Work Text:
There are good and bad days in the desert.
Most of the time, Louis can feel the bad day in the air when he wakes up. The energy of their trailer home would be crackling and tense, Lestat in a snippy or withdrawn mood. It’s these days that they’ll yell or cry or sit next to one another in silence, bearing each other’s burdens as best they can. The thing about their new home is that there’s no escaping these bad days, no place or person to run to except the starry night and their well-tended garden. Louis can sit with ugliness now much more than he’s ever been able to.
There is no warning sign when Louis wakes up this evening. Perhaps it’s his dream that augurs the bad day, the one he’s still shaking from his mind as he rouses himself. The bad dreams are not as frequent as they had been for the past couple of years. Upon first leaving Armand, Louis would have nightmares nearly constantly, the fog of Armand’s control finally lifting. They lessened in frequency and then nearly stopped altogether once Louis was back to sharing a bed with Lestat.
The dream he’s awaking from is so vivid that Louis can smell burning flesh lingering in his nostrils. In his sleep, he had clawed at his ears to try and stop the sounds of Claudia screaming. There’s blood on the sheets of the bed, and drying under his nails. Louis traces gently along the gouges in his skin, which are already healing.
Louis listens for the beat of Lestat’s heart, and finds it in the coffin, slow with sleep. He’d woken up alone, Lestat’s side of the bed cold, sheets mussed. They’d fallen asleep tangled up together; Lestat’s cheek pressed against Louis’ chest, his leg shoved between Louis’. Lestat must have risen while the sun was still up, and stumbled his way to coffin as he occasionally still does, when the openness of the bed becomes too much for him. Maybe that’s where Louis’ nightmare had come from, the empty bed, the empty room.
He’s in a bad mood from the start, wishing Lestat was awake, or at least next to him, so Louis could prod him gently awake and make Lestat hold him for just a moment. Instead, their competing demons separated them in the middle of the day, and Louis knows better than to try and open a vampire’s coffin. He strips the bed of the bloody sheets, jaw clenched tight as he does, making as much noise as possible in a desperate attempt to wake Lestat. It’s not until the machine is running, and Louis has rinsed the dried blood from his head, that he hears Lestat’s heart kick up, and his phone unlock.
Lestat stays in his coffin, though, which only makes Louis’ irritation rise. He puts fresh sheets in their bed, stretching the fitted sheet into the far corner of the mattress, by the nightstand on Lestat’s side. After he successfully tucks the sheet in, Louis notices the blank space on the nightstand. There’s a photo missing, one of Claudia from Paris, laughing in the sidecar on the way to the hunt. Lestat had requested to have it there, and now, it seems, he’s removed it. Probably when he got up in the middle of the day without telling Louis.
Louis angrily pulls open the drawer and finds only lube and a spare charging cable. Maybe Lestat threw it out, Louis thinks, a little crazed, digging through the nearly empty trashcan. He makes enough noise that he hears Lestat click open the latch on his coffin. Louis escapes to the kitchen before Lestat can fully rise. Maybe Louis is just hungry, and some blood can stave off this bad day that’s beginning to mount.
It’s still early in the evening; the last dredges of twilight are finally fading outside their windows. Louis is somewhat surprised he’s up so early, earlier than Lestat, who always rises the second the sun dips below the horizon. It must be a combination of the nightmare and Lestat’s mid-day sojourn to coffin. Louis can hear Lestat move about the bedroom, getting dressed and washed up. The soft thudding of his feet makes Louis’ skin itch. He throws open their fridge.
Their blood delivery is delayed, so they’re all out of the specialized blood. All Louis wants is alcohol or drug or something infused blood, and what they have left is the boring, run-of-the-mill AB-. He grabs it anyway, now in resealable, reusable plastic bags due to Leatat’s needling. In a small tantrum, Louis punctures the side of the bag with his nail, slicing a tear through the eco-friendly plastic. All it serves to do is get blood all over his hand, dripping onto the floor. He sucks at the hole mulishly, thinking of the scrubbing he’s gonna have to do to clean up.
Lestat emerges when Louis is halfway through his bag, one of his brocade robes over his night clothes. His hair is pulled back into a low ponytail like he used to wear in New Orleans, and he looks like he just stepped out of 1920. Except for the phone in his hands that he’s frowning at as he taps away.
“Where’s her photo?” Louis asks hotly.
“What?” Lestat says, looking up. His eyes are still cloudy with sleep. “Who?”
“Claudia’s photo,” Louis grits out. “Where is it?”
Confusion now, replaces the drowsiness on Lestat’s face. “Mon cher, what photo are you talking about?”
