Chapter Text
Endless, faceless stars sparkle like eternal beacons of flame above him; calm and serene and fathomless in a way that’s utterly captivating yet completely mundane.
These stars, how long have they persisted? Modern science teaches that they are billions of years old. How completely far away that feels, how uncomprehendingly long.
Inky blackness, endless swamping dark, littered with balls of light and intensity that from Louis’s meager point of view look as if he could reach up with one hand and pinch one from the sky; ball it in one fist and covet it.
No, that is not something he could ever understand; for all the miles and years he has traveled he has not seen the smallest fraction of the life of one of these tiny, flickering balls of extraordinary everyday normalcy.
Louis’s place in this world is as fickle yet as permanent as the ever-changing stars above him.
Immortality. 200 years. It all seems so insufficient.
And it makes him feel so very small.
—
Louis had always awakened after Lestat had; even before the strange, godlike powers had been bestowed upon him. He had been created with stronger blood– but beyond that, he simply is stronger. In will, in vitality, in deadly determination to make his mark on this world.
He is not there, as he usually is not, when Louis sits quietly at his chair, eyebrows knitting together softly as he sees the warped pages in front of him. Clearly they had gotten wet somehow, curled forward with smeared, ruined ink. Captivating, the flowery pattern the melted black stains form on the yellowing paper. Beautiful, yet perplexing. Louis looks up at the roof as if looking for answers.
“Had you forgotten about the rain, Louis? I thought it would surely motivate you to finally fix up this terrible shack of yours.”
“Ah, you.” Louis looks up quickly, the voice causing his lethargic heart to unexpectedly skip a beat. His own eyes round and somber, he takes in Lestat’s marvelous form outlined by dim moonlight, the singular pitiful candle reflecting his ethereal beauty. He wears unusually mundane clothes compared to usual; Leather jeans, with a tight black t-shirt that hugs his body entirely too perfectly. His hair is tied back as he used to have it, though a rather tasteless black scrunchy holds the wavy golden strands rather than a ribbon. He moves too fast for Louis to see, for a moment. His eyes are alight with mischief.
“Look at this– your lovely, horrific writing, all down the drain.” Lestat lifts the damp, ruined papers in one hand, pouting melodramatically. He leans on Louis’s desk now, leering over him with those vital, crystalline eyes. “Well, all for the best. Thinking of you sitting in this damp hovel all night, writing your sad little ponderings, is perhaps the saddest thing I can conjure. Perhaps this is a sign! Move in with me. Live a bit. And quit writing forever, please, it clearly is not your forte.” He drops them with a flop on the table, all eyes for Louis.
“I think not,” says Louis carefully, though he meets his eyes still. He leans an elbow on the desk, neck craning up towards him. Lestat meets him halfway, pressing his lips teasingly to his for but a moment before whisking away.
“Please, love, it’s absolutely terrible stuff. Too dark! No one wants to read that drivel now, they are looking for action, for romance!”
“Ah, of course.”
“I can give you that, if you’d stop hiding away in this sorrowful place.”
Louis shakes his head. “My apologies.” He stands now, unsatisfied with staying still, though truthfully there is nowhere for him to go. He can’t meet Lestat’s eyes anymore, despite his joy at his visit. He does not visit entirely often, just enough to ‘make sure you’ve not driven yourself underground’ as he so gracefully put it. He can feel his heart beating faster at his presence, at the feel of his eyes on his back.
“What are you apologizing for?” Lestat forces himself back into Louis’s line of sight. “Your terrible writing?”
“Maybe. I’m not entirely sure,” mumbles Louis.
“There is something wrong with you, I can see it. More wrong than usual, I mean.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do I not visit you enough?” He had always wondered about this. There is no one in Louis’s little life, no one constant to keep watch over him. When Lestat is not here, what exactly does he do with his time? He reads, surely. And feeds quietly on his poor victims, whom he takes with the gentlest touch and the deepest of woe. He sits in his leaking, dark hovel. The true vampire archetype, if he was not so tender and humanlike in his polite little way. It’s not healthy, he knows.
“I always treasure the time you spend with me.” He is nearly whispering now.
“Louis.” He has him by the shoulders now, trying to meet his eyes. “Speak to me, lover.”
His face is so lovely, so perfectly gleaming in its somber elegance. Even in the throes of unhappiness, as he so clearly is now, his mossy green eyes glitter in a way that is utterly magnetizing. Lestat curls his pointer finger and runs it along Louis’s fluttering eyelash, feeling the profound, gentle touch of the black hairs. His eyes close for a moment and he looks like the perfect angel before he opens them again. When he looks at Lestat, it is nearly paralyzing with the intensity, the beauty,
“I am unsure how else I am to tell you this,” he says slowly. “Because I want you to know. To understand.” His voice is deep, reverent. His face gleams with admiration as he learns unconsciously toward Lestat. “I love you so dearly. So I must do this, but…”
“But what?”
