Chapter Text
It had started as a good night, that was the thing. Lestat had been sweet and kind, and Louis had wanted so badly to be held, to not have to think about how much he missed Claudia or how horrible Lestat could be or anything at all. So when Lestat had tempted him with a pressed suit and the promise of a bar full of men dancing, Louis thought about it for a moment, then said, “Alright.”
Lestat was ecstatic, and his energy had always been infectious. Louis was nothing if not addicted to him, to the way he smiled and laughed and leapt around a room. He’d even drunk from Lestat’s wrist, before they’d left. He had neither the energy nor the will to hunt tonight, and Lestat had convinced him with his own fears:
“Mon cher, if you do not eat, the hunger will gnaw at you until you snap. I know you don’t want to hurt some poor boy on the dance floor, you are too kind for such a fate. Drink from me, Louis, let me sustain you. Blood of my blood, Louis.”
He’d never been able to say no to Lestat’s unearthly eyes, especially not when Lestat was asking such a simple thing, such an intimate thing. So he’d said yes, and in the resulting head-rush of their blood mingling in his veins, they’d crashed together and rutted in their clothes like teenagers.
So, it had started as a good night. At the bar, Lestat had slipped an arm around his waist, without so much as a second thought, and dragged him onto the dance floor. They’d had fun, waltzing and twirling around amidst others like them – not exactly like them, but men, spinning their lovers across the floor and kissing in the dimly-lit booths by the walls. And then Lestat’s eyes had lingered a little too long, a little too hungrily, on some poor young man behind Louis, and he’d felt his chest tighten.
“I need some air,” he said, breaking away from Lestat’s hold.
Lestat hardly noticed, humming absently. “Yes, mon amour, of course,” he said, eyes still tracking the man he’d seen before.
Louis went out onto the balcony, closing the large French doors behind him. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it. The smoke didn’t do much for him, anymore – another thing Lestat hadn’t told him, before that night in St. Augustine. But it was a comforting habit, all the same.
The doors opened, behind him, and his jaw tensed, irritated. He turned, and was a little surprised to see that the man wasn’t white. Most of the men on the dance floor were. The irritation lessened, if only slightly.
He was leaning through the doorway, speaking to another man in a language Louis didn’t recognize. The white man inside laughed, and the man on the balcony blew him a kiss before he leaned back and shut the doors again.
“Good evening,” he said, to Louis, with a blinding smile.
Louis nodded in return, then turned back to stare out at the night sky. Always evening, always night. The man had pulled out a cigarette, but was patting his pockets, Louis could hear the fabric rustling. He had lost his lighter, but didn’t want to ask Louis, just yet. He thought Louis looked upset, and didn’t want to bother him further. Louis didn’t make a habit of listening to people’s minds anymore, but it was a long time since he’d been in such a densely-packed area, and he was out of practice.
“You need a light?” he asked, turning back around.
The man smiled, a little sheepishly. “Ah, yes, I seem to have lost mine. Do you mind?”
Louis considered, for half a moment, leaning in to light the man’s cigarette with his own. But then he thought of what Lestat would do, the jealous rage he was too tired to deal with now, and decided against it. Instead, he pulled out his little silver lighter – a gift from Lestat, of course.
“Thank you,” the man said, taking a long drag.
Louis nodded, slipping the lighter back into his pocket. “You been together long?” he asked, gesturing with his chin towards the doors. He didn’t really care. He thought about that easy closeness they’d had, told himself he didn’t envy it.
The man sighed dreamily, looking back inside. Only one of the door’s glass panes was clear; through the others, the dancers were warped, just a little, the image distorted as if through water.
“For all of my life,” he said. “Since the dawn of time. And yet – only a heartbeat.”
Louis wondered if he was always this poetic or if it was the alcohol. He could hear the man’s heart, beating strong and steady in his chest. He took another drag of his cigarette, gave a noncommittal hum.
“And you?” the stranger asked, turning to him.
Louis raised a brow. “And I what?”
He smiled, charmingly. “Where’s your great love story?”
Louis caught something in the corner of his eye, a flash of blonde hair through the glass. “Flirting with yours,” he said, gesturing with his cigarette.