“Are you seriously pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about?” Louis snarls. He’s thinking of Fred Steins and Armand.
“It’s not pretending when you are being nonsensical.” Lestat’s tone is clipped, and Louis can see his grip on his phone has tightened, knuckles white.
“Claudia’s photo,” Louis keeps his voice even. “You removed it from the nightstand. That why you got up in the middle of the day? So you could hide her from our home, try to erase her from our lives?”
Lestat is taking slow, cautious steps towards Louis, eyes wide and hands up as if he’s approaching a large, unruly animal. Louis can see now a crease from his pillow indented into Lestat’s left cheek.
“I assure you, Louis, I have no idea what you are referring to. I did not touch any photo.” Lestat comes to a halt a couple of feet from Louis, separated from him by the small counter in the kitchen.
“Sure you didn’t,” Louis scoffs. “Even if I believed you, that means, what? You didn’t even notice it was gone?”
“Mon cher, I just woke up,” Lestat says, voice gaining a bit of an edge now. He must be able to smell the fight coming on now, the one that’s been brewing since Louis woke up. “I—I had a tough night. Please—”
“Well, I had a tough night, too,” Louis cuts Lestat off of whatever lukewarm apology he was working up to. “I still noticed her picture was gone. Do you even miss her?” Louis sneers. “Because you sure act like you don’t. Took a boat all the way across the Atlantic fucking Ocean to help kill her, and you don’t even grieve her?”
He tosses the ruined blood bag into the trash; Lestat’s eyes track it, then return to Louis’ face. Louis, desperate for something to do with his hands that isn’t wrapping them around Lestat’s neck, grips the edge of the counter. He can feel it under his fingers, smooth, strong stone. He can feel the weak points in it. Where it would crack if he flexed his hands just right.
“Louis,” Lestat’s voice is tight. “What is going on?”
“What’s going on is that it feels like I’m the only one who wants to remember.” Louis’ voice is strained so much that it cracks. “I’m the only one here who misses her.”
“How can you say that?” Lestat asks, face crumpling. “Do you truly believe that?”
No. Yes. Sometimes, it seems like the only thing that can be true.
“I don’t know what I believe, Lestat,” Louis says, keeping the anger, the cruelty in his voice. “I believe what I see, which is someone who seemingly never thinks of our daughter.”
“I’m the bad guy for not wallowing in my grief forever, which she told us not to do, if you remember,” Lestat yells the last part, gesturing wildly. “For you to accuse me of this, after everything. Of course I miss her. Of course I think of her. Am I not allowed also to move on?”
“No!” Louis shouts, surprising himself. “Why do you get to do that? Get to move forwards and leave me, leave here to—”
He cuts himself off with a gasping breath, rickety with tears. Louis squeezes his eyes shut, willing the world around him to go black. When he opens them, Lestat is staring at him in their too-bright kitchen, mouth wide open and concern in his eyes. Louis pushes past it, past Lestat and towards their door. The second he opens it, the dry, cool evening air hits him.
“Where are you going?” Lestat yells after him.
“Out.”
He lets the door slam behind him and stalks through their growing garden towards the flat landscape in front of him. Louis listens for the sounds of Lestat following him, but hears nothing but the quiet loudness of the desert. He resists the urge to look behind him, to see if Lestat is watching him from the doorway or a window.
Louis walks for hours, past the edge of their property and past the tiny ranching towns that dot the barren landscape, all the way up to the edge of Basin and Range National Monument. It's a great, vast nothingness, all around Louis. Miles and miles of it, stretched out in all directions. Louis has never been in this much emptiness. Even in those years of wandering around desolate Europe with Claudia, in and out of abandoned towns and bombed-out villages, it was never this empty. And even then, with a landscape dotted with bodies and humanity, Louis had needed the escape of Lestat. What does it mean, that he’s been able to live out here for so long with only Lestat, no Claudia appearing to him for comfort or guilt?
He starts to dig.
He’s standing three feet below the ground, dirt piling around him before long. Louis brought nothing with him on this walk, not even a phone and much less a shovel, so he’s digging with his hands. Dirt is caked under his nails, stuck in his nostrils, sticking to his sweaty skin as he shovels it with his hands. He hadn’t even changed out of his pajamas before he left, and now his favorite satin set is smeared with dirt.
He must have breathed some in, since he can taste it in his mouth, feel it in his lungs as he breathes. Louis pauses to hack some of it out, blood coming up as he coughs. He feels a little dizzy. Leaning against the makeshift wall he’s dug around himself, he lifts his head up from the dirt and sees it. An owl, staring right at him, perched on the rim of this hole. Its head is tilted slightly as it blinks at Louis, no fear evident in its behavior.
