Archive of Our Own

"isolation comes from 'insula', which means island."

insula, by moses sumney

Louis always knew he was going to die young.

It wasn't instinctual, this knowledge deep within his bones that his time on this Earth is slipping through his fingers faster than predicted. It wasn't until he was coughing into a handkerchief, bloody rose petals littering its surface, that he realized that he would likely die alone.

Growing up, he was told repeatedly that he was weak. The other children mocked the way his head was always in a book, his persistent usage of long words as he chattered away about random things he had just learned, the way he held himself apart from the others, uncomfortable and thin, waffling in the wind and under their hardened stares, refusing to play their rough games.

The other boys eventually stopped trying to play with him and instead made him the subject of their new game: seeing how well they could hurt Louis. Tripping him, throwing rocks at him, goading him into a fight he would inevitably lose when he ended up face down, mouth full of dirt, and arms twisted painfully behind his back.

Louis' father often got mad at him when he came home, crying and covered in bruises and dirt. He would stand there in the living room, clothes ripped, lips busted, and tears trailing down his cheeks. He would wait for someone to comfort him, offer him a bath, or even just a hug.

His father barely spared him a glance from his newspaper, only telling him to pick his head up and stop crying. To wash the dirt off his face and stop being a fucking pansy. Louis didn't learn what that word meant until much later, but he knew he couldn't be seen as weak. His mother could only offer him a shrug when he glanced in her direction, as she had repeatedly told him before that she did not get involved in men's business and that he needed to become strong like his father.

So Louis learned to fight, how to pick his battles, and to let his words do the hurting for him. He learned how to push back, step up, and hold his ground. Nobody would save him, so he could only save himself.

Louis eventually became a silent child, speaking only when spoken to, choosing his words carefully, weighing each one in his mind to ensure he said only the safest thing, to protect himself from visibility.

Agreeable and quiet, Louis was a beautiful child, so Florence stopped fussing at him to get stronger because Louis could stand on his own.

The books became his friends, his thoughts providing him company on those long, lonely days, saying nothing or fighting back with everything he got. He found it easier to keep his real thoughts where they could be protected by his skull.

One day, when walking home from school, the fallen leaves crunching underfoot, Louis found a dying bird. Its wings twisted up and broken, quiet, seemingly waiting to die. Its beak opened and closed, eye trained on his approaching form, and still, the bird did not panic. He thought it was beautiful how something so small could suffer with grace, so he helped put it out of its misery, crushing its head beneath a rock.

Louis wondered if one day, someone would help him, too, by putting him out of his misery. His head cracked open, brain spilling out, his thoughts running away from him and into that great unknown.

He knew it was a sin to wish to die, but he didn't do it on purpose. It was a silent, pervasive thing that became a part of his inner soundtrack.

Louis' teenage years were the worst years for these thoughts. He grew overnight, shooting up and putting on muscle, ignored by his peers and fawned over by the girls. His mother, noticing the attention he was getting, started introducing him to reputable girls at their church. He was polite, offered a smile when prompted, and consistently kept himself apart from their affections.

He knew something was wrong with him, then, when he spent more time looking at the boys who sneered at him than the girls who tried to hold his hand.

Sometimes he would go on a couple of dates, deluding himself into believing that he could grow to love girls the way his mother wished, but he felt nothing affectionate toward them, only a sense of obligation and disgust.

Louis would look at his classmates, study the way their shirts stretched across their muscles, their strong hands and powerful legs in motion, and selfishly dream what it would be like to feel their muscles against his own, a flat chest pressed against his back, to feel what it's like to be held, tenderly, by somebody stronger than him.

He wondered if other boys felt the same, if that was why his classmates constantly fought each other, pinning each other down as they wrestled in the mud, because they felt vulnerable when they saw themselves in a mirror. The idea of touching someone else, someone who feels like himself, and who wouldn't look at him in disgust.

