Making It Work - literary_genius (2024)

Chapter 1: A New Odyssey

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It’s hard, with people like Lestat, to blame them for how they are. I think really and truly that he couldn’t change who he turned out to be even if he went to church and made himself abject to somebody’s god or society’s rules of engagement.

Lestat’s brain just don’t work like that.

I think of Paul, my brother—I have experience with people whose brains don’t work like other folks. It’s not Paul’s fault that his death was… premeditated… nor that he heard from those birds every day until he died (may he rest in heaven, Lord if you exist, he was innocent). It was nobody’s fault at all. Just like I can’t even blame Lestat’s upbringing for how many colors of f*cked up he is, and all the things he has done.

This is not an apologetic record trying to paint my Lestat in a positive light. He was never a perfect man, and he isn’t a faultless vampire, but he’s mine. Nor am I writing any of this because I’m sharing him with any of you who may read this after we’re gone. This is for me— to see the beast as well as the man, and to have something to return to in order that I might reflect on him without too many liberties taken with what my friend Daniel calls “the odyssey of recollection.”

Since I’ve got all eternity, apparently, to love Lestat and fight him and hate him and want him, I’m trying to do something that will be mature and healthy for the both of us, since couple’s therapy is a suggestion he would laugh hysterically at. That is, if there were a therapist who could legally and practically handle hearing about our centuries-long battles and surrenders and all their many mistakes and grisly details, which most mortals would not have known how to live through for the sheer magnitude of the mental scarring they would have accrued.

Lestat is not perfect, but neither am I. I caused him much pain at several points in our relationship, which now I look back to with a grimace.

But mostly, Lestat is sensitive. It’s what I fell in love with—his drama and constant attunement to his audience (which has included me for 115 years now), and his way of seeing what his extreme vanity would have you think he overlooked. Delicate as a turntable’s needle, is his finger on the pulse of desire and tragedy. It’s how he could profess his love to me and make me feel seen and safe and adored… something that most of my human life, until him, I’d never experienced. It’s how he can show up after years of us pretending to hate the other, that he can have me falling in love all over again, questioning why I ever let him go when everything I thought I hated was all I needed from him.

Anyway. It’s September 2025. We’re back together, and we live in Seattle, on the water so we can hear the boats go by every night when it’s time to wake up.

He’s driving me insane.

Chapter 2: We Interrupt This Broadcast

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Hi, Lestat here. The thing you should know about Louis is that he is very prone to exaggeration. It’s a symptom of his moroseness and being a bookworm— he simply must embellish every simple fact of life with mountains of suggestive nuance.

Yes, we live in Seattle— a city that is very gay and somehow not very fun. Louis, naturally, loves it here. The humans are just like him— denying their bodies their natural urge to consume their lesser animals’ flesh, and instead raving about veganism and the philosophical pitfalls of the technology age. I swear, all the virgins that are included in the studies blaming women for men not having sex by 30 live here.

Anyway, my husband has a tendency to exaggerate, as I was saying. He doesn’t understand that you all don’t experience the world exactly as he does, and that against his presupposition, he doesn’t have to defend me because I have a powerful fanbase— and no they’re not just the groupies from my very successful glam rock band— they’re those studious and masoch*stic enough to have trudged through the many, many lurid details of my and his difficult but (I warn the deluded competitors) loving marriage.

Of course, we’ve had our fights, and of course, I’ve been wrong and unrepentant many a time (blame my father), but also our sweet Louis has broken this heart time and time again. What is a vampire to do when in love with someone so self-effacing and yet so righteous as to be certain that 90% of the time I am the villain? I admit to being the problem only 70% of the time, and that percentage can be blamed on my ambition and tenacity in love.

I would withstand hell for Louis, but only if he is in hell with me. It is terrible, but it is the truth. I love him so much I’d rather kill him or let him kill me than to know he hates me. Thankfully, I know he never truly has. Louis is the kindest person I know, and you little voyeurs are lucky to have him entertain you. (Yes, Louis, I see that this is another collaboration with your geriatric boy, Daniel. You’re shy but you are an exhibitionist— the paradoxes have always been strong, with you.)

He says I am sensitive, Louis does, and I submit to his opinion; however, I am most sensitive to his brutal judgments of me than I am to anyone or anything else. I say that not to make him feel bad or hold back when he’s giving me a sometimes-deserved tongue-lashing, but because I know that many of you who are new to this are going to enjoy putting me in a box of childlikeness, and I will have you know, I won’t appreciate it. I’m sensitive like a bomb, not like a f*cking moonflower. I say this for Louis’ benefit as he carries on with this exposition so that you all don’t infantilize or deify me (it’s exhausting being a god) while he takes all the blame for being a challenging, pessimistic, relentless stick in the mud. Others’ words, not mine.

Anyway, I will log off this blog now. Is this place considered a blog? The internet still baffles me.

Chapter 3: We're Granduncles

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Back to your regularly scheduled programming. (It’s Louis again.) I’m sorry about Lestat— he is rude, but he makes a point— you all are voyeurs and I am, for personal/beneficial reasons or not, making our private lives public once more, and he is allowed to have feelings about that. (Lord, I sound like the author of that book I read on communication and emotional intelligence.) Lestat did in fact break into my laptop to ascertain what I was doing, but still. I am willing to concede that he made good points. This is not to become a collaborative work, if our argument had any point and I can be said to have gotten my perspective across. If he wants to qualify my words, he can do so on his own blog. Anyway, that would work more fluidly and not disrupt the narrative arc—

[Lestat, here, editing this, to say that this last remark is bullsh*t, and I will be doing no such thing, thank you very much: you will read from me again in future chapters; a different conclusion, after our rehashed argument, has been reached.]

Before I was turned… before I met Lestat, I thought to myself that I would have a wife and kids. I would be a good uncle. I’d leave a legacy of excellence even though I would never be myself. I had something to invest in. My entire life, a number of calculated business transactions. I preferred treating myself as merchandise.

Then Lestat came and there was all of the stuff that you’ve read about already in the other scattered records I’ve entrusted to Daniel’s publication. But I don’t think I ever really talked about how much loving myself— no, even liking myself— was foreign to my mind and even to my body. I couldn’t do it seriously. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror and believe that I was someone who sought such a frivolous thing as love, much less could even enjoy or deserve love. I was a man of limited emotional range. I had to be, or else I’d expand outwards and find belatedly that my foundation was but a narrow strip within the crust of the earth, about the width of my family’s house, and that any expansion would not be accommodated.

Lestat challenged me to demand things— to want things for myself, and not just for others— to see my inherent value to him as a human being, not as an industrious mind and wily businessman. He challenged me to do this by being himself. His demanding, difficult, needy self.

I call him needy lovingly, and only because I acknowledge that I was (and perhaps still am) more so. For example, I need him to text me when he’s coming home because the idea that he might stay out too late, overestimating the cover of the overcast skies and subsequently get burnt to a crisp by an unexpected dawn, can leave my teeth on edge with anxiety for hours until I hear him open and shut the door and saunter in, all suave blond hair and catlike smugness.

I need him to console me after our fights, whispering sweet things in my hair, winding the coils meditatively around his deft and lovely fingers until they are stretched out of style (or sometimes if he’s considerate of my mood, his winding will result in him actually braiding my hair himself— and rather passably too; he learned many things in our time apart, how to do Black hair being one of them). In these times, I need to smell him and hear him say he knows that I love him very much, and am very sorry for the years I pretended I didn’t, and that he believes me, and would never grow cold against me, tired of my melancholy and bottomless sorrow.

I have always dealt with what a friend called “anticipatory grief.” As a vampire, it’s part of the deal. You watch the world die and your friends die, and it becomes boring because you foresee it — you watch it as if it’s happening in slow motion, and sometimes you want it to happen— to just happen, already. It’s why I can’t ever let a good thing exist and be mine. I couldn’t let Lestat be mine because even him, I anticipated growing tired of me. Of throwing me away.

If you recall a night I recounted in my book, the question I put to him when I found out about his sidepiece (whose name I prefer not to speak or write), “Aren’t I enough?” was so painful to even utter because I knew the answer. I knew I was more than enough, somewhere deep down, but I needed him to confirm it. To say it. To mean it. To convince me. To fight for me— or at least to stave off with all his strength and passion the part of myself that despised my ambitions for feelings of completeness.

I know it’s pathetic.

I did tend to loyalty-check him, often. With the absence of Claudia— our child, our joy, and our sister— when she went away those seven years to acquire her hard-won education, I tested his patience. I loved to do it. I loved when he proved my darkest feelings were right— when he would go off and f*ck that singer— that white, soft-skinned, big-bosomed, birthing-hipped effigy of a love that I knew he deserved.

He deserved everything, and I was nothing. I gave him nothing. I neither gave him anything of my body, nor anything from my hand in the form of material peace offerings, nor did I allow him the simple joy he’d take in plying me with gifts, spoiling me with comfort and excitement, as is the way he often shows his love. I took those opportunities from him and slowly let my soul decay, making him watch because I could not let him be the victor in the battle I fought my whole life. I could not let him save me and show me something better and more useful to the world than hating myself.

Those years, I was a rotting carcass in that house. I was misery and I wanted him to hate me, to show me how wrong I was in ever trusting the many beautiful things we’d shared that had led to our unholy union.

I tell you all this for a few reasons.

1. As an act of atonement to my dear Lestat, whom I love more than myself, and for whom now I will finally proclaim it proudly, as he deserves;
2. To sort out my own head to my own self: this isn’t pure exhibitionism;
3. To give you a reason why we’re in Seattle where, it happens, live my nieces (the twins) and their children, and my nephew’s children. My nephew, Ben, has since passed away, while the twins are in their 100s— 113, now. I think they will die soon.

Family has always been my reason, and now I think I am finally willing and able to be an uncle— and a granduncle— to them. I don’t know what this will entail, but I can’t stand another decade or more without having become something of the man I’d hoped to be.

I know some would say that I am better now than I was as a human, and perhaps ever could have been— but I haven’t been someone’s family. I know, I know. I’ve had Lestat. I loved and I still love, Lestat. But I wanted my sister’s kinship. I wanted that. I wanted to be a brother to her and to Paul for as long as I lived. And I can’t. These younger grandnieces and grandnephews… I can know them. I can love them. I can help them.

This is perhaps a foolhardy plan, but I think it’s high time Lestat and I paid our dues to the filial. I always did think he would make a perfect uncle.

Chapter 4: We're So Mature

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I had Daniel on standby as I composed my first email to my grandnieces and grandnephews. It had to be done carefully and with tact. I was out of touch with humans and I feared it showed.

Long story short, though, I received their answers, and now I have invited them over for dinner at our residence.

Lestat is not overjoyed, needless to say.

“I just don’t understand why you can so easily pop our bubble of bliss for a few children who will look at us and think it’s a joke. I mean, do I look old enough to be anyone’s great-uncle? Do you, mon coeur? Much less to some barely stable forty-somethings.”

“Lestat, I swear if you purposely try to disrupt this evening, I will nail you inside your coffin.”

“You already do that every other night, these days, mon cher— much better than you do it in the bed, even, I’ll tell you. The leverage is much more advantageous, non?”

“You’re so f*cking annoying.”

“You love it,” he chuckled and his eyes were sweet, pupils large and bright as they were when he was about to feed or when he was feeling playful.

“I love you,” I corrected him, “but there’s no hope in fixing that. Please can you just… just try not to run them off. Don’t say anything weird or pull out your mindgames sh*t.”

“What are you going to do, Louis? Are you going to sit them down at the table and say very seriously, ‘Children, the reason I have been absent from your life and that of your dying mothers and aunties is that once I almost ate your Uncle Ben when he was a newborn. Since then, I have changed, and I have summoned you because I want your love and to meet your babies in exchange for money and apology gifts.’ Honestly, darling, when I first met you, I never thought I’d have to say this as much as I do, but you are too optimistic.”

“You know, Lestat, sarcasm during serious conversations really does piss me off.” Recalling that I should state how it makes me feel instead of stating the reaction I want to express, I took a breath and said, feeling stupid and embarrassed, “I feel like you’re trying to make me feel stupid.”

He huffed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling because he knew this communication was the influence of a book I read (and made him peruse) about having effective and mindful conversations. “Mon Dieu— alright, fine.” He set his hand on his hip and struck a familiar co*ck-hipped pose. Then realizing what he was doing, he tried a more neutral body language. “Thank you very much for telling me,” he said through tight lips. “Of course, I don’t want to make you feel stupid, my love— how can you be stupid? I only mean to… express concern,” he said carefully, “that this might not go as you anticipate. I do not wish for you to feel disappointment or hurt. It would break my heart because there would be nothing I can do.”

