Louis consistently woke up at about the same time and Lestat had always managed to be back in the house for that time, or soon after it. He should have been back by now.
He checked the fridge, pretending he didn't quickly count how many blood bags were left (they had received a fresh delivery the previous evening). They were all still there. Lestat hadn't eaten before he'd left. Louis decided that he must have gone hunting, hence had been kept out slightly longer than usual. No matter— he would be back any minute now.
It was only when his own mug of blood had finished warming in the microwave (it was too early in the evening for Louis to stomach it cold), that Louis could bring himself to admit that none of the assurances he had given himself had done anything to soothe the nervousness building up inside him. He was overcome by this instinctual feeling that something was direly wrong.
And then he heard it.
Quietly, even to his heightened hearing, a heart beat in one of the rooms on the second level. It wasn't much of a leap to assume that the rhythm was coming from the room Lestat's coffin was in. Lestat was still here. Perhaps he was sleeping in— he did that sometimes, albeit rarely. No— he was definitely awake, judging by the way Louis could hear his breath hitching if he strained enough. Louis froze. Then he heard the muttered words of a prayer.
In a moment, the mug of blood forgotten in the microwave, Louis found himself kneeling beside Lestat's coffin, knocking on the lid.
Something was desperately, direly wrong.
It was times like this which made Louis curse Lestat for always being so insistent on locking his coffin (he had been much more lax about it in New Orleans but now…). He knocked lightly on the lid.
"Les?"
No response, just whispered breaths and what sounded like a plea: "Don't desert m— me, d— don't—"
Louis knocked again, this time with more force. "Lestat? I'm here, can you please unlock it?"
The praying stopped. A sob. No response.
Louis continued to knock, becoming increasingly frantic. The longer he waited to hear the click of that lock, the closer Louis got to seeing how much force it would take to break the lid off. (Of course, destroying Lestat's coffin would recall a whole new set of memories, wouldn't it? The smashed fragments of a coffin found in the middle of Rue Royale continued to linger so vividly in the collective memory that it had become a part of New Orleans's urban mythology).
Click!
Louis stopped banging on the polished mahogany of the coffin. Frozen. Okay, what now? Some part of Louis feared what he would see when he opened the coffin. This part of himself was now telling him to just stand and leave— Lestat would get up eventually, he always did. Louis silenced the thought, sighing as he slowly opened the coffin.
The scene which met him was about what he had expected.
Over the years, Louis had seen Lestat in all kinds of positions which had tugged at his heart. He had seen him cry on countless occasions, had seen him lost and abandoned and in every kind of pain imaginable. Lord, he'd even seen Lestat dead. Yet, he was still taken aback as he saw Lestat curled up in on himself, his body trembling slightly even as he tried to shoot Louis a charming smile.
And Louis had thought he had gone out for a walk.
"Evening, m— mon cher," Lestat managed to choke out before Louis could figure out how to respond.
A quick survey of how Lestat was laying confirmed Louis's suspicions: knees drawn up, arms wrapped around his torso, his shoulders folding inward. Louis had seen him in the same position on multiple occasions throughout the tour (although there were usually less tears, the fact Lestat's face was painted with a darkening shade of red only served to concerned Louis more)— "The Pain" (as Lestat called it) was back. He knew very little about the specifics of "The Pain" but he could take a good enough guess about where exactly it sprouted and what its origins were. Louis tried to think about the latter as little as possible when Lestat was close by in case his anger boiled over or he was sick or, worst of all, he began to cry.
Presumably having seen the panic stretching across Louis's face, Lestat tried to hiccup himself through an explanation (Lord, the fact Lestat felt he had to explain this to Louis sickened him further); "C'est b— bien, mon saint. J— just a v— visit from Our Little Friend."