One time, Louis was daydreaming outside, aimlessly working on his homework and watching his classmates play football. He was watching Ricky in particular, examining the way he laughed loudly and stood tall, shining brightly in the sunshine, his sweaty brown skin illuminated. Ricky saw him watching him, twisted his face, and called him a pansy.

Louis knew then that he might die a pansy, but he'll never die weak, so he got up and threw a punch at Ricky. They scrapped together in the grass, muscles straining against each other, both of them vying to prove their manhood in that grass as the other boys jeered them on, betting who would be the better man.

When Louis elbowed Ricky hard in the mouth, knocking out his teeth and dazing him, Louis grimly realized this might be the only contact he could receive from a man. Hurting, and being hurt in turn. It hurt him a little, tore up his insides something fierce, and Louis pretended his teary eyes were from the dirt on his face and not his heart breaking in his chest.

That weekend is when he kissed his first boy. Ricky, with his missing teeth, had his hand down Louis' pants and his tongue in his mouth. Louis felt weak, mad at himself for giving in to his demented desires, yet eager for whatever the other boy could give him. Once Louis finished in Ricky's hands, breath stuttering in his chest, Ricky's mouth at his throat, Louis felt as close to a mirror of himself as he could get.

To be touched and held by another, to be seen and desired, Louis' shell softened against that brick wall, a nearby lamp post their only witness.

Ricky drew back, looked at his cum-covered hand with a sneer on his face, and wiped his hand on Louis' pants. "I knew you were a fucking queer. I'm not like you. If you tell anyone I did this, I'll kill you."

Louis nodded quickly, still reeling from the encounter, heart sinking into his stomach. "I'm not queer. I won't tell anyone, I won't." His throat scratched, a tickling sensation brought forth, yet he ignored it.

Ricky shoved him into the wall and hustled out, running away into the night. They never touched again, ignoring each other in school.

Louis grew to have a problem with other pretty boys.

Louis liked the way it felt to have another man's body against his own. He grew addicted to what he couldn't have and found small moments to dose himself with delusions. In alleyways, in fields, in bathrooms, he found ways to sate his ever-growing lust. It was always when they finished, whether on his knees or wrist aching, that reality came crashing down. The other man was always making sure Louis would never breathe a word to anyone.

Louis always agrees, crumbling inside, swallowing down a, 'Can I see you again?'

Louis used to think his tender throat was because of all the cocks he swallowed, their lengths bruising his meaty palette at the back of his throat at the rate he was torturing himself with vying for what he couldn't have.

During dinner one night, swallowing down his protests against his father condemning his brother for his recent hallucinations, Louis coughed hard, something caught deep in his throat, and excused himself to go to the bathroom. Bent over the sink, struggling to expel what feels stuck at the back of his throat, and swallowing down water to aid whatever was stuck, he coughed out a rose petal.

Staring at the petal in the sink, its black hue chronicling his future demise, he picked it up and flushed it down the toilet.

Nothing to do but wait to die, Louis supposes.

When Louis' father died, he never knew whether he had made his father proud.

In their household, silence was coveted, so Louis was comforted when his father chose to ignore him. His father ignored them all until he died, found by a maid in their study, milky white foam spilling from his lips. The doctor ruled it a stroke, but inside, Louis felt a grim satisfaction at the evidence that keeping things inside will inevitably destroy you.

At the funeral, Louis spoke about his father's accomplishments to a solemn crowd. He spoke about his father's business prospects, his beautiful family, and his status as a respected member of the community. When he finished, he fetched his trusty handkerchief and coughed hard to expel the petals from his throat.

The rose petals fluttered in the wind as he dumped them out over his father's casket, letting his thoughts get buried underground where no one can reach. The petal's black hue, shiny with spit, was covered with an ever-growing pile of dirt until vanishing from sight.

Louis didn't cry at the funeral, but it's been a long time since he cried for his father.

Jonah always had a smile ready for Louis when they met in the bushes, pinning each other to the trees, hands and legs tangling, jeans around their ankles, laughing into each other's mouths, shirts rucked up to their necks as they explored each other's bodies.