The man turned, saw Lestat leaning into his lover’s air, oozing his particular brand of charm. “Ah, well,” he said, turning back with a shrug. “Who can resist my beloved?”
Louis almost wanted to warn him. He took another drag of his cigarette, instead.
“I hope this doesn’t upset you,” the man said, drawing Louis’s attention again. His brows were drawn together in what looked like genuine concern.
“Where you from?” Louis asked, in lieu of a response. “That’s not a local accent.”
He smiled again, spread his arms a bit. “Here, there, a bit of everywhere. My home is where my people are.” His face dropped, just a little, as he spoke.
Louis thought of Grace, of their mother, of Claudia, somewhere on her own. His eyes drifted, unwillingly, to Lestat. “I can understand that.”
“Yusuf,” the man said, holding out a hand.
Louis smiled, just a little. “I know that ain’t the name they gave you at the door.”
For secrecy, for privacy, it was a club rule that only false names were used. Since the club was owned by men with Lestat’s penchant for the dramatic, all the pseudonyms were from Greek and Roman myth. He was Tithonus, cursed to a twisted immortality, endlessly aging. Lestat was Eos, who’d wished Tithonus into immortality so he would stay with her forever. Lestat found the whole thing endlessly amusing.
Yusuf laughed, sounding delighted. Lestat would love him, Louis thought; someone so alive and full of energy.
“No,” he confirmed. “I am Baucis, tonight.” He gestured through the doors, where Lestat now had an arm over his lover’s shoulders. “And my Philemon.”
Louis thought it over. “The two who got turned into trees?”
Yusuf brought a hand to his heart, feigning that the words wounded him. “The two who loved for eternity, as a gift for their hospitality and the kindness offered at their hearth.”
Louis raised a brow. “Fitting,” he said, dryly. “Tithonus, but you can call me Louis. If you promise not to tell, that is,” he added, a little more flirtatious than was necessary.
Like a gator drawn to splashing, Lestat’s eyes met Louis’s, through the glass of the door. His smile, when he turned back to Yusuf’s lover, was a little pinched, his expression a little mean. Louis smiled into his cigarette, reveling a bit in his ability to make Lestat jealous, despite everything.
Yusuf caught this, raised a brow. “So that’s how it is?”
Louis smiled, smoothly. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, echoing Yusuf’s own words.
He raised his hands in innocence. “As long as you aren’t counting on my Nicky to play a role in these games. I think you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“Nicki?” Louis asked, suddenly hyper-focused. Had Lestat deliberately chosen a victim with the name of his deceased lover?
Yusuf frowned. “Forgive me, I assumed…you know my name, I know yours. He would not mind, I assure you.”
Louis shook his head, gritting his teeth. Through the doors, Lestat had moved on to whispering in Nicky’s ear. Though, as Yusuf had predicted, the man didn’t seem very taken with Lestat. It wouldn’t be long, surely – Lestat was impossible to resist, impossible not to love. It’s probably why people could hate him so deeply, too.
“It’s nothing,” Louis said, stubbing out the end of his cigarette. “Don’t worry about it.”
Yusuf pulled out a case, offered him another. Louis thought for a moment, then took it.
“May I ask how long you have been…together?” Yusuf asked, delicately.
Louis exhaled, watching the smoke curl. “Too damn long,” he said, after a while.
Yusuf made a noise, something almost pained. “Any time at all is a gift. Or – it should be,” he amended, turning sad eyes onto Louis.
Louis shook his head with a bitter laugh. He had thought like that too, once. When life still had an endpoint. “Live a little longer and get back to me on that one,” he said, shaking his head.
For some reason, this made Yusuf laugh. “I am far older than you,” he said, with such surety that Louis almost believed him, even knowing it couldn’t be true. The man was twenty-five, at the oldest. “Leave, then, if you are so unhappy. As you say, life is short.”
Louis didn’t deign to answer this. “How long have you been together?” he asked, instead. Was it a kind of self-punishment, some sick obligation he felt to know the story of the man Lestat was almost certainly going to kill that night? Perhaps.
“All my life,” Yusuf said, again. “All of it that matters, at least. Longer than you could ever imagine.”
Louis thought about Lestat, about St. Augustine and that beautiful, horrible rebirth. “Yeah,” he said, voice a little quiet. “I know something bout ‘all of my life’.”
