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Louis wakes in his bed, grasping at the sheets. He coughs up the rocks but there are no rocks, just blood splattering against the white Egyptian cotton. A wave of nausea hits him, and he heaves to keep himself from vomiting nothing, but the heaving only makes his chest hurt.
He shoves Armand’s hand off his shoulder only to realize he’s scraped at his own skin, drawing blood.
It’s the same old pattern. The many nights he’s spent alone since Lestat has been touring again have brought back the worst memories. Louis had thought he was improving. And well, he was. He’s not needy. It isn’t as if he needs Lestat near him to be able to get through the day’s sleep.
In the corner of his eye, Louis sees one of Lestat’s t-shirts draped over the armchair by the bedroom window. They don’t use the chair for much else. Storage—but not just that. Sometimes, Lestat sits there and watches Louis touch himself, his breaths getting quicker until a damp patch spreads across his trousers and opens his legs for Louis to see.
A single look at the chair could turn Louis on, on any day.
Louis focuses on that memory to bring himself back to reality. Masturbation has proved to be a useful coping mechanism. Thinking of his ex-husband helps. Thinking of all the sex he’s been having with his ex-husband helps. He doesn’t know what to call that now.
The feeling doesn’t pass when he cums. Louis feels heavy and strung out. There are tears in his eyes.
There’s always the other coping mechanism, but Lestat would have something to say about it.
He doesn’t have to know. Louis heals quickly. His nails are already piercing through the skin of his forearm. The pain is grounding.
Louis, if you ever feel this way again, call me. I won’t let anything happen to you.
A voice in his head. Almost like Lestat is able to hear his thoughts again, to speak to him through the tether that should no longer exist. It’s almost as if Lestat’s ghost is here, though Lestat is living, only mere miles away, just across the border in Houston for a book signing.
No. No. He doesn’t need to do this.
Louis is filled with shame at the memory. Lestat opening the door to his bedroom to find Louis with a bloated corpse of a grandfather and the blood cut out of Louis’ own veins. Just like Armand did decades ago, when—
No. No. Not her. Not Claudia. Oh Claudia, oh, my baby, my light, my Claudia. Not now, when the grief feels fresh. Like it could have been hours since he heard her screams. Louis.
“No,” Louis sobs. “Claudia, wait—”
Her hands were never this strong. So what is that, gripping the flesh of Louis’ neck, pressing down on his trachea?
I’m sorry, he screams again. It must have been hundreds of times, his mouth moving the same shallow shape of apology. Of course, it always means nothing.
His eyes fly open. Claudia looks at him with numb eyes. Her hands are wrapped around Louis’ neck. Louis pants, his eyes darting around his room.
It’s nighttime. Did he dream twice?
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Is it his voice, or hers, or Lestat’s? Or is it Armand's? No, Armand has never said sorry.
“Please, stop,” Louis chokes out, his fingers curled against his temples.
This can't be happening now. He was doing fine. He’d just gone to the movies two nights ago to see one of those rom-coms humans liked so much. He was reading again. He’d bought a couple of Harry Belafonte vinyls and played one of them over video call with Lestat, fantasizing about how they’d dance together when Lestat was back in NOLA.
This is happening now, but it doesn’t need to be so vicious, so endless. Louis is not alone.
Louis moves off the bed. He picks up Lestat’s t-shirt and brings it back with him under the covers. The collar still smells faintly of Lestat. Louis presses his whole face into it. He kisses it. He wraps his body around it.
There’s nothing to be ashamed of, mon cher.
He picks up his phone. The time reads just after one in the morning. Street lights merge with the soft shelled light of Louis’ sheer curtains. The room turns green, and then red.
A child laughs outside, and even that feels raw. A scab Louis picks and picks at it. He returns nowhere, because he’s already home, which is a fact both comforting and harrowing. His skin is exactly as it was an hour ago, two hours, two years, two decades, a century.
Louis the vampire. No longer bored, but what he is, he can’t say for certain. Louis tucks his knees up into his chest and calls Lestat.
_____
Louis must have passed out from exhaustion, because he doesn’t remember time passing between the time Lestat said he was coming by to the time he hears Lestat buzz into the flat.
He doesn’t remember what he said on the phone, but he realizes, with some embarrassment that he sounded half-frantic, and probably needy, too needy, qualities he had never found appealing in himself. But he found that Lestat was receptive to Louis wanting things from him, and though Louis rarely engaged in that sort of display, he’s been trying to find things to ask for. Favours. Though Lestat seemed to perceive them as signals of trust.