Jonah was an eager little thing, slightly younger than him and inexperienced in the matters of touching another boy, but ready to do anything and everything. Louis let Jonah touch him and touched him in turn, their quick, horny fumblings evolving to languishing on the grass, pressed close together like a beast with two backs, heaving and groaning into the night air.

Louis would pin Jonah down and ride him, hips rolling lazily as the stars twinkled ahead, completely enraptured at the sight of Jonah's straining throat as he tried not to cum too early. Louis would lean down, licking and biting at his clavicle, teasing his carotid pulse with his tongue, huffing his scent deep into his lungs. These were the moments he could breathe the easiest, his ever-present cough and sore throat gone in these small deaths they shared together, freely and without judgment.

Louis' family thought he finally had a friend, and Louis felt like he finally had somebody who understood him without speaking. He could be quiet with Jonah. When Jonah would ask questions Louis wasn't prepared to answer, when Jonah tried to poke at his soft underbelly while he buried his face between Louis' thighs, Louis would shake his head, and Jonah would smile at him.

What a beautiful thing, to hide and still be seen, to have a hand reach out and grasp yours, to offer pleasure without ties or dreams of a future.

Dear Jonah, showing all his teeth from laughter or gasps of pleasure, letting Louis play with his body and tuck him up close to his heart without piercing the bouquet of anguish it has become.

It was a beautiful summer, the time Louis got to have Jonah all to himself. His late father's legacy dogged his steps, buried under paperwork, demanding lawyers, and circling debt collectors snatching everything they could get.

Jonah was a breath of air. Louis didn't have to pretend, wasn't forced to lie or even speak. A sweet, easy romance marked only by the moon's passage across the sky and the imprints of their bodies in the grass. Louis may be going to hell, may curse the sky when Jonah licks into his hole, but he cannot curse God for allowing him to experience something beyond himself, to steal glimpses of sunshine from that beautiful boy.

When winter came, ending that summer air of passion and care they cultivated within each other, Louis finally condemned his soul to hell.

Jonah wanted to run away together, to move up north or even go overseas, where nobody knows them. To live with Louis, sleep together in the same bed, maybe even walk down the street together, shoulders brushing close.

A dream, that summer was. God is getting the last laugh, words strangling in Louis' throat as thoughts of his family's well-being run through his head.

Louis was all his family had to depend on, even though all he had was right in front of him, heart open and vulnerable smile on his face, constantly trying to reach across that small space that Louis maintained through their entanglements.

His father told him not to be weak, so Louis tried to be strong when he broke Jonah's heart for the last time.

When Jonah walked away, pretending that he wasn't crying, Louis felt his lungs creak as the vines from his heart squeezed tight, smothering his air. He couldn't call out for Jonah if he tried, falling to his knees, gripping the dead grass, back arched as he fought for his life.

Louis coughed, hacked, choked, spitting out bloody petals onto the snow-covered ground. He smiled to himself, lips smeared red and bloody spittle foaming at the corner of his mouth.

A pansy he may be, but nobody, not even God, could say he was weak. Weak to the desires of his flesh, yes, but his thoughts and his heart are his to own, protected and hidden.

Louis resigned himself to ending his own life, a master of his own fate to the very end, while he destroys everything around him to cling to the shaky foundations of his family's love.

To love his family to the point of self-destruction.

God could give him that at least. Letting his poor, unfortunate soul receive a simulacrum of a family's love. What a Gracious Ruler, to let Louis die with grace.

Louis figured if he was going to hell, he might as well do everything he could to make sure his family would be okay after he passed. He didn't know the timeline of it all, but figured throwing up bloody petals and staying up all night from night-terrors and sensations of feeling strangled in his sleep couldn't be a good sign.

So he diversified his portfolio, liquidated his father's failing businesses, paid off some debts, and used that leftover cash in the red light district. Whorehouses, gambling dens, saloons, and more. Sinners and the like were welcomed through the open doors, no judgment or inhibitions, just pure unadulterated excess of pleasure and fun.