“And at the beginning of this life?” Yusuf asked, prying further into a topic that Louis would be more than happy to leave behind. “Were you happy, then? Was he?”
He thought of Lestat making a scene at his family’s dinner table, harassing him in the procession for Paul’s funeral, ripping Father Matthias from the confessional. Then he thought of the opera, of nights spent talking in the park, of all Lestat’s beautiful promises. “Yeah,” he said, a little choked up. “We were.”
There was silence, for a moment, then he shook his head. “But that’s not how life works, is it? Time corrupts, just like –” just like him, he didn’t say, just like murder and the drinking of blood and the fear and this goddamned, endless, undead life they were living.
“I’m sorry that you feel so helpless about this,” Yusuf said. “Truly, I am. But time doesn’t corrupt unless you let it.”
Louis growled and, in a flash of rage, had Yusuf held up against the wall by his throat, just out of sight of the doors and his precious Nicky. “And what you know about time, huh? You think you understand something, but you’re trying to play a game you don’t even know exists.”
Louis was infuriated. He felt his fangs descending, didn’t even care to hold them back. Maybe he should kill Yusuf – after all, if Lestat was going to kill Nicky, what would he have to live for, anyways? It would be something like a kindness, and it would be so, so gratifying.
Yusuf, despite everything, looked unfazed. He didn’t even struggle against the hand on his neck, though it must have felt cold as ice and strong as steel. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked, raising a brow. “Will that make you feel better?”
Louis released him, as if burned. Unnerved by Yusuf’s reaction, his lack of reaction, he took a step back. “The fuck?”
“You have some deep issues, my friend,” Yusuf said, with a heavy sigh. “But take it from your elder: you can’t blame time for everything.”
Louis narrowed his eyes, studying him. “What are you? You’re not –” he cut himself off, already knowing the answer. He could hear the blood pumping through Yusuf’s veins, could smell the life on him. He was no vampire. He tried to draw the answer from his mind, but it was elusive.
Yusuf, in return, was studying him. “How long have you been together?” he asked, again.
“Since 1910,” Louis said, without hesitation.
Yusuf hummed. “You didn’t meet as children, though.”
It wasn’t a question, but Louis shook his head, anyways.
“Interesting,” Yusuf said. Then he smiled. “But I am older than you.”
Louis leaned forward, grotesquely intrigued. Lestat didn’t even talk about other vampires, how long they could live. He wasn’t sure if Lestat would know what Yusuf was, or if he was even aware that there were other beings out there, frozen in time like they were. He felt something like pleasure, a petty and vengeful pleasure, at the idea of learning something about this supernatural world that Lestat didn’t already know. Of knowing more than Lestat about something, anything, for once. It was his turn to withhold the information, perhaps.
“And you?” he asked.
Yusuf cocked his head, still smiling. “And I what?” he asked, teasingly.
Louis almost rolled his eyes. He had been right, earlier, when he’d thought that Lestat would like Yusuf. They shared a flair for the dramatic, it seemed. “How long have you been together?”
Yusuf’s smile softened into something sweet. “Longer than you would ever believe,” he said, voice tender. “Lifetimes.”
“How many?” Louis demanded, wanting a number, a definitive length of time.
Yusuf laughed at that. “Hmm, let me think. We had already shared lifetimes when the Spanish first came to this New World of yours,” he said, eyes crinkling in amusement. “If that’s a suitable reference point.”
His mind was difficult to read, the images flying by too quickly and out of order. He saw Nicky, in a thousand different settings and garments. One image remained longer than the others; Nicky, filthy, dressed in rags with some long-faded crest on the front, leaning against a stone wall, lit by the flickering of a fire. His eyes were weary, but he smiled, said something in a language Louis didn’t recognize. It sounded old, something like the Latin the priests spoke at mass. The image faded, replaced with the Nicky of today; well-groomed, dressed in a suit that matched Yusuf’s, smiling softly.
Louis stared at him for a moment, waiting for signs that he was lying, joking, anything. When none came, he stepped back, put a hand over his eyes. “Fuck,” he said, a little shaky. He tried to imagine four hundred years with Lestat – at least four hundred. “Fuck,” he said, again.
