Work Text:
The phantom of her followed him all the way through the heavy modern doors of the Manhattan high-rise and into the silence of his loft. Her face. That soft, almost lilting cadence of her accent. The precise weight of those dark braids framing her face. But most of all, it was her eyes. Those deep, soulful, human brown eyes.
Truthfully, Louis didn’t remember the color of Claudia’s human eyes. They had been open to the light of the fire for only a fraction of a second before she closed them in agony, and he had been far too busy falling in love with the sheer magnitude of her incredible soul to focus on the shade of her eyes. But in the quiet, deep spaces of his mind, he had always imagined them brown. A rich, warm earth. Exactly like Regina’s. Like Grace’s. Like his own.
How was it possible for her to be here, now, working in a dirty diner in the middle of the night? Had that awful, desperate oath of hers finally found a way to come true? Had she crawled back from the ashes of the cursed theater to haunt every single person who had survived that night? He had butchered essentially the entire Parisian coven himself for her. A ruthless, single-minded slaughter. It’s what she would’ve wanted. Anything for her. If she had finally returned to exact her own pound of flesh from him, he wouldn’t fight her. He deserved whatever hell she’d want to unleash upon him. He would welcome the executioner if the hand holding the blade belonged to Claudia.
“Welcome home, babe,” a deep, soft voice drifted from inside the loft.
Louis blinked in surprise, the sudden intrusion jarring him back into his own skin. Lemuel was here. He had completely forgotten. Fuck.
Lemuel sauntered towards him, a relaxed, attractive smile playing on his handsome face. He was large. Built with a heavy, broad-shouldered frame that made Louis feel small in ways he wasn't entirely used to. Much larger than himself. Larger than Armand. Larger tham… well. Louis had chosen him precisely because he was so different. So deeply unfamiliar. There were no ancient, suffocating hurts attached to Lemuel, no mind manipulations. Just two vampires, attracted to each other and fucking it out.
Lemuel placed one massive paw gently against Louis’ waist, pulling him in easily for a greeting kiss. It was soft, dry, and entirely unhurried. Welcoming. Louis let out a faint hum against his lips, allowing the physical weight of the man anchor him for a moment. Different is good. Different means moving on. He chose different. He wants different.
Right?
“Good trip?” Lemuel asked, his tone cool, absolutely unbothered.
Louis nodded tightly, sidestepping the embrace to move deeper into the open layout of the loft. The sky outside the high windows were just beginning to turn that bruised, almost-early-morning purple. Louis was hungry. His veins were itching with the nearing sunrise. But more than that, he wanted a bath. He wanted to slide into the dark and sleep until it was night again, just so he could return to that diner and look at her again.
“Left some O-Neg out on the counter for you. I know you prefer it room temp,” Lemuel offered, trying for conversation again.
Louis offered a polite, tight smile in return. “Thanks.” He wished he were alone. He wished the room was entirely empty.
Lemuel watched him, his shining eyes teaching the stuff carry of Louis’ shoulders. “All good?”
“Yeah,” Louis lied smoothly, the mask of his perfect composure snapping into place without a crease. “Why?”
Lemuel leaned casually against the sofa back. He really was so fucking attractive. Effortless in a way Louis rarely encountered. He shrugged one large shoulder. “You’re unusually quiet. Even for you.” Lemuel never pushed Louis. He wasn’t the type to demand 100% of Louis’ attention at all times and go into a hissy fit if he didn’t get it. He was cool and collected and measured in a way that fit Louis’ 2025 persona. Or at least the persona he was desperately trying to cling to.
Louis stood quiet for another moment, his mind running through the brief checklist of his current options. He could double down on his lie, let his irritation flare, get Lemuel going as well, and turn the last few hours of the night into a stupid, draining fight. But he was so profoundly tired. Louis could always tell him the truth. Confide in him about the girl, about the ghost of Claudia, about the grief that was currently eating him alive.
Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Ever.
So Louis chose the easiest option. He tilted his head, flashing his most dazzling, disarming smile, completely ignoring the blood Lemuel left for him. He stepped around the kitchen island and walked straight into Lemuel’s space.
The other vampire zeroed in on the slow sway of his hips, his pupils expanding slightly. A natural predator locking onto its favorite target. Louis trailed a soft, deliberate hand up from Lemuel’s waist to the nape of his neck, pulling his large head down for a lingering kiss. He used his tongue expertly, deep and wet, demanding all the man’s attention.
“Been a long trip,” Louis whispered into the minimal space between their lips, his nails scratching Lemuel’s nape. “Help me forget about it.”
Lemuel let out a low groan into his mouth, his easy demeanor melting into an urgent, heavy need as he let himself be pulled forward by his belt hoops to the bedroom.
