Work Text:
-
Once the steps of Merrick and David had faded from earshot, I turned to him.
Louis. My Louis. My beloved, beautiful fledgling, who had sat next to me in the long evenings when my soul had wandered far away from my body, so far I thought it might never return. Louis, who had sat next to me, reading me the books and the poetry I so loved to hear in his voice, even when I was not able to hear him. Louis, whose body I had seen in the coffin, beautiful even in that macabre cameo form, who was, thank whatever powers existed – fate, perhaps, for I was tired of speculating – more solid than Claudia had been after the sun had turned her, my beloved little predator, to ash. So solid I knew even as I pleaded with David and his lovely Merrick to listen to his mind, to find the 'no' I wanted to end my awful plight, that he was salvageable.
I knew his resurrection was a terrible deed. I knew it would weigh on my soul the way so many other things did, the same way the turning of David had, at least until he had convinced me of its providential goodness. Dear, rational, gentlemanly David, who should have hated me by all rights, and was instead so caring and so polite. Just like my Louis in his courtesy of manner, and really, I did seem to have a type, didn't I? Anyone who represented the opposite of the nobles I fled from when I left Auvergne with Nicki. Yes, it did seem to be a pattern.
We had bathed Louis all together after he'd risen from his death bed, as if he was our child. As they would have bathed me if I, covered in the dust of the cathedral, had allowed myself to be so treated. I had left him to David and Merrick for the final accoutrements of civilization: the combing of the hair, the dressing after the underclothes were put on. I had left to undertake my own hasty transformation.
Shake off the dust of the grave you do not seek, Lestat. Shake off the dust and untangle your hair and clothe yourself in rags you chose, what now must be lifetimes ago, and put on new boots. It's the least you can do. Like wearing your finest clothes to a trial, or to your own execution. Dress for this occasion as best you know how.
I hadn't expected Louis to look as he did when all four of us were finally settled in the back parlor and he had sunk into the velvet chair he'd always favored. His eyes were radiant, green lights in the siren song of his face. He was whole. But fragile, still; still fragile, and I could sense his fragility despite my being his maker and despite my weary state.
I could feel David watching me with respectful curiosity. Yes, look upon the corpse, risen from the grave. And I'm not talking about Louis. Louis, at least, had been whole the way I hadn't been for a long time. So look upon me, all of you! Witness the sin I have committed at your urging! Witness my furtherance of this sin!
"It's not complete," I said, my eyes only for Louis. "It requires more blood. It requires that you drink from me, Louis, and that I give the blood back."
I was watching his face for some disgust at this, some rejection of my monstrous self, some condemnation of how I brought him back, surely against his will. It never came. He continued to look at me, calm and wondering, listening to my voice without bristling at it.
"It requires," I said, keeping my voice from trembling, "no less than that to give you all the strength that's mine to give and not lose. I want you to take it now without argument, as much for my sake, perhaps, as your own."
And that was the crux of it, wasn't it? I had tried to be selfless. I had tried to consider what Louis wanted, had tried not to make the mistake of David Talbot over again, to bring one off the mortal coil who had committed himself to its spiral and inevitable end. But Merrick had been so persuasive, and David had as well. Yet I knew within my very being neither of them were at fault for what I had chosen to do.
No, neither of them could have swayed me, I knew. Looking upon Louis' face I knew that I would have made the same choice no matter what they'd said. I would have risked hatred from the one I loved most, and I would have done it because to do so would at least have meant he was living on and not gone from this world.
I said something then to David and Merrick, something about hunting and feeding and how Louis had taught this beautiful fledgling, this child of my child, although I cannot recall the exact words. I know only that I thought Louis would protest, and he did not.
The thing about Louis is that he will always surprise me, whether it is with words or beauty. He used both when he turned to me and spoke in his melodic voice: "Yes, do it, give me all you can."
I felt a shiver run through me at his tone, low and full of the life I had given back to him against his will. It was an electric shock to my system, and for a moment I almost felt mortal again for the want of him close, his blood in my veins and my blood in his, and the pleasure that would accompany this exchange, closer to the orgasmic pleasure I had known in the body of a mortal than any other sensation I could describe, but deeper. Infinitely so. With Louis, there would be the love between us, and I wanted him more in this moment than I wanted life itself.