“Oh, I just know you won’t understand. You’re a different creature than I, so full of life and… and will to continue.”
“Yes, I know. Please go on.”
He doesn’t bother trying to seem annoyed by his usual vanity. He touches the side of Lestat’s face fleetingly before lowering his hands to his sides. “I have decided to stop living. To walk into the sunlight.”
There is silence for a moment, and Lestat’s face is entirely unreadable. It seems to freeze in place, locked as it had been moments before. Louis doesn’t try to speak again, for surely he will get his thoughts out whether Louis tries to quell him or not.
Moments later he is gone, ripped from Louis’s sight, and he is but a blur of light. Something smashes outside– that old mailbox? Before he storms back inside. Lestat’s eyes are entirely furious now.
“I do not like it when you joke like this, Louis! Sarcasm does not become you.”
“But I am not joking.”
“Surely you must be, for if not you are the stupidest creature I have ever laid eyes on.”
“I don’t dispute that.”
“Louis, oh, Louis, you miserable…” He clenches his fists, eyes wide with furious, burning intensity that stings. “You idiotic… you utter foolish… fool!”
“Ever the clever writer yourself.” If Lestat’s hearing was not so finely tuned he would not have caught that little remark.
“You shut your mouth! You disgust me, you annoy me beyond words, you know that!” he shouts. “You act as if you’re the sufferer of everything, the terrible martyr, the lonely dark angel who must pay for his sins. What sins! You know nothing of sin!”
“I know enough,” Louis whispers. “Enough to end this.”
“I should– I should–” Should what? His instinctual scathing remark would be to threaten to destroy the little brat, but clearly that would be counterproductive. “I should like to hear what exactly brought you to this brilliant little conclusion!”
Louis’s hands are politely clasped behind his back. His eyes, his lovely eyes, are so far away that Lestat wonders if he even sees him. “I don’t know what to say. There are many reasons, many justifications, but in the end, it does not change how I feel. I am a monster, Lestat, a terrible wretch, and life to the end of time has never appealed to me. I do not want it and I do not deserve it.”
“Want and deserve. Those are two very different things, lover. Tell me, do you think you deserve death? Do you think that the world would not be just if you continued living? Or do you simply no longer wish to see how the world evolves around you?”
“I am the judge of my soul, I am the only one who can say what I do and don’t deserve. And my heart, my soul, is telling me that to continue is to die. I cannot continue like this, Lestat.” He looks up at him now, the pain in his eyes so palpable it hurts. “Don’t you see? I have failed in all I ever meant to do. I failed you, I failed myself, I failed…” He holds the fabric of his shirt close to his heart, a loose poet shirt that hangs on his thin body. How fragile he looks. “I failed Claudia. Most of all, I failed her. This guilt, this pain, I cannot shake it loose, nor do I want to. I cannot forget how deeply I failed her, my little girl, my love. I want to be free. I want to see her again. I want…”
“Move in with me.” Lestat is close to him again, arms wrapped around his shoulders, nose to nose. “Let me show you. You can move past this, you always have.”
“I can not and will not.”
“Louis, my lover, my beautiful one.” Lestat is begging now. He holds his lips to Louis’s, breathing in his sweet air. “My Louis. You cannot give up yet. Stay with me, love. Let me show you, my Louis, how happy you can be.”
“But I do not deserve the happiness you can give me.” His lip trembles against Lestat’s. Thick red tears stream from his eyes. “I know you could do it, too. You’re everything I am not. You complete me, yet neither of us have ever been able to see it. When you are not here, I feel as if half of me is gone.”
“Then you must see, if we were together, you would see! You’re just not thinking clearly. Come with me.” He’s pressing sweet kisses to Louis’s face, staining his lips red, fervent and devoting. “Come to me, Louis.”
“You will tire of me.”
“I would not. I could not.”
“You say that now, but I will bore you. I am not so interesting as you think of me. I’ve never been anything special. You can live without me, I know you can, as I cannot without you.”
“You assume too much. You’ve never understood me, that silly book of yours says it all.”
“I think I explained my book plenty well.” Louis looks too tired to defend himself.
“Louis. Let me show you. I beg you. Come to me as you never let yourself before. Do not end your eternal life before you’ve had the chance to feel true happiness.”