Afterwards, Louis left Lemuel a panting, boneless mess on the sheets. He watched the evidence of their fucking drip lazily frim Lemuel’s skin, the heat of it cooling quickly in the air, before he quietly slipped out of bed and headed to the shower.
It was a fastidious new habit he had picked up just recently, showering right after sex.
With Armand, leaving the bed so abruptly had been an impossibility, their scenes, even the most mild ones, always demanded a lengthy, meticulous aftercare routine. And Louis had happily obliged, spending hours bringing Armand back to the present with soft touches and even a softer press of a warm washcloth. Louis even kept a supply of blood bags in the bedroom for those particularly rough nights when the exhaustion was too deep.
With the hundreds of faceless, anonymous men he had fucked over the decades without a single care, he had either been too high on their lovely drug-laced blood to care about cleanliness, or the encounters had been so impersonal that not a single hair had been out of place, nit a single drop of bodily fluid marking his person. They were a warm hole and he had a cock. That was it.
With Lestat… well. With Lestat it hadn’t been a matter of fastidiousness or clinical detachment. It was that Louis had loved the mess of them. He could - and had - spent hours, sometimes days, with the literal evidence of their lovemaking marking his skin. It had been a shock to his repressed, tidy nature to discover just how much he craved it. It was almost a compulsion. Like he couldn’t stand to not have a constant reminder of them, together. Louis was always very particular about his routine, so Lestat had very naturally often made to leave their bed as soon as he had caught his breath to fetch something to clean Louis off. But time and time again, Louis had forcefully pulled him right back down onto the ruined sheets. He would move his hand through the spend on his own abdomen, smearing it across Lestat’s chest. Sometimes licking it off his skin, sometimes just making another mess. Always demanding anything and everything that would keep their bodies glued together for just a little while longer before Lestat would inevitably drag him to the bath to clean them both while getting Louis off at least one more time.
But Lemuel was different. He didn’t need Louis’ grounding aftercare, Louis wasn’t fucking him high as a kite to try and escape his own mind, and he sure as shit didn’t feel the urge to play in the aftermath of their coupling.
So now, Louis simply went off to shower the moment he made sure Lemuel had reached his climax. Lemuel never asked him why, and Louis never felt the need to explain himself.
The water in the shower was scalding, a punishing downpour that turned the glass enclosure into a white, forged-in tomb. That wasn’t enough to burn Regina’s face from his retinas.
Louis leaned both palms against the dark tile, his head hanging low between his shoulders as the steam filled his lungs. Closed his eyes, she was right there. The tilt of her chin, the sharp defensive lilt of her accent, those dark braids clinging to her cheeks. Regina. It was a beautifully normal, human name. Yet the mere site of her had unraveled every tightly wound stitch holding his sanity together.
He was going insane. He had to be.
Vampires didn't get to lose their mind to cheap tricks of biology, but his brain was misfiring. Spinning in a frantic, impossible loop. Claudia was dead. She was burned in that infernal theater in Paris. Her bright, warm life reduced to a pile of gray ash. He knew the absolute reality of her ending; he had carried the weight of it for nearly a century now. There was no magic in this world that could patch a charred skeleton back together and give it soulful, human brown eyes.
Yet, the logic of his immortal existence felt entirely useless against the memory from the diner. If she was a ghost, a phantom sent to torture him, he would’ve accepted the haunting. Nothing headn;t dealt with before, after all. Ghosts were as familiar for Louis as can be. But she had been physical. She had been breathing.
The weight of the cognitive dissonance pressed down on his chest until his lungs ached with a phantom need for air. He scrubbed the soap across his chest with a desperate, bruising friction, trying to wash away the memory of the smell of grease and cheap coffee, the lingering essence of a daughter who couldn’t possibly exist.
It wasn’t working. Tears were burning his eyes. Panic was gripping his throat. He wanted to scream, he wanted to break something. He wanted to talk about this. Someone should have the answers he doesn’t have. And that was the moment the current shifted in his mind. Pulling him inexorably towards the only one who would understand this madness in him.
Lestat.
The name hit his throat like a dry swallow of blood. If Louis went to Daniel, the old man would analyze it, pathologize it, treat this whole thing like a chapter for his new book, waiting to be edited into more lies. If he had gone to Armand, if he was capable of even looking at him again, his former companion would have built a beautiful, sterile wall around the memory to keep Louis placated and dulled. But not Lestat.
Lestat wouldn’t try to fix the broken puzzle piece. He was the only other creature on this earth who shared the specific, marled gravity of this loss. He was the co-author of Claudia’s tragedy, the only other one who knew the exact timber of her laugh and the precise metric of her rage. Lestat would hear him out. Would accept this strange reality as fact, simply because Louis told him to. Shit, if Louis asked, Lestat would probably go with him to watch her.