You must understand, it was by no means unheard of for master and fledgling to drink from one another in this way. Indeed, I had learned long after Louis' turning that this was a form of vampiric intimacy between maker and fledgling similar to sex for humans. And I had thought of Louis in a mortal sense, once, when he had been human; I had thought of those long, slender, muscular legs intertwined with mine as I took the ecstasy of the blood and gave him what ecstasies of the human male I could give. I thought even of pleasuring him the way I had once pleasured my male lovers, on my knees, the inconvenience of my fangs dismissed in a haze of human and blood lust.
Ah, what I could have had back when he was mortal, if only I had been older and less foolish when we'd met. Would I have been so afraid, as I had been back then, that his infatuation with me — or, more to the point, his life — would last more than a few drunken nights? Perhaps he would have gone on living if I'd known how to share my blood without sharing the Dark Gift as I do now. I let my mind wander to this impossible idea, thinking how I'd have let him grow at least two decades older than I'd ever had the chance to age if I thought he'd love me that long, and half those years would have been spent willingly on my knees.
I had never had the chance, of course. He'd been much too drunk, that first night, and weak besides, especially after I'd taken my petit coup, and of course near death before I’d ever taken a single sweet drop from his veins.
I have sometimes been accused of having a one-track mind when it comes to Louis de Pointe du Lac. I had been so desperately in love with him then, just as I am now. Maybe I couldn't have waited. No, I doubt I could. I wanted him too much to wait.
And after his turning we had been alienated from each other for so long. I couldn't think on it now. Couldn't think of Claudia without aching for the chapel floor and the oblivion I'd only just slipped out of. So instead I thought again of Louis.
How gorgeous he'd been to me when he rose from our shared coffin after that first long day, my companion in the Dark Gift. No comprehension of his own beauty, though I'd have loved him even if he'd been aware of himself and spent all day staring into his own reflection like a modern Narcissus. Certainly, I couldn't blame him if he had.
But Louis was too remote for vanity, too untouchable to me, always, and I had hurt him for it, and I was killed for my stubbornness and my crimes. A deserved killing, as you, reader, know. I've already narrated the decades of separation and the reunion and the ache of my Louis, so fragile, so human, refusing the intimacy of sharing blood. You know how I was much too infatuated with his lingering mortality to press the issue. You know, and you may comprehend, but if you saw Louis, you would understand more wholly than you are capable of understanding now with only my inadequate words for your guide. Trust me.
This Louis in front of me was not the Louis I had become so used to. He was physically less human-looking than he had been, of course, but something else had changed in him, and I shivered to look upon it. He said something of Merrick, and I answered in a daze: whatever he wanted, I would give. Penance and gift in one.
I think I spoke to Merrick, warning her of what was offered, making sure she understood. She did. I knew she did. She was as intelligent a creature as I'd ever met, and it did not take many words for me to be sure she knew all the horror of what I offered her at Louis' request.
She further exemplified her intelligence by saying that she must hunt first. I gestured for David to go with her. And then we were here, where I began my narrative, the steps of our fledglings gone beyond all hearing, and I was trembling again as though cold.
Louis looked at me. He was so beautiful. Still had been, even when he seemed to be sculpted of charcoal. I thought that he must have more self-composure than I ever expected him to have, to be so calm, so still as he looked at me, not even an hour after his rebirth.
"Louis," I said. My voice was still hoarse. "I am sorry."
"Sorry?"
"I don't know if this is what you wanted."
"I didn't know," he murmured, hand coming up to the old-fashioned tie at the neck of my linen shirt and pulling it loose, "that it could be like this."
I swallowed hard, and tilted my head away from him, baring my neck. I could feel the pulse of my preternatural heart through my veins, each beat sounding the word: yes, yes, yes.
Drink from me. Take me, make me yours, and I can make you mine again, make you strong enough so that I never need to fear to look upon you again as I saw you only an hour ago. Drink from me, my love, my fledgling, my Louis. Drink.