“Oh, but I have felt true happiness. You have given me that, time and again. And in my selfishness, I coveted that just as I covet my misery.”
“You wound me with these words, Louis. Just tell me now how you wish I had not changed you.”
“No, I don’t wish that.” His eyes widen. “Who else would have cared for Claudia? Grieved for her?”
“And what of me? Have you no feeling for me, in these years we have been tangled together?”
“Lestat, the love I feel for you is unlike anything I have ever known. Understand this.” He takes Lestat’s face in his hands. “Understand this as we have never understood each other.”
“Yes, I’m irresistible, I know.”
He smiles.
“Don’t do this, Louis.”
“I don’t know what else to say to you.”
“I won’t allow you to do this. I’ll stop you. I’m stronger than you.”
Louis blinks serenely. “And of stopping me, you will tire of as well.”
“You utter fool. I cannot stand to look at you.”
“I love you.”
“Shut up.” Lestat tears away, running his sleeve over his face. “You say these words, and then threaten to tear yourself from my life. I will not hear it! Either you love me and live, or hate me and die.”
“That is certainly one of the most selfish things you have ever said.” Louis almost looks amused now, and Lestat wants to tear him limb from limb.
“Why can’t you see– why can’t I make you see– there is more to immortality than repentance! You did not allow yourself to live before you started to regret. You’ve never allowed yourself to feel truly happy. It’s what holds you back, I know it is!”
“That may be true, but it’s how I choose to be. I can’t live as I am if I don’t repent, if I don’t feel the weight of every life I take.”
“So dramatic! Always so dramatic!” Lestat throws his hands in the air, mind running desperately, frantically for the right thing to say.
Louis’s face is calm, wiped from the bloody tears he had shed. He watches Lestat with the most knowing, indulgent expression. He looks peaceful, as he had not in years. He is so tragically beautiful that Lestat wants to tear his hair from his head.
“Is there nothing I can say to you?”
“No.”
“Is there nothing I can do? Am I truly not enough for you, Louis?” He had known this from the beginning; the standoffish, disinterested looks he would wear while they wound the streets of New Orleans. Lestat’s deadly vitality never sparked interest in him as Louis’s gentle spirit excited Lestat. For possibly, very possibly, he would not have allowed Claudia to attempt murder upon Lestat if he was not dissatisfied with him. A follower, he has always been. But stubborn he was also.
“You mustn’t think that. Though I have known from the beginning how different we operate, I never felt the will to be truly rid of you. You’re the reason I’m here, my creator, my darkest tormentor and greatest love.” Louis takes Lestat’s wrist– the one he had drunk from that night he changed him– and presses a fervent kiss to the veins.
Lestat stares down at him in disgust. “That means nothing to me. Not if you are dead. No. I must have you, Louis, you must not take yourself from me.”
“And how would you have me?” he murmurs against the wrist.
“Move in with me. A few years, no, a few months will do. I will show you that there is no reason for how you feel now.”
“I can’t,” Louis whispers. “I cannot kill as you do.”
“You don’t have to! That’s not what I’m saying. Let me introduce the world to you, let me give your life meaning. This place, it isn’t right for you. We can find happiness as we had back when she was still alive.”
“I wish for that deeper than I can express to you.”
“Yes! So-”
“But I cannot allow it. No, I know what I must do.”
“Damn it, Louis!” Lestat tears his hand from Louis’s grip. “Damn you!”
“I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you. All of it. Even if I may have thought so at the beginning, you did not deserve it. Claudia was wrong, and I was wrong to stand idly by as she plotted to end you.”
“I won’t hear any of this.”
“Oh, but you must. When I am gone, you will remember all those years we had spent, me silently hating you, and I can’t abide that. You have to know that I am sorry.”
“When you are gone, when you are gone.” Lestat paces the room furiously. “Do not go! Why are you doing this thing to me?”
“Lestat, I–”
“Don’t leave me, Louis.” He is truly begging now. “Don’t go where I can’t follow. Please, Louis. Please.” He sinks to his knees, and Louis follows him down, knee to knee, staring at each other’s deathly pale hands.
“You deny my blood, you deny my help, my company. I don’t know how to save you, I never did.”
Louis takes the weeping man in his arms, face pressed into his golden hair, breathing softly. His voice is so soft, so cruelly soft. “You never could. No one could.”
“I could. I could, I know I could. Oh Lord God, how can I be gifted the strength of a thousand men yet unable to lord power over a single one?”
“Lestat, please.” Louis lifts Lestat’s sharp chin with his finger, meeting his eyes. “Your ego is getting a hold of you again. I do not want to argue with you, not anymore, but don’t you know that you never could have held power over me? Not in the way you mean, not in a way that would help either of us.”