Another thing Louis wasn't quite sure about: Our Little Friend. Sometimes this "friend" who came to visit was quite obviously "The Pain". However, Louis had, on more than one occasion, heard Lestat talking in another room and not to himself. No, he had heard Lestat have entire conversations with people who were clearly not there (or at least not perceptible to Louis). They seemed to be the kind of conversations Louis used to have with the mirage of Lestat which had followed him around Paris. After hearing Daniel talk about his Rapture-like experiences when it came to feeling his own maker (which still came across as extremely strange to Louis), Louis had started to wonder if every maker and fledgling had their own kind of… "connection". Lestat had told him that he had seen Louis appear to him in those years apart, too. Perhaps such "connections" ran through their blood. Perhaps one of these days, Louis would see Madeleine staring down at him with deserved disappointment.
Of course, if such connections did exist between fledglings and their makers then this "friend" could easily be one of Lestat's fledglings. He had many fledglings, after all— an almost ridiculous amount— any of whom might be visiting him. But, if Louis's theory was correct (which it very well could have been), this connection was a two way street and, if Louis had seen his maker, it was safe to assume Lestat could see his own maker, too.
Louis didn't let himself stumble down that line of thought too often.
The handful of times "The Pain" had manifested over the past few months had allowed Louis to develop an understanding of how to react and what Lestat needed. For example, Louis knew that he shouldn't ask "Are you okay?" now because that would cause Lestat to start bawling his eyes out. No, now was the time for cold pragmatism, which meant that Louis had to swallow down any of the pain rising within him; "Can you stand?"
Lestat shook his head. That explained why he was still in the coffin. Louis could see how it would be difficult for him to get out of it (which was another reason them being in the bed together brought him some relief).
"Do you want me to help you to the bed? Or do you want to stay in there?"
Lestat hesitated slightly and Louis could see the thoughts drifting like koi just beneath the surface of his eyes. He knew what Lestat was going to choose before he said it because he always chose the same thing: the bed. He always chose the bed not because he disliked the coffin but because he had insisted they put a television in the bedroom and he currently had a fixation with Love Island. (Louis also preferred the bed during these flare ups because it meant that they could sit together— it meant that Louis could hold him). However, he also recognised that asking Lestat and allowing him to make the decision was imperative, even if Lestat didn't realise this was what Louis was doing.
"The bed would be nice," Lestat finally muttered and Louis moved to help him up. A sharp hiss and mess of limbs later, Louis had gotten Lestat situated on the bed, propping up pillows wherever Lestat motioned for him to. He then went to go down to the kitchen again and, before he had even left the room, the television had been switched on.
Progress.
There was only one draw in their kitchen more sacred than the shelf that housed Lestat's novelty mug collection (Lord, the man loved mugs with shitty vampire puns on them): the heat pack draw. They had practically every kind of heat pack and hot water bottle available on the market in this draw, each having been thoroughly tested with the results thoroughly recorded in Louis's Notes app. (Louis had spent a lot of time trying to find the most effective pain relief strategies. He had spent hours scouring every corner of the internet and donated so much money into research that "Thomas Pitt" was now one of the biggest benefactors of medical research in the world. Of course, vampiric pain was very different to that experienced by humans, and Lestat refused to see Dr Bhansali who was the closest thing to a vampire specialist Louis knew of. Consequently, they were still very far from a better solution). He picked up what was undoubtedly the most effective heating pack (Louis attributed its efficacy to the fact that the pack itself had a cover that made it look like a mastiff puppy, not that he'd reveal that information to Lestat), removed his now-cooled mug of blood from the microwave, tossed the mug in the sink, and began to warm the pack up.
Louis couldn't help but smile slightly as he heard Lestat talking back to whatever show he was watching ("Mon dieu! Of course she doesn't like you, look at what you're wearing!"). It was good to know Lestat was coming back into himself already. The microwave beeped, Louis took out the beloved heat pack and pulled another blood bag from the fridge even though he knew Lestat would refuse it. Routine, no matter how superfluous, was what Louis had found worked best on these days.
Sure enough, Lestat pouted when he saw the bag of blood in Louis's hands; "I'm not hungry."
"It's not for you," Louis tutted, handing him the heat pack which Lestat more than happily accepted.
