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Even in his most indulgent reservoirs of remaining faith, Lestat knew Louis had many reasons for seeking him out that night. Louis needed confirmation of things he already knew. Desired closure to his entanglement with Armand. Sought to share the burden of his grief with one who understood its tremendous weight. And perhaps most of all he required a witness to his burgeoning transformation. Felt a call to return to his maker and show himself to be yet again remade, ready and able to carry his new found resolve back to the city that had held their darkest days.
But none of those wishes required Louis to take Lestat’s hands in his. Nor to offer him shelter from the storm.
“I have a place,” Louis said simply, bashful in the thunderous rain. “Come with me.”
“Is it near?” Lestat found himself asking. Foolishly so. As if anywhere could be too far. As though he would not have followed Louis anywhere.
Louis shook his beautiful head, leading the way without another word. The hotel was indeed far, in the very heart of the city. They met barred front doors when they reached the establishment, shut tightly against the building rapids of rainwater. Poor protection against the elements as the humans were cowering inside, hunkered down under the flicker of their failing light bulbs. It was no matter to them, and only a short climb in scaling the forty-nine stories to the single window Louis left unlatched in his departure.
Lestat dripped from head to hem over the Saxony carpet. Louis sealed the entranced behind them.
“I didn’t know if I’d be coming back here,” Louis admitted. A hesitant moment stood between them, soaked and windblown and frightened. “I wasn’t sure what I might find on Rue Royale. If you, or if I…”
He turned from Lestat, watching back out to the dark twisting of the hurricane, gathering himself in the writhing mists.
“I didn’t plan for this, is all.”
Lestat nodded, his own gaze never budging from the outline of Louis’ shape. It was a familiar picture, every detail etched into his mind. The length of his body, the curve where his neck greeted his slender shoulders, the width of his stance. Whenever Lestat dreamed of Louis, his traitorous heart remembered him just like this; the back of his head, facing an eternity far from Lestat’s reach.
“I understand if you've changed your mind…” He told him, feeling a tightness in the hinge of his jaw. It pained him then to speak the words he knew he must. "And if you wish it… I can go.”
Louis spun back around and Lestat trembled where he stood. This part never happened in his dreams.
And those green eyes. Still so luminous. So perfect.
“I didn't say that."
“And I will not make you say it.” Lestat shrugs, pitiful and small. Seventy years of silence have offered him a great deal of reflection on all the things Louis never said. Or cannot say. “It was a kind offer. Most generous. But you, you are not required to… it would be unfair to… and I…” Flustered, frustrated, he shakes his head. Meaning dissolves in his mouth, no better than ash. A thousand nights of grief and longing behind him, so much time lost to ravings and ravaged anger. It had never once occured to him to wonder what he would say in this moment he had so wished for.
Lestat musters what he prays is a serene smile. One without demand behind it. He took a shuffling half step toward the window. “It is wrong of me to impose—”
A flicker moved through Louis. Cautious. Fearful. New. So rare was it to see his features betray him, it gave Lestat pause.
Worse, it gave him hope.
“Stop that, you hear?” Louis spoke shortly, directly, an echo from the past creeping into his voice. There it was, his accent, his mother tongue. Louis du Lac, the son of New Orleans. “You go on and sit, and I’ll get you something to dry off with. Maybe something warm to wear, too.”
“Well,” Lestat shrunk back, sitting at the foot of the hotel bed. “If you insist.”
“And I do insist.”
Louis disappears into another room, leaving Lestat to drink in his grand accommodations. The penthouse suite was fit for royalty, richly decorated and well furnished. The bed was so massive the room felt as though it was built around it and the ceiling was high, holding swaying glass fixtures by bronze chains. Yet there was something strangely sterile about the framed art on the walls. Black and white photographs sapped of life and color. On his feet, Lestat inspected each, familiar sights of the city with unfamiliar automobiles and street fashions. Time had stolen much of the luster of the past.
Or perhaps the beauty of the city had stolen away that night all those years ago, packed away with Louis and Claudia.
“There ain’t much to see in those old photographs,” Louis dismissed, returning with a stack of towels. “All boring, the lot of them. Too pretty, too quiet. They just hang there for the sake of it, not showing anything of interest.”
Its a foreign sensation, to speak of something so casual, so pointless. But Lestat could listen to Louis like this for hours. He wanted to beg him to say more. Falling on old habits, he dared a little to poke and prod, hoping to goad Louis into speaking further.
“How could they be interesting,” he teased, giving a false sneer, “after all, I’m not in any of them.”
Something changed then. He felt the air hitch around Louis. Felt it freeze. He stood a moment too long, a ways off from Lestat, blinking quickly, trying to focus his eyes. He looked as though he were seeing a ghost. Or as though he were afraid one had found him.
“Lestat? Are you really… Are you—”
His voice was arrested. Distant, removed from this room. He looked so lost. Lestat did not know what to do.