Who are you? Claudia had asked him a human lifetime ago, and Louis still doesn’t know the answer to that question. As a human, he existed solely for his family and then, as a vampire, for Lestat. Without Lestat, he was Claudia’s. Without Claudia, he was Armand’s. Without Armand, he was briefly, maybe, just Louis, and now here he is, Lestat’s again. Lestat and grief. Louis’ twin flames of eternal life, it seems. That’s what he couldn't tell Claudia, back then. Who Louis is is his grief and his guilt. And Lestat.
He’d never burnt the dress. That’s the shameful truth of it; it’s tucked in a box under the bed, hiding amongst the scratchy blankets and tax documents that Lestat will never touch. Louis had told Lestat he burned it, and Lestat, maybe naively, took his word for it. Louis doesn’t want to let go of the grief that has fueled him for 80 years. He’s been so afraid of having to find something else to live for that he hadn’t realized he already did until he woke up this evening and thought of Claudia for the first time in three days.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Not the grief, which Louis had long accepted would always be a part of him, sitting there right under his ribs. The absence of it. His ability, however brief, to forget that he deserves to be miserable for the rest of his undying life. Live for her, die for her; it was always about Claudia. Louis can’t believe he’s even considering a life driven towards a purpose other than her.
He and the owl are still staring at each other. Maybe this owl can read his mind, Louis thinks somewhat hysterically. Paul used to speak to the birds, and they would speak back. Lestat had brought that up just a couple of weeks ago, out of nowhere. I think your brother was telling the truth about the birds, he had said nonsensically. What truth? Louis had asked, to which Lestat just gestured vaguely. Maybe the birds were speaking to Paul, and Paul spoke back. Louis keeps looking at the owl.
“What do you say?” he asks the creature, who, predictably, doesn’t respond. “Should I go home?”
The owl chitters, clear and resonant in the night air. Louis makes a startled gasp, slipping in the dirt as he scrambles out of the hole. The owl still hasn’t been scared off, despite the noise and motion, and instead is looking up at Louis now. Louis crouches down at the edge of the hole, looking between the owl and the ditch he’s dug.
“Okay, home,” he says to the owl.
Louis leaves the hole, dirt piled all around it. The wind or animals will take care of it, he figures, or maybe he can come back tomorrow night to fill it in. He has a long walk back, and only a few hours until daylight breaks. Louis starts his path back, looking over his shoulder, half expecting to see the owl hopping after him. It’s not; nowhere to be seen, even. Louis shakes his head to clear his mind.
His walk out was a blur. Probably a straight line, but Louis isn’t positive he didn’t wander a bit. Without his phone, he has no way of navigating back home with certainty. Except, there’s Lestat. Louis closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. He listens, past the animals and the wind and the distant sounds of humans hiking or camping, miles and miles out, until he hears Lestat’s heart beating. Louis follows the familiar sound home.
By the time he can see the trailer home in the distance, the sky has begun to lighten with the oncoming dawn. Louis is exhausted, a deep-tissue muscle-and-bone tiredness exacerbated by the pull of the sun. He’s also starving. He thought of stopping for something to eat, like a fox, but he was too tired to hunt even an animal.
The lights are on inside their home, and Louis can see through the windows. He doesn’t see Lestat, not in the bedroom or the music room, but he knows Lestat is inside. The steady beat of his heart, which was Louis’ map home, has gradually gotten louder, and now it overlaps with Louis’ own, one double sound. Lestat must hear it too, because the door swings open when Louis is 15 feet away.
Lestat runs out to meet him, grabbing Louis’ shoulders to look him all over.
He feels Lestat breathe out a relieved “Louis,” and then he’s pulled into a hug, burying his nose in Lestat’s neck.
They’re in the middle of their garden, primrose and juniper and yarrow all around them. Lestat holds Louis tight to him, so close that Lestat is all that Louis can smell. Louis holds him back, arms wrapped around Lestat’s back, hands stroking up and down the robe. Louis can hear Lestat crying, soft, wet sobs as his body shakes. The sensation of it reaches his brain slowly, like pushing through a fog, until Louis tightens his grip and runs a soothing hand along the back of Lestat’s head.
“I’m okay,” he says quietly, right into the delicate shell of Lestat’s ear. “It’s okay.”