"You're lying."
"Prove it," Louis retorted, sitting himself on the other side of the bed and pretending to watch whatever Lestat had put on.
He bit into the bag, not really caring when a few drops spilt onto the sheets— he'd change them when Lestat was in the bath (the second most successful method of relief he'd found). He still hadn't found a surefire way to make sure Lestat didn't starve on these particularly bad days. His attempts at tempting him by letting Lestat drink from him, which he usually jumped at doing, only brought on more panic and stuttering and, on one memorable occasion soon after the travesty that was the interview where Daniel had asked all the wrong questions, vomiting. Louis would eventually figure this out, too, he just had to hope Lestat didn't starve in the meantime.
They quickly settled into the position they always assumed on these days: Louis's arm around Lestat as he curled around the little dog-shaped heat pack, chattering away about whatever they were watching. It would have been a domestic scene had Lestat's voice not maintained that slight undertone of hurt. It would have been so lovely if Louis could stop his mind wandering to what he knew had caused this— who he knew had caused this. After all, he had yet to bring him up to Lestat again. Louis knew they would have to talk about him one of these days but the right time had yet to make itself apparent.
Maybe they would talk about it tomorrow. (Probably not).
_
As dawn approached, Louis steeled himself for the argument he knew they were about to have.
"I think you should sleep in the bed tonight," Louis declared as Lestat lay on the bed, cradling an untouched mug of blood in his hands.
"Non."
Louis was generally averse to letting Lestat sleep alone on the particularly bad nights but now, knowing he might not be able to get out of the coffin if he really needed to, he was now ready to beg Lestat to stay with him. Lestat had been much more open to the idea of sleeping in the bed permanently in the beginning. However, one time Louis had woken up to find healing scratches on his arms and Lestat sobbing on the bathroom floor ("I was asleep, I— I did not mean to—"). From that instance onward, Lestat had insisted on sleeping in the coffin more frequently.
"Please, just for today," Louis swallowed, coming to perch on the edge of the bed beside his feet. A wave of self-loathing hit him as he added "For me," knowing the effect it would have on Lestat.
Lestat's eyes widened— beautifully blue despite the slight panic that stirred beneath— and he nodded slightly, muttering: "Anything for you, mon saint."
Lord, Louis hated when he said that. He loved it, too. He hated that he loved it. The knowledge that Lestat would do anything for him had a euphoric effect on Louis. However, there was something about the way he said it— something about the very idea that all it would take was Louis asking for Lestat to do something, whether he wanted to or not— which caused Louis's gut to twist ("I— I gave him everything to convince him to stay with me, to love me!").
Either way, the addition had had the desired effect, which surely stood for something. There was a note of relief in the way Lestat held himself now, too, even daring to take a sip of the microwaved blood which had certainly grown cold by now.
Progress was progress. It was simply a shame Louis had never been a patient man.
_
The fact Louis woke up to hear humming downstairs was a good thing. It had not taken him long to learn that— as far as any outside observer could tell, because it was truly impossible to tell what Lestat was thinking at any point in time— Lestat had good days and catastrophically bad days. For every hundred or so good days, he had one bad day. Realistically, the ratio of good to bad was not cause for complaint, Louis had just always been greedy and would have much preferred it if there were no bad days whatsoever.
But humming was good; he liked humming.
Of course, when he made it down to the kitchen, where some warmed blood was already waiting for him, Louis realised that the humming wouldn't last.
"How often has what happened yesterday happened before?" Louis asked before Lestat even had time to say "Good morning". He knew that, had he waited until after Lestat greeted him, he would have chickened out and not addressed the elephant in the room. Louis simply hoped that Lestat could see why the question was important instead of jumping straight to anger.
Lestat being Lestat, however, seemed to have already decided avoiding the issue was the only course of action. "There is no need to worry—"
"So it has happened before?"
"I never said that!"
"If it hadn't then you would've said 'no'."
"Well, then: no it has never happened before."