The rankled beast in me lowered its hackles, and I sighed, nodding. “I know. But do you see why I have to try this?”

As usual, he seemed surprised as the words left his mouth and even more surprised that my reaction was so positive to it— or at least that I didn’t seem ready to slap him, or else withdraw emotionally from him.

After a moment, he nodded and folded his arms, leaning against a doorframe. “Yes, I understand. I want the night to go well, Louis— I wouldn’t sabotage it, you should know that.”

“Yes, I do know it. Thank you, and… I’m sorry for assuming the worst.”

He nodded, looking down at the floorboards. “You have every right to. I’ve not been easy or kind when there has been competition for your attention and affection.”

“I’m glad you’re conscious of that…. Damn, who are we? Could we always have talked like this?”

“No. And all from a few books. See? We don’t need couples’ therapy.”

“I don’t know about that, but sure, as long as you keep this thing going.”

“We’re so mature,” he smirked and slowly, slinkily walked in my direction. “A couple of grownups.”

“Yes,” I agreed and set my hand on his waist, marveling as always at its narrowness, his compactness, able to be felt even under his clothes. “We are grown. We have grown a lot, haven’t we?”

“Yes. And you’re so sexy these days when you speak like a therapist at me.”

I cuffed his ass and squeezed, relishing the gasp of pleasure.

“I bet I am.”

With an affectation of meekness, he balanced his arms on my shoulders, lacing his fingers together behind my neck, and whined softly, eyes boring into mine.

“What can I do for you, baby?” I asked, voice a little deeper, a little huskier in subconscious response to his feminized method of seduction.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked, pouting in that way I couldn’t resist.

“You want a reward for being good? And for future insurance that you won’t act a fool when we meet the kids?”

“I don’t need such insurance— I’ll be good for you. I’ll be so good for you, St. Louis,” he purred and molded himself against my body so I could feel his erection but also could be reminded how deeply he could arch his broad and muscular back.

“Spoiled ass…” I mumbled

“You like my ass spoiled, don’t you?” he grinned, and his fangs came out to play.

I gave a grunt of agreement and kissed him.

“You should put it in its place though,” he said, eyes heavy-lidded. “I’d thank you.”

“How do you mean?”

“If you wanted to take your less polite and communicative feelings out on me— teach me a lesson so I won’t ‘act a fool,’ I’d say, ‘Thank you, Daddy.’ And then I’d present myself for f*cking in whichever manner you desire.”

I shook my head, even though the thought made my neck and cheeks warm. “Lestat, how many times you gonna ask me to beat you? It’s not happening.”

He rolled his eyes. “Not beat me, Louis, simply spank me. I’d like it very much.”

“I get the distinction, but I done told you, I don’t want to hurt you no more. Not even playing around. It’s a bad idea. Will start something in me, and I don’t want to get used to just whaling on you when you piss me off. It would be too often— every f*cking day.”

“Well, see, darling that would be the point. I wouldn’t be pissing you off as much with the probability hanging over my head that I may have to answer for it later.” I scoffed and shook my head again. “Come on, Louis. You’ve been topping a lot lately, and it’s gotten me so excited. I’d forgotten how much I like it when you take charge. And you like it too. I know, I know, you prefer it the other way around, mostly— I don’t expect you to stay on top indefinitely, that’s not what I’m saying— but when you boss me around and you express yourself as you have done lately… I don’t know. It does something new to me. I’d like you to consider it, my love.”

“I know some other vampires would find that kind of dynamic strange since you’re my maker.”

He shrugged. “Yes, well… you are also the only person I would lay down my life for. You are not simply a lamb to me, but my companion heart. My reason to continue. I love you dearly and am subject to your every whim— your every unhappy face. If they knew anything, they would know that this is how it always has been and always will be. I am but a servant to you, Louis. A naughty servant who mouths off a lot, but a servant nonetheless.”

“I’ll think about it.”

His grin widened and he passed his clawed hand over my hair, tugged on a curl, and got caught up arranging it. I closed my eyes and enjoyed it. I love it when he plays with my hair because I know he loves it so much.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

“Don’t go out of your way to give me a reason though. I won’t take the bait.”

“No, no of course not. Of course not.” He clasped my face in his hands and kissed my lips. “I only want this if you do. Of course not.”

Chapter 5: Housekeeping

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Hi, readers, it’s Lestat, again. All of that was very sweet, and again, Louis’ disregard for our sexual privacy is shocking to me— but arousing. Though you perverts don’t get to see the weirdest stuff we get up to, believe me. (Unless? I’m pointedly staring at you reading this Louis.)

You see at this time, Louis and I were communicating splendidly. The sex was even better. I hadn’t been f*cked so ardently and with such satisfying results since we got back together the first time and when he beat me to a bloody pulp. I was very happy, and I wore my wounds proudly. But I know my Louis, and I like to see him satisfied beyond compare. While my considerable considerables can put him to sleep like a baby, I also know that for him, he needs his mind made love to. He needs to feel understood.

While I pride myself on knowing him better than anyone on this earth, I do also know that I’m an incorrigible brat. The vampires, of course, call me the Brat Prince, and not for no reason. Louis and his levelheadedness, his sternness and composure amid my chaotic badness is not only an immense turn-on for me, but it is also the reason why he is the only person who will ever have my entire heart and as much of my body and devotion as he can take.

He knows this, but of course, his abysmally low self-esteem doesn’t allow him to believe this in his spirit.

So what is a loving husband to do? Well, the answer came to me to give him the means by which to keep me in line. Sure, I’d take perverse pleasure in being perhaps whipped and beaten by my usually so-restrained Louis, but I am not immune to pain and its deterring promises. And Louis is strong now. He can make me hurt for days if he wanted to. And I know in brief flashes of irritation, he has wanted to.

So I’ve been bringing up the idea ever so frequently. Each time that I mention it, it seems to appeal to him a little bit more.

This dinner party with the younglings is getting closer at hand. Louis has hired cleaners to sanitize and upholster our house and what he feels are its elements lacking warmth.

“Why does this place feel so cold?” he grumbled. “I mean, aesthetically.”

“You were influenced by Armand’s ascetic, psychopathic tastes, mon cher. You know I am much more baroque in my sensibilities.”

“Why are there so many random specks of blood on the wall? Are you trying to terrify them? You need to clean up after yourself better, Lestat. The cleaners can’t even reach up there.” He wet an invention called the Magic Eraser, and directed me to a high place where could be barely seen a smudge of blood from my last meal— or perhaps a meal some weeks ago, who knows?

“As if our immortality and bloodthirst is not terrifying enough. The world has progressed, but not by much, Louis. Certainly not as far as our kind is concerned.” I took the white sponge and rose in the air to tend to it, trying my best not to show my distaste for such charlatan work. Once I cleaned up one smudge, there was another right above it or somewhere else. However, I admit, watching the sponge disappear as one uses it is fascinating.

“I just want it to be nice here,” my sweet, hopeful Louis said with so much woeful wist in his eyes that I could have squeezed his cheeks and pulled him to my breast like a mother to her child. “I want them to feel at home here.”

Cynical bastard I am, I did not comfort him, but told him the truth. “They won’t. They have their own homes. I hate to dash your optimism, my darling, but how do you know they won’t appear with pitchforks and tiki torches?”

“They said they’d heard stories about us. They’re curious. Wouldn’t you be?”

“I can’t speak for my human self. He was rather stupid.”

“Well, still, we’ve got to be presentable.

I hated to see him crestfallen and pouting, so I said, “Do you think they’ll call me ‘Uncle?’”

Melancholy persisting, he said, “I don’t think they’ll even call me ‘Uncle.’”

“Sure they will. They look just like you. Can you believe the twins are still with us? We should pay them a visit, but they’ll probably scream and run away as they always did, calling us ‘the ghosts!’ That is, if their old-person walkers would allow them to do more than hobble. Do you think they made a deal with the Mayfairs to live a long enough life to spoil ours?”

And there, I ruined it again.

“Lestat.”

I spread my hand in apology. “I’m sorry, ignore me. I’m a jealous spoilsport.”

“Why are you jealous?” he snapped at me like a ridiculously handsome piranha. “I never cheated on you. I never abandoned you for some bitch who could sing pretty!”

“Yes,” I said, finding myself inexplicably outraged that he could reduce my good friend, my sole confidant for many years, Antoinette, to something so vulgar, “you abandoned and neglected me to my face for a child. There is a just distinction.”

“f*ck you!” he raged, exiting the foyer in a blur and slamming the bedroom door behind him,

“Only if you kiss my ass!” I roared through the wall that separated us, feeling my own bitter fury surge up in me like magma.

I prepared to follow him into the bedroom but paused as I started to float down… he had slammed the door so hard that the wall had a thin crack running up it, halfway toward the ceiling. So much for making the house nice.

I never learn.

Claudia is a sensitive subject. I didn’t kill her, but I made her, and I drove her away. I drove her mad. Louis’ love for her was something I understood but did not want to be true because in my eyes it took away from his love for me. I see in hindsight that seeing me be a loving and indulgent father to her was a joyful thing for my Louis to witness. It healed something in him. Her loss and my apparent apathy in the 1920s, was something that absolutely killed him inside. Finding out through her diaries all the ways in which she was let down by our unorthodox parenting was very, very difficult for him. It was not easy for me either, but I pretend I can endure it without tears when I’m around Louis because I was her enemy in the end, and only Louis loved her as she deserved. My Belladonnic beauty— my little milkweed. My infant death. I miss her dreadfully sometimes, but still not as much as Louis. Louis’ grief can fill several stadiums.

Still, he thinks he didn’t love her enough because he, in the end, let me live, and before the end, he let me continue to love him imperfectly in front of her. Louis’ pity for my wicked heart is difficult to come to terms with, yet I love and worship him for it, and I need him for it. He thinks I don’t understand these things that he does, but I do. I’m much more conscious of things than I let him think.

A little ashamed of myself after some reflection and steady breathing (I imagined him in a fetal ball, as he was often shaped during much of the time he was grieving Claudia, and I couldn’t let his terrible, chronic sadness escalate like that), I closed my eyes and willed myself to open the door.

“Lou?” I sang. “I’m sorry for being a c*nt. Will you forgive me so that we can try again?”

“f*ck off, Lestat,” he mumbled, and I spotted him curled up in bed, only his miraculous hair peeking out from under the covers. I went to him and tried not to laugh.

“I said I’m sorry, baby. I acknowledge I was a sh*thead. What more must Lestat do to earn your forgiveness, hm?”

He flipped the covers off his head and glared something fierce at me, except he is so cute, it’s hard to take him seriously as a threat. He was in his pajamas now. He refused to be under the covers in “outside clothes” and would call me an animal for doing such a thing myself.

“I repent of my sins, St. Louis,” I insisted humbly.

“I can’t stand you, sometimes, Lestat.”

“I know. I’m grateful you withstand me at all. I admit that my words were childish and uncalled for. I did not mean to conflate my jealousy over Claudia with how much heartbreak you must have felt about me and… the woman. I am truly very sorry, and I know I must control my temper and spite.”

“Do you intend to?”

“Yes, I intend to,” I said, trying not to snarl. Louis can be very bitter at times. “Can we put it behind us? I cleaned up all the blood. You would be pleased.”

“Fine,” he sighed and lowered the covers a little more.

“But we have a new problem,” I winced in apology. “The wall is cracked where you slammed the door.”

“I don’t care anymore, I don’t care,” he whispered softly, closing his eyes. “It’s going to be a disaster anyway. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Hey, hey. We’re not doing that,” I said with an abrupt sternness. Louis is prone to all-or-nothing defeatist beliefs, and it is a pattern I try to break him of. “You can do whatever you want. You’re Louis de Pointe du Lac. I promise I won’t foil your plans, despite how I was recently behaving. I’m going to help as much as I can to make it all pan out. You forget sometimes, but your man is very capable of controlling himself.” He tried and failed to give me a weak smile, so I plowed on. “You mustn’t worry because they will love you. How couldn’t they?”

“I wish I’d gotten to know the twins,” he rasped hoarsely like a dying man instead of one blessed with immortality. “Wonder what they did with those paper dolls.”

“You will ask them.”

“I don’t deserve a family, and I’m forcing it. You were right a century ago, Les— we’re not supposed to have human families or get mixed up in human affairs. But I’m so weak I can’t even live by that rule. I can’t even do the first thing expected of me.”