And he did drink. I felt the ecstasy even before he'd begun, felt it the very moment his fangs pierced my skin. So careful, that bourgeois courtesy surviving despite everything. I almost sobbed, it was so quintessentially my Louis. But I didn't have a chance, really, because the moment he tasted my blood he began to pull upon it with a vigor I had never experienced. I knew at that moment: he'd chosen life. He'd chosen me, and he showed it to me like this.
I was scarcely conscious of shoving his head away from my neck and clambering on top of him, drawing him back to me as impatiently as if he'd been the one to push me away. I only knew that I needed to be closer, and in pursuit of that motive I hurriedly shed my coat and then my shirt as he drank, wanting no barrier between us. He pulled back to gaze up at me, my blood still coating his fangs, and when I lifted his black turtleneck up over his head his arms went up without protest.
I wanted to be fully bare, suddenly. I hadn't been conscious of it before, but when I realized the need it became urgent. I pawed at his modern cotton pants with all the clumsiness my long coma had bestowed upon me. "Louis."
"Yes," he breathed, and with more dexterous fingers than mine, rid himself and then me of our garments, both so recently donned, so that no barrier existed between us but that of our skin. I wondered, wistfully, if all the erotic passions of mortality were truly gone. If they were, I wasn't cognizant of the fact. I wanted him, wanted Louis in all and any of the ways I could have him, blood and soul and pleasure and everything else we could have, and when I felt the hard length of his cock against mine as I leaned in towards his neck I moaned for the sheer knowledge of it, despite knowing it would never yield the transient pleasures those of our sex experienced the way they did when mortal.
His breath was quick against my skin, and he arched up into my touch as I kissed his neck, unwilling to end this strange ache of want between us. "Lestat–"
"Tell me you want this," I whispered, desperate. "Please, Louis. Tell me you want me to, tell me, I can't–"
His lovely hands came up to caress me, one on the sensitive skin of my waist and the other threading through my hair, so gentle I nearly sobbed at the touch. "Yes, Lestat. My maker. Please. I want you to, mon ange, ma pauvre âme perdue. Drink from me, Lestat."
I needed no further command. I was crying as I sunk my fangs into his neck, trying to be gentle and knowing I failed by the way his pulse fluttered as I did it, pulling long draughts of his blood, my blood, into my mouth, and falling into ecstasy.
I hadn't known, really, what it was like to share blood between a maker and his fledgling, not in the first gift of creation but after decades – centuries – without the taste of him. Hadn't known the way I'd cling to him as he drank from me, as I drank from him, had never imagined I could feel the sort of desire I'd felt as a mortal again as the swoon of the blood overtook me.
Oh, I was familiar with bloodlust. Familiar even with the pleasure drinking from another vampire could bring, of course I was. But this was something else entirely. This was love, and lust, and bloodlust, and love and love and love again, and I was kissing Louis without knowing what I was doing, only amazedly yet vaguely aware of my hips rutting against his as I did. His mouth was yielding as I had never known it to be, and when his blunt teeth bit down upon my bottom lip I groaned, tasting my own blood in his mouth and loving it.
"Lestat," he said when he pulled away from me, his voice husky. "Lestat. You were gone."
I hated the pain in his voice, and I pierced my own lip with a fang before kissing him again, moaning into his mouth as I felt him suck at the too-quickly-healing wound, chasing the taste and the power of my blood he had so long denied himself. It was only his drawing back from me that forced me to reply. "I could not let you die, dearest. Not without your saying goodbye."
He did something utterly unexpected then, and again I fell in love with him, as I have so many times before. My most beautiful Louis, my darling, still so human and vulnerable even with my powerful blood thrumming through his veins. He grabbed my cock and squeezed at it, thumb swiping up just below the head of it, where the most sensitive nerves responded to his touch as though they'd been waiting for it my entire life. I moaned, half in surprise and half in lust for him.
I'd thought these feelings lost to me along with the chance to be mortal again. But then, I'd never really tried to call them back, had I? I'd never writhed on the lap of my most beloved Louis and felt his clumsy caresses with the taste of his blood in my mouth and the taste of my blood in his. Stupid, really. I could have had this so much sooner, had I only known. Still, I'm not sure I would have dared to ask.