That thought gave Louis pause. Would Lestat want to see Claudia again? In this form of a 20-something year old human girl? Would he prefer to sit with the ghost he knew? Louis wasn’t sure he knew the answer. He wasn’t sure he knew the answer to any Lestat related question anymore. The man sat across from him in that fucking meeting wasn’t someone he recognized. Sure, there were glimpses. Lestat’s jealousy was always easy to court. But everything else was different. At the show, as Lestat flew to face him, freezing the whole room as he went, Louis had to tighten his fists until they bled to avoid reaching out to him. Then Lestat tossed the book in his lap and any and all thoughts of that touch being well received flew away, same as Lestat himself.
Louis let the water stream over his face, his mind drifting back towards the disaster of the book. The copy Lestat tossed at him still waiting at the bottom of his unpacked duffle bag. Daniel’s published pages were a permanent monument to their worst cruelties. A map of every sin they had ever committed against each other, and against Claudia. Louis had wanted to blame everything on Lestat back in San Francisco, had wanted to use his words like a knife to make Lestat squirm, to beat him down for all that he did. For killing her. For Louis loving him, still.
What a fucking fool he has been. So fucking easily swayed by rage and lies and mind games.
Louis thought he had approached the interview in a better, less vitriol way in Dubai. Mature and grounded. Giving Claudia the ending she deserved while also purging Lestat from his system. But seeing the fallout, particularly after learning the truth, seeing how those charted-out weaknesses had cut through Lestat… it felt like an infection in Louis’ own viscera. He had orchestrated the slaughter of Lestat’s character and for what? Nothing could ease the pain of her absence. Almost nothing could make pain lessen. Almost...
A profound, aching loneliness bloomed in the center of his chest. It was an empty, hollow space that no amount or successful property flips, art sales, or carefully curated distances could ever even hope to fill. A Lestat shaped hole can only be filled with a Lestat shaped person.
Outside of the steamy bathroom, Louis’ phone was sitting on his nightstand. He had Lestat’s number. He knew that despite the screaming match, despite the vitriol of their last encounter, if he called - Lestat would answer. Lestat, if nothing else, was a bottomless pit for his attention. Greedy for contact after almost a century of starvation. Louis could picture him perfectly; lounging in a filthy tour bus or pacing in his studio, running a hand through his messy golden curls, waiting for the phone to ring but pretending not to. Fucking some human with his mind a thousand miles away.
The urge to step out of the stall, leave the water running and pick up the phone just to hear that French-lilted baritone, was like a physical blow to his lower belly. Louis ached to tell him about the girl from the dirty diner. He wanted to tell him that the world is starting to go dark around him again, that he needed his light back. He wanted to apologize for the book, to pour out a century’s worth of unspoken truths and explanations into one conversation.
The tiles under his feet suddenly felt cold, the water barely even warm. Louis shut off the water and in the silence that followed, realized he was still trapped in a cage. This time of his own making.
Louis stepped out of the bathroom, the cool air of the loft hitting the damp linen of his shirt and sending a slow, superficial shiver over his ribs. He avoided looking at the bed. He didn’t want to see the heavy, content shape of Lemuel sprawled beneath the sheets, or the quiet, slow rhythm of his breathing.
“You’re like a phantom tonight, Lou,” Lemuel’s voice drifted towards him, smooth and deep and entirely relaxed. He didn’t sound angry; he never did. He always sounded just on the cust of boredom. Lemuel reached out an arm towards Louis, his smooth skin catching the light from the window. “Where’d you go?”
Louis didn’t answer immediately. He moved to the wide glass of the terrace doors, his back straight. He fiddled with the latch, needing something to do with his hands. “Nowhere, Lem. Just checking the windows, making sure we’re good. Sunrise is close.”
“You avoided the question before too,” Lemuel said, sitting up slowly, the sheets pooling around his defined waist. He was almost outrageously handsome, large, a solid mass of muscle and warm blood that should’ve been enough to have any creature begging for a fraction of his attention. But to Louis, he felt empty. Like an incredibly expensive painting, done in all the right ways, but with nothing behind it. No soul.
“You were balls deep inside of me twenty minutes ago,” Lemuel continued, an edge to his voice. “I took everything you had to give and you didn’t even look at me while we were fucking. Not even once.”
Louis let his forehead fall against the cool glass. He was so tired. “I told you. It was a long night, long drive. My mind’s still on the road.”
“Your mind’s somewhere else entirely,” Lemuel said, swinging his legs off the bed. He didn’t bother getting dressed, cock large and thick, impressive even when completely soft. Confidant and solid. “You’ve been checked out for days now. You didn’t even notice I changed the painting in the living room.”