“Well, boohoo. So what if you are stubborn and optimistic? That’s why you are an excellent match for someone like me. You see the best in people, and you have hope in every situation, no matter how dismal. I’d have you no other way. And like I said,” I added with a touch of something like a dark promise, “I will make this night go as pleasantly and smoothly as possible. Okay, darling?”

He searched my eyes in that sweet and vulnerable way he used to when he had more faith in me, and I felt myself close to melting. “Okay,” his voice wavered.

“Good. Do not worry your pretty head about this. While you cannot get wrinkles, you can get hangry if you burn away your energy with unnecessary anxiety.” I leaned over him and kissed his forehead. “Will you please let me make it up to you?”

“I’m not in the mood tonight,” he murmured predictably. “Sorry, just a lot on my mind.”

“No, I mean you should relieve some tension. You should take it out on me. I have just the thing I’d have you use on me.”

“Lestat, I said I’m not gonna do that.”

“How do you know you won’t like it if you won’t try it? Don’t tell me beating my ass blue isn’t appealing to you.”

“It’s not. You don’t deserve that.”

“Then tell me, before heaven, what I deserve, St. Louis?”

“You deserve… love.”

“And I tell you you may show your love by disciplining me with your frustration.”

“But I don’t want to do that.”

“Only because you are afraid you’ll hurt me.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Come on, Lou,” I urged him. “Beat me! Beat me before I start sounding like Adam and the Ants!”

He laughed and I was happy to see the sadness leave his eyes for a time. “No.”

“Tell you what. How about you do it nicely? Just with your hand to start, hm? Ten swats, hard as you like. I’ll drape myself over you and present my lovely ass to your judgment, hm, St. Louis? Would you like that?”

“God, Lestat,” he said, not looking at me as I began to strip.

“What about Him, Louis?”

“This is why you’re going to hell.”

“We both are,” I reminded him.

“Yeah well, you’re going to hell for perverts.”

“There is nothing perverted about this. It’s quite common and vanilla, if I do say so myself.”

“So this is a kink thing for you?”

“So what if it is?”

“Then what’s the point?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re so f*cking repressed. Even your anger is repressed. Stop choking on your rage and sorrow and give your loving husband a good spanking.”

“I don’t wanna be toxic anymore. There. I said it.”

“Well, Lou, while this isn’t the Muppets, it’s hardly toxic. It’s not abuse if it’s consensual, isn’t that right? Didn’t I read that in one of the enormous tomes of relationship advice books you throw at me?”

“I mean… logistically. But we get on each other’s nerves. We get at each other’s throats.”

“Lou. My sweet Louis.” I sat naked on the bedspread and grasped his hands in mine, looking seriously into his bright eyes, not lacking for warmth even though their color had been made an icy green shade— a result of the Gift, and something which I mourned a while, as I knew I would miss those deep, brown eyes, like pools of the blackest coffee. “You couldn’t hurt me unless you cast me away from you and told me never to look on your beautiful face again. And as you punish me, I will not retort. I will not fight you. In fact, I swore never to lift a hand against you again, after that awful night. And have I?”

“No…” he admitted carefully.

“That’s right. So we will not fight. It will not be a power struggle. I am handing you the reins. I’m saying, please remind me of my place and help me atone. How’s that? Hm?”

And I saw on his face dawning a new understanding, and I had to suppress a smug smirk now that I was finally getting my way— a fantasy of mine about to be fulfilled.

“Just my hand. Just ten times. Okay?”

“Of course, my love. Who am I to tell you what I deserve? I submit my will to yours. I lay down my body as a metaphor for how I would lay down my life for you. Yes? This is art, Louis.”

“You white people are so f*cking weird. Okay.”

And before he could come to terms with what he was agreeing to, I happily lay myself across his lap and lifted my ass to his smacking advantage. He didn’t touch me at first, stunned and shy, but I let him look at me, let him marvel at my magnificent body. I know I am gorgeous. It’s hard not to know it and harder still not to let it get to my head, but I think I’ve been mostly successful.

“Tell me if I hurt you too bad,” he said. “I’m not used to using my full strength on people, even if they’re a vampire.”

“Of course, angel.”

“I love you.”

I smiled. He’d gotten so much better in recent years in saying those words to me, now that he knew that I needed them like I needed blood. Like I needed him.

“I know,” I said, which was the only answer that would console him.

There was a silence and then his hand fell, and I could have sung his praises for hours for that sweet, stinging touch.

Chapter 6: Humility Like Lingerie

Chapter Text

Louis, here.

Lestat’s lust for pain was not comprehensible to me. He wanted this kind of humiliation, this kind of discomfort— and at my own hand? I try not to show my prejudice, and I know my people do this kind of thing, too, but you white folks really confound me even after all these years. Y’all must need to create scenarios where you’re oppressed and experiencing something bad in order to get through your life. Not me.

His reaction when I first hit him was something I didn’t expect. His mouth opened wide as it did after org*sm or after feasting something beastly. He purred and arched his back for more, but not before he whispered softly, sweetly, “Thank you, Louis.”

That made me shiver.

But I didn’t ask him what for— I just raised my hand and slapped his fine ass again, hard as I dared to, and watched the blood rush into his skin, watched the bruise form. He groaned deep in his throat, his breath coming faster. He rolled his hips down, and I wondered disbelievingly if he were turned on by this. I knew the answer, already. I knew, but somehow I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe he was in pain, and that he hated this, because it’s not like I was being nice to him. I’d hit him hard enough to probably knock the meat off a human’s bones.

I hit him again and he gasped, still squirming his hips, so I could feel the blood filling his co*ck.

“Please, Louis,” he whined. “Please.”

“Please, what?” I demanded.

“Hit me again. Punish me. I know I’m terrible, but I want more of your rage. It turns me on, and I like to hurt for you.”

“Must not be hitting you hard enough then,” I commented dryly.

“You can hit me harder. Please hit me harder.”

“Don’t worry about that, I’m going to.”

So I hit him harder and his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth dropped open, his fangs extending, and he bit his lip, blood oozing down his chin. “f*ck, Louis.”

“Did that hurt?”

“Hurt so bad. Do it again. You owe me more.”

“First of all, I don’t owe you sh*t.”

“You’re so good at what you do, Louis. You’re such a good man— a good husband. I don’t deserve you.” His hips were rocking down faster.

“Cum on me, and we’re going to have a problem, understand?”

“Oh, Louis— you like this don’t you?” he asked. “Embrace it. You’re so beautiful like this.”

There was something addictive about hitting Lestat and him letting me do it— asking for it. Moaning like a whor*. I loved how much of an unashamed slu*t Lestat could be. In fact, I think it’s partly what made me want him in the beginning. The way he moved just radiated suggestion. Like he would throw off his clothes for me (or anyone else he had his eye on at any moment) in any public place if that’s what would give him the desired reactin.

“How you know?” was all I asked. “You can’t see me.”

“Your energy is just so exquisite. Please, cher, hit me again! Punish me! Tell me I’m bad.” I grabbed a fistful of his golden hair and pulled sharply.

“I said no getting off to this.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said, but he was laughing— hysterically. Though I reprimanded him, I liked it. I twisted his hair harder, ripping out a few strands most likely, and I slapped him again and again.

“Oooh,” he moaned. “Ah-ha, that hurts.”

“What do we say, then?”

“Thank you, Louis.”

And the words “Good boy,” rolled off my tongue without thought as they did on the rare and intense occasions I dominated him in bed. I hit him again. Then three more times in quick and violent succession so that he hissed and drew his knees up, whimpering softly.

“That was ten right?” I asked, panting a little— out of it with strange delight and exertion.

“I lost count,” he said in a tiny strained voice.

“Better give you one more for good measure.”

“Or three,” he suggested softly.

“Okay. Three.” So I hit once. Twice. Three times. And by the end of it, he was trembling with equal parts euphoria and agony.

“Ow, Louis,” he whined. “Please, Louis. Thank you.”

“You happy?” I demanded.

“Yes. Are you?”

“I’m not unhappy,” I said, and I smoothed my hand over the livid redness and bruised, purpling flesh. He hissed but arched up into my touch.

“Did I take it well for you?” he asked, voice muffled by the comforter.

“Yeah, you did. Though it was what you wanted, so I don’t know if it counts.”

“It counts,” he decided for me. “It hurt more than I expected. You really applied yourself, Louis.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” I asked, a little anxious I’d gone overboard.

“Yes. I’m very satisfied.” He stretched and lifted his head, turning his face to look up at me. His eyes and nose were a little red and his cheeks a little streaked with bloody tears but he had a contented smile on his face. “You’re very good at this sort of thing, Louis. I never doubted you.”

“Why did you want that?”

“Does it matter that much?”

“No, I suppose not. I just want to know what you get out of it.”

“I already told you. And I meant it. Atonement, yes, but your attention. I’m a slu*t for your attention, Louis, I crave it more than I crave anything. And I like… I like having a physical way to give you control. It keeps me feeling humble. I wear humility like lingerie— it’s a turn-on for me, both to find it in myself and to see it in others— another reason I adored you instantly— but I digress. But to suffer humiliation on your terms would be proper penance as well. Gives me so much to feel, expanding my selfish soul into a more functional shape. And don’t you like how it makes me look, Louis? Isn’t my ass a lovely hue now? Don’t you want to f*ck me even more?”

I spluttered, shocked, and shoved his head down as he giggled. “Are you sure I didn’t hurt you too bad?”

“You didn’t, Louis. You couldn’t.”

I bit my thumb, preparing to heal him with my own blood, but he maneuvered away from me, protesting, “No, I wanna keep it. I want to feel it. It will already be completely healed in another day, probably. If I were a human, this kind of damage would take a week to heal, so I’m jealous of them, you see. I can’t keep your mark on me. We must revisit this before we are hosts. That way I will be reminded of your anger while also feeling less jealousy as I keep something of you that they can never have.”

“You’re a freak, Lestat.”

“I know, and you can do so many more freaky things to me if you agree to this. I want this from you, lover. My own dark heart. My soul companion.”

“Well, we can try it out,” I finally conceded. I was utterly unable to say no to him when he looked up at me like that, eyes so blue and clear, his face so flushed and beautiful. That spray of golden hair spread like silk on the bed. “But I’m going to find a way to make sure you don’t always enjoy this. Because sometimes I feel like I really need to make a point.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Louis. Twelve or so smacks with your hand brought me to tears. I’m sure you will be successful.”

“But this doesn’t replace my suggestion that we do couples’ therapy or that we keep working on our communication. I’m dead serious. Have you been reading what I send you?”

“You know phones are idiotic now— I hate them. I hate texts and e-mails. It all gives me a f*cking headache.”

“Well, I can print them out then.”

“Will you punish me if I don’t read what you tell me to?” he asked with a lascivious smirk.

“Only if you won’t like it.”

“Oh, goodie.” I gripped his left ass cheek and squeezed a little harshly until he squirmed out of my grasp. “Fine, Louis!”

“Thank you.” Laughing a little, I stroked his hair, gentle now. “This is important to me. You and me. I don’t like hating you. I don’t like when we fight like we used to. Even getting close to it is very… very upsetting to me.”

He clasped my hand in his own, rolling over to lay our joined hands on top of his chest so I could feel his heart beating.

“I know. I will never make you suffer like I used to. I was a terrible brat, back then. I’m different now, though. You changed me. I have a better heart because of you, Louis.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely true, but… I like to think we make each other better.”

He snorted. “Now that’s certainly not true.”

Chapter 7: Innocence in Power

Chapter Text

Louis felt terrible for liking it as much as he did, and he was dreadfully worried he’d hurt me too much. I consoled him by demonstrating just how resilient his Lestat can be, thanking him and kissing him softly, as he liked to be kissed.

“You sure you liked it?” he asked, interrupting my excitement at having my lips mid-way through marking his throat. “And you want me to do that, but harsher… and often?”

“Yes, my darling. In fact, I loved it.” I rolled off him and sat up, not hiding the wince so he knew he’d also served me a proper lesson, too, and hadn’t wasted his time. When he looked apologetic, I gave him a look. “Are you really that sorry that I’m in a little pain?”

“No,” he said defiantly.

“You really ought not to be. Truly, I want this. I’ve wanted this for years, Louis. Decades.”

“Decades?”