Here, in Lestat’s arms, Louis starts to come back to himself. His muscles ache terribly, fatigue settled deep in them. It’s probably because he hasn’t eaten anything for hours; there’s a hunger, too, the kind of emptiness Louis used to be so good at ignoring. The hunger shortens his already frayed nerves, and Louis feels as if he could fall apart right there, crumple to dust in Lestat’s arms. He pictures it, pictures Lestat standing there as Louis disappears, Lestat’s renewed anguish echoing through the night sky.
Lestat’s hands are curled around Louis’ upper arms, grip tight enough that his fingers dig into Louis’ skin through his clothes. Louis can feel the sharp pinpoints of Lestat’s nails against him, a slight sting reminding him that he’s there, that he’s alive. Lestat pulls back, just far enough so they can see each other's faces. Lestat’s is streaked with red tears, mouth in a frown.
“You’re filthy,” Lestat says, eyebrows pulled together in concern. He runs a finger along Louis’s cheek, gathering the residue there and looking at it. Red-brown dirt, made thick like mud with Louis’ sweat and tears.
“Yeah,” Louis says distantly. He looks past Lestat to their home. The door is still hanging open. “I’m gonna go clean up. Can you heat me up a glass of blood?”
Lestat nods frantically as Louis slips from his grasp and towards the door. He makes a beeline for the bathroom, throwing his clothes into the hamper and scrubbing the dirt from his face and hands in the sink. He watches the eddy of dirt and blood wash down the drain, swirling and swirling in the sink. His hair is probably filthy, too. Louis touches it lightly, feels the dust and the dirt lying on top of it. He’ll have to wash it later, after this conversation he knows Lestat is waiting for.
In the kitchen, there’s a mugful of blood on the edge of the counter. Louis smells it before he enters the room, and grabs it greedily to gulp down. When he lowers it, he sees the photo, Claudia grinning brightly, sitting on the counter. Louis nearly sobs when he sees it, tracing his finger along the curve of her cheek through the glass.
“It had fallen,” Lestat says from behind him. “I must have knocked it over in my nightmare last night, and didn’t notice when I got up to get into the coffin. I apologize.”
Louis shakes his head, unable to bring himself to turn and look at Lestat. How is it that Lestat can have a nightmare and not wander into the desert to bury himself? “It wasn’t about the photo.”
“I know,” comes Lestat’s answer. Louis feels the weight of him at his back as Lestat hesitatingly wraps his arms around Louis’ waist, resting his chin on Louis’ shoulder to look at the photo. “But it’s still here, nonetheless.”
“I dreamt of her last night,” Louis says. He can feel Lestat’s quick intake of breath. “I dreamt of her dying. I could still hear her screams when I woke up.”
“Louis,” Lestat says softly into his ear. He tries to pull back, probably to turn Louis around in his arms so they’re face-to-face. Louis grasps Lestat’s hands where they meet around his waist, keeping Lestat in place.
“And when I woke up,” Louis continues, voice thick. He sniffs. “I realized that was the first time I’d thought of her since Wednesday. Three days, Les. I went three days without even thinking of our daughter. Like I can just keep living my life and forget about the worst thing that I’ve ever done.”
Lestat is uncharacteristically silent for a moment, just the sound of his breathing softly behind Louis. Louis needs to see him suddenly, gripped with the urge, so he turns around in Lestat’s hold. Lestat is crying silently, red tears streaking down his face. Louis cups Lestat’s face with his hands, brushing strokes with his thumbs through the wetness on Lestat’s cheeks. He’s momentarily shocked by the tears streaking down Lestat’s face. He’s still in the process of remembering, of stitching together his memories with the truth. He had left out Lestat’s fits of teariness from his retelling, so much so that he would forget, forget that Lestat’s melodramatic shouting was often accompanied by tears.
“I was quite worried,” Lestat says eventually. His voice is high and reedy.
“I know,” Louis says. He does feel bad about that, but he can’t bring himself to apologize,
“I did not know if you were coming back. And you di—didn’t bring your phone. Where did you go, Louis?”
The real question is why he came back, Louis thinks. He gestures with his head to lead Lestat towards their couch, settling in next to Lestat. Louis doesn’t know if he’s ready to talk about this, if Lestat is ready to talk about this. Armand ignored it or belittled it or otherwise exploited it in Louis for decades. The part of him that can’t move on. The part of him that doesn’t want to.
“How did you know you had to go to ground?” Louis asks, keeping a steadying hand on Lestat’s arm as he does.
Lestat is looking at him with such familiar worry, that same look he had on his face during Louis’ starving years. “I went to ground because I wanted to die. Do you want to die, Louis?”
Louis shrugs helplessly. “Not usually, but sometimes, maybe. Or I think I should want to, and I don’t know how to separate how I’m supposed to feel with how I do feel.”
