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He could be uniquely cruel. Harsh. And unforgiving.
When Lestat raised his voice, he was loud as a hurricane slamming its winds against the shutters. His rage was terrible-- neverending. It went on and on and on like the space outside this world. He was an animal. His sharp teeth sliced through skin, blood, and sinew. He made women cry. He killed children's loved ones. He feared no one. And he ate people like a beast would.
Louis feared him sometimes.
It took a couple of years to figure out just what Lestat wanted from him. After a while it finally clicked. He was just lonely. He didn't want a partner so much as he wanted someone to sit there in his house, day in and day out, just putting up with him.
So, Louis decided to just be quieter in his presence. Louis bit his tongue until it bled. He kept his eyes on the floor when Lestat got angry. Louis watched him walk out of the house and skip into the arms of women, touching them and claiming them in public while he waited patiently in Lestat's bed like his dirty little secret. Because that's what he was.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, George Eliot.
He blames these women for ruining his life. They painted a picture of love so pure, so all encompassing, that Louis once thought he wanted it. He knows better now.
Love hurts.
It cheats, it yells, it drops him from the heavens and breaks every bone in his body. And still, it asks for more. Love looked at Louis with steel grey eyes. Love held his hand like a promise. Love slipped his robe down his shoulder and placed soft kisses on his back. Love was killing him.
Louis doesn't think he could go on without love-- especially not this love: Lestat.
Paul was dead, Mama was dead, Grace was old and bed bound, and his daughter... she was nowhere to be found.
One day, delirious with loneliness and desperate for the sun, Louis ran away for an evening. He went to find Jonah. He knew it was a long shot. But they cared for each other once. He was a good man. A hardworking Christian. When they were kids, Louis saw kindness shining out of his face like a beacon. He had such a pure loving heart back then. Louis hoped that maybe, just maybe, he would understand. If he could do that than maybe they could work something out.
He didn't.
He wouldn't even let Louis in the door.
Louis missed his chance. It had been too long. Almost forty years. After all that time, there was nothing but fear in Jonah's eyes when he caught sight of him. The way he screamed when he saw Louis's young face staring back at him... my God. It's a sound Louis doesn't think he'll ever forget. Jonah threw his rosary at him and started praying. He was right to do it.
His maker, the vampire that terrorized New Orleans, was the only family he had left.
And just like the deed to the Rue Royale, Lestat's cold dead heart wasn't his. Not completely. No matter how long they stayed together, they'd never have a marriage license and no one could ever know what they were to each other.
Louis hated that he cried after their fights. He always felt so useless after losing to him. So hopeless.
And like a fairy tale, his Prince Charming would come back hours later, ashamed at what he'd done. Lestat would weep and apologize with big beautiful gifts wrapped in his hands. He'd get on his knees until his forehead touched the carpet. He'd beg for forgiveness like a kicked puppy, eyes all wet and sad. He'd bring up his trauma. He'd blame his angry ass father for teaching him to act like that. He'd tell Louis everything he wanted to hear. Then Lestat would submit to him, mind and body, for days. Just long enough that Louis would trust him again.
Times like that was when he felt the safest. None of that shit mattered anymore. He was loved. He knew he was. Their relationship was just... complicated.
Louis wanted every day to be like that. If only he could rest his head on that brawny chest and forget about all the horrible things he did with those teeth and those sharp sharp claws. But that will never happen. Louis was hiding too much from him to truly feel comfortable. He was hiding his fear and his disgust and his depression. He doesn't know how to open that part of himself to his lover. What if they couldn't work through it? Louis already feels faulty enough. He couldn't admit out loud that he wasn't the vampire Lestat wanted him to be.
Hell, he didn't want to be a vampire at all!
He wished he was never turned. He wished Lestat was a human man with a human life and a human heart. But that's not their reality.
Louis and Lestat are beasts. Killers. Monsters. Blood drinkers, slurping up death like the Grim Fucking Reaper. Louis hates what they are.
But sometimes....
Sometimes the sound of a piano would leak through the walls or a violin would cry softly from a quiet room.
Louis could hear him in that. The real him.
What was inside Lestat was old, terrified, beautiful, campy, and very very queer. He touched instruments as if he wasn't worthy to hold them, but when he did he played like breathing. He would inhale and exhale and a gorgeous composition would flow right out of his chest. That's when Louis can feel that young boy in Lestat, scared, running from his father with a violin in his hand. The strings would cry and he'd hear the tears in his voice as he promised his boyfriend they would run away and never come back.
Music is how Lestat escaped. It's how he got free.
And still.
Over a hundred years later, the dead little French boy in him sees life in music. He sees hope. Louis loved that part of him so desperately he could hardly stand it.
Louis walked into the room in his slippers, hoping to watch his companion play without interrupting him. When Louis passed the living room archway, he found Lestat perched on the edge of the windowsill like a birdie. It rained heavily on the other side of the glass, the gentle smacks of water joined in with the sound of his instrument. There was a violin under his chin. His fingers were dexterous and skilled, claws shining on the bow.