Louis worked his jaw, a sharp, bitter twinge of irritation pricking behind his teeth. In all fairness, Lemuel had no idea about anything. He didn't know about the Talamasca deal, about Bruce. He had no idea about the diner. He didn’t know about Regina, or her braids, or her eyes that had turned Louis’ mind into a house of horrors. Lemuel was just noticing what any normal… companion - the word tasted like bile in Louis’ mouth - would notice. The withdrawal, the sudden, freezing distance Louis always created when things got too busy in his own mind.
“I don’t need an audit on my attention span, Lemuel,” Louis said, his voice dropping into that quiet, dangerous register that usually signaled a hard stop to any conversation.
Lemuel did not heed Louis’ warning signs, though. He was simply tracking Louis’ movements with a cool, almost unbothered stare. He wasn’t a doormat, Louis knew, but he wasn’t a romantic either. Lemuel was a practical creature, and he was starting to scent the shifting tied. “I don’t give a shit where you go or what you do when you’re not here, Louis. But don’t bring that ghost back into our space.”
Louis turned to face him slowly, hand sliding into his pockets. The name was right there, hanging between them in the dark, unsaid yet screamingly loud all the same. Lestat. The same name, always, unuttered in this home just the same as the one before. The same Lestat whose pride Louis had smashed into pieces with a three-hundred-page book. Lemuel had read it too, of course. Everyone had. He also knew the general trajectory of this disaster.
“If you’re unhappy with the arrangement,” Louis drawled, his tone deliberately leveled, “the elevator works just fine.”
Lemuel let out a short, deep chuckle, finally shrugging on a skil robe. It was cream and golden. Wrong color. Wring everything, really.
“I’m not unhappy, Lou. I’m just being realistic.” Lemuel said calmly. “You want to pretend you’re your own companion, that’s fine. I let you call me nothing but a great lay in front of him with no protest. Even kept my mind shut. So he wouldn’t see my clothes in the closet, my jewelry on your nightstand.” Louis hadn’t even thought of that. He was trying to rile Lestat up, he hadn’t even considered that Lestat might poke around in Lemuel’s head to try and get a glimpse of their life together. “You wanted to be the big, bad man in front of him and I let you. I let you use my body to score that point. To one-up a ghost, because I get it. I do. I get that you wanted to rile him up. I get that you needed him to see you unbothered and free, with nothing holding you back. With nothing dragging you down. “
Lemuel then let out a short laugh that didn’t have a single bit of mirth in it.
“But you weren’t lying to him, were you? This is a fucking joke. You leave our bed the second you’re finished, like staying a minute longer will kill you. You’ve never actually given me a real piece of you, have you?” Louis said nothing.
“Your time? Never an issue. Your money? I’ve never met a more generous man, truly. Your cock? Ready and willing whenever I want it, however I need it. But that’s it. Nothing real. You told Lestat I'm emotionally unavailable but that’s a rich fucking lie. You’re the one who's not available. You keep that heart of yours, your emotions, under lock and key. You keep it for him.” Lemuel looked Louis directly in the eyes. Bright eyes glossy, reflecting emotions Louis had never seen before, or had never taken the time to see before, more like.
“Do you still fucking love him?!”
The words hung in the cold air of the loft. Heavy and absolute. Louis said nothing.
The absence of his words was louder than any confession Louis could’ve made. The silence was like an anchor, pinning him to the floor, rendering the space between them completely unbridgeable.
Lemuel nodded slowly, pursed his lips. Something changed in his posture then. His shoulders caved inward just a tiny bit. If Louis wasn’t looking at him so intently, he would’ve missed it entirely. It looked like the tiniest arrow had pierced him. The first time Louis had seen his vulnerable. He nodded again, letting out an ugly laugh. Louis had never seen him be ugly before. “If you’re going to burn down your life again - be my fucking guest. But don’t do it here.”
This is my house, Louis thought but didn’t say. This was humiliating enough for Lemuel without having to kick him out.
“Okay,” Louis said softly.
He walked past Lemuel, into the walk-in closet to get a jacket, his movements fluid and certain.
Lemuel watched him with an incredulous expression, his arms crossed over his chest’ like he couldn’t believe Louis was actually going. Actually walking out on him. Louis couldn’t believe it either.
“You’re actually going?” Lemuel asked. Distantly, Louis appreciated how refreshing this was. Being with someone who simply said what was on their mind. If Louis was a better man, he’d turn around, apologize, and drag Lemuel back to bed to really hammer in the apology.
But Louis was not a better man. He couldn’t wait to be away from this conversation.
“Yeah,” Louis said instead of voicing any of his inner thoughts. He slipped on the leather jacket and was already halfway to the front door when Lemuel’s voice stopped him.
“Why?” he asked. Simple question, the answer was anything but.
Louis turned back to him. “Because that’s what I need to do. Because he calls me home. Because nothing else matters.” He took a deep breath. “Because I love him.”
There was still another hour until sunrise. Louis already knew where Lestat was staying. He fished his phone out of his pocket and typed out - on my way