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The eldest, the favoured, the prodigal son. Oh, it is a delicious burden his Louis must bear. Lestat would have envied him, once, perhaps, for in the whole of his childhood he never tasted the weight of such crowns. Ah, but now, does he not have upon his head the only benediction that matters? He alone survives, and his siblings as – how does he say the word in English? Ah…
Dust.
“Lestat…” Louis moans, and Lestat gathers him a little closer to his side – closer, how can they be closer, is it not his blood in Louis’ veins? But the press of flesh to flesh has its own joyous intimacy (how can the press of wafer to tongue ever compare to this, Lestat wonders, as he often has) – and continues their path down the darkening alleys.
“Shhh, shhh mon cœur, we are nearly home, nearly safe,” he murmurs, nonsensical little things. Louis is all adrift in his arms, nearly wrenching himself free on repeated occasion to gaze in wonderment at the flickering flame of a streetlight or its sisterly reflection gleaming in a pool of collected water at their feet. Lestat remembers it himself, dim with specifics but heavy with magnitude, how magnificent and overwhelming the world first appears once it is viewed through truer, darker eyes. The flame of the fire separating into its coruscating lines, the reflection shimmering in myriad waves.
What painted gilt and stained glass can ever compare to this?
The temptation to release Louis from the curve of his arm is very nearly a palpable taste upon his tongue, as delicious as Louis himself was – and oh, he was superb, exquisitely rich and dark and warm and Lestat had wanted to feast upon him forever but now, now, he has him, forever, and it is the better deal, if one has been struck. He wishes to release him, and watch him bound about the world like a newborn lamb, returning always to sweetly nuzzle at Lestat’s side, or perhaps more apt, like a kestrel released from its tresses, to wreck savage and swift-winged death upon the oblivious little rodents of the world, and return its kill home to share with Lestat.
Two things stay his hand, only two, to keep his palm fixed against the warmth of Louis’ side, warm with its borrowed blood and the lingering heat of his abandoned mortality. Firstly is the encroaching light of dawn, too dim yet for human eyes to see but menacing in its approach. Lestat can feel its flickers like a hearth too close to a hand, and the urge to pull away is the same as the one urging his own and Louis’ feet onwards, to the dark safety of his wood-shuttered rooms.
And the second?
Oh, the second.
Lestat is selfish. He does not wish for Louis to marvel at streetlamps and puddles, still less to be caught up in the sights and sounds of New Orleans at night. He wants him all his, entirely, to gaze in wonder at nothing except Lestat, to be absorbed in nothing but Lestat…
Lestat was not the eldest son, no, and even more so not the favoured nor the prodigal. Not to him the blessed cherished spot of youngest, or the solitary glory of the only girlchild, or even the black-handed gift of the middle child, secure in the centre of the pack. No, to him fell the inverted honour of being counted nothing more than the fourth-born of five sons, dismissed and disregarded, neither a righteous son to bring his father joy or a wise one to bring him rejoicing. Whatever pleasures and happiness Lestat has counted in his years, every one he has had to lay claim to himself.
And now, and now, he has the greatest of them all.
“Here, here, you are here with me now,” he whispers low against the delicate shell of Louis’ ear, a noise that to humans would be merely a breath of air. But Louis tilts his head in response, his body pressing close, close, closer, and Lestat hums his way through the rush of desire that threatens to overwhelm him in the knowledge that soon they will be closer still.
He has to tug Louis past a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in the hall, past their delicate scent to enrapture advanced senses and the pinprick silky definition of their petals, and resorts to bodily carrying him up the stairs, both of them too blood-stained by those fat, sanctimonious priests to risk being seen by his staff. And then, at last, they are within his rooms, and Lestat’s patience is lost to the skies above as he spins Louis round and takes his mouth in a kiss.
“Lestat, Lestat…” begs Louis, clutching at his arms and oh! a bruise! Lestat has not carried such a token in decades. He kisses him again, sweet hot presses of their mouths, enough to satiate the urge within him, for the moment at least, and then draws equal contentment from cradling Louis’ face in his hands.
“You are mine now, my beloved, my eternal immortal beloved,” he promises softly, and Louis grins at him, giddy like the schoolboy.
“What now? What comes next?” he asks, as demanding as that newborn lamb wishing to suckle, and Lestat can only stroke with great tenderness at the sweet brown curve of his cheekbone.
