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Louis wakes to shouting. The coffin around him is unfamiliar and less comfortable than his custom. Instead of the typical rise from death sleep, Louis feels nearly electrified. Every extremity seems to pulse and buzz, almost to the point of pain.
And his throat…God, his throat.
His throat.
Louis slams his still tingling hand into the lid of the coffin and shoves it open with an urgency nearing despair.
Familiar long, pale hands catch the lid before it can shatter against the nearest surface.
“Louis,” Lestat whispers, falling to his knees beside the coffin. The shouting Louis woke to has stopped. “Louis, Louis, Louis.” One of Letat’s hands holds his shoulder. The other reaches out gently, slowly, tracing with feather-like fingers along the new scar on Louis’ neck.
“Les,” Louis croaks, because everything still hurts, and his own shaking hand reaches two fingers to the ring of rope encircling Lestat’s elegant neck. He rests his fingers along his pulse point for a long moment. God. God.
“It’s alright,” Lestat says softly, his gentle hand finally leaving Louis’ neck and brushing through his hair. “It’s alright. We’re alright. We will be fine.”
Louis’ eyes begin filling with tears; he doesn’t think he has the blood to spare.
“Where are we?” Louis asks, finally taking in their surroundings. The coffin seems to be on the ground of a narrow, rather disgusting apartment, filled with wood paneling and far too many windows. And people. There are so many people crowded in the doorway, standing along the windows. Standing outside the windows, banging and shouting to be let in.
“My tour bus,” Lestat replies softly, “We are at the concert.”
“The concert--,”
“I know,” Letstat interrupts quickly. “I know. Gabrielle and the band spirited us here without my knowledge.”
“Or consent,” Louis adds menacingly.
Lestat bites his lip, then lets his hand slide tenderly down Louis’ cheek. “Do you want to get up?”
If Louis could blush, he would. Instead, he accepts Lestat’s offered hands and stands gingerly to his still tingling feet. It’s pins and needles, multiplied by one thousand, and if Louis had the voice for it he would scream.
“How do you feel?” Lestat whispers, reaching to take better hold of Louis as he helps him step out of the coffin. He ushers him a few feet across the way, to a waiting booth under the window. Screaming fans are banging upon the window as they sit; Louis very much hopes Lestat paid handsomely to have the windows tinted.
Louis sits first, and Lestat, after a second of deliberation, slides himself in right beside Louis, their bodies touching from knee to shoulder. Louis makes the decision to keep holding Lestat’s hand. He squeezes it tightly and stares around the dingy tour bus Lestat has spent so much of the last year traveling in. He spies Gabrielle speaking with the rest of the band in the doorway and cannot hold back his scowl.
“Louis?” Lestat asks again, and Louis realizes he never answered his question.
“Weird,” he says honestly. “Everything is pins and needles. My throat feels like someone took a hot iron to it. Can we go? I don’t want to be here. I don’t want—Lestat--,” And suddenly the tightness in his throat isn’t just his recent decapitation, but an honest to goodness sob building in his throat, but hell if Louis de Pointe du Lac is going to break down and fucking cry in front of all these people.
“If I could get us out of here, I would, mon cher. I would, I promise you. I just—I do not now how.” The cries outside seem to reach a fever pitch. The entire bus shakes, as though an earthquake has rattled the world.
“How are you?” Louis asks instead, leaning his head into Lestat’s shoulder. “Where did they…” Louis trails off. It seems poor taste to ask Lestat where Daniel went with his head.
“I’m fine,” Lestat reassures him. “Our intrepid reported stashed me away in a bowling ball bag of all things and brought me to observe his most recent hobby. The Talamasca picked me up not long after that, and our dear Fareed put Humpty Dumpty back together again, as the children say.”
Louis thinks he may vomit, the thought of Lestat’s beautiful face rolling along the shining wooden floor before crashing into a bloody mess of pins, Daniel’s tan hands raised in the victory of two birds with one unwilling stone replaying endlessly in his own battered head. “Oh, God. Oh, my God, Lestat did he, Jesus Christ, did he--,”
“What?” Lestat asks genuinely, before the realization hits. He lets out a little chuckle. “Oh, goodness, no. Dan is dark certainly, but that would be horrific even for him, I think. No, I stayed in the bag until they brought me back. I was dreaming truthfully. I do not recall much of what occurred until I woke here.”
“Oh. Good. Good, that’s—I’m glad. I’m so glad,” Louis says quietly. Lestat’s blue eyes, dulled by the events of the night but still piercing, lock their gaze with his.
“Louis,” he whispers, “Cheri, what happened to you?”
“Armand,” he chokes, and then there’s really nothing left he can say, not in that moment. It is all too soon, too raw. Too appallingly horrific. The image of his own desperate body, reaching fruitlessly out to him, will star in Louis’ nightmares for the rest of his immortal life.
The image of Lestat’s headless body lying dead on the table before him will forever haunt Louis’ waking hours.
Lestat takes one of Louis’ hands in both of his own and kisses it reverently. “I will kill him,” he says simply. Louis cannot help but take intense comfort in the words.
“I don’t want to talk about it now,” Louis finally says. Lestat nods slowly. The rabid fans are still working on breaking down the windows of the bus. Gabrielle and the band and possibly members of the Talamasca are lingering rudely in the doorway. Armand is on the run somewhere in the world. Regina is fleeing.
Claudia hates him. Claudia is still dead.
Louis turns himself toward Lestat in the small booth and uses his free hand to hold Lestat’s face.
“I love you, Lestat,” Louis says. “I will always love you.”
Lestat’s mouth falls open in shock. His blue eyes suddenly flood red. “Louis,” he chokes. He squeezes Louis’ hand like it is a lifeline in a stormy sea. Louis brushes his thumb gently along Lestat’s cheek, wicking away the bloody tears.
“It seemed such a waste, to have never told you that. I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it, sometimes.”
“Give it to me,” Lestat breathes. His blue eyes are suddenly so bright that Louis wants to drown in them. “Give it to me, and I’ll give you mine, and we’ll carry the weight together.”
“Forever shackled by the weight of our love,” Louis says with a soft laugh. “Sounds nice.”
Lestat kisses Louis’ hand again, “So do evening primroses.”
“And desert birds,” Louis adds quietly. “Lestat, don’t do this. Please, do not do this. Come with me.”
Lestat is silent for an everlasting moment.
“How?” he finally asks. Louis smiles.
“My love, have you forgotten how to fly?”
***