Uncomfortable, Lestat looks to the side.
“Lestat, all I ever wanted was to be happy with you, but it always falls to this. Doesn’t it. You, taking control, and me following along because my life is directionless. I can hardly stand it.”
“You don’t know- you just don’t know…!”
Lestat tries to imagine a world where Louis does not exist. His somber little companion, his sweetest masterpiece, burnt to ashes in the sun where Lestat could never possibly follow. How cruel, how terribly unjust.
He pulls his shoulders back, desperation pinpointing his brain toward one singular purpose.
“When you had spoken to Armand, all those years ago, he had conveyed to you how vampires are not truly immortal.”
Louis looks surprised. “How do you…”
“Your little interview, Louis. He spoke of how, after years and years of persisting, even the strongest of vampires are unable to keep up with despair and ultimately… end things.”
“I remember the conversation,” says Louis quietly.
“Well, I call bullshit on it. When direction is lost, one must find oneself again in vigor. You may not be able to see it, but I can. I can help you, I will help you.” He takes Louis’s face. “There is light here. There is light in you, that you cannot see, that breathes beauty in everything you touch. Your heart, your endless somber, quiet persistence, it is beauty itself. It cannot sustain you alone, but this flame, this spark, it can be fanned again.”
“Flattery,” says Louis weakly, resisting the urge to nestle his cheek into that cold hand.
“No. Not flattery. Is it why I fell in love with you, even while you were in your deepest despair as a mortal man. No one can snuff out your light, not even yourself.”
“Oh, but Lestat,” says Louis. His voice is truly desperate now, hands shaking, eyes round, mouth downturned in a way that is so reminiscent of the human man he once was. “I fear that any light I had was snuffed out so long ago. I haven’t felt it, I cannot see it.” Lowering his head, he weeps. “I’m afraid.”
Lestat lifts one of Louis’s trembling hands, pressing his lips to his knuckles and holding them to his mouth. “It’s alright to be afraid, mon cher. I’m here,” he whispers against the smooth skin.
The weak light of the candle catches in Louis’s brilliant green eyes as he lifts his head to meet Lestat’s fervent gaze. There is doubt on his face, which he cannot hide. Lestat has never been known for his undying devotion; chained to his obligation like a prisoner and prone to overzealous whimsy.
“Come home with me, Louis. I won’t go. Not for you, never. Let me show you the beauty of life again, you have always been weak to it.” His eyes burn with icy fire, intense and searching and Louis wonders if he could ever deny those eyes once they’ve been turned to him. He is starstruck, spellbound by icy depths of mystery yet genuine sincerity. The sunshine against the snow, reflective and blue and shining at every angle. He remembers those eyes, as a mortal man, and the feel of his soft hand as he pulled him into an endless immortal future. How sure he had been, how scared. He feels quite similar now, but he lacked something back in those days that he can feel now, budding inside of him. Hope.
How freeing it is, to hope for something again. The beauty he had always searched for in his immortal life comes endlessly from the man in front of him like a fountain of youth. How had he been so blind to it before? His temper, quite possibly, but they are both wiser now. He knows, they both know, that the love is there if they are willing to fight for it. There is more to discover about this curious man, and suddenly the thought of living with him, learning these things, is the only possibility he can imagine.
“Okay,” he concedes softly. “Take me home, Lestat.”
A brilliant smile brightens the man’s face, and it seems to illuminate the whole room. Louis watches in wonder as his expression morphs from despair to hopeful joy. He is angelic, ethereal, even more so than he had been when they first met, because now Louis knows what happiness looks like on him. He presses kisses to each of the fingers of Louis’s hand that he still holds, then takes him in his arms. He gathers Louis forward, breath misting against his neck, hands tangling in the full, unbearably soft black hair. Louis can feel the smile pressed against him, and he buries his face in Lestat’s hair, letting out a soft breath.
“It’s going to be alright, Louis,” he chants in his ear, voice shaking with fervor. “It’s going to be alright, I’ll make sure it’s alright. You’re my first priority, you know, you always have been, my Louis, my beautiful Louis.” Soft kisses to his ear, sweet breath that makes Louis see stars. Hands hold him upright, the sweetness nearly unbearable.
“You’re scared, but you’ll be okay. You’re not alone. I love you.”
The passion that Louis is so intimately familiar with fills his chest, and for a small, crystalline moment, the emptiness of eternity forgets him, and he does not know it. He knows only Lestat, and his life-giving words, and the hope of a future that he might want to be a part of
He closes his eyes, and smiles.