In that corridor of sin, Storyville, Louis made a shit ton of money. He helped his girls, gave them a roof over their heads, protected and supported them while they let men pump away into them, all the while skimming off their profits to put in his pockets. He ignored their bruised knees and tired eyes and only intervened when a client threatened their life. He told himself that was all that he could do. Louis kept the kegs full in the bars, smuggled drugs into the gambling dens, and looked away while people slumped over, eyes glazed over from overusage of opium and alcohol.

Like addicts, the crowds came back week after week, and Louis kept the doors open for them, always hungry for their money. He threatened and stabbed those who owed him money, beat up rough johns for not respecting his girls, and ordered workers to throw out drunk and high patrons to the streets when the sun rose.

Louis tried to do better, get into the legit businesses, but it was hard enough being a Black businessman. His permit requests are frequently denied by councilmen, owners refuse to sell their businesses to him, and banks are reluctant to lend him money because of his skin color and considerable debts. Louis was corrupted either way, the road to hell paved with good intentions and the like.

To assuage his guilt and slow his descent into damnation, he donated to the church to keep his brother happy, kept a roof over his mother's head, squirrled away funds into savings for Grace and his mother to live off of for years to come, and prayed on his knees for the world to stop.

Louis never slept with another man since Jonah. He figured he didn't deserve to feel good if he was only supporting the growth of wickedness in the world.

Louis watched his empire grow, debt shrinking, and family mildly content with their situation, all the while torturing his own battered soul day to day.

Louis figured God was laughing at him when he finally met Lestat, that beautiful man smirking at him in candlelight, peering into his condemned soul as if he knew Louis better than he knew himself. Louis hated him. Louis wanted to fuck him. Louis wanted him dead and all to himself.

Used to denying himself at this point, Louis tried his best to ignore Lestat, but like a wolf sniffing at his heels, there he was every day. At the corner of the bar, sitting across from him at the poker table, walking behind him in the street, constantly dogging his footsteps.

Before Jonah, Louis would've offered to meet Lestat in the park for a little rendezvous, his intentions clear. But Louis saw that beautiful man, saw the way he studied him, the way he had his hands reaching out for what Louis could not and would not give, and hid from his sight.

Louis felt like a bird trapped in a cage with a broken wing, waiting to die. For someone to put him out of his misery (or, a secret part of him whispered, someone to take care of him).

Louis didn't know if Lestat would fuck him, or if fucking him would lead to his own destruction, but he didn't want to find out.

And yet.

Louis may be strong, may keep his soft brain tissue in his head until he is ready to blow his own head off, or let the mysterious disease end his life, whichever comes first, but he is just a man. A pansy.

Lestat is beautiful, sunshine and mana in human form, and even God will understand the way Louis didn't give in but stepped toward, reaching out, stretched thin and dying inside.

Louis talks to Lestat, shows him around Storyville, and carefully tries to maintain a five-inch distance between them at all times, while Lestat ignores propriety by shrinking the space between them at every chance. Lestat is hungry for all Louis could offer, so Louis offers his company, nothing more.

There is something easy about the way they connect, the way Louis can breathe easier when he can bask in the radiance of Lestat's brilliance, like a bird greeting the sunrise in the morning, that feels like a betrayal of everything he has gone through.

Louis is stubborn, truly his father's child, not willing to show his soft underbelly, so he favors silence; he denies himself and denies their connection.

Louis helps him buy furniture and clothes, lets Lestat buy his girl's time after a long night of drinks, plays poker with him, and pretends he is not being hunted. To assuage the predator with fauning, with attention, in hopes that it would be enough.

The wolf circling the cage, saliva dripping from its teeth, of course, is still hungry for what's inside. The bars of the cage are wide, and the bird waits for anything to happen. Eyes trained on the predator, resigned to its fate.

Romans 8:13 reads, For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.