"I know you're lying, Les."
Lestat glowered at him for a moment, his jaw tensing. Louis didn't care too much to be offended by this anger. He simply took a sip from his mug, and went to check his email. After all, he had gotten the information he had been looking for— perhaps not in as much depth as he had wanted, but it was information nonetheless.
"Dr Bhansali also has availability next month," Louis mused, pretending to be disinterested in some desperate attempt at reverse psychology, "if you—"
Lestat sighed in frustration, as he did every time Louis mentioned the subject. "Louis, as I have already told you—"
"L—"
"—I refuse to be that man's test subject! I am fine! I've lived with it for hundreds of years— I barely even notice it!"
It felt like a strange reversal of the roles they had held for over a century for Lestat to be the one saying he was "living" and Louis to be the one on the verge of yelling at him that he wasn't, that he didn't have to torture himself like this.
Lestat continued: "It's not like you would go to your beloved doctor if our roles were reversed! So don't—"
"Maybe," Louis sighed, "but are you tryin' to tell me you wouldn't drag me to see him anyway?"
Louis's retort quite obviously had the desired effect on Lestat as his jaw snapped shut and frustration glimmered behind his eyes. His hands clenched into fists and he looked mere seconds from breaking something. Instead he simply yelled: "Don't you do the 'Uno Reverse card' to me!"
Louis blinked once. He had no idea what the fuck "Uno Reverse card" meant (Lestat spent much more time on the internet than he did) but was 99% sure he got the message, even if he was certain the term had been used incorrectly. However, his musings on Lestat's use of modern slang were cut short as he stormed away. Louis couldn't help but notice that he was limping slightly.
_
About a week after the coffin debacle, Louis awoke to yelling from another room. A quick peak at his phone showed it was about 1 PM and Lestat's side of the bed was empty.
That was never a good sign.
"Believe me! I said no!" the unmistakable sound of Lestat's voice rang through the house, "I said no! No! No! No! As my final breaths left my chest I said no!"
Even half asleep, Louis could not miss the rising hysteria in Lestat's voice. Even half asleep, Louis's movements were sharp and desperate as he got out of bed and started to look for Lestat.
"Nicki, mon cher, mon ange! Nicki, I— I swear!"
Louis felt a bitter satisfaction at hearing the name of the figure Lestat was supposedly talking to. His theory was correct, then— he wasn't the only one who had appeared to Lestat over the years. This satisfaction proved to be enough to drown out the other fear boiling up in Louis. "I said no."
He found Lestat kneeling on the living room floor, tears in his eyes as his pupils moved from left to right as if he were watching someone pace. Louis lingered in the room's threshold, watching as his sobs began to rock his body harder and harder.
"I begged him to kill me but he didn't and— and I— I told him again and again. No! 'No, M— Mag— M—'"
Stuck on the sound, on the word, Lestat choked, almost gagging. Louis saw some saliva spray from his mouth before he finally pressed his head to the ground, becoming a rocking ball on the ground. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Louis thought he was going to be sick as he watched his lover's body squirm in the throes of anguish. He so desperately wanted to go to Lestat but he was frozen to the spot, watching in horror.
"Please, mon ange! D— don't go! D— don't leave!" he continued, voice softening as he looked back up, presumably at the figure of Nicki.
The apparition of Nicki must have said something to Lestat particularly hurtful for the latter suddenly let out a groan of agony. Another sob, another twist of Louis's heart. He should do something.
"I— it wasn't like this! I said no! I didn't choose him, I didn't choose to feel this! But you, mon ange, I will choose you again and again and— non! Non! Don't l— leave me! Please—"
It was this final plea which propelled Louis into action, crossing the room in a split second to place a hand on Lestat's shoulder, feeling his entire body shaking. Lestat gave in to his touch with no retaliation, allowing Louis to pull him up into a close embrace. He remained silent as Lestat muttered into his skin "Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave" over and over again. What else could he do? Louis felt utterly helpless— warm baths and heat packs couldn't bring Lestat any respite from this.