It’s not like it was in the 70s, when Louis would wander San Francisco like a ghost, chasing Claudia’s voice down alleyways to avoid being stuffed in an apartment with Armand. He has no desire to seek out at-risk boys and get high off their blood. He also, he notes to himself mildly, has no desire to walk out into the sun. It’s not even as bad as it was early this year, when he scoured every young black girl in the city for her face, and he wasn’t talking to Lestat. He hadn’t wanted to die then. He thinks, maybe. Louis studies the dirt under his fingernails. What he wants, maybe, is to disappear for a bit. He wants to be able to think about Claudia without feeling guilty. He wants to be able to forget about her for a moment and it be okay.
“So that’s where you went?” Lestat asks. “To bury yourself?”
Louis nods slowly. He tightens his grip on Lestat, trying to get the other man to look him in the eye. “But I didn’t, okay? I came back.
“This time.” Lestat is looking right at him now, the endless pit of worry in his eyes inescapable. “What about next time? I thought,” he pauses, sighs, and continues, “I thought this was past us.”
“Sometimes, it is,” Louis answers honestly. “Sometimes it’s enough to know she wouldn’t want me to follow her. Sometimes, it’s not.”
It’s like 80 years ago, Louis was pushed into a never-ending black pit and has been falling nonstop. Then, Lestat offered him the smallest bit of closure, the vision of their daughter, angry and vengeful, and that was a rope dropped into the darkness. And every day, Louis hauls himself up that rope, inch by inch, and sometimes he can’t do it; he just needs to rest. Sometimes, he slips and starts falling again, the blackness whooshing by him. But the rope is always there for him to grab again. He has 80 years of darkness to climb out of. Sometimes Louis doesn’t think he’ll ever see the light again. And sometimes, he can see it peeking through as he climbs.
“I can’t promise anything except that I’ll come back every time,” Louis continues. “I’ll come back to you, Les.”
“Yes,” Lestat says, then purses his lips. It’s clear to Louis that Lestat doesn’t believe him, not fully. “I don’t know how to help you, Louis. I let—I let you fester in Rue Royal for years because I do not know how to help you like this. And it seems that sometimes, my mere presence is enough to anger you, and I don’t know why.”
There’s an edge of desperation in Lestat’s otherwise carefully managed tone. It sounds rehearsed, or practiced, maybe, like Lestat has been thinking about how to discuss this with Louis since he left. He probably has, Louis figures. And even with the practice, the frantic desperation still leaks through.
“I don’t always know why, either. But sometimes, I think I’m a bit jealous of you,” Louis admits, to Lestat’s wide-eyed surprise. “Your ability to leave it behind you. To move on. Endure.” Lestat frowns at him. “Gills to lungs, right?” Louis asks, suddenly nervous.
Lestat’s head tilts to the side, eyes scrunched up, and mouth quirked like he’s surprised Louis remembers that. “Well, I wasn’t very good at that, was I? It’s all coming back up now anyway.”
All the way up all over Louis’ shoes, if he remembers correctly. “I think it was coming back up then, too,” Louis admits.
That’s been another part of his attempts at recollection. Fitting all this new information he has about Lestat into his memories of the past, finding the gaps and filling them in with new context. The portrait above their bed, Lestat’s bursts of anger and fear, his then inexplicable jealousy of their daughter.
“Probably,” Lestat says softly. “I wanted to leave it all behind, and I thought if I pretended it didn’t happen, if I built an entirely new life with you, it would be as if it truly had. That the Lestat of the 19th century was some other creature, completely untethered to who I was then. Unsullied.”
Ain’t that the crux of their entire problem? Lestat’s desire to reinvent himself constantly and be free of his past, and Louis’ desperation to cling to every part of who he is and leave nothing behind. Sometimes, Louis thinks he understands almost nothing about Lestat, and Lestat about him, even less. But they’re here together, at the edges of the world all alone, with nothing to do but try.
“Is that what you’re doing with Claudia?” Louis has to ask. “Leaving her in the 20th century with everything else you’d like to forget?”
“Non,” Lestat says immediately, empathetically, eyes wide. “I could never forget her, Louis, please, if you know anything, know that. I may not walk out into the San Francisco sun or hunt down girls who look like her, but that does not mean that I don’t miss her acutely. I loved her. I watched her burn. I have no wish to forget any of that.”
“But you killed her,” Louis lets the anger peak through again, unable to contain it. At the flash of hurt on Lestat’s face, Louis concedes, “Maybe you didn’t, but it’s semantics, isn’t it? You crossed the Atlantic Ocean to be a witness in that sham trial that sentenced her to death. Why did you do it? Why, Les?”