This however, is not something Louis asked for. This is something he needed, of course Lestat would come.
There are quiet footsteps, soft breathing. Louis’ whole body reacts to the sounds. Just having Lestat close by relaxes his limbs and sends his skin buzzing. Two opposite effects that make one perfect whole.
Head still leaden, Louis doesn’t move from under the covers, can’t anyway. He shuts his eyes when Lestat enters the room, not because he doesn’t want to see him, but because he isn’t ready to speak yet, and he wants Lestat to come to him, to be silent and love him, and that is exactly what Lestat does.
A kiss against his cheek, Lestat’s thumb tracing his stubble.
A warm hand against his back, rubbing circles into it over the sheet that covers Louis.
And then, the comfort Louis was longing for—Lestat’s entire body draped around his.
Being held by Lestat is one of the things Louis missed most when they were apart. Both being held by him, and holding him, and they had done so much of both when they decided to see each other again.
Their heartbeats sync easily. These days, it happens quicker than it ever did. A couple minutes at most. The slow thud of Lestat’s eases Louis’ rabbit heart into something calmer. His chest pain dissipates, surrendering quietly to the companion who quells it.
“Chéri, is anyone home?” Lestat whispers, kissing Louis’ nose. “May I see through your windows?”
Louis’ mouth pulls into a half-smile. He opens one eye and wonders if he said Claudia’s name on the phone. Lestat looks grief-stricken, but he’s trying to be cheeky. It’s a familiar combination.
“Oh non, just one, c’est dommage,” Lestat smiles, “still beautiful all the same.”
Louis opens his other eye, placing his fingers on Lestat’s mouth to stop the next bit of praise.
“How was the signing?”
“Not too good, I left early,” Lestat says, “I hated it anyway, don’t make that face. The flight’s only an hour, you know, my love did not inconvenience me. Tu ne pourrais jamais .”
Louis sniffs. His fear has turned to sludge. He’s sad all over.
“What was it?” Lestat asks quietly. His face is something entirely different now. The lines around his eyes are more apparent than ever.
“The box, the coffin,” Louis says, “where they locked me. Her screams. Armand’s hands on the back of my neck. Why did he like to hold me like that? It was everything all at once. My head shoulda thrown Paul in there too for how creative it got. Fuck.”
Louis’ breath catches and he’s crying again. “I’m sorry.”
“Please, Louis,” Lestat says, “do not apologize to me. What did you do? Did you do anything?”
To yourself is the end of the sentence Lestat doesn’t finish.
Louis looks at him for as long as it takes to clear his vision. Lestat wipes Louis’ tears with his fingers, and then reaches for the cloth rags Louis leaves in the bedside table for aftercare. He dabs at Louis' face with unnecessary focus, his mouth all drawn up and tense in a way Louis usually finds endearing, and still does, despite the nature of the gesture now.
Lestat is worried.
Louis pulls down the bedsheet to reveal the shirt—Lestat’s shirt—that he’s still clutching against him.
That gets Lestat to smile again, shaking his head a little like he can’t still believe his clothes are of such comfort to Louis though Louis has told him, has been telling him, to leave more of them behind.
The smiles fades as quickly as it came.
“Is that all?” Lestat asks.
Louis nods.
They’re both quiet for a near minute, watching each other, laid next to each other on the bed, very close, noses almost touching. Noses indeed touching when Louis moves in closer.
“Lestat,” Louis says, just to feel the name he loves full in his mouth.
“These dreams are not your fault,” Lestat says knowingly, “nor are they punishment. You are not atoning when you suffer. You remember this, mon cher?”
One of his hands reach for Louis. He laces their fingers together.
“Now that,” Louis laughs bitterly, “is a dangerous thing to say.”
“How?” Lestat asks, almost angrily. His nostrils flare. Louis loves that motion too. It makes him want to stick a finger up there. He’s done it before, just playing around. Lestat had sneezed, violently jostling them both on the couch. That was funny. It was such a loud sneeze. Louis didn’t think he’d heard Lestat sneeze in their entire married life together.
The memory makes Louis smile until he realizes he’s thinking of it to avoid thinking about something else.