“Anything you wish for. To feed, to feast, to dance in the night, to love until dawn breaks.” He can see in Louis’ eyes that he only has the barest understanding of the beauty of the life that awaits them, but that is of no matter. They have years, decades, centuries for him to learn to cherish it. Right now it is exactly as Lestat wished, exactly as he selfishly grabbed for himself, that tonight the only thing Louis’ heart craves for is Lestat himself.
“Come, come, sit with me,” he coaxes, and Louis folds himself down alongside him on the chaise longue. His gaze carries the weight of every title Lestat has never borne, all the love and adoration that was never his by birth.
Lestat has killed tonight to have him and he will kill a thousand more times to keep him.
“Tomorrow, mon amour, I will teach you to feed,” he says softly, one arm cradling Louis’ head close to him as they lie together, entwined as the vine and the railing do. “Teach you to savour the hunt and the prey and take nourishment from the dark.”
“You will teach me to kill.” Louis says, as blunt as a hammer fall, and Lestat pauses, searching his gaze as though to prise his way through whatever mortal moral tangle is there. Finally he simply shrugs.
“Oui.”
Louis stretches a little within his embrace, his eyes full of thought, but he does not speak. Lestat brushes his lips over the tender skin of his temple, tasting a little of the human sweat that still lingers in that place.
“But that is tomorrow. There is still a little of this evening remaining to us, and then you will sleep, and awake at sunset with the transformation complete.”
That catches his beloved’s attention once more. “It is not yet finished?”
“Not until you awake from your first sleep. But do not be afraid. I will lay down beside you and keep you close,” Lestat promises and Louis closes his eyes as though he experiences either great pleasure or great pain, although Lestat can recall occasions in his past when the two seemed hardly distinguishable. He strokes a single finger down the curve of Louis’ nose and does not show his displeasure at all when Louis tilts his face away.
“Stop pouting like one of my working girls,” Louis tells him, and Lestat feels his displeasure grow, and then again when Louise chuckles and shakes his head. “How’d you ever walk through society without being uncovered in an instant, that’s what I’m asking myself right now.”
“Humanity only titillates itself with thoughts of the unnatural,” Lestat says, waving one hand in quiet dismissal. He does not wish to talk of humanity right now. He had hoped to talk more of Louis and himself and all the pleasant savagery they might inflict upon the world. “They rarely notice when it truly walks among –”
“I ain’t talking about,” Louis taps a finger against his own fang, pauses for a instant in silent contemplation, and then returns his gaze to Lestat’s, one eyebrow arched in condemnation or query, Lestat cannot quite tell. “I’m talking about you being queerer than a shoeshine boy charging a quarter ‘stead of a penny when he’s between a man’s legs.”
“Ah.” Lestat has nothing to say to that, except a mild exasperation for this pig trough of a country. In Paris the boys charge three francs and are all the better skilled for it. A quarter. Ridiculous. No doubt the boys of colour are paid less, if they are even given a choice at all. How utterly barbaric.
“I have a great deal of money,” he says finally. “The preferences they call vices…are all too easy to overlook when one has a great deal of money.”
“Yeah, if you white.” Louis retorts, his accent thickening most enchantingly. Lestat merely nuzzles a little closer to his hair. Louis will learn soon enough to look upon the foibles and principles of humanity with as much amusement as he does. He is so lost in the idea of teaching Louis to shed his human skin that he is caught most unprepared for when his companion tips his head to one side and kisses him.
“Come on then, come on,” Louis pants, air he does not know he does not need. His hands are cool and strong on Lestat’s arms. “Come on, this is what I did it for, this is what I done gone flung myself halfway to hell for. Come on, give it to me.”
In his desperation he is a marvel, in his lust he is sublime. Lestat feels a surging underneath his skin, the blood still warm enough in both of them for this act. What better way to purge the last remnants of human misjudgement from his beloved’s form, than for Lestat to force it out with his own. The thought makes him bite down on Louis’ shoulder, his fangs neatly tucked away, but with a force sufficient to make Louis arch and moan like the most magnificent courtesan of the French court before its fall, let alone the timid little brothels of this town.
“You wish for my touch, my hands, my mouth?” he taunts, stripping Louis of his clothes with far greater skill and accuracy than his companion can bring to bear. “You wish to complete your damnation in my arms, is that what you seek my darling Louis?”