“Yes, Louis? I’m here.”
He did not know why that felt like the thing to say. It took all the courage in him to reach for Louis hand. To steady him. The touch blossomed into something behind Louis’ eyes. Something satisfactory enough to change course within, to set his breathing right.
“We’re here, Louis. We’re here.”
And even when their hands fell away from each other, Lestat knew Louis had returned to himself once more.
“Its… its just corporate art. Some throwaway samples a hotel design committee voted on. The least objectionable images they could find. Wanted to… evoke the city without engaging the it.” Lestat hummed, listening intently despite knowing Louis was avoiding something even as he spoke. “Its barely art; made to offend the least amount of people, and to please even less.”
Laughing softly, Lestat accepted a proffered towel. Wringing dampness from his hair he watched Louis sort through his trunks and suitcases. The silence was returning as he busied himself. Lestat detested it. Again, seeking something, anything to say.
“It seems your time with Armand has made you into a snob.”
He said it without thinking. He wanted to take it back. To unsummon the specter of the man between them.
But the mention did not deter Louis. He didn’t miss a beat spreading out clean, dry fabrics at the head of the bed. A pair of black trousers, a black blouse, black undershirt, black socks. With hands in his pockets, utterly unphased, he looked pensive for a second, rocking on his heels. He wrinkled his nose.
“You wouldn’t believe it but in all our years, Armand never seemed to actually care that much about art. Not really.”
“He disliked the theater, too, when I knew him.” Lestat caught a small smile from Louis. It felt strange, as if they were trading innocent secrets. “A man of appalling taste, truly.”
“We don’t have to talk about him.” A gentle nudge of a promise.
“Then what should we speak of? If not the decor, then the weather perhaps?”
A rumble shook the building that never next moment and Louis grinned, so brilliantly and true, as if it were possible that the lightning striking on cue were Lestat’s doing. Lestat might have floated away then and there, giving into the Cloud Gift as he had not done in over seventy years.
Yet his feet held firm to ground in the growing puddle of water pooling at his shoes.
“Lets decide that once you’re warm and dressed.”
Louis was behind him then, helping Lestat shoulder off the moth-eaten gold and tawny robe he wore. Louis appeared ready to leave the room again. Ready to grant Lestat privacy more out of formality than anything. “I’ll leave the wet things in the bathroom. Have someone take care of them.”
“I’ll need those back,” Lestat called after him, too loud, too urgent. A seizing fear overtook him. That the security of his ancient attire might disappear along with Louis.
Louis raised a single brow at him. Lestat tried to walk back his foolishness.
“My clothes, I mean. They… they are special made, you know. There are no others like them. Tailors aren’t what they used to be.”
More nonsense spilling from his mouth. But Louis is forever gracious.
“Yes. I know, Lestat. I know.” Its pure kindness as he folds the dingy garments over, handling them with the utmost care. He looks down, musing quietly. “Gold… Yellows… it was, it was always a good color on you two.”
Lestat doesn’t ask if he means Armand, or someone else.
“It is. But black is dull against my coloring.” Lestat scooped up the dark offerings. Soft. Good quality. He expected nothing less of Louis. “Though perhaps it is fitting…If you mean to dress me as a penitent, that is.”
“That’s not—” Louis caught himself sighing bemusedly. “Those are the only clothes I have that might fit you. Old things I’ve been meaning to get rid of.”
Louis appeared ready to step away again, to offer Lestat privacy. Lestat removed his shirt before he saw something was sticking out of the back pocket of the dry trousers. A piece of paper. Lestat unfolded it, turned it over in his hands.
A first class ticket. For a return trip to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Lestat swallowed. He wanted to shred the offending paper to pieces.
But he doesn’t.
“Louis?” he called, voice brittle. “Louis, I think you’ll need this back.”
It was obvious that he was trying not to look too intently at Lestat and his bared chest, and it would have been a victory if not for the damning evidence he held. The promise of distance. The reminder that this reunion could not last. Louis would be lost to him again.
“That’s not… I didn’t realize that was there.” He accepted it back, folding it back on its creases. “And I don’t need it. All that stuff is electronic these days… they just sometimes hand out hard copies for the sake of it.”
Lestat turned back, dressing himself. The black felt more appropriate then. Funeral attire.
“It’s getting late. We should turn in—”
“Lestat.” Only his name but with the tired edge to it. He didn’t want to explain himself. And Lestat did not want to hear it. “Wait, let me—”
“It is fine, Louis. You owe me nothing. And the sun is coming closer, behind the storm… Let us go to coffin now and when the time comes, I promise… I will see you off.”
“I…” Louis at a loss for words. Lestat could marvel at it, though it pained him. “I just… I didn’t…”
“The coffins, Louis,” Lestat prompted. “Where are the coffins?”
“Right. Right.” He hesitated. Scatched at his head. “So, about that.”
Rather than explaining, Louis led Lestat across a threshold, into a further room where the couches and tables have been pushed aside to make way for a single dismantled wooden crate that carried a coffin.
A single coffin.
Lestat found himself holding in air, not daring to expel it. There was no where else a second coffin could have been stored.
“Louis?” Lestat asked, head cocked to the side. “Where is the other—”
“I told you at the start, I didn’t plan this!” Louis bit his lip. He knew they would come to this realization. He had to have known. “Look. It’s fine. We’ll just have to—”
“Say our goodbyes,” Lestat finished for him, solemn but firm as he did so. He could not waver on this. Because if Louis were to offer such an unthinkable thing, to answer the call of the coffin together, to give into the tradition of their kind, to offer that sacred security alongside his being… Lestat could not take it.
He would not survive.
“I thank you for your hospitality. Your… your grace. And your gifts… I will take my leave and—”
“Lestat, there is a hurricane out there,” Louis cut in, incredulous. As if Lestat had anything to fear from a meager storm. “You have no where to go but here. Your old place is either flooded or blown to nothing.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“No, Louis. I truly cannot.” Blood pricked at his eyes, tears threatening to fall. “But I will find somewhere to endure. You know I always do.”
“Where? There is no where out there to go, and I only just got you clean and dry—”
“I’ve slept in stranger beds than you can imagine. Under floorboards, in basements, in river muck, under heaps of grave dirt.”
Louis shook his head, primed to argue.
“Neither the storm nor the sun will take me, Louis. This I promise, if… if that’s what you fear. You do not need to worry for me. Nor do you need to shelter me here. You have no obligation. None.”
“Maybe I don’t.” Louis snapped. His first sign of anger. He choked it back, trying again. “But if you leave, then I’m following after you.”
“What?” He stepped back, not believing his ears. “No. Absolutely not.”
“If you bed down in the river or the dirt or anywhere else, I’m gonna be right behind you.” He crossed his arms. “So the choice is yours. Where are we staying tonight? Here, in my perfectly fine suite, or out there in the wilds? Pick now.”
Lestat narrowed his brow. “I won’t let you. I won’t allow it. You wouldn’t be protected, you’d be exposed—”
“No more than you—”
“Stop, Louis.” He held his hand aloft. “You’re being cruel, even if you think you aren’t… and we both know and you’re bluffing.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes, I am. I know you, Louis. And I know you well. Softness, finery, warmth and beauty; it all calls to you. It cradles you. You would never give any of it up to win… whatever it is you think you’ll be winning here, between us. You need this too much; you and your creature comforts.”
Lestat turned toward the latched window. The storm raged beyond the panes, unmoved. It felt then as if it would hang over them forever. But there was less to fear out there than in here, with Louis. If he gave into this now, this old calling…
No. He could not let himself.
His hand hovered over the lock.
A shadow moved over his being. Louis stood behind him.
“If what I need is comfort then… then be my comfort, Lestat.”
Its a simple request. It is his final undoing. He’s overcome. He’s lost. Unthreaded at the seams, Lestat’s feet move under their own power, back to the luxurious polish of the solitary coffin, back to the fleeting call of the past, back to his own long denied desires.
He’d forgotten how hard this was; saying no to Louis had always been an impossibility.
His heart is still behind him. Hand at his back, as though he were blind and relied upon guidance to make it through the dark. Louis whispers softly to him as Lestat lifts the hinged lid.
“Thank you, Lestat.”
“Don’t.” He half-murmured, half-sobbed. “Don’t thank me for this.”
Not when there was no telling if he could let Louis go when the moon rose next.
“I know what I’m asking… and I can’t ask you for more. And I can’t promise you more. More than one night. Because I don’t know what the next night has in store for us. I just know that now… now I have to be truthful. I swore to myself, that I would try… And I want this… honestly.”
Like a man condemned, Lestat climbed in first. He waited for the killing blow as slowly, carefully, Louis eased in next to him. He settled half atop Lestat without a touch of awkwardness, as if no time had passed. Still a perfect fit.
God. It was ruinous. He smelled radiant. He felt effortless and whole and alive. Lestat had only known with certainty these past few hours that he lived and yet it was then, tucked against him that the truth bore down upon him. Louis was alive. Louis was alive. From the beat of his heart, the movement of his breath, the delicate brush of his eyelashes. So very alive and here with him, willing to sink into the dark embrace of sleep in Lestat’s arms, their knees together, all their bones and sinews remembering their rightful place.
Closing the coffin, the blessed darkness sealed them. And that ever present cord so tightly wrapped around his heart did not loosen. It tightened its stranglehold.
Then, one last sound.
“Lestat?”
Brokenly, he let out a fragile sound. “Yes, mon couer? Yes?”
Louis wiped the tears from his cheeks. His only salve against the agony.
“Just hold me, and sleep.”
fin.