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It would have been cruel to call attention to it that night.
But on another night, when Lestat was once more robust and fully fed, Louis laid his head upon Lestat's chest and said, I am sorry --very softly-- that you learned from me how to harm yourself.
Lestat kissed his Louis's head. When I buried myself beneath the soil all those years, do you think it was just a long fast?
This did not better Louis's grief and guilt. He did not know how to ask why Lestat had not told him that he could hold such large sadness, too. Perhaps he had not thought Louis could hold it alongside his own? Even with the sifting of memories too long suppressed, Louis still could not say whether he would be wrong.
Almost like he was tracing Louis's thoughts, Lestat lay his cheek atop Louis's head, soothing his hand up and down Louis's back. Yes, Lestat could be gentle as well as he could be cruel; and he could be very cruel.
Mon cœur, how do you know it is not I who passed along my self-punishment to you? That I did not somehow place my perpetual dissatisfaction inside of you--
Lestat was not understanding. Louis leaned up and kissed him and wrapped his arms all around him, carefully rolling his cunt against Lestat's cock again. Wanting to be closer with his body in a way his words could not seem to reach.
--Do not change the subject, Lestat said roughly, his body straining with desire; his eyes all pupil.
Once this would have made Louis tremble in more ways than one. But instead Louis just gazed back at Lestat; and then he bridged the gap between them and kissed him, tender as anything. And he felt he had given up nothing to do so.
Ok, hon, he said. Tell me what it is you need to say.
Arush with sudden sharp emotion, Lestat began to tear up, his eyes reddening with bloodied tears, unable to bear being so distant from his Louis; he drew his love's legs a little more apart and pushed inside him, the wet heat of him a silken embrace in the deepest part of Lestat's heart.
Louis held him tight with his whole body, his lashes fluttering against the side of Lestat's face as he clung to him, biting back sweet moans in his ear.
I cannot be sorry about it, Lestat gasped, it helped-- it made me feel closer to you. You tried to tell me so many times, what your family meant to you. I did not--no, I would not-- his arms surrounded Louis --I, without you two, I, too-- I too--
Louis's heart pounded in his face - he would not remember that he began to cry, too. He would remember how his fangs descended; how he buried his mouth in Lestat's neck; how he drank from him: trying to swallow just a bit more of his grief.
Lestat rolled Louis back onto the bed, covering him with his body, stretching his neck so Louis could suck from him without interruption, fucking him slow and deep, making little shallow bites in Louis wherever he could kiss, sipping at all his love's years of swallowed yearning - seeking glimpses of all the things Louis still seemed too hurt to say.
Wishing they had not spent so many years holding their grief for their daughter hostage from each other.
In this way - bite by bite - they traded memories of the blood, of their bond, and - of course - all the bloody rats.