Louis has never asked about the trial. He’s been good, he thinks, to leave it between them. To be one of the things they don’t have to ask each other for forgiveness for. But Louis needs it, whatever explanation or apology Lestat can dig up for him. Lestat stares at him for a long moment, chewing his bottom lip.
“When Armand called for me, I was still in New Orleans,” Lestat says eventually. “I was healing slower than I anticipated, perhaps due to the volume of blood loss. The scar on my neck hadn’t even healed fully, even years later. I was too sluggish to hunt properly, which did not help the healing process. There was no blood delivery back then, as I’m sure you know.
“It was a year after my mother left me,” Lestat continues. Louis stares at him, wide-eyed and wide-mouthed.
“Gabriella was with you after Mardi Gras?” There’s something Louis refuses to define in his voice, jealousy or anger or pity or all three. He thinks of Lestat, in that dump that Louis and Claudia left him in, being cradled by his mother, always there when Lestat is at his lowest.
Lestat gives him an odd look, his expression blank and his eyes blinking. “Yes, she knew I needed help. She stayed with me for two years before leaving, once I was able to move around rather independently and she was bored of my constant emotional fits. So I was alone, and weak, when Armand called for me. No excuse, I know, but it’s the truth nonetheless.
“I needed his blood,” Lestat continues. “And I knew his plan. I thought, foolishly perhaps, that I could stop him. He’s always had a weakness for me, and I thought I could exploit it. He was trying to provoke me, as well. He would call for me while you two were together, try to project the lust you felt for one another right into my brain.”
Louis’ stomach turns at that. It’s a perverse kind of irony, that both he and Armand were unable to keep Lestat off their minds during their courtship. He wonders how long Armand had been plotting, at what point he decided to choose his coven over Louis. If it ever even was a choice.
“Did it work?” Louis asks. Lestat raises an eyebrow in question, so Louis clarifies. “Did Armand provoke you?”
Lestat frowns. “I was angry with you, yes. You murdered me so beautifully, only to fall into the jaws of Armand. I had hoped you would have better discernment, and then I feared you did and didn’t care. I thought I could go to Paris and go directly to you, have our argument face-to-face, say my piece, and warn you off Armand. That was foolish, in hindsight.
“He was waiting for me to arrive, and snatched me right from the docks of Paris. I was weak, if you remember, and Armand has always been more powerful than me. I awoke in Magnus’ tower again, chained in iron, and starving. Armand would release me for blood, which could only come from him, and to rehearse. I begged to see you or Claudia constantly. We rehearsed during the day, while you two were asleep, and at night, I was returned to the tower.”
Louis can feel his eyes widen like saucers, his mouth drop open slightly as his heartbeat kicks up in his chest. He’s breathing heavily enough that it’s audible in the quiet room. Lestat tells the story with the same kind of affected detachment he uses when speaking of his past, but Louis can feel Lestat’s own heart beating rapidly and knows they’re in sync.
He shifts so his arm slings around Lestat’s shoulders and pulls him in close. Louis rests his head on Lestat’s shoulder, his cheek pressed into the fabric of Lestat’s robe. Lestat raises his own hand to cradle the back of Louis’ head, then gently lays his head down atop Louis’. He continues speaking, and now, Louis can feel the vibrations of it through his skull.
“At the trial, I hadn’t fed for two days, maybe three. I thought through many of the possibilities, but there were so many more of them, and the coven clouded your fledgling’s mind so strongly that I could not get through. I did the only thing I could do, which was save your life. Armand punished me for it, of course. But you were alive, even if you hated me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Louis asks desperately. Those lost years with Armand, all for nothing. “Any of it, all of it. Didn't I deserve to know?”
“I was still angry with you,” Lestat says. “And with myself. I thought, one day, the lie would be too much for Armand to hold, or you would figure it out, and by then I might feel more like myself. I had not anticipated 1973.”
Louis swallows thickly, closes his eyes, and breathes in the smell of Lestat. Would he ever have figured it out without Daniel? Louis could feel something was wrong, even back in the 70s, and certainly in 2022. The seed of rot in his and Armand’s relationship, taking root and spreading for decades. And Lestat had condemned him to that with his lie. Saved his life just to turn him over to their daughter’s killer.
“Besides, Armand helped you, I think,” Lestat adds. “In the immediate aftermath. He helped control your grief so it would not overwhelm you. I would not have been able to do that.”