“Mmhmm. Without fully knowing why. I thought it was because I wanted you to treat me like a child, so I dismissed the thought because I didn’t want to be a burden to you. But then I learned that hot-blooded adults do this all the time. Of course, I’d known about BDSM for much longer, but this felt a little different because I’m… well I’m asking you to be my disciplinarian in kind of non-sexy contexts, too.”

“You aren’t a burden to me,” he said, kindly, his point emphasized with his hurt little pout, as if to say, How could you think I’d feel such a thing?

“I know that now,” I soothed him.

He searched me, examining my face and body language, and feeling out my energy with his growing vampiric power. Satisfied I was sincere, he nodded and he turned his body so he could wrap his arms around me, burying his face in my neck, sheltering himself under my jaw. I wrapped my loving arms around him and wished achingly he’d never had to be without them.

“Lestat?” he asked.

“Mm?”

“I think I want you to do it this time….”

“Do what?” I said as if I didn’t know. It’s his fault that I like his embarrassed face so much.

“Can you… I need you to f*ck me.”

“Oh, but of course,” I said bracingly. “How would you like me? Rough or gentle, my sweet beignet?”

“Just need you on top of me. Need to feel you. Want you all over me. All in me.”

“I can fulfill that request, yes,” I promised. “You would like me to rock your world, yes? Or would you prefer to slowly be steeped in me until you are intoxicated and overwhelmed?”

He hesitated before admitting, “Slow. I need you slow.”

“More than happy to oblige, my darling.”

And so it went. I made him get rid of his pajamas, and I lay him down, then lay me down atop of him. His legs opened to embrace me as if they were made to do that, so perfect for me is my Louis— and his arms wrapped around my back. He kissed my neck and pressed his inexplicably bloody eyes into my shoulder to hide them from me, but I am observant.

“What’s the matter, darling?”

“I just love you so much. It hurts me how much I love you, and I can’t let you go.”

“Do you wish to let me go?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

“No. No, I can’t. I’d die, Lestat, I’d just f*cking die.”

“You haven’t died when we’ve had our little breaks,” I reminded him. “In fact, I would say you were in recovery, and you came back to me much better than I could have hoped or deserved. And I came back much changed and contrite, haven’t I, my love?”

“I’m so damn codependent on you, baby— I need you, I die on the inside without you.”

“I can’t say I am displeased with this. And you know I will never leave you willingly, mon cher; don’t you know this?”

“I do. I know. I’m sorry I… I just guess I don’t know how you can still be with me when I damn near killed you and I was— it’s all so f*cked up. We’re so f*cked up. And it’s mostly your fault, but I feel awful anyway. I think, you know….” I frowned down at him, feeling what he was going to say and already disapproving. “I think if I were better, if I did some things better, most of what we been through wouldn’t have happened. We would have been able to survive much more together. But I didn’t listen to you. I didn’t believe you about this vampire life. I lost everything, but not before I f*cked it up, believing I could hold on to it. But I was so weak. I am weak.”

“Shh. No, no, darling. Never were you weak. I don’t love weak people.”

“I fall for you again and again…. I fear being apart from you…. You’ve been damn near the worst thing that’s ever happened to me— ‘cept Paul’s suicide and… and…” Claudia, my brain helpfully supplied, “but you… you pull me back in. I pull you back in. We are drawn to each other by that thread we can’t see. The one you mentioned before I… s-slit your throat….”

Here he trailed off and sobbed. My concern came to the fore of my focus, displacing my love of sex, and I found myself holding him tighter as he cried— almost too tight.

“I’m sorry,” he cried, voice broken and high— almost musical in his grief.

“Why are you sorry to me?”

“I killed you.”

“You saved me.”

“I’m so happy you’re alive. I don’t deserve you back. We don’t deserve each other. I keep hurting you, you keep hurting me….”

“I think that means we do deserve each other, if we keep seeking the other out after such torments. It means we are both fools— each other’s fools. So we must be most tenacious and never part.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t… maybe it’s not meant to be—”

“I do not believe in your versions of fate and what’s Meant To Be, mon cher, I tell you over and over again. I gave you death; you are mine. You are mine and I will not let you go easily. Call it toxic, call it ugly, but it’s what you want. And who am I to deny you the truth of myself if you are so receptive?”

He’ll kill me for mentioning this, but he made a sound of such awe and discomfited horror, like a most delicious whimper, and he pushed against my shoulder, whining something like, Get off. And this may not have been nice, but I pressed more of my weight onto him.

“It’s true. Accept it. If we are to get better, we must know what’s true of us.”

“I know what’s true, but… how do I know this isn’t just a game for you? How do I know you’re serious and you’re not playing me, just trying to stay with me?”

“What if I am?”

“Then it means you’re just the same as you always been.”

“Selfish? Needy? Vindictive? Cruel?”

“Yep.”

“And you are the only person who has shown me love that isn’t false. You haven’t merely accepted me for shallow reasons; you love me for what I can be, and you believe in the best of me as I believe in the best of you. You see what can make me beautiful and free and happy— and you want me to be happy. Do you know how rare that has been for me? Everyone I have ever loved has wanted to possess me or wanted to bring me low because they could see how my pride buoys me through this undeath….. But you… you always wanted me to be free of my ghosts. You want me to feel better and be better. And because you love me, I want to be better too— for the first time in, like, 250 years. You are my inspiration, Louis. I have changed deep in my soul because of you. You have altered my internal landscapes. Will you abandon me now because it’s a little confusing?”

“No. I’m not gonna abandon you. But I hate how much I need you.”

“You hate it? Do I make it unpleasant for you? Do I rub it in your face?” His face said I did not. “No,” I said aloud for emphasis. “I keep how much I like it to myself, most times, my sweet fledgling.”

“I’m not a fledgling anymore,” he pouted, but I could see that now he really liked it when I called him this. My Louis has had decades of too much responsibility forced onto him. When I make him feel young and small, easily manageable for me in all of his complexity and strangeness, he responds most agreeably: blushing, heart racing, even laughing.

“You are. You’re a baby,” I continued. “You’re my baby.”

“Almost as old as you, when we met,” he insisted dismissively.

“I doubt it. And even if that were true, that is an age I look back on with much pain because of how horribly immature I was. You are leagues better than me, Lou, you always were.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘leagues.’” But he knew it was true.

“You misremember me and how bad I was because of the way I had about me.”

He chuckled, remembering how often he’d said this “way” was what had led him into my arms and to his doom.

“I don’t misremember, I knew when you were full of sh*t. But I would allow for it.”

“Merciful King Louis!”

“Too merciful for my own good, aren’t I?”

“We’ll see who is more merciful between us as the dawn comes.”

I relished the way his eyes widened and that soft whine left his throat as I pressed against him. None of you will ever hear this sound. It is mine.

“Lestat, wait.”

“Shhh, relax.” I reached between us and massaged him gently with my fingers and my knuckles, careful to keep my nails away. Then prodded him again, rubbing myself gently against where I so longed to return. I’m an expert at this. Not to advertise, but men don’t need fingering with me. And Louis loves this kind of treatment, when I make him ready as if he were meant to take me just as he is, not forcing it with too much clumsy preparation…. And like a flower, Louis always softens and blossoms for me. Sometimes I aid the way with oil, but Louis makes me so wet it’s hardly necessary.

As I sank into him and he gasped with bliss, I settled onto him and kissed his beautiful neck.

“Oh, baby,” he whispered. “That feels so good.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” I planted my kisses all over his slender chest, withdrawing partially as I went, only to surge back up and cage his sigh in my mouth.

“Good, Louis,” I whispered. “You are so good to me.”

“Love how f*cking big you are,” he whispered. (Alright, I acknowledge I’m including this moment just to brag.) “You feel perfect.”

“You take me so well. You’re so good for me, Louis. You are so accommodating to me. So powerful in your own right. Never think I am not most adoring and awestruck by you.”

“You smell so good,” he said, and he ran his fingers through my hair, making me melt. He is so innocent, sometimes, my Louis. So pure and gentle. Times like this I can feel how he marvels at me with every light touch, as if he never thought he’d be able to have these things for himself— to love as he must and to be embraced and adored as he desires. And certainly not with someone so well-endowed and beautiful as I. I know there are not many on this planet as perfect aesthetically as myself and Louis (Louis also being perfect psychologically and in matters of the heart, mind you, I am but a pretty but empty vase compared to him), that is just a fact, and that we found each other at all is something to celebrate in itself.

“You smell so good. I could eat you.”

“Please do,” he whispered and how could he have expected me to resist? I plunged my teeth into his neck and sipped from him a good couple of mouthfuls from the artery, before biting my own tongue, healing him with my blood and kissing him so he could taste the both of us in my mouth. He drank from the wound in my tongue, biting it himself so it would give more to him. His eyes lost focus and gradually rolled upward, roving under his lids. This face he makes always gives me such euphoria and pride.

“I love you,” he slurred.

“Mercí, my love, I love you too.”

“Come on.” He grabbed my ass and squeezed, making me wince (he really had applied himself to the job I’d given him). This wince seemed to turn him on. “That hurt?”

“Yes, Lou.” He kissed me hard on my bloody lips in response.

“Take me. Come on. I’m going to come without touch, I feel it.”

“Yeah? I’m that good?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Ask nicely then. You know I like it when you beg for it.”

He laughed shortly and pleaded, “Please, lemme come. Make me come, Lestat.”

“What did you call me?”

He groaned. “Baby, please?”

I nibbled his jaw. “Good, you know my name isn’t really Lestat while we are like this. Mon petit gâteau. What are my names?” I rocked into him slowly but firmly to make my point.

He gasped aloud and a moan wavered straight from his throat, not bothering to bounce around in his mouth. “B-baby,” he answered. “Angel. Princey.”

“And? You know what I want to hear.”

“I ain’t calling you that, get over it.”

“Oh, but we know you will. But only when you’re very happy, isn’t that right?”

“I’m not suffering your foolishness today, Lestat. It was one time, I was just testing it out.”

“What did you call me? What did I say I’d be very happy if you called me?”

“How ‘bout ‘Papi?’ I’ll do ‘Papi.’”

“Let me just hear it one time.”

“No.”

“Please, Louis?” And I gave him the look he can’t really resist.

So he rolled his eyes, hid his face over my shoulder to speak into my ear as if we had eavesdroppers, and mumbled, “Fine. Daddy. Lemme come, Daddy, please. Wanna come with you in me.”

“My sweetest heart!” I crowed and to reward him I kissed his cheek and his neck and the line of his shoulder before moving as he really liked, putting in work to make him see the stars that made us. “But of course!”

As his head dropped back on the pillows, his eyes slipped back again and he gasped. “Yes, please— yes, yes, yes—”

And without even using the Cloud Gift, I carefully brought him to that higher place, and I listened to the lyrical quality of his moaning and gasping as he came down, oversensitive as I sought my own escape in his trembling arms, driving into him like a madman now, hips moving like a cobra strikes.

His last cry joined my own, making the most lovely duet. It inspired a new song, actually.

The gratification I felt as we floated down from our mutual highs made everything that Louis had suggested we do in the last several months, like maybe a round of couples therapy for as long as we could stay discrete and hosting his nieces and nephews, seem very reasonable and worthwhile endeavors. In fact, I started planning what I would say to these people. What I would wear. Whether I might like to be called Uncle Les again.

“How do you feel, mon coeur?”

“Better,” he whispered, already half-asleep.

I stroked his hair and admired his lips and his eyelids and his cheeks and his—

“You goin’ to sleep, too?” he mumbled.

“You know I don’t need as much sleep these days, angel.”

“Can you hold me? I need you close to me today.”

And of course I could only answer, “Happily.”

So I curled up behind him and wound my legs through his, kissing the back of his neck, wondering to myself how he could be so sweet like this and also hold such unwitting power over me. My innocent, my delicate, my terrible Louis.

Chapter 8: Meetings

Chapter Text

Lestat told you nosy creeps way too much. What we do with each other in… that way is none of y’all’s damn business. However, it has come to my attention that we have more readers than ever before, so I won’t delete that whole damn thing.

Delicate and innocent, my ass. I swear this man forgets who I am. Just because I’m not proud of it, talking about how f*cked up I am and all I’ve done all the time, doesn’t mean I’m not still rough and fully capable of stomping a mudhole in a— (Edited by Lestat at 6 a.m.)

Anyway, back to relevant matters if any of you actually gives a single f*ck.

I’d prepared the bedrooms so that my grandnieces and grandnephews might stay the night and leave in the day. I doubted they’d take me up on the offer, but I hoped that when I gave them the tour, they’d see how much I wanted them to stay.