“Yes, yes, damn me, damn us both,” Louis moans, and Lestat can only kiss him harder, so in love with this man who begs for the darkness, until the paper skin of their lips splits and tears and they share the taste of blood between them.
It is the symbol of a new age, the one they shall bring to the world.
Louis’ skin is revealed before him piece by piece, appearing almost too fragile to hold the power now residing within. But then, it has always been a wonder to Lestat that Louis could be contained within a human form at all.
He remembers the first time he saw him, on that street with a knife to his brother’s throat, the street he bought with the few precious trickling pennies of his father’s wealth, the street and the lives of all upon it held within Louis’ palm, on the blade of his knife, under his complete control. Lestat has considered many, in the past, considered them for this gift, but only with Louis did he know it absolutely, immediately, for was not Louis well accustomed already to holding mastery of life and death over others? All Lestat has done is given him fangs.
“You too busy lollygagging back there to fuck me or what?” Louis demands, and Lestat is brought back to the moment from his reveries, a moment that reveals Louis before his eyes in nothing more than his cotton briefs, pale against dark skin. He is a delight to behold, equally more so for the proof of his desire for Lestat’s touch, dampening the fabric more alluringly than the slenderest neck. Lestat reaches, cups, squeezes, and watches Louis shift and startle and accept it all.
“Roll over mon cœur,” he murmurs, and Louis trembles like the throat the blade is against is his own, and rolls.
There is perfumed oil to hand, imported at great expense from Arabia and carrying the scent of a damask rose. Lestat applies it liberally. Of course, it is not needed, but – ah, how shall he say? He wishes for Louis to know all there is of pleasure before he moves him on to pain.
“Mon cher,” he breathes out, and presses himself close.
It is a struggle, a fight, a desperate objection. Lestat withdraws, to stroke and murmur love against the back of his beloved’s neck, the marks he gave him already gone, and then to press close again, and still he cannot enter. He tuts a little, from exasperation only, and Louis makes a sound of frustration and pleading both.
“No, no, keep going. Goddamn your eyes, is this what you baulk at?”
“This is not the body’s resistance my love, but the soul’s.” Lestat’s words summon a silence that deafens. He presses Louis more firmly against the chaise longue beneath them, sprawls himself across the gleaming length of the man’s back, their bodies aligned in the way that would bring pleasure to them both if only Louis would make this last surrender.
If only he would give Lestat everything.
“It is not the pain you fear,” he ponders aloud, rubbing his cheek over the brown slope of Louis’ shoulder. His body is beautiful; Lestat could worship it for hours. “Is it the submission? Is this some expression of your enforced servility to others of my race?” Louis’ breathing quickens beneath him but he is not flung to the floor in the manner he half anticipated. “Hmmm, no, not that. And not the damnation, you begged for that. Come, my darling Louis, tell me, let me inside your heart.”
“An’ how do I know I’m gonna stay in yours once you’re done.” The words drag out from Louis’ chest, half muffled by a velveteen throw cushion of Parisian design. Even to Lestat’s ears he must take a moment to decipher them and once he does he can do no more than throw back his head and laugh.
“Louis, Louis, my love – I have given you the Dark Gift, the greatest of all. I have created in you my most cherished immortal companion. I have brought you to my home, flung open its doors to welcome you here. And you think I am some mortal grunting man to lose interest once I’ve spent inside you?”
“You don’t need to laugh at me,” comes the mutter, as petulant as a child, and Lestat laughs again. He senses that this moment of weakness, of vulnerability, will not come again in such a manner – Louis is not the sort to pout. So Lestat will have to treasure this memory of his darling’s low confidence, and do everything in his power to expel it.
“I laugh from joy at slicing this Gordian Knot,” he promises. “From relief, nothing more mon cœur, at being able to soothe your worries.”
He nudges at Louis’ jawline – sublime, magnificent – until the other man turns his head and their eyes meet and Lestat can press kisses on his cheek till his head turns further and their lips follow. When Louis is soft and pliant beneath him he lets his smile emerge once more.
“Louis…you fret about your place in my heart, how could you, when you fill every vein?”
Louis’ eyes flutter, and Lestat knows he has him.
“And am I not equally in yours? And I always shall be. You are my fledgling; a unbreakable bond. We will never not be part of one another.” He nudges closer, lips and cock both. “Let me in, mon cher.”