Suddenly, Lestat pushed himself out of Louis's grasp, turning and retching on the carpet. He then proceeded to stare in horror at the thick crimson pool he left behind on their once pristinely white rug. Another sob rang through their living room.
"Hey, should we go to bed?" Louis asked a moment later.
Lestat shook his head, eyes looking anywhere but at Louis in shame; "I think I'm going to be sick again."
"We'll go to the bathroom, then."
The next hour or so was spent with Lestat hugging the toilet, and Louis rubbing his back and holding his hair out of his face. No matter how many times Lestat told him that he could go back to bed, Louis remained beside him. Steadfast. Distantly, the words "Don't leave" rang in his ears.
When Louis finally managed to coax Lestat, body leaden with exhaustion, back to bed, he was just mumbling "I said no." Fortunately, Lestat drifted off to sleep pretty much as soon as his head hit the pillow. Louis, meanwhile, was certain he would never sleep again after hearing everything he had.
_
"It's okay, Les. We don't have to—"
Panic flashed alongside the shame in Lestat's eyes as his breath heaved. He shook his head and Louis knew immediately they were minutes away from an argument. This was a somewhat unfortunate turn of events considering they had, mere moments ago, been on the verge of something much more… fun. Louis distantly thought it would be somewhat absurd of them to start yelling at each other whilst they were both naked and Louis was hard, but, then again, stranger things had happened.
They were in New York for the weekend, lodging in one of Louis's hotels whilst Louis attended to some business. In hindsight, Louis should have known today wasn't one of Lestat's better days by the way he had spent the entire night complaining about how much walking they'd done. Alas, he hadn't and now Lestat was panicking because, well—
"Non, non, I can get it up," he grimaced in annoyance.
Louis propped himself up on his elbows so as to try and break the mood more than it had already been shattered.
"Les, don't—"
"If you can't wait, I could give you a— how do they say— 'blow j—'"
Louis shook his head, his hand distantly reaching for the remote on the table beside him. "The sun's going to rise in a few hours, anyway. I'll just have a shower—"
"Non! We'll just do this."
Lestat rolled over to his side of the bed and horror began to curl inside of Louis. He knew what Lestat was telling him to do, he knew what Lestat was going to let him do even though he currently lacked that spark in his eye he got when that was something he wanted. Louis was shaking his head before Lestat could even say the words.
"Fuck me, mon cher," he drawled, putting on an awfully proficient show of wanting it.
"Not now."
Lestat scoffed, his body pulled taught, rearing up like a cornered animal.
Louis knew the signs; Louis knew Lestat. "It hurts, doesn't it?"
"You do not know how I feel," Lestat spat back, slipping from the bed and picking his clothes up off the floor, "stop pretending you do."
"Les—"
"Non, Louis. Just say 'Lestat, you are not enough,' or 'Lestat, I do not want you'. Simple, non? Do not torture me by lying. It is cruel, Louis."
As he said this, he dressed quickly, turning away from Louis for a moment. Silence, Louis knew, was not the right answer. However, what was the best way to respond to this? Thinking on his feet, Louis opened his mouth to speak (it was surely better to say something than nothing at all). He was shushed immediately. A pit began to form at the bottom of Louis's stomach.
"Do not say 'Oh, but Lestat, your mother!' or 'Oh, but Lestat, your maker!'" Lestat continued, doing the worst American accent Louis had ever heard to mock him, "Because at least they accepted what I could give them! You— you— you sit there on your high horse a— and sneer and tell me 'No, Lestat, you're in pain' as if that, for whatever reason, should stop you. It never stopped them and they love me, non? They love me in spite of it!"
"You know that's not what I meant," Louis sighed, trying to suppress the anger rising up inside of him. He raked his hand through his hair, squeezing his eyes shut tightly, "You know I love you."
Lestat whipped around, eyes burning with pain poorly masked by anger. He was now fully dressed once more and practically shaking with emotion as he yelled back: "Then fuck me!"