I didn't have to ask now. I simply knew, instinct guiding my hand to the velvet skin of Louis' cock as he tugged at mine, eyes wondering and wide, fangs finding the artery at my neck even as my head fell forward against his shoulder and I bit down. The blood was like fire between us, the blood was the passion neither of us had the words to describe, and as I drank I felt the pleasure come closer and closer to a climax I was at once familiar and unfamiliar with, pulsing in my veins and in the rhythm of Louis' hand over my cock, so obscene it made me squirm with delight.
He broke from me at the moment I thought I would come to an end, though whether that end was death or orgasm I was not sure, my hips stuttering in their unconscious rhythm as he gasped words into my ear. "Lestat, I am – I will –"
My love for him eclipsed all other feelings, even that of surprise that I could still feel this blood-carnal urgency, something I'd never felt before while in my immortal body. But then, I had never touched Louis like this, had never surrendered myself so utterly the way I had when he was near to ashes in the coffin and again now, gasping his name and shuddering in his arms, driving my fangs into his neck to feel the blood pulsing through him and into me and back into him as he drank from me again.
The climax, and it was worthy of such a word, came upon us both simultaneously. Interlinked as we were, I doubt it could have been otherwise. There was no physical evidence of it, only waves upon waves of unparalleled pleasure, rolling up through my toes and through my cock, pulsing in Louis' beautiful hands even as his pulsed in mine, and then up through my chest, tingling through to the roots of my fangs as I drank and drank and drank, surrendering myself utterly to the pleasure of Louis' blood through my veins and mine through his, the low vibration of his moan against my throat making my back arch and my eyes squeeze shut, too overcome with this new closeness to bear watching him in ecstasy.
When I came back to myself again we were pressed together still, my mouth licking at the wounds my fangs had made in his neck, kittenish, even as he pressed kisses of his own to my skin, the intermingled blood on his lips healing the deep wounds he'd made. I felt a sudden selfish urge to ask him to stop, wanting his marks on me, even though I knew they would heal faster than I could want them to.
I didn't give voice to this desire. I was crying before I knew myself to be. "Louis. Louis. Louis, I couldn't – I couldn't, not you, I couldn't–"
Louis held me. He is strong, my Louis, despite his delicacy. I don't understand him, even after all these years of adoring him. I don't understand how he can be so weak and delicate and human and yet stronger than me in these moments of my need. I loved him all the more for the mystery of him, and it only made my tears come faster.
"Lestat," he whispered, his hand a comforting anchor against my back. I was furious at myself. I should have been the one to comfort him! I should have been the strong one, in this moment! Louis had nearly died, and I had been so selfishly asleep in my own misery and had not stopped it, and he was my fledgling, and it was my responsibility, since I had brought him back, to comfort him like this. And yet here he was, soothing me as I sobbed! I hated myself for it, but I could not stop. "Lestat, please. Don't cry. I can't bear it."
I drew back from him at once, indignant. "You can't bear it?! No, Louis de Pointe du Lac, I cannot bear it. If you were gone, I would–"
His perfect lips quirked up into a smile, then, at my words. "You thought I was gone, once. Before."
"I thought you hated me then," I murmured miserably. "You forget. I was starving into bone. I was going to bury myself in the ground again. Only my promise to Gabrielle kept me from walking into the sun, back then."
His grasp on me tightened, and I laughed, delighted at this no-doubt involuntary show of affection. "I'm sorry."
"Don't," I told him sternly. I undermined my own tone by pressing kisses to every inch of skin I could reach, so ecstatic that I could kiss him at all, that he allowed it. "You, of all people! Don't you apologize to me."
His arms tightened around me, and I was so happy at the new strength he possessed that I instantly pressed myself into his chest, hugging him tight to me, my fingers dancing over his skin as though I needed to feel it to make sure it was there. Perhaps I did.
He sighed against my ear as my chest shuddered. The tears were back. But you know what I'm like, and if you can't imagine or understand Louis as he is, in all his flawed, lovable beauty, then you may as well stop reading. If you can, you know exactly why I'd begin crying again at such a moment.
"My maker," he whispered against me as I sobbed. "My Lestat. You've come back to me, when I needed you most, though I did not know myself that I did."
"I'm sorry I could not have come back before," I managed.
"I know," he said, and the love and pain intermingled in his voice said more than words ever could.
-