On that couch, sitting next to Lily and sucking her essence into his mouth, her juices covering the taste of blood ever-present in his mouth, he prayed to God to save him from Lestat.

God laughed and let Lestat touch his malleable flesh because Louis shouldn't have stayed at Lestat's house, shouldn't have taken off his clothes, shouldn't have sucked Lestat's thumb into his mouth, or even kissed him.

When Lestat's fangs pierced his neck, gulping all that he could offer deep, cock reaching his soul, Louis felt like he could fly. His flesh sloughed off his trembling spirit, breathing air for the first time in a long time, wilting within Lestat's arms and letting pleasure take him far away.

"Louis, you have roots within you," Lestat murmurs, brushing Louis' curls from his face, rubbing his arms where dark brown veins swirl and creak and branch into a network of support for the bouquet growing within him, killing him. "What have you done to yourself?"

Louis kissed that gorgeous monster quiet, letting his bloody mouth distract him, and ignored the ignorant question.

What all could he do but suffer?

Louis was caught up in the magnetic embrace of a man intent on eating him alive. The absolution Lestat offers him is only of the flesh. With every kiss, Louis felt the roots within him gain purchase from silencing himself, from denying himself again, again, again. Louis let himself be fucked and kissed and drank from all night, only able to sincerely offer his blood for Lestat to consume.

Louis' soul is his to keep. The wolf, satiated, let Louis run away into the sunlight.

Grace gets married, then Paul dies, and Louis wilts as his heart breaks in his chest when Paul shatters into pieces, his soft tissue spilling across the grass and staining his white shirt with red.

Louis doesn't think he'll ever forget the way Paul fell, reaching for him as he slipped through his fingers like mist. Paul left him behind for good, Grace running from the ghosts of their family all the way across town to live with her husband. Louis' own mother refused to mourn with him, preferring her solitary confinement.

He ignores Lestat in the coming weeks, bans him from all his establishments, and lies awake at night, struggling for every breath rattling in his lungs. Sometimes his heart lurches hard within him, thumping away in a staccato rhythm that causes him to sweat, feeling dizzy as he swoons in his bed. Louis wonders if following the beat of his heart will lead him back to Lestat.

Louis could swear he could hear Lestat's voice late at night, crooning at him, Come to me, Louis.

Louis grows ever more frail, his stomach barely able to hold soup, so the staff has to help him bathe. Lily disappears and is found by dock workers, drained completely of blood. Lestat is sending him letters daily, but Louis can't concentrate long enough for his flesh to take control of his will in his final moments on this Earth.

It's a strange thing to prepare for your own funeral. Louis updates his will and gets his affairs in order, preparing ironclad paperwork to keep the businesses in his family's name, whether through Grace and her children or his mother.

The world is waiting for Louis to die, and yet his heart keeps beating. The petals fall from his lips hourly, drenched in blood, and Louis knows he will die alone. He entered this world as a screaming child and will die a silent man.

Come to me, Louis.

With a storm wailing around the land, lightning flashing overhead, and rain pouring down from the heavens, Louis returned to the church, seeking a prayer for his poor, battered soul. Louis ignores the voice in his head, chipping away at the rest of his strength, and hopes that God's word will protect him and silence all others.

Louis knocked on the wooden doors with trembling arms, drenched in rain, limbs creaking, and heaving great, body-shaking coughs into his hand. Father Matthias let him inside and brought him to the confessional booth to confess his sins.

At first, Louis stares at the wooden lattice wall, crying and choking on bloody petals, stuck in his mind and damned on this Earth.

Come to me, Louis.

Louis' words stutter out, banging his fist against the wall. Father Matthias tries to calm him down, but Louis couldn't stop the words, no matter how hard he tried. If he was going to die, at least he would die honestly.

God already knows what he has kept secret from society, so the words he spoke were less of a confession and more of a final reckoning.

Here lies Louis, a pansy, a drunkard, a pimp, a liar, a coward.