Lestat's eyes opened. He noticed Louis walk in and his lips turned up a bit. He was happy to see him. Lestat varied up the tension on his bow, showing off a little with some complicated notes. Alright, alright. Louis tried not to smile. That's what he gets for fucking a theater kid.
Louis pulled a book from the shelf above the fireplace and made his way over to the couch. He flipped through the open pages with Lestat's music crooning in the background, tucking his legs up underneath himself. He draped a cozy blanket over his knees and relaxed by the fire.
Lestat continued to fiddle in the corner and they didn't talk. Not for any particular reason.
They just wanted to sit with each other without the pressure of conversation.
Louis only flipped the page twice as the time passed. He needed more time to read it. The book he'd grabbed from the shelf was in Spanish and he wasn't completely fluent yet. That's alright. It's perfect actually. He's trying to learn.
They won't be able to stay in America forever. Someday soon the townspeople will notice they're not aging. Maybe they'd go down south and escape the lingering stares by jetting off to the countryside. Argentina or Paraguay would be a nice change of pace.
Lestat slipped from a freestyle melody into Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D major. He says all the time, it was the only violin concerto Tchaikovsky ever wrote. Perfect for a soloist. Lestat loves to play it.
Louis would never admit this to him, but he finds it impressive.
He smiled softly as his companion played something special just for him; he turned back to his reading. Louis was in the middle of a book of poetry.
The book was published in Chile just a year ago, but Lestat had a copy sent to the States. Lestat heard good things about it, but as usual, he'd read the first few pages and acted like he'd finished it. Louis rolled his eyes. Whatever. That's his man.
As Louis read on, he got more upset at that.
It's a shame. Lestat should have kept reading. He would have loved this book if he gave it the time of day. But he knew Lestat. Lestat didn't want to know what was inside. He didn't care. He just wanted to be able to brag to people that he had it and they didn't. Ew.
Pablo Neruda was a beautiful poet. He wrote mostly about love, lust, and relationships. But he didn't sound stuffy like Lord Byron or Shakespeare did. He wrote like a person. He wrote like a grown man who had fallen so deeply, so desperately in love that all he could do was drown in it until he stopped breathing. Neruda flourished, swimming in the body of his lover. Then he suffocated under her tide. Louis can relate.
The poem Louis found himself stuck on was titled "Para Que Tú Me Oigas". Louis translated it in his mind as "So That You Will Hear Me".
Wow. What a desperate title. He must have been suffering when he penned this one. Hundreds of miles away in a pioneer town in Temuco, Louis could feel Neruda's writer's quill shake with emotion. He was touched by his love, treated as a man worthy, but his tears fell on deaf ears and she refused to see him for who he really was. So he crumbled alone, reaching out for her. And she just watched him and did nothing.
So that you will hear me, my words sometimes grow thin as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches......
He sighed into his book of poetry when he realized he was getting sucked in. He promised himself he wouldn't read any more love stories. Rocked by the absence of his daughter, rudderless after he and Lestat's tenth fight this month, Louis ran screaming from romance novels! He swore off them, calling them poison, ripping them off the shelves. He almost burned them all in the incinerator out back. But it was useless. He would always wind up here, reading his own tragic love story line by line. He can't escape it.
He hates what has become of them.
But he loves Lestat. He loves him desperately.
I watch my words from a long way off. They're more yours than mine. They climb on my suffering like ivy.... now I want them to say what I want to say to you...
Louis stole a cautious glance at Lestat as if he was standing over his shoulder, judging him for what he was reading even though he hadn't spoken a word. He was being paranoid. Lestat wasn't paying attention to him. He was sitting on the window still, eyes closed, enraptured in the flow of his own music. His bow danced along the violin strings as he worked his way through the D major concerto, blonde hair flowing around his jawline.
It was in that moment, Louis understood Neruda.
He knew what it felt like to have to edit himself-- to say whatever his lover wanted, or stay silent, just to avoid the bloodshed of another argument. Oh, what he'd do to hold on to that false image of marital bliss. He'd tell any lie, fake every smile. He'll do it tomorrow.
You are to blame for this cruel spot.... you fill everything. You fill everything.
Lestat did fill everything.
He's the reason Louis is living this double life. He's the reason they moved in together, gone into business together, raised a child together. Years passed by but neither of them could grow or mature. Their names were almost synonymous with one another. As were their lives. They'd blended together over the years like an oroburos, forming one big bloody snake that never stopped gnawing on its own tail.
Lament of old mouths. Blood of old supplications. Love me, companion.
The blood they shared dripped from open lips, stained with kisses and bites. They were desperate for each other in the quiet dark. Desperate for a love they weren't brave enough to ask for. Stealing away any small little crumb they could find, they took what they could get. But Louis wanted that. When asked, Louis chose it.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish. But my words become stained with your love.
Louis turned the page and stole another glance at Lestat. His lover may never understand the depths of his emotions. But that's okay. He'll be a part of him forever. Lestat's blood sang in his veins. Their hearts beat together like matching sets of a thrumming drum. They were made for each other. No matter how much it hurts.
Louis can learn to live with less. He can manage. He has to now. He has no other choice.
"Todo lo ocupas tú, todo lo ocupas tú..."
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.