The anger swings back, as fierce as ever. Louis pulls back to face Lestat. “Armand did nothing to help me. Here it is, all coming up now. Why did you do it? Why did you save my life just to give it away? When you could’ve saved her,” Louis says through tears.
“I couldn’t,” Lestat says quietly, barely audible. “I only had the strength to do it once.”
“So you chose me. Over her.” Louis needs to hear him say it, needs it all out in the open between them.
“Yes,” Lestat says fiercely, eyes shining with tears. “And you can’t tell me to regret it or wish that I had chosen differently. I will grieve Claudia for the rest of my life, but I would’ve ended mine if you had died.”
Louis knows his anger is hypothetical. If he had been in that same seat, with that same choice, it’d still be Lestat standing across from him now and not Claudia. That if they had thrown Lestat in the incinerator next to Antoinette, Louis would’ve crawled in right after him. He’s still choosing Lestat over her, now, in the 21st century. Followed Claudia all the way to Europe for what? For her to burn and Louis to be back in Lestat’s arms not even a century later? The cruel truth of it is that Louis loves Lestat more than anything in the world.
The steady stream of tears turns into sobs, Louis’ body shaking with the strength of it. He half-crawls into Lestat’s lap, clinging to him, feeling the embrace of Lestat’s arms around his body. He nestles his face into the crook of Lestat’s neck, probably ruining Lestat’s nice robe with his blood tears. Lestat doesn’t seem to mind; he just holds Louis tight.
“I love you, Louis,” Lestat says quietly, right into Louis’ ear. “I don’t know if that’s enough for you, but I hope it is. The past is behind us. She would not want us to mourn her forever.”
Louis nods into Lestat’s skin, letting the words settle into him. “I need to burn the dress.”
The words are muffled against Lestat’s neck, probably incomprehensible. Louis feels Lestat’s hands pause their soothing strokes on his back.
“What?” Lestat asks, gently leaning back to get Louis to lift his head. Louis does, looking at Lestat with shame.
“I have her dress still,” Louis says, then takes in a deep, shuddering breath. Lestat’s face is one of abject concern, lips parted, and brow furrowed. “It’s in a box under the bed. I know—she asked us to burn it, and even that I couldn’t do for her. I need to stop failing her.”
“Yes,” Lestat says softly. “We need to burn it. You do not still have her diary, no?”
Louis shakes his head. “Just the dress. Can we—tonight? Can we burn it tonight?”
Lestat frowns, glancing behind him at the window. The sun is starting to peek over the horizon, a muted, glowing ball through their UV-treated windows. Louis can feel the pull of it, making his limbs heavy and his mind sluggish. But he also knows he needs to do this now, before he wakes up and changes his mind.
“We can stand in the shade of the front awning,” Louis says. “It won’t take long.”
Lestat, likely sensing the desperation in Louis, nods. “Okay, yes. We can burn it.”
Louis climbs off of Lestat slowly, Lestat keeping a hand on his hip even once he’s standing. Louis squeezes it with his own hand, then departs for the bedroom. He expects to hear Lestat following him, but Louis hears only the shuffle of Lestat’s feet towards the front door. He’s oddly grateful for the last solitary moments he will have with the dress.
The box under the bed is labeled ‘tax documents’, and mostly, that’s what it contains. But folded between the property tax information and Louis’ investment portfolio is Claudia’s yellow dress, faded with age and ash. He takes it out gently, the fabric having started to degrade over the years. He rubs a patch of it between his fingers, feeling the fine craftsmanship of Madeleine’s hand. Louis sniffs and watches a blood tear land on the fabric, staining the yellow a deep red.
He walks back out to their door and sees Lestat standing there with paper in his hands.
“What’s that?” he asks, trying to get a glimpse of it and seeing it’s all music notes.
“A duet I wrote a century ago. A song for two, when Claudia was still trying to learn piano. She added some notes to it. I thought,” Lestat pauses for a moment, tracing along the margins. “I thought she might want this to go, as well.”
Louis smiles sadly. “I think so, too.”
They stare at one another a moment, both delaying the inevitable, before Lestat finally turns the knob of the door. The front of their trailer is shaded at this time of early morning, and they can both fit in the square of black. It’s already getting warm out, the desert heat unrelenting.
Louis folds and refolds the dress, then places it on the ground a couple of feet from them. Lestat looks at Louis and holds out the sheet of music.
“Would you like to do the honors?” he asks, presenting a corner for Louis.