The candles from the church illuminated the brown veins in his arm, branching out, now burrowing in his marrow, tearing him apart from the inside as he is drained dry.

"I laid down with a man. I laid down with the devil and he has roots in me. All his spindly roots in me and I can't think nothing but his voice and his words, Lord, help me! I am weak. I want to die!"

With a great crash, the booth shatters, and Louis falls to his face, sobbing and throwing up, crawling away from the wreckage with the tips of his fingers. He hears the screams of the priests, and Louis closes his eyes and lies down, knowing that the devil is finally here to claim what is his.

Louis is turned on his back, and there, the candlelight casting him in a false halo, is a beautiful man who wants to consume his very soul.

"Louis, dear boy. How you have suffered," Lestat says, caressing his face and tsking at the way Louis continues to cry.

"I can take away your sorrow, Louis. Just ask me for it, and I will give you everything. You do not have to speak," Lestat croons, wiping away the blood pouring out from his lips. "You just have to nod your beautiful head."

Louis feels flayed open, like a butterfly pinned to a board, a nightmare unfolding around him while his heart calms. It is less the fact that Lestat is there, offering him a chance to escape this purgatory he has constructed of his life, and more the fact that Louis is tired of fighting himself.

Louis is tired, tired of waiting to die, tired of society telling him he should suffer, tired of being alone.

Louis could say no and die in this creature's arms tonight. He knows he will be consumed gently, bones coveted and polished within his tomb, arranged to let everyone know he died beloved. Or, he could say yes, and choose something beyond himself. He could do the terrifying thing by letting himself be cherished by another. He could love, cracking open his chest, whispering his secret thoughts into the ear of someone who is begging to hear. Lestat sees him in all the ways that he could be, and Louis wants to discover the man that Lestat desires so much.

"Be my companion, Louis. Be everything you want to be and be that thing for all eternity."

Using the last of his strength, Louis nods and cries into the palm of Lestat's hand. He has nothing left to give, so he hopes his heart is enough.

On the altar of the destroyed church, fires spreading around them, God screaming for his attention while the storm raged on, Louis feels peace while being drained of his blood, the world finally quiet within his mind. Lestat offers his wrist, the vein that leads straight to his own heart pulsating, and Louis drinks of Lestat's love freely given.

Opening his eyes, he stares up into the eyes of a man who loves him to the point of destruction, and smiles. He lay there, their hearts thudding in tune, breathing deep and free, in throes of increasing wonder.

Louis now knows what it feels like to step into a cliff of the great unknown, with someone there ready to catch you.

A monster loves him, and for the first time in his life, Louis is not afraid.

The wolf pries open the cage with its teeth, peeling back the layers of Louis' clothes and revealing Louis' brown skin for his perusal. Louis lay still, trembling in the casket, a marital bed for their mutual death, unsure of what to do with his limbs or mouth as they flapped about uselessly.

Louis knows how to fuck, how to give pleasure to a man, but he's never held another in a bed before. He's never been unwrapped like a gift, laid bare in front of someone who has seen all that he is and wanted him anyway.

For all that Lestat has talked to him, chewing his way through the bars of his defenses, he is quiet, now. Lestat lies on top of him and draws him into a kiss, licking into his mouth, tasting the remnants of iron on the roof of his mouth.

The space they have cultivated is serene, broken only by unnecessary breaths and smacking of lips heralding their burgeoning passions, and Louis is at a loss for words.

Louis breaks the kiss, pulls back to stare up at Lestat, who strokes his cheek ever so softly.

"I've never," Louis whispers, struggling, pushing past the remnants of roots in his throat. "What do you want from me?"

Lestat kisses his nose, his cheek, the corner of his lips, down his jaw, leaving behind a path of devotion until he reaches his clavicle. He bites down gently, not piercing the skin yet letting Louis feel the sting and presence of his fangs. This man, this gorgeous creature, wants to bring him pleasure.

"I want you," Lestat says into the hollow of his throat.

"Yes, but-" Louis says before being cut off.