The slide is exquisite, as is Louis’ groan, deep and aching and so full of lust it ignites the same in Lestat’s chest. He fucks him as only their kind can, every stroke deep and precise and casually brutal, forcing unneeded gasps from Louis’ chest. He adores this, this joining, for the symphony it creates, each sweet desperate noise a note in their concerto.
“Lestat, please…”
Oh, and the begging is rather lovely too.
“My sweet Louis, my dear sweet Louis,” Lestat croons, shifting a little to vary his entrance. He is promptly enchanted by the little whimper he receives and all the ones that follow, Louis squirming under his relentless assault. It is clear his beloved has never felt pleasure like it. Yet another thing he will experience first at Lestat’s hands, at Lestat’s will.
Lestat could do this for hours – intends to, in the future, to start at dusk and finish at dawn – but sunrise rapidly approaches and he wishes to wash the last human scents from Louis’ body, to dress him in silk and satin and to coax him down into the coffin beside Lestat. The pleasure nearly undoes them both when he lifts Louis’ thigh, savouring the glorious flex beneath his palm, and surges into him with greater vigour. He mouths gently at Louis’ ear.
“Touch yourself my love, I wish to hear you dissolve into pleasure beneath me.”
“Goddamn you,” Louis says, or rather gasps. Lestat bites his lip to conceal his smile. “You banging me like a tin drum here.”
“And you love it.” Lestat informs him, and relishes the grumble that is his only response. He moves his hips, relentless and overpowering, savouring every slick sound the motion brings and shaking apart the foundations of them both. He can sense how his lover is toeing the brink, feel the tension coiled within him and smell the rising need. “Come, darling, just a little more.”
“Oh, fuck, please, please…”
“What is it? What do you beg for?”
“In…in me.”
“Oh darling, I am.” Lestat fucks a little harder, in case Louis needs the reminder, but his lover only tosses his head, desperation lining his brow, and Lestat summons his neglected mercy and slows, lets the words make their way forward.
“No – I want…I want the rest. In me. Your cock, your blood…” Louis struggles mightily, the strength of a desperate man, to reach up and tap at his temper, the same spot where Lestat tasted his sweat. “Your mind. All of it. I want all of you.”
Oh mon cher, my darling, my love…Lestat knows his thoughts must barely be fragments but he sends them out nonetheless, his own desperation now rushing forward, borne on a swell of helpless love. It fills him, overwhelms him, overspills him to flow into Louis as well, sobbing in relief as he spends helplessly over his own hand, the two of them joined in ways no mortal could ever conceive of, and Lestat surrenders himself as well, lost completely in the love.
In the aftermath, he too gulps for breath, transformed into light. What pulpit could ever promise something so divine as this?
The dawn comes, as it tends to, and Lestat achieves all his goals, as he tends to. Louis is bathed and bedecked in all the finery mortal money can buy, and nestled close to Lestat’s breast in the coffin. He will have to procure a second one, he knows, but for now this is the sweetest embrace.
“What are you thinking of?” Louis asks. Lestat opens one eye, peers down at his form in a darkness even their eyes cannot penetrate. He wants to ask why Louis does not sleep, but he already knows. The first sleep is the final step, and Louis fears to take it.
“Deuteronomy,” he shrugs, and feels Louis’ mouth move without sound against his neck.
“Deu – why the Devil you lying here thinking ‘bout the scriptures?”
“Deuteronomy 21:17.” Lestat offers, and then extends further when his companion’s confusion does not diminish. “The son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.”
“Which means?”
“I do not know. I have never known. The privilege of the eldest son has never been mine.” Lestat says into the dark. All that Lestat has, he has fought for and won, and yet his battles and his victories are nothing, nothing compared to what his beloved has achieved in his short stumpy little mortal life. What will he now do, unfettered?
“Well, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Firstborn an’ all that. Being born first ain’t nothing I done earn.” Louis says, pressing the soft tip of his nose to the hollow of Lestat’s throat. It tickles and he recoils, only to press himself back a mere breath later. To separate now is agony.
“Yes.” Lestat agrees. “Our strength is our own. We need no others to give us our rights. Do you hear me, Louis? What we desire, we will earn. What we want, we will take.”
There is only silence. Louis is asleep, his surrender complete. He will wake at dusk and he will be so terribly hungry, and Lestat will have to teach his love to hunt, to take, and forge them both crowns of their own to wear long after all those they have known and who’ve known them have crumbled into dust. He smiles, and sleeps himself.
Dusk will come, and a new age.