Instead of answering, Louis focuses on that corner. It catches fire easily, then Lestat lays it on top of the dress. Louis watches as the paper burns up, ashes floating into the air. The dress catches easily, burning quickly with the paper. The flame is bright orange, engulfing the dress in no time. Louis sobs as he watches it, curled into Lestat, arms wrapped around each other. Lestat is crying too, he knows, both of them watching the last pieces of Claudia burn up. Louis wonders if this will allow her to rest, finally.
“Thank you,” Louis says as they watch the fire start to die down. “For doing this with me.”
Lestat doesn’t answer, just hums and kisses Louis’ temple.
The entire thing is over in 5 minutes, just a pile of light gray ash where the dress used to be. It will blow away through the day, Louis knows, until there is no evidence left. Louis stares at it for a minute or two, rooted in place, until Lestat tugs gently at his arm. Louis follows him indoors reluctantly, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up with him. He hopes for a deep, dreamless sleep.
“Do you need anything to eat before we rest?” Lestat asks, idling in the kitchen.
Louis is a little hungry, but not enough to forgo sleep. “No, cher, let’s just go to bed.”
He tries to wrap his arm through Lestat’s and pull him towards bed, but Lestat doesn’t move. Louis frowns at him, tugging again.
“There is one more thing,” Lestat says hesitantly. There’s something like fear in his eyes, or maybe just apprehension.
“Can it wait til this evening?” Louis asks, not prepared for whatever this will turn into.
Lestat shakes his head. “I need to tell you now, or I never will. I knew what photo you were asking about earlier,” Lestat says. Louis pulls back, mouth ajar. “I noticed it was missing when I woke up. I don’t know why I said I didn’t. Or I do know why, but you won’t like it.”
“I want to know why, still.”
“I wanted a fight,” Lestat says simply. “We hadn’t fought in weeks, and I missed it. So I’m not some paragon of perfect coping mechanisms that you think I am, mon cher.”
Louis snorts. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.” They share a smile. “Why? Did you want a fight?”
Louis asks, even though he thinks he knows the answer, thinks he might agree even. The odd placidity of their relationship out here in the desert, so unlike how they negotiated each other during their first marriage. He misses it too, sometimes. The spark of anger that only Lestat can ignite and only Lestat can put out. They’ve only ever loved each other one way.
“If you fight, it means you care enough to argue rather than leave. There was a time, if you can remember, when anger was the only emotion I could rouse from you, and to feel the beauty of your anger was almost as exquisite as feeling your adoration.”
Louis does remember, and he remembers no one ever being able to get him as angry as Lestat did. He had loved fighting with Lestat, loved finding the exact place to slip the knife through Lestat's armor to do the most damage. It’s a habit he’s trying to kick, out here in the desert, the habit of seeing a soft underbelly and sharpening his teeth.
Maybe at another time, Louis would have the energy to talk this through with Lestat. He would have the patience to understand Lestat’s totally fucked conception of love and attention. But as is, he’s so tired that his eyes are drooping closed as they talk.
“I love you,” he says, stopping Lestat from continuing his introspective monologue. Lestat does shut up, closing his mouth mid-word. “And I don't think you need to purposefully start fights. We’ll always fight, Les; we can’t help it. But can you please try to crave my love as much as you do my anger?”
Lestat is on him in an instant, cupping Louis’ jaw with one hand, the other grabbing Louis’ shoulder. “Louis, I crave your love more than anything in the world. More than the sweetest blood you could taste.”
Louis can’t help but smile fondly. He places a hand on the back of Lestat’s neck and squeezes. “You have it, baby. Just try to remember that next time you wanna goad me into yelling at you, yeah?”
Lestat nods. Before he can say something else, which Louis knows he’s going to since his mouth is open and his head is tilted just so, Louis kisses him. Lestat’s open mouth means Louis can slide his tongue into Lestat’s mouth immediately, kissing Lestat deeply. They’ve spent most of the night apart, and it’s catching up with Louis. He sighs into the kiss, pressing Lestat closer with the hand on the back of his neck.
Lestat melts into it, letting Louis bend his head back slightly to deepen the kiss. The hand on Louis’ jaw holds him delicately, his thumb stroking Louis’ skin. Louis is warm all over, with love, with tiredness, with sadness. He wants to go to sleep so the night can end, but he wants to get up and keep living the next night. That’s progress, right?
“C’mon,” Louis says into Lestat’s mouth. “Let’s go to bed.”
Lestat follows Louis into their bedroom, lying down next to him rather than in the coffin. Wrapped up like they are, so tightly that Louis doesn’t know where one of them begins and the other ends, Louis is hopeful it will ward off both of their nightmares. Or maybe it won’t, but they can be there for one another when they wake up. They have so many nights ahead of them to figure out how to be there for each other in the ways they need.