The tension killed me the whole day that we waited for them to arrive. I sat rigidly on the sofa trying not to muss my hair or poke holes in the furniture by accident or snap at Lestat who I knew was secretly hoping they wouldn’t arrive. I had to try not to snap at him because part of me hoped that too. We are much more similar than I know how to account for.

“Do you think they got lost?” I said, when the clock struck five past.

“Perhaps,” he said carefully, “but it has only been five minutes past when you said they should be here.”

“Early’s on time, on time is late, late is now.”

“You know I’ve never subscribed to that. Maybe they take after me somehow, and like to arrive fashionably late to build anticipation.”

This made me smile a little despite how dumb of a joke it was. “We said 7, right?” I pursued.

“So you did.”

“But they have kids. Some of them.”

“So they do,” Lestat said.

“We should’ve sent a driver.”

“Perhaps, but that might have seemed too insistent, we agreed,” he reminded me patiently.

“Yeah.”

“They will show up. And if they don’t it’s for good reason. Probably their anklebiters being… bitey.”

“All of them?”

“Maybe they wanted to arrive together,” he supplied, determined to ease my anxiety.

“Maybe.”

“Also, I know I’m not allowed to make the joke about how late Black people are to everything, so you think of the joke for me.”

Here, I finally laughed. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“See? It’s nothing. Besides, if they weren’t coming, don’t you think it would be apt for a mortal to send a couple of vampiric entities these details over the insipid little glass boxes?”

“Oh, right, my phone!” I got up and searched for it in the seat cushions, then zipped upstairs when I remembered I left it on my bedside table. I had indeed received a text an hour or so ago, saying they’d arrive by 7:30. They were, in fact, carpooling in 2 cars.

“You see?” Lestat chided gently, coming up behind me. “They’ll be here.” He kissed my cheek and squeezed my shoulder, grounding me. “You chase reasons to be miserable like a puppy chases its tail, darling— you must be kinder to yourself.” He nipped gently at my ear.

“Don’t mess up my hair,” I warned him.

“We’ve been married 110-, 115-odd years, and you think I forget that simple rule?” he asked.

“You always conveniently do when I have somewhere to be or there are people coming through. Never to an opera, though, you’re always careful with me when we’re going where you want to be.”

He gasped theatrically, hand clapping over his chest with insult. “Is that an accusation?”

“It is an observation.”

“Well, well, Louis. You are snarky this eve,” he mocked me. He pecked my lips, then took another kiss, prolonging it. “Seems I have reason to put you in a more agreeable mood.”

“Lestat, we ain’t got time.”

“Not for a little schmooze? A little, tiny poke?”

“No.”

“Oh, but, Louis, twenty-three minutes is forever.”

In answer, I slapped his ass, making him hiss and rise up on his toes.

“You feel it still?”

“Yes, Louis, I do,” he said with a grimace. “But I love it. Thank you very much for that.”

“Gimme some sugar, then.” He rolled his dazzling eyes with a humoring smile and kissed my lips, draping his arms over my shoulder and leaning into my body.

“You take such good care of me, Louis.”

“I do, don’t I?”

“Might I request a refresher course to remind me just how much, tonight?”

“You… you want me to— again?”

“Yes, Louis, don’t slu*tshame me.”

“Shame, slu*t.” He grinned, shaking his hair back with delight, his eyes narrowing smugly.

“I’m not going to be naughty tonight,” he promised, “so I want you to be nice about it. However, if something goes awry and my plan to be a good little boy is foiled, you may act accordingly and put the fear of God in me, St. Louis.”

“Now I feel like you’re going to make sure that’s exactly what I’m gonna have to do.”

“You don’t have to do anything, Louis, this is all consensual…both ways, yes?”

“I know you’re not outright making me do anything, but I know you like to push my hand.”

“I do,” he purred.

“Kinky motherf*cker.”

“What can I say? You make me feel like a little kid, Lou. I want to keep you happy with me,” he said, voice low as he leaned forward to kiss my lips. “Are you happy with me?”

I smothered a laugh of my own in favor of a serious expression, “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“Good.”

I wrapped my hands around his waist and squeezed. “You look good.” And he did. He always does, but vain brat that he is, he always wants to hear it.

“Not as good as you,” he replied, and I knew he was proud of this being the case, though it was not fact.

He was dressed in a billowy blue shirt that brought out the warm playfulness in his eyes, with a slightly open collar and neat sleeves pushed up almost to his elbows. I think it was technically a women’s blouse. He also wore slightly more form-fitting white linen pants and in certain lights… well, I was very pleased with what I saw. His hair was wavy, golden, and fairytale charming as ever— tucked behind one ear. A beautiful man in the most Aryan way possible, but he was mine and I loved every bit of him.

“This is going to be good, yeah?”

“I think it’s going to be great,” Lestat said and caressed the back of my neck, the tips of his claws scratching softly. “Don’t you worry your beautiful head about it.”

“What if they hate us?”

“Then we’ll eat them.”

I laughed and dipped my face into his neck and clavicle, sighing as he propped his jaw atop my head and squeezed me tightly.

“I wish anxiety medication worked on us— you could use a dose, my love,” he chuckled deeply.

I luxuriated in his deepness— that which occurred in his laughter and in his voice and in his powerful embrace.

“Am I neurotic?”

“Very much so,” he confirmed.

“Do you hate it?”

“No— it’s how I found you. Your mind was the only one that interested me on that street when you threatened your brother. The war inside you— the conflict of goodness and the anxious need for power that you didn’t want to possess. I thought to myself: what man could be so intelligent and strong of will as to accrue power in your station and then not feel entitled to keep it? Not revel in it? It confounded me so. Then I thought: a good man. A perfect, beautiful man with a perfect, beautiful soul. And I thought to myself, it would be such a pity to let you suffer and die like the rest— and I heard in your thoughts your religious shame, and I got angry that God had any say— however diminished— in what all you could be… what you would allow yourself to become.”

“You were jealous.”

“Your Lestat is a jealous Lestat,” he said in explanation.

“There is no one comparable to you who takes priority to me.”

“As it should be, my darling. You are mine. I created you. We created you together,” he added when he sensed my air of mild indignation. He kissed my temple. “So I love your neuroticism. I wish I could see more of it, but I gave up that precious gift for another. I just wish it didn’t make you suffer. That is all, my angel.”

“Are the servers ready?”

“Yes, they’ve been ready for a while now.”

“This has to be good. They have to want to stay. Don’t do any of your creepy, mind-speak voodoo.”

“Once again—” he said, “not voodoo.”

“Whatever you call it.”

“I will refrain.”

“Don’t even read their minds.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

“You are a liar,” he sang.

“Whatever, just don’t let on that you know what they’re thinking. And don’t take insult to anything they think if you do hear something, they’re bound not to like you right away— since you’re the one who made me like this and ruined our family, according to my sister and the twins probably.”

“Also, I’m white so they’re immediately going to expect me to be insufferable, yes darling, I know— you don’t have to tell me anymore where I am in your family’s estimations.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

“I know. You didn’t even like me right away, even though I was perfectly charming and civil.”

“You were way out of line the way you came at me, ‘Stat— I almost knocked you on your ass.”

“I was new to America,” he protested. “How could I have known you’d take offense to my little observations?”

“Exactly— so keep your little observations to yourself, at least for a little while.”

“They’ll love me,” he said. “Now, why don’t you focus on not letting that pensive little scowl be present when they get here?” He smoothed his hands down my shoulders, pulling away to look at me. "Smiles, darling— charm. Charm goes a long way.”

“Charm’s the same thing as bullsh*t to the discerning Negro.”

“Well, let’s hope they are not so discerning because we certainly won’t get them to like us based purely on our personalities, mon cher— not immediately, at least.”

“Are we that bad?”

He pinched my cheek and thumped my chest. “Of course not. No.” He shook his head. “No, we’re not so bad. But you know how they say that couples, when they spend all their time only with each other and not out in the world— they are not much better than shut-ins as far as manners and social skills. We might come across as a bit eccentric.”

“I don’t mind that.”

“Of course. You shouldn’t. We’re good, right? Of course, they will warm up to us.”

Lestat’s eyes were too bright and unblinking— and he’d said “of course” one too many times, and was still adjusting my clothes and fussing with my hair.

I looked askance at him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Whatever, we don’t have time for this,” I groused.

The doorbell rang. I threw open the door to see my eldest grandniece and her younger adult brother. She was 53 and he was 48. She was beautiful, like Grace. And his profile looked like my brother’s.

“How you doin’?” she asked pleasantly, even though she was clearly startled by the manner in which I’d opened the door. Lestat stood just behind me.

“Hi, there,” I said. “I’m good. I’m so good, come on in, Lisa. Freddie.” I let them in, kissing her on the cheek and clasping his hand, pulling him into a brief embrace. “Y’all know of Lestat.”

“This him? Lestat , you said? This the one you been with since, like, 1910?” Lisa asked. Her eyes were wide as she regarded my lover, and they reminded me of Grace’s curious, analytical gaze.

“Yes, I’m the infamous Lestat, it’s a pleasure to meet you both,” he beamed, and he took her hand and kissed it. “A pleasure.” He grasped Freddie’s hand too and shook firmly. “You both are as beautiful as your great-grandmother.”

“You look just like you do in the pictures I found,” Lisa remarked to me. “I’m shocked this isn’t a practical joke, but I also knew that you were still alive somehow. I researched you both, actually, a while back— read about that party where all those people died— and I’d just about given up on the idea of finding you and Lestat and thought maybe it was for the best— Grandma and Auntie were insistent that we not try too hard because it might wind us up dead, but you know. It’s fascinating. Sorry I’m rambling, now,” she chuckled.

“Don’t be sorry. You must tell me what all you found.”

“Why’d you find us?” Freddie asked. His eyes were warily flicking between me and Lestat as if second guessing whether he’d walked into a lion’s den.

“‘Cause you’re my family, and I’m trying to… reconnect with my people.”

Lisa and Freddie exchanged looks. “Why didn’t you before now?”

“Because I knew it wouldn’t be welcome and in the past it had been dangerous. Since the book, and given the oversaturation of daily life with astonishing phenomena, it didn’t seem as dangerous. I mean we got aliens now and no one cares, apparently. And I…” I continued very soberly, feeling somewhat ashamed, “I couldn’t help myself. Family’s always been a weak point for me. Anyway, I can get into it with more detail later, if you’re interested— but you must be thirsty. How long until the others get here?”

“About five minutes,” Lisa said, checking her phone.

“May I help you with your coat, Madame?” Lestat asked with utmost gentility. Lisa’s mouth fell open for a moment, but then she chuckled and allowed it.

“Thank you. You’re so polite. I take it that’s family privilege?”

“You would be correct, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for beautiful, gracious, and talented people.”

“Talented?” she asked. “What do you know about my talents?”

“Oh, but you didn’t think you were the only one who had done your research?” Lestat met my gaze, questioning whether he could disclose. At my panicked look, he said, “I read in the paper your debut as a professional cellist in Carnegie Hall. Some years back. And I saw you on the… er, what is it— iTube?”

“YouTube?” Freddie asked incredulously.

“Exactly. Clever lad— can I take your coat?”

“I’m okay, thank you, very much.”

“It is very nice, where do you shop?”

“I forget where I got this. I think it was a gift, actually. Christmas.”

“Very lovely. And of course I know about your accomplishments. A professor of law at the University of Washington?”

“You sure seem to know a lot about us, but we don’t know a thing about you. Sorry if I seem ill at ease.”

“I don’t bite family, dear Freddie. I don't have the de Pointe du Lac’s acumen for academics, but I can tell you all manner of stories about my travels, studies… hobbies. I am most civilized these days. You won’t need that gun hidden in your jacket, I promise you. It won’t work on me anyway. Even if you had silver bullets.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Let’s all move to the sitting room.”

“I always stay strapped. Nothing personal,” Freddie said, with a wry little smile at Lestat. “I can put it up somewhere, if you prefer.”

“No, don’t trouble yourself— so long as you are comfortable with it and not thinking this is a setup. I simply do not want Louis’ family to be wary of him— nor me. Louis has long anticipated this day.”

Sighing, I strove to change the subject. “Lord have mercy— come on, let’s get you two a seat.”

“Aw… but that’s really sweet,” Lisa said softly, looking to Freddie. He shrugged and pursed his lips.

“I hope you all like the menu selection,” I said, changing the subject and moving down the hall. “Because I can’t really taste human or mortal food anymore, I had chefs prepare it. You don’t know this— I used to be able to throw down, back in the day, but now I really can’t trust myself to make anything edible.”