"Do you want me?" Lestat asks him, drawing back to peer into his eyes, studying his expression. Louis feels flushed under his gaze, sweating from the heat of the coffin, and grinds his hard cock into the divot of Lestat's hip.

Louis nods. "Yes, I do."

Lestat smiles. "Then we do what two people who want each other have done for all of time. Whatever we like, together. Laisse moi t'aimer."

Louis gasps into their kisses when Lestat pushes into him, careful and slow, stretching him wide and opening him up. It's a vulnerable feeling to be splayed open while peered deep into, Lestat studying his body and facial expressions as he fucks him open on his cock. He has a feeling that Lestat is more interested in his heart than he is in fucking him, yet Lestat plunders both for himself to keep.

Louis doesn't think Lestat is healing him so much as covering his wounds with his love, his thrusts forcing murmurs of gratitude into the space between them.

"Oh, Lestat, thank you, thank you, thank you. Right there, yes," Louis bites out, words flowing from his mouth like rushing waters. Lestat has chipped away at his defenses, and here is the hurricane, here is every word he has wished to say swirling around them. Louis is practically rambling, delightfully not thinking, experiencing all that Lestat can bring from his body.

No more quiet fumblings, no more hiding, here every word he contains is selfishly hoarded by this man who is taking him with equal passions.

They move together in tandem, heartbeat chasing each other, chests pressed tight, hands digging into flesh, almost as if they could reach deep inside and find a home within the other.

Louis' hips ache when Lestat presses his knees to the bed, his thighs wide open to better receive the battering against his prostate. Louis' eyes roll to the back of his head from the pleasure coursing through his veins.

"Please, I need, I-I, I need it all, please, Lestat," Louis says, so hungry his fangs drop down in his mouth and tear at his gums, open and vulnerable, split open on that thick cock as Lestat's love fills him again and again and again.

Lestat is a merciful maker, to love him so, Louis thinks to himself. At this thought, Louis deliriously laughs out loud at how he has been able to find God in another, one Maker who has cracked him open down to his atoms and fashioned his flesh to become something better, something otherworldly, something free.

As Jesus offered his blood and flesh, so Lestat offers his blood for Louis to drink, tilting his head to the side for Louis to latch on to his throat, to soothe his fledgling, as he is practically becoming a wild thing, yowling and clawing at Lestat as their passions reach a new fever pitch.

Louis drinks deep, imagining all that makes up Lestat is filling him and changing him from within, nourishing him while loosening the ties on his damned soul. He rips his fangs from Lestat's throat, blood smearing his face, licking his chops to chase the taste of a supernova.

Lestat laughs at his messy face, rubbing his fang with his thumb until it bleeds, and Louis sucks it into his mouth greedily, reassuring himself while Lestat's thrusts rock them further up the bed in long, rolling motions. "Mon petit monstre, you are resplendent."

With Lestat's fingers in his mouth, hips pressed together after each long push in, cock burrowing its way to his heart and knocking the roots that have sucked him dry all these years, Louis let himself be loved.

They reach a peak together, not with a bang but with a sigh, atoms melting and fusing, drawn inevitably to the magnetism of another's flesh.

Louis has no choice but to tell the truth, shyly, in a whisper for only them to hear. "I do not know if it is love, yet, but I feel terribly fond of you."

Lestat smiles at him, pressing their foreheads together, blue eyes shining bright, and Louis soaks up the sunshine pouring into his fragile heart. "Mon cher, we have all the time in the world to let our love grow."

This must be heaven, to be chosen by Lestat, cage broken open. His secrets, vulnerabilities, and complexities were ripped from Louis' head and tucked up right next to Lestat's heart.

To be cherished is a beautiful thing. And oh, Louis has wished, for so long, to be beautiful in the eyes of another.

The wolf wraps itself around the bird, the poor thing, purified and shaking in its grasp, the world beyond them hidden from sight.

"surrender,

my life, to something,

something bigger than me."

gagarin, by moses sumney