The room door swung open and slammed shut before Louis could even open his mouth to reply. Lestat was gone. All that was left was the fury that burned within Louis and the empty wine glass on his nightstand. In a desperate attempt to calm himself, he seized the glass, stood and threw it against the wall, watching with a detached satisfaction as it shattered into thousands of shards onto the ground— crystalline rain. For a moment, he thought this action might have calmed him slightly but, alas, he only fell deeper into the rage.
They love me in spite of it!
It wasn't that he was angry with Lestat. No, this anger was solely for the mother who had— this anger was for the man who had—
Lord, if Louis couldn't even think about it, how could he expect Lestat to speak about it? Anger quickly disintegrated into remorse as Louis informed reception that a glass had broken and the fragments needed to be cleaned up, and went to take a shower. Lestat would be back soon enough (after all, dawn was rapidly approaching), and they could talk about it then.
After the coldest shower in his life, Louis returned to the main room to find it empty, unchanged except for the spot where the shattered glass had now been cleared. Strange, but not worryingly so. Shrugging on one of the bathrobes, Louis went back to the bed and flicked through the live channels. He wasn't paying much attention to what was on, settling on an episode of Love Island only because it was familiar and if— when— Lestat came back, he'd appreciate the familiarity.
One episode later, Lestat still hadn't shown up.
No need to worry, Louis told himself, sun isn't up yet.
Another episode. No Lestat.
He'll be on his way back.
Ten minutes into the third episode, Louis had left Lestat eleven voicemails, fifty texts, and was pacing the room in sheer panic. Sure, the sun hadn't quite risen yet but Lestat was certainly cutting it close. Images of a pile of dust blowing across the streets of New York flashed in Louis's mind— Lestat, unknowingly trampled by thousands of feet. Louis shuddered, saliva growing thick.
Surely not. Surely Lestat wouldn't go like this—
Maybe he'd booked another room! Louis launched himself over the bed to the hotel phone, dialling reception.
"Hello, this is—" a pleasant voice began.
"I'm looking for Lestat de Lioncourt," Louis shouted immediately.
"Who?"
"Lestat de Lioncourt."
"We do not have a 'de Lioncourt' staying with us currently and, even if we did, I couldn't—"
Louis drowned the receptionist's voice out as he started running through a list of all of Lestat's aliases.
"Is there a 'Klapek'?"
"No, but sir—"
"A 'de Valois'?" (He shuddered to think of the woman whose name it was).
"No. Who are you?"
"I'm his fucking husband!"
As Louis finished that final word, he heard the door shut and a familiar heartbeat filled the room. Lestat scoffed as Louis froze. In one, swift action he slammed the phone back down and turned to stare at Lestat in shock.
The anger in his eyes had cooled to pure shame and he looked as if he had been hollowed out, stripped like a log. Exhaustion weighed even heavier on him than it did on Louis— a feat in itself. Of course, to see him standing there, laughing, reignited the fury within Louis and he immediately sprang into a tirade, the contents of which he could not control as his tongue moved on its own accord. He felt very little guilt about this, however, because, after New Orleans and San Francisco, they had reached a silent agreement that just… "leaving"… was not an option, that they would say "Goodbye" before—
Louis's lecture was cut short when Lestat broke down into tears. Perhaps he had gotten distracted from the real issue at hand.
"I— I'm sorry," Lestat swallowed, clumsily wiping the tears from his eyes, "I was just angry that—"
"It's okay, baby," Louis murmured, crossing the room to gather up Lestat. His skin was as cold as marble and the desperate need to warm him filled Louis. Consequently, he dragged Lestat to the bathroom, turned the tap for the bath on, and sat on the ledge, monitoring the heat of the water.
Lestat continued, seemingly having written some script which he was trying to drag himself through now; "And I was sore— and— and I know you love me and I was being ungrateful and—"
Louis whipped around to look at him, mouth opened in shock.
"I— I don't want you to go, Louis," Lestat finally managed, digging his palms into his eyes to try to blockade the tears.