“You can’t taste normal food?” Freddie asked.

“Nope. Sucked at first, but now I’m used to it. Especially when I found out I can kind of taste what people have recently eaten, sometimes.”

“A trade-off when acquiring the Dark Gift,” Lestat said serenely.

“You adapted to prefer the taste of blood?” Freddie asked.

“Well… ‘adapted’ isn’t a word I’d choose,” I said, “As I was turning, and… and Lestat’s blood, and mine that I’d given him flooded into me, I tasted… euphoria. It’s more of an experience than a tasting endeavor.”

“Always euphoric?”

“If it’s human, and the hunger is strong. With animals, less so. With another vampire… it is beyond words. Anyway, this isn’t the kind of conversation we need to be having right now. Might put you off dinner.”

“You’re right,” he chuckled.

The doorbell rang again and I glanced at Lestat, heart in my throat and went to open the door again.

There were five others now. Three women and two men.

Paulette (my heart twinged with pain at the slim prospect that she could be named after the late uncle the twins never knew, but who left a painful scar on the family tree) at 82 was the surviving daughter of one of the twins, I forget which one— and mother of Marcus who was 43, and Mikey, who was 38. Their cousin, Elsie, was 40. She was Ben’s daughter. He’d had her when he was pushing 50, I believe.

I don’t think I’d explained it properly before, but there were three generations separating most of me and the grandnieces and grandnephews: that of the twins, their children, and then the younger generation. The twins were born in 1912. They had their children in the ‘30 and ‘40s, and then Paulette had her children at 39 and damn near 45. I put these details so people aren’t confused by the age gaps. The du Pointe du Lac’s have high fertility well into adulthood, and good, long natural lifespans, if we can let natural causes catch up to us, my father always said.

I greeted them all with warmth and tried to hide my excitement and nervousness. I noted and sympathized with Paulette’s skeptical stare at Lestat, whose gaze to the casual outsider felt like it was trying to freeze you and suck you in.

“You the ghosts? The nightwalkers?” Paulette asked. She was a little frail-looking and walked with a cane. “You Uncle Louis?”

“I am,” I answered, heart lifting with the address, however passing. “Please, come on in, ma chérie. I sure am pleased to finally meet you all. Come this way. The others are here already.”

“And is this the one…?” Paulette asked, squinting up at Lestat through her thick glasses.

“The very same,” Lestat smiled. “Welcome to our home. I am Lestat. The man who took Louis away from all of you—your grandmother especially.”

Paulette stared, then gave a sharp, cackling laugh.

“So you know we always talked about you, right?” she hooted.

Lestat beamed his most disarming smile. “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, isn’t that right?” She laughed again and hobbled past him to make her way down the hall.

I clasped my hands together. “Y’all hungry? I guess we can move on ahead to the dining room.”

“She insisted on coming,” Marcus said. “Please don’t do nothing that’ll give her a heart attack. I mean, I’m sure you’re both… perfectly civil. But you know, Ma’s a bit more sensitive these days to things.”

“How would she feel about the sight of blood?” Lestat asked. “In glass, of course, we are not savages. We can pretend it’s soup.”

“Uh…. Y’all can’t eat nothing else?”

Elsie bumped his shoulder with her own. “She was a nurse, she’ll be okay. She knows what you are.”

“Happy to live up to her imagination. If we can do anything to amuse her, let us know,” Lestat said, winking at her and linking his arm through hers as we followed Paulette into the living room. Elsie blushed and glanced to Marcus.

“This is wild,” Mikey muttered.

“I know, you’ll get used to it, I hope,” I said, clasping his shoulder. He glanced at my nails, but I told myself I’d address my predacious physical attributes later. “Thank you for coming. Lestat and I are so pleased.”

Lisa and Freddie stood when they saw the others.

“We can take this to the dining room. I’m sure you all are starving. I had the chefs take into account your food restrictions.”

“Oh, good,” Lisa said brightly. Lestat let go of Elsie’s arm with a kiss on her temple, and with sweeping arms, guided the family toward where we’d all be eating together for the first time.

“This way, my loves,” he sang.

“Where you from, Lestat?” Mikey asked, sitting down warily where I had earlier, with utmost care and hopefulness, placed his name card.

“France, originally,” Lestat said. “But I have done much traveling—living in Germany and Italy and even the Netherlands for a while. My accent is strange, but my heart was first for France and then for New Orleans— now, wherever St. Louis is, I consider home.”

“St. Louis?”

“A silly nickname,” I said.

“Should I tell them the context, Lou?”

“I don’t think… I don’t know.”

“It’s a good story— the first story I ever told you, in fact.” I couldn’t help but blush and smile at his good spirits and his amiability so I waved my hand.

“Alright, you can tell it.”

“Excellent— so my young nieces and nephews through marriage:” he began (I looked around tensely, unsure how they’d like being called that by some strange and dangerous white man who had wrecked the strength of our family unit more than a century back— but all I saw was Paulette snicker with amusem*nt, straightening her bad leg out to get comfortable for the story; Lisa schooling her expression; and Marcus shaking his head to hide his own flustered takenness with Lestat’s infectious and charming attitudes), “When you all were not even a thought, it was 1910— the night was warm and muggy as it is in New Orleans to this day, and the ship I was traveling within for weeks since, landed in her port. I intended to get off at St. Louis. However, I was tired of traveling by now, you see, and I’m a hedonist. I’m like a bloodhound— I can sniff out my fellow hedonists from miles away. And the music was so joyful, so unique— I’d never heard such music. This was before music was easily passed around, you see, so when I heard something new, I was, and still am, a rapt pupil.

“So I told myself I just had to get off for a time, to stretch my legs. But then it wasn’t just the music— it was the people. All of them, beautiful— the women, divine, the men, absolutely strapping. All joyful, even though they lived in what is ostensibly a swamp. I asked myself why are they so happy? In France, everyone is miserable about one thing or another. Unless it’s time to chop off someone’s head, French people are always complaining and bitter. So I’d never been surrounded by such delicious joy as what I found on this peculiar pitstop. Such a thick pleasure, one can slather it on their skin and be rejuvenated.

“Now it wasn’t all joy— there was a deep sorrow to be found. Poverty and inequity and the like. I confess it was my first time being exposed to so many Black people and to such a culture— to the kind of discrimination your people face here in America. (I’m afraid I made a fool of myself many times getting to understand what little I do now, but I loved New Orleans and its music and, of course, Louis so much that I was definitely the least affected by my ignorance.) All of this intrigued and excited me, too, making this strange, swampy land a more and more appealing place to unpack my bags. And at any rate, I really, really hated traveling in that ship, staying in my coffin, day after day.”

“Y’all actually stay in coffins?” Mikey interrupted, eyebrows raised. Lestat laughed and I smiled, remembering my own surprise at this news.

“Yes, of course. The rumors are true. It is not always necessary, but sunlight is not our friend, so— better to stay in a cushy box no one wants to open in daylight, oui?”

“Right…. Sorry, this is just insane. Alright, my bad, carry on with your story of how you met… him.”

“With pleasure, mon cher— now, I don’t know how much you know about your Uncle Louis— but back in his mortal days, he was a man of diversified enterprises. A pimp, if you’ll pardon the vulgar word, Louis. He was terribly good at it. I hadn’t actually decided to get off and stay in New Orleans, until I saw him outside of his place of business,” he said, sliding his eyes over to hold mine. “He had pulled a blade on a man who was threatening his endeavors— a man he didn’t want to kill, it was clear to me, but still he was ferocious in his manner. I was drawn to him instantly because his energy felt so alive yet so melancholy. So much sorrow was in this beautiful man— even in the hand that held the blade— and I wanted to know why such a man could ever be sad in a place like this, with such music and such gaiety. With so much money and beauty. And more than that, I wanted to know whether he could know me, and I him. So that first night, I bought a townhouse and I found him the second night, determined to be his friend. The third night, purposefully on my part, we were together again, playing cards with his peers. I helped him secure a vengeful hand against these men who for years had scorned and disrespected him. Thus began our courtship.”

“It wasn’t a courtship,” I scoffed. “We hung out, and one thing led to another.”

“It was a courtship. It was deliberate. I hunted you, my darling, and you relented and gave yourself to me at last, and I am happy every day that you did— because if you made it clear you despised me and didn’t want to see me again as you said through lying teeth, I would have gone away and been miserable until I died of a broken heart, Louis, you know this.” I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. “See, I came to America to find St. Louis the city— but I found that the saint I should tie myself to was instead a man who would bless me with his merciful love, attention, and more patience than my damned soul could ever deserve.”

“I read your book,” Lisa said, leaning toward me. “Was the man you pulled the blade on really your brother? Uncle Paul? Who killed himself?”

I shifted, although I’d been expecting this. “Yes. I regret that I did that. Even though we were good afterward, and he knew I wouldn’t have done anything to him, it was still… f*cked up, pardon my French. I was real rough back then. Had to be. No money to be got if you looked weak.”

“I get that,” Mikey said with a shrug. Marcus gave him an amused, incredulous look.

“That was a lovely story,” Paulette said— her voice old and like the cooing of doves. “Mama and Auntie would love to hear that story. They told us stories our whole life. Swore you was real and you was made of the devil. And you are, how ‘bout that?” she cackled.

“The devil did not make me,” I said. “It was Lestat. And no devil made him either, though the bastard might as well have been. But that’s not really good dinner conversation— it’ll spoil the food, I think, how bitter the story is. Anyway I want to get to know all of y’all. I wanted to connect. If you’ll all have me.”

“If we’ll have you?” Elsie asked warmly. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

“I understand if you were just curious and unsure…. I understand if you thought you might have to defend yourselves from some psycho. I know how this all seems and I know it’s weird and not…. I know you could have had a good enough life without any of this.”

“Lou…” Lestat chided me gently, and I knew he wished he could put his hand over mine, but he knew I was nervous about showing too much PDA too soon in front of new people, especially people as important to me as family.

“It would be nice to have that relationship with you. It must have been hard all these years by yourself.”

“I always wanted a family, you know. Kids. I think I said so in my letter, but I… I really am appreciative that you all were kind enough to come over."

“Lisa’s idea,” Marcus said. “And mama found out.”

“Of course, I found out!” Paulette said, scowling at him. Marcus cringed. “And it weren’t your place to— to tell me what— what— what I’m allowed to know and what I can get up to, I’m your mother, little boy, calling me old— oh, I ought to—”

“It’s alright, Auntie Paulette, ain’t nobody calling you old,” Elsie soothed her.

Lestat was giddy as a cat with a live canary.

Lisa smothered a laugh behind her hand. “Shush, Marcus, of course I’d tell your mama, when she’s the one who likes vampire stories more than anybody.”

“Well this ain’t a story, Lis’, this is real sh*t—” Paulette walloped him with her handbag.

“Watch your mouth, you ain’t grown! Not around me, you’re not! Ooh, boy, you getting on my last nerve!”

“Sorry, mama, chill— relax, please. I’m sorry, come on. Be civil.”

She sucked her teeth at him and shook her head.

“Children,” Lestat said with a grin. “Hard to break that dynamic of viewing them as our little ones even when they are fully adults.”

“You ever had any kids?” Elsie asked. She’d been watching him this whole time, delighted and enchanted with him.

Lestat and I met eyes again. “That’s a long story,” I said softly.

This time Lisa did not bring up what she’d no doubt read already.

The doors to the kitchen burst open, and in wheeled the servers with many covered dishes of food in trolleys.

“Oh, wonderful!” Lestat clapped briskly. “I’m starving, aren’t you?”

Under the table, I touched knees with him as the distant and ominous whine of grief made its return known to me. Without breaking his smile, Lestat leaned forward to ask Mikey a question about his culinary interests while subtly grasping my hand under the table, pulling it onto his knee and squeezing. Slowly, the whine grew quieter, and for perhaps the first time that evening, I breathed with genuine relief that I was doing this with Lestat— my best friend, the man who knew and loved me more than anyone (whether he loved me right or wrong)— by my side.

Chapter 9: Things Go Askew

Chapter Text

For a vampire, a creature as close to something godlike as it gets, Louis is terrified of humans. And he is terrified of love, though he wants it more than anything else in this world. He is a paradox— a library of confusion. I love him so much, but he is impossible to understand completely.

Dinner was going well until the precise moment it no longer was. Even then, in my opinion, it was going perfectly fine.