“Because it’s not true,” Louis says, “I told you before, we should have never gone to Paris, I should have—”
“Stop,” Lestat snaps, sitting up. He presses his forehead to the heels of his hands. “Louis, I will repeat myself as long as it takes. You did not kill Claudia. She is not dead because of you. She loved you. Despite the dreams in which she doesn’t, she fucking does, Louis. Do you know how many times she has told me this herself?”
“Lestat, that’s not real,” Louis protests, though he shouldn’t. He sits up too, shoving the covers away. “You seeing her is all you. She’s gonna tell you what you’re already thinking.”
Lestat is quiet and so still. Louis can’t see his face. The curtain of blonde hair and his hands cover it.
When Lestat does speak, his voice is muffled against the knees he’s pulled up to his chin.
“If I could take those dreams I would. You could give them all to me. I see her every time I sleep, anyway.”
“I don’t need—”
“I would take your memories of the rocks in your throat. Louis, find a way to give them to me and I’ll take them,” Lestat sobs, “they could not hurt me more than this, than this blame you must face from your own self. No matter how many times I tell you, your idea of atonement, it does not go away.”
Louis blinks back a new wave of tears. “It’s okay Lestat, wait,” he says, his hands hovering at Lestat’s shoulder, unsure where to touch. Lestat mutters an apology and Louis shakes his head, because no, he doesn’t need to be sorry for his emotions but this is difficult.
“I don’t think it’s going away,” Louis confesses, “the feeling or the dreams. At least not for a long time. But I want it to, isn’t that enough for now? I’m working on it.”
“I see.” Lestat tilts his head, observant, wary.
Louis sighs. “Would you rather I not tell you?”
“No,” Lestat says, raising his head. His eyes are red-rimmed. “You must tell me. You must. Just as I have been telling you about what she says to me.”
Pained and in love, Louis can’t think of an appropriate response. He leans forward and climbs into Lestat’s lap, their arms encircling each other instinctively.
Louis has nightmares about Lestat too. About being dropped, clawing at the air for Lestat’s hands, Lestat who would not save him, though he had that first night Louis was turned into the immortal creature he is now. Lestat’s heavy hands around his throat. His face as he bled from the wound Louis carved into his throat. Lestat’s body on top of his, their bruises blooming like love bites. Sometimes his dreams started like sex and turned into violence.
And sometimes there was that dream: something that had never happened. Lestat burning in a fire right in front of him, his face melting, his hair singed into ash while Louis stood, paralyzed, his eyes filled with unshed blood.
It must have been—it must have been something like what Lestat had seen the night Claudia was taken from them.
“Is she here now?” Louis asks quietly, cupping Lestat’s cheek.
Lestat nods. “Sleeping.”
“Right here with us?”
Louis looks around like he can see her. He can’t. He can’t feel her either. None of the energy and warmth he could feel when she was alive. All he has are images–the one’s he’s taken of her, the memories he has, and the ones Lestat describes to him as new.
Lestat nods again, mutters, “next to me, like a little girl. She is not dreaming.” He glances to his left to the empty space. Louis almost expects to see the mattress sag with Claudia’s weight, but it never does. She isn’t a physical presence. Louis cannot reach out and touch her. He can touch Lestat. He curls his fingers into the material of Lestat’s collared shirt. It's not expensive, but it has an easy hold, clean and crisp.
“That’s nice, baby,” Louis says, with nothing to choke down. It is nice.
He’s sure that almost nothing has hurt so much as loving Claudia, but loving Lestat comes close. Because even in the best of moments, they feel twice the pain. Theirs, and each other’s.
But it isn’t agony. It isn’t stilted or suppressed. Everything has been laid out and imperfect, and despite those imperfections, those quiet moments of sadness or rage, Louis knows what Lestat says is true.
“Thank you for coming,” Louis whispers, kissing the side of Lestat’s head. “I don’t need anything else. Just stay with me.”
Lestat rocks them gently, like he’s putting a baby to sleep. He does it unconsciously, something new Louis has noticed when they’re sitting together like this. Louis thinks it must have been something he did when he was alone in that shack all those years, but he hasn’t pointed it out.
“I will always stay with you,” Lestat says. “Shall I cancel my signings for the rest of the week?”
“Yes,” Louis agrees. He’d like to have Lestat all to himself. He pushes away the feeling that it’s gluttonous or excessive, especially when Lestat beams at him, all too happy to forgo his engagements for Louis. They’re together, Louis thinks, and the days are indefinitely theirs.