In an instant, Louis had gathered him in his arms and started to press his lips to any of the tears that made it past Lestat's hands. "Who said I was goin' anywhere?" he whispered softly, hoping his breath could bring some life back to Lestat's skin.
Lestat's hands dropped from his eyes, revealing the stunning blue of his irises, now turned violet by the sheen of blood. Sometimes Louis wished he could have seen what his eyes had looked like when Lestat had been mortal but those occasions were rare— Lestat's eyes were some of the most beautiful things he had ever seen and whatever quality mortality had given them would neither add nor detract from that.
He sniffled in that way which meant "Really?". Louis nodded. Lestat sobbed again, this time slightly happier than before.
"Now, where are you sore?"
Lestat motioned to where the pain always manifested— his pelvic region— and Louis nodded dutifully. "Enjoy the bath and I'll get a heat pack for when you're done."
He frowned; "But we didn't bring one."
Louis shot him a smile. This smile was partly because he knew Lestat desperately needed the mood to lighten and because he was proud with his own foresight on the issue. "Should I be offended you don't know any of my hotels' policies?"
Confusion painted Lestat's face, causing Louis's smile to widen as he explained: "It's fine, we only changed it a few months ago. They must all have stocks of basic first aid supplies: bandages, ice packs, heat packs—"
As the realisation dawned on Lestat, he began to cry again, burying his head into Louis's shoulder as if doing so would hide the fact he was currently bawling his eyes out. Louis didn't mind, however— he would much prefer Lestat dirtying his robe with bloody tears than being a pile of ash on the street.
_
"Are you sleeping?" Lestat murmured into Louis's ear, waking him up.
"Yes," he murmured, "we have an early flight home."
Louis didn't have to open his eyes to see the endearing frown on Lestat's face. The night after their argument had been much quieter than its predecessor, spent mostly in their room.
"He talks to me," Lestat confessed, swallowing, "sometimes."
Louis's eyes shot open.
"Who?"
"Him." No further explanation was needed. "Like you said I did in your book."
Louis nodded, trying to keep his breath steady. He could be calm now, couldn't he? Now, when Lestat was detailing the story of, well, him. Lestat's eyes trailed up to the ceiling, focusing on some detail in the same way people do on the sky when they're trying to find shapes in the clouds.
"Does he… talk to you?"
"Oui. We didn't have much time to talk to each other in life."
Because he was too busy ra—
"Do you know what my first coffin was?" Lestat asked, that ghostly smile he got whenever he was talking about Magnus drifting across his face. He answered his own question: "It was his. Carved entirely from marble, with an effigy of him chiselled onto the lid. It was slightly damaged— he had pulled a cross off of the detailing of the sword at his hip."
Louis nodded, somewhat taken aback by how forthcoming Lestat was being all of a sudden. Still, he made no comment, afraid of scaring Lestat out of sharing everything he knew he needed to air out. No, he wouldn't push him because Lestat was stubborn enough to take that as a sign to withdraw again and, Lord, Louis was getting tired of running away from the issue.
"It is fitting, I suppose, that I lay beneath his skin after my death, and he lays beneath mine now. His blood in my veins, his—" he shuddered, swallowing. "He comes to me younger than he was with golden hair and eyes like mine once were—"
Louis felt sick but he remained unmoving, only extending his hand to clasp onto Lestat's. What else could he do? Lestat coughed, the sheen of pain dissipating from his eyes as he rolled back to look at Louis.
"Je t'aime," he whispered, so quietly that Louis almost missed it.
"I love you too, Lestat."
This seemed to quiet the turmoil inside of Lestat for he soon fell back asleep. Louis, however, could not be sure whether he returned to the darkness of unconsciousness, for he could not stop his mind from wandering all the way back to a tower in France on a week in Winter almost three centuries before. But that did not matter, did it? It did not matter if he could not sleep now— Lestat had talked to him and that was a step.
Progress was progress (Louis only hoped he could learn to be a patient man).