“Why do you treat these extra days as a punishment?” Yusuf asked, curious. “What have you done?”
Louis dropped his hands. He opened his mouth, but no words came. He closed it again.
Yusuf hummed. “Nothing so terrible as you think, I’m sure.” His expression was growing dark. In his mind, Louis saw flashes of battles, of horses and soldiers kicking up clouds of dust, of buildings burned and children crying. More, too, familiar to Louis; planes he’d seen photographs of in the newspapers, burnt-out fields pocked with shell-holes.
Louis shook his head. War, these memories; they couldn’t compare to the horrific act of a vampire’s nightly existence. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Before Yusuf could respond – with advice? Chastisement? A joke? Louis almost didn’t want to know – the doors opened behind him, drawing their attention.
“And of course,” Lestat said, holding out a hand, “my Louis.”
Beside him, Nicky smiled, pleasantly. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said, with a thick accent – Italian, maybe. Louis thought, again, of Yusuf’s memory. That old, old language.
Louis nodded at him, then raised a brow at Lestat. “What happened to pseudonyms, Eos?”
Lestat flashed him a grin, just slightly too sharp. His eyes were a little mean. “Ah, bon,” he said, faux casually. “You have been making such good friends, here, I thought to do the same.”
You don’t get to play jealous, now, Louis thought, staring daggers at Lestat. Not when you started this, when it’s always you that starts this shit.
Lestat’s smile twisted down into something more like a sneer, as if he had heard Louis’s thoughts. Maybe he had – maybe he’d lied about that, too, for all Louis knew.
Yusuf cleared his throat, drawing their attention. “Yusuf,” he introduced himself, holding out a hand to shake. “As you have already met my Philemon, my sun and moon and stars.” He winked at Nicky, who smiled fondly.
Lestat gasped, charmed, and shot Louis a look as if to say, Why don’t you speak to me like that? Louis rolled his eyes, leaning back against the wall.
Lestat ignored him, turning his attention back to Yusuf. “I was telling your Nicolò –” not Nicky, Louis noted. He wondered if that’s how the man had introduced himself or if Lestat had just refused to call him by the name of his violinist – “that we have the most magnificent piano, you must –”
“No,” Louis interrupted, firmly.
Lestat turned to him, nostrils flaring. “Come now, Louis,” he said, stepping past them to be closer to Louis. “Surely you won’t deny us all some fun this evening? The club soon closes, you see,” he added, glancing back at Yusuf and Nicky, “but the night is so young.” He’d turned his full attention back to Louis, and it was difficult not to be dazzled by it, not to agree to anything he asked. Lestat had never needed vampire mind games and magic to enchant Louis, after all.
But he stood firm. “I said no, Lestat.”
He pouted, putting a hand on Louis’s neck, trailing it down his chest. “At least let me invite our friends over for dinner,” he said, playing at begging.
That snapped Louis out of it. “No,” he said, brow drawn and jaw set. “Not these two.”
Lestat rolled his eyes with a huff. “You and your little rules,” he bit out, irritated. It faded quickly, though, and he darted forward to peck a kiss on Louis’s lips. “I can never deny you, my Saint Louis,” he said, quiet enough that only Louis could hear it.
Embarrassingly, Louis leaned after Lestat when he turned away, his body instinctively following Lestat’s.
“Alors,” Lestat said, to Yusuf and Nicky. They both looked somewhere between amused and concerned. “For the best, perhaps. We did not ready our home for company, this evening.” He shot Louis a sharp look, no doubt thinking of the stacks of decaying newspapers that lined their walls, feeding the rats. “Another time, yes?” He produced one of his gold-gilded business cards.
Nicky took it, turned it over. “That’s a kind offer,” he said. “Thank you. We do not have a telephone, however.”
“1132 Rue Royale,” Louis said, making a split-second decision. He could feel Lestat tense beside him, but chose to ignore it. “Send us a postcard, you know. From uh – here, there, and a bit of everywhere.”
Yusuf laughed. Nicky looked at him with such naked adoration that Louis had to avert his eyes, feeling like an intruder on something private.
Four hundred years, he thought, and lifetimes before that, still. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around it, wasn’t really sure he wanted to. He glanced at Lestat, beside him. Four hundred years. Jesus Christ.