Freddie, you see, is a child in many senses. He thinks he is a hero, a protector— but has never defended anyone in his life. His sister, on the other hand, is a new personal hero of mine. I aspire. I literally adore her. Lisa de Pointe du Lac— even though that is not the family name on Grace’s side— what a pity, and a fact I will ignore— is clever and quick—the kind of girl who does her homework, knows the difference between a good question and a stupid question, and who has stunning fashion sense. My darlings, when I tell you this, you must understand that I am admiring her platonically, I truly believe I am— I’d never go after one of Louis’ younglings. That’s gross. It’s practically incest. BUT. Lisa de Pointe du Lac is more of a legend to me than Beyoncé has become in recent years once she found her stride, and I would have her live with Louis and me for eternity just so I could witness her splendor and beauty as it deepens and matures into true and terrifying power.

Freddie, this entire dinner, stared across the table from me as if I’d killed his dog (he should have been looking at Louis in this way, because I’d sooner fall on another sword and not get up again than eat another dog). He exchanged meaningful glances with Marcus, watched my every move as well as Louis’ — were suspicious of the food. Why on earth would we poison it? If we poisoned the nieces and nephews and tried to eat them, we would be poisoned! He does not use common sense, but that’s just mortal men for you.

Lisa was very sensible and enthusiastic, something I very much like. And so was Elsie and Paulette. The women of the family are all wonderful. Louis being one of the only sensible men (given his sensitive disposition and the fact that really I’ve always felt that he would have been happier when I found him if he had grown up as a girl and matured into womanhood, although that’s neither here nor there— apologies; I tend to go on tangents when I have a lot on my mind and this dinner has flooded my mind with thoughts and frustrations and feelings) was matched only by Mikey, the darling youngest nephew, in his open-mindedness.

But that is to be expected. You see, I’ve been reading a lot lately because Louis throws books at me as if to say that I’m stupid (and that naturally does not sit well next to my pride, so I read these books and others). I’ve come to the conclusion that women are far more capable of leadership than men. Much less rash. Bearers of pain and beauty. Beauty will save us all, I think, and Dostoevsky agrees. Yes, I have read Dostoevsky. I was very curious why the book was entitled The Idiot. TANGENT. I’VE DONE IT AGAIN.

But all of this to say that I ignored Louis’ instruction and allowed myself to read the minds of our extended family.

He was not happy about this, and I will get into that later, but yes, I knew everyone’s intentions before they came to fruition. The women seemed to know that no harm would come to them, as women tend to have a good sense about these things.

Freddie and Marcus’ intentions were to wait it out and see what we were, to be sure that we were what we said we are, and then to decide what to do about us. To make us leave the family alone or to kill us. They didn’t really want to kill us, but I knew they did not really take into account the possibility that they might like us and we might be good for the family, all things considered.

Louis was so trusting, so warm, so kind, so hospitable. This distrust that his blood nephews held for us hurt me deeply on his behalf and angered me on mine. I do not tolerate any kind of disrespect or rudeness toward Louis. I felt in their distrust and their amorphous planning (or plotting, more like) a resistance I couldn’t easily surmount because it was grounded in an irrelevant idea of who they were as family before this instance and who they intended to be going forward.

The girls and perhaps Mikey were the only ones who thought it possible and appealing to develop a relationship with us. I think what held Freddie and Marcus back was an internalized sense of hom*ophobia. I mean, it’s not like they were calling us poufs, or more American-ly, fa*ggots, in their minds, nor were they necessarily feeling contempt for us, but still it took a lot of that thing that good people do— the mental editing and/or self-beration— for their profiles to be smoothed out into that of people I don’t want to eat. It’s their fault for being so like their uncle.

Their distrust faded a little after I told the story of how we met. When they saw that Louis was the one between us who came off as more *grunts and spits on the ground* manly— even though, ironically, Louis' soul is as tender and smooth on the palate as a woman’s and mine is as rugged and ugly as any violent beast. I think it did something for their pride that Louis seemed this way, as much as it breaks my heart because Louis has striven so hard for so long to feel allowed to be himself. I wish he could seem exactly how he is without feeling so dysphoric and self-hating.

It is why, in part, I told our story. I wanted them to know exactly what the dynamic was. Sure they think I’m some animated and playfully demented person, but they also should know that I was the instigator. I was the one who pursued their uncle, and in our manly fight for control, I was victor. Because Louis is too good and complex of a person to truly ever put me in my place— and here’s another secret: Louis likes when I overwhelm him— show him who’s maker. I’m going to post this at an hour that Louis least expects so that he won’t get to remove this bit before a great deal of you have already read it, because it’s true and it’s important to the public understanding who he is. Lestat knows best in this instance.

Anyway. Back to dinner.

The first course for the mortals was a savory amuse-bouche of a shrimp tartar on slices of French bread.

Then followed a soup. Then plates of mutton and potatoes. Then crème brûlée and coffee.

As all of this was dealt out, Louis and I were served first chilled glasses of a diabetic’s type A blood. Next, a body-warm soup of a vibrant B type, female, mixed thickly with delicate blood clots which we ate with spoons. I noticed many queasy feelings in the air at this one.

For dessert, we had frozen type O rolled into something that looked like sorbet.

This is how Louis eats. I join him occasionally in this more civilized affectation, but usually, I am rather old-fashioned, and I like to go straight for the neck, killing them with the arterial spray I swallow with cruel delight. I have to admit though, this dinner was rather nice. Louis spared me the fox or the rabbit blood he’d usually supplement his meals with and which he says he rather likes these days.

I was polite. I was good. Exceptionally good, I’d say.

“So, Lestat,” Lisa said warmly. She’s very good at starting conversations and keeping things not awkward. “What was your life like before you met Louis? When were you born? Did you have any family? I’m very curious, because I know you’re kinda old,” she chuckled, “but you look and seem so…” her fork moved in a graceful circle as she chose her word: “vibrant.”

“Why, thank you,” I said, rather pleased to hear it. “I was born in 1760, which makes me… I can’t do math, someone care to calculate that for me?”

“265,” Mikey whispered, looking awestruck.

“264,” Louis corrected. “You’re turning 265 on November 7. Even though he don’t know his own age, he hates when I round up.”

“Very true. Especially since every year on this earth makes it harder and harder to remember oneself, accuracy is welcome. You’re sure my birthday is November 7? For a while, I was sure it was November 9, or is it my numerical dyslexia?”

“You told me and I saw it written somewhere. I remember for you, don’t worry.”

“Hmm, yes, seven. Lucky number. So I always thought. I think Armand got in my head and buggered around in it long enough that I could have forgotten.”

“Armand?”

Louis cleared his throat. “He’s just a friend of ours.”

“Of his. I can’t stand the tiny jester. Does he get step-uncle privileges, or what, Louis?”

“Lestat,” he warned me.

“Désolé. Anyway, to answer your questions— I was in training to become a priest.”

Paulette’s high “HA!” gave me great mirth.

“Ironic isn’t it? I wanted to know God so much that he let me become like an angel— a fallen angel. I lived in a monastery until my father and brothers dragged me back— bad sports both of them— and then later on, I was kidnapped and turned into this by my own maker. It’s not a pretty story, all the bits I didn’t fill in,” I said before Lisa could ask another exacting question. “Perhaps another time.”

She nodded. “Well, do you still want to know God? If one exists?”

I felt rising in me the urge to spit or curse or reveal myself lewdly at the prospect, but instead, I smiled, though I’m sure the bitterness oozed forth from even my poreless complexion. “I’m afraid that if I ever met Him, I’d burn down His house, to put my contempt for the idea lightly.”

“Fair enough,” Elsie tittered. She had a birdlike laugh.

“But I’m sorry, are you all believers of the Good Book?”

Paulette predictably confirmed this while Lisa and Mikey exchanged a look and tucked into their soup.

“Lestat, let’s not talk religion at the table— it’s bad for digestion,” Louis said.

“You’re right, the fault is mine. Would anyone like some wine? Obviously not the kind we’re having, don’t worry.”

“So where you been hiding all this time?” Paulette asked. “Why only now you deciding that you want to rejoin the family?”

“I never wanted to leave it,” Louis explained, though I could hear the fragments of his heart clinking against his ribs as they journeyed to pierce his gut. “Grace… your grandmama… thought it’d be best. It was what she had to do for herself and the family. I wasn’t around much, on account of… of the change. I knew she would notice I ain’t changed since Paul’s death, excepting the color of my eyes. I didn’t want her to hate me, but that’s what I made her do anyway.”

Listening to Louis speak, I wanted to protest this, for the sake of the children at least. But I also knew that he believed this, even after peering into his sister’s mind. From my memory, she only had hate for me, but Louis must have found a difference in her regard for him that equaled hate. I try every day not to let a similar change come over me, though I doubt it could be possible. Even without the mindreading of the humans, Louis is rather good at reading people’s countenances, understanding their emotions. So I listened to the next part of his story, and learned something I’d never heard before.

“Last thing she said to me was that something had taken her real brother away from her and that this was how it had to be for her and the family. She’d engraved my name on the family tomb and lay down her flowers, squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek. I couldn’t watch her go.”

“Oh, Louis,” Lisa said, with great empathy.

“Damn!” Freddie exclaimed under his breath. Marcus exhaled heavily with puffed cheeks, a frown on his brow.

I squeezed Louis’ hand tightly from under the table, to redirect the memory of his weak and traitorous sister’s hand in his on that last day. I promised myself I’d ask him later why he never told me this. The reason, of course, broke my heart.

“It wasn’t her fault, though— I take full responsibility for the choices she had to make when my fear of exposure and of rejection got in the way of maintaining my relationships. Paul’s death changed my family forever.”

“How’d he die?” Elsie wondered.

“Killed himself,” Mikey said, then realized he was talking to Paul’s brother. “I mean he suffered from… suicidal depression.”

“He walked off the roof. The morning after Grace’s wedding. Ruined sunrises for me forever, so in a way I’m glad I go down when the sun comes up.”

“I don’t blame you,” Marcus said helpfully.

“Right,” Louis said softly, swirling his glass of blood with such profoundly felt melancholy.

“How many people you gave the Gift to?” Freddie asked, though his voice placed way-too-big quotation marks around the word.

“Not many. Very few,” I replied.

“It’s not an easy thing, or something to take lightly,” Louis said solemnly.

“So you ain’t tryna make a little vampire family with all of this?” Mikey asked.

Lisa shook her head. “I told you they weren’t Mikey.”

“Well, what’m I supposed to think?”

“It’s more a curse than a Gift then, isn’t it?” Marcus asked.

“Some may say so,” I said with an attempt to be delicate. “We all have certainly felt so in our unnaturally long lives.”

“Then why would you do it to someone else?” Marcus asked aptly.

“Because I am selfish,” I answered with a smile. “Sinfully selfish. In my undeath, I have become something of a monster. So I created Louis and I created some others. Dead now. Through no fault of my own, I may add. But dead. It is not for everyone, so we must be most cautious with whomever we endeavor to share this path. What of it, my dear Marcus— would you like to partake? Is that why you ask?”

“No, I’m good. Doesn’t seem like something I’d enjoy.”

“It has its perks,” I disagreed. “But yes, it makes monsters of us all. Louis is an exception. Somehow he just became even kinder and more self-sacrificing.”

“Y’all want more wine?” Louis asked.

“It ain’t cold to y’all in here?” Paulette asked.

“You’re right, let me change the thermostat for you,” Louis said amenably, even though it was 72˚ Fahrenheit at least, which is sweltering for me. I really wouldn’t fare well in Hell if it truly is hot. It would drive me mad.

I set a hand on Louis’ shoulder and sat him down firmly. “No, darling, I will take care of it. Stay with your family.”

I admit I did not know where the thermostat was, so I wandered around for quite some time looking for it. It’s a new(ish) house, stop smirking!

When I found it, I bumped the temperature to 75˚ Fahrenheit. If I could sweat, I would have been, but instead my waxen skin just fought valiantly to stave off melting.

Rejoining them, I was glad to see that they were still talking. Sometimes conversation suffers when someone who isn’t good at maintaining conversations is hosting. Not that Louis is bad at maintaining conversations, of course, but his interests are so vastly involved in particular subjects that often he feels himself dull in the other more common ones, and he second guesses himself so much so that there are long… sleepy… pauses. Again, posting this before he gets to it.

Dinner proceeded and we all got on merrily. I was amused and amazed at how utterly brilliant our nieces and nephews are. My Louis’ bloodline. All gorgeous and witty and accomplished or on their way to being very accomplished, even though I remained wary of Marcus and Freddie’s distrust. How much talent can exist in one family? The answer may surprise you.

Lisa was a musician, Elsie was a painter and a writer. Paulette was a sculptor as well as a physician, and Freddie was a scholar and orator. Young Mikey was a chef— a culinary artist rather— and Marcus was a physicist. I think. Something with engineering spaceships, very boring but impressive.

So we talked and talked and talked. It was fine; it was dandy, even; I wasn’t complaining; everything was going smoothly.

So they left. We bid goodnight to them at around 11pm. They did not, in fact, want to stay over, making their excuses that they had children and work to do. I knew Louis was disappointed, but I also knew he was optimistic. It was not his feeling that they thought us a couple of spectacles. He felt that we had managed successfully enough to humanize ourselves in their eyes.

We made plans with Lisa to meet again that weekend, and Mikey and Freddie, of course, wanted to come, too— the latter to protect her, I knew, even though, between you and me, Lisa is the least likely of them that I would drain.

Mikey is great fun once you get past his youthful idiocy and his desire to seem like “one of the men.” While I can’t say the culinary arts are an interest of mine that makes me find the humans any more particularly deserving of life, I have watched a great deal of Hell’s Kitchen and Chopped since we got a television. I like the disappointment of the incompetents, and I like to think I could have been an excellent chef if I didn’t have to have a preference for the blood. My hunger has always been exceptional.

It all went askew with Freddie at the next meeting, which was held two days later, on Sunday. I said something that let slip that I could hear his thoughts, and then he was suspicious of me. And there was an interrogation and I feigned innocence, and Lisa and Mikey exchanged meaningful glances and Freddie grew angrier and angrier and I facetiously begged him to leave so that I could hypnotize and devour his sister in peace, which unfortunately, he took seriously. Louis through this whole exchange interjected to say my name a few times. When he grabbed my arm and eventually pushed me away after Freddie became irate about me insulting his intelligence with poorly stitched-together lies and began yelling in my face, it happened that Louis had shoved me hard enough that in order not to fall, I unthinkingly revealed the Cloud Gift as I sailed through the air in ways that defied gravity— as Marcus would have pointed out readily, if he were there.

“What the hell?” Freddie shouted. He does a lot of shouting. “What the hell are you?”

“It’s just a trick he can do,” Louis said quickly. He’s got a lot of tricks. Freddie, listen to me, please— I promise you Lestat’s just messing around—”

“Keep your hands to yourself, partner!” He said the word “partner” like “pod-nah,” which made me laugh for some reason. I always laugh hysterically at the most inappropriate times. It makes me look much worse than I am.

“You’re both crazy. We’re goin’ now.”

“Finally!” I said, clapping my hands. “You don’t deserve him, anyway, you joyless, imbecilic, cancerous blight on your mother!”

“The f*ck did you just call me?”

Before things came to blows, Lisa put her arm around his shoulders and tried to steer him away. “Fred— let’s go. Let’s just go.”

He shrugged her off him and grabbed his gun which he pointed at my chest. “Say that again.”

“You think you can hurt me with that?” I said in my nastiest mocking tone.

“Freddie, calm down, please, man, it’s just a misunderstanding,” Louis pleaded. Oh, how I hate to see him plead. Especially to those beneath him.

“Guys, it’s all good,” Mikey said, spreading his hands and grabbing Freddie’s gun arm. “Unc, we’re just gonna call it a night. We know, we know. We just don’t want things to escalate any more than they have.”

“Don’t call him, Unc, that man ain’t your uncle!”

“Bruh, let’s go. Put that gun down, gaht-damn!”

“You should listen to your cousin,” I couldn’t help but sneer with a falsely regretful tone. “I am not so friendly after I have been threatened, no matter how laughably.”

“Let me walk y’all out,” Louis said, not even looking at me.

“No, we’re good—” Lisa assured him. But Louis herded them, hands on Lisa and Freddie’s shoulders.

“I’m so sorry about Lestat, he’s— he’s a f*cking handful,” I heard him whispering at the door, “but I swear he’d never— he was just talking. You just got to get to know him. He thinks he’s funny.”

“HA!” I shouted down the hall. “Je suis très drôle, Louis, I’m f*cking hilarious! Though it is only natural that your bloodline are humorless f*cking, Bible-clutching Puritans!”

“I’m an atheist,” Mikey called. “If that helps.”

“Not you, Mikey-baby, you’re splendid,” I laughed, adrenaline making it necessary to pace the room like a prowling beast. Almost accidentally, I knocked a plate over and it shattered.

More hurried whispering and apologies and promises Lisa and Mikey may or may not keep about following up, and then Louis and I were alone.

When I could see his face, he looked exhausted— no, defeated. He looked like I’d punched him in the gut and he had no strength to punch back. He looked like he wanted to die rather than kill me, which would have been more fun at least. He didn’t say a word to me, but continued to climb upstairs to the coffinroom where he began undressing.

“Freddie is a rascal, isn’t he?” I said because I can’t keep my stupid mouth shut. “You should have let him shoot me. But I’m sure he’ll be back to do it. Don’t worry.” He said nothing to me. “I see you are worrying," I continued airily. “I know that didn’t go as well as it could have, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.” He kicked his trousers across the room. “Ah. You are angry,” I said, as if I didn’t know. “Unnecessarily, though, my love. I went too far, but it’s nothing that can’t be walked back. I will fix it tomorrow, if it makes you so cross.”

“I told you to f*cking stop,” he said in a low, almost weak voice. “You can’t help yourself, can you, Lestat? Not when it comes to when my attention is split between you and anyone else. You always got to be the only one. Don’t you?”

“It’s not like that, Louis. I quite enjoyed them. Except Freddie. He definitely needs therapy.”

He scoffed with disgust at me, and I knew I was losing him. I remembered the scoffs of disdain from the 1920s. How silent he had been except to hound me, and so had I been except to chide and ridicule him for his feelings. I knew that was the pattern we were falling back into. I had to redirect us.

“I’m sorry, Louis. I apologize to you—sincerely. I was out of control.”

“Really? It seemed you were in perfect control. Seemed you knew exactly what to say, what to do to get what you wanted.”

“I did not want this to happen. I thought he would calm down eventually.”

“You were reading his thoughts! I specifically told you not to do that, but regardless of that, you knew what kind of anger he was feeling! Yet you pushed him! You did this on purpose. You wanted them to leave. You wanted to have me to yourself again. Well, if you hate my family so f*cking much, I don’t know why you bother with me, or why you bother me at all.”

This made my heart sink. “I love your family, Louis. You shouldn’t say that. Don’t believe it for an instant that I hate your family. I don’t even mildly dislike them. I like them a lot, Louis.”

“Then why do you act like this? Is that the best your love looks like?”

“You know it’s not, mon coeur, you know it.”

“I don’t know what I know anymore.”

“You know I love you, don’t be silly.”

“I know you’re obsessed with and possessive over me. You act like I’m not even my own. You act like I owe you something. Well, I don’t. So either you get over needing me to belong to you like I’m your f*ckin’ slave—”

“Louis don’t f*cking say that,” I said covering my ears. White fragility, I know.

“—then I don’t know if we should even keep this up. Now I’m going to sleep before I say something I regret.”

“You don’t regret just now threatening me with divorce?” I said, acting scandalized though I knew deep down he didn’t mean it.

“I’ll sleep peacefully all day.”

“Louis….”

“Good night, Lestat. Don’t f*cking wake me up for anything.”

“Louis!” I said, crossing the room to hold him.

“Don’t f*cking touch me.” And he climbed into his coffin and shut himself in.

I knocked on the lid. “Please, cherí.” He did not answer. I knocked six more times. “Louis?”

“Try me one more time, Lestat— I’m looking for a reason. One more time.”

I almost took him up on his offer to tell him we shouldn’t sleep angry, but a smart voice inside my head told me not to.

Chapter 10: Painful Penance

Chapter Text

Louis here, picking up where Lestat left off.

He did not leave me in peace. The second I got out my coffin, he was opening his, too, as if he’d been waiting for hours, and his mouth was already moving, saying, “I am your family, too, Louis.”

“You’re real comfortable in that status.”

“I’m saying that I love you and am here for you. I have been with you longer than they have and I love you more than they love you, Louis.”

“Scared that would change the second they got a chance to know me? Scared you’ll be competing? Scared I might get used to people who are normal about their love?”

“You don’t like normal, baby, you know you get f*cking bored with normal. You can’t hide from me.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m about to try.”

“Louis….”

“You’re in my way.” He stepped back and let me leave the room, but he followed closely on my heels.

“Louis.”

“I’m tired of hearing my name come out your mouth, Lestat.”

“Louis, Louis, Louis,” he responded.

“You’re so childish! Leave me alone, else I’ll put you through a wall, man!”

“I hate when we fight,” he said. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do, Lestat, but guess what?”

“What?”

“You’re impossible to get along with.”

“Not true.”

“Yes! True! This is why everybody leaves you or tries to f*cking kill you, bruh, what the f*ck is wrong with your head?”

“I’m getting better,” he snapped. “I am getting better. You’re just pissed off at me and are refusing to acknowledge that.”

“How many more centuries until you are actually, finally good?! You’re still just a complete asshole!”

“I may be an asshole, but you love me. You love what I am, it turns you on. You like having a project to fix. You’re such a woman!”

And for reasons I should take pains to examine within myself, this set a devastating fire inside of me. I turned around and slapped him across the face (not very hard) and used the back of my wrist to jab his solar plexus, winding him, and causing enough pain, but not technically damaging him as I might have with my fist. He gasped, hunched over for several seconds before he lowered himself to sit on the floor. “Louis,” he rasped. “That f*cking hurt.”

Though my hands trembled (with rage or in anticipation of a disproportionate retaliation, I wasn’t sure), my voice was steady and cold. “Don’t ever tell me what I am, what I like. You have no clue. As if you ever cared.”

“You don’t like me?” he asked through a pained, watery smile.

“I pity you,” I snarled. “Always have.”

“As… as you should,” he said, then tipped over on his side, holding his sternum. “Ow, Louis.”

I turned my back to him just as I thought I saw his eyes going bloody with tears. I didn’t want to see him crying because then my resolution of silence would be f*cked.

The rest of that night, I practically pretended he didn’t exist. I read and I wrote, sipping a glass of chilled blood.

He would move to the same room as me and sit at the opposite side of the room from me. I wouldn’t look at him. When he sat next to me, I would get up and leave the room.

“Louis,” he said, the third time I had done this. “This passive aggression is impressive, but I am trying to reconcile.”

“Reconcile about what, Lestat?”

“I was wrong to provoke them. I was wrong to say those things earlier, too. I was trying to provoke you—”

“Well, provoke me, you did. Congratulations.”

“Right, but then I realized I was being childish. I didn’t want to admit to wrongdoing. I don’t like to do that. I instead wanted to appease you with words and to assure you that it wasn’t so bad what I have done. I know it is bad. I know.”

“Smart man. See what happens when you have some time to self-reflect?” Still, I did not look at him.

“I didn’t mean for them to leave like that, Louis.”

“What did you want to happen?”

“I wanted… does it matter? I don’t know what I wanted. It’s like I get this feeling that I want to be reacted to.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know— it’s probably the same reason you pity me.”

“Mm.”

“That really hurt me, Louis; do you really pity me?”

“You’re pathetic. Of course, I do.”

He laughed painfully. “You are brutal today. You are skewering my rotten heart.”

“I never miss when that’s the goal.”

“You want me in pain?”

“I do.”

“Well, please, just keep talking to me. Don’t treat me like a disease or a parasite you must avoid, it hurts me too much. Let me be in the same room as you— let me be near you.”

“No. I can’t stand seeing your face.”

“I miss you. And I am truly sorry. What more do you need?”

“More than that.” And then I resumed not answering him when he spoke. Three days dragged on like this.

Then he finally got me to break my silence after he’d successfully kept up a racket, talking nonstop for two hours about how cruel I was being, how relentless I was in my self-pity, how self-righteous I was, and how I never actually wanted change or a healthy marriage, I was just toying with him.

“I’m not!” I snapped. “Can you shut the f*ck up?!”

“So when can we talk?” he said, not missing a beat, though his face showed his surprise that I had finally spoken.

“Later. Not now.”

“When is later? Please, I’m desperate, St. Louis, I’ve been praying to you for days, don’t you hear me?”

“Connection’s patchy.”

“Darling, let’s talk it out. We can get through anything.”

“You crossed the line Lestat. I’m trying to teach you something about boundaries.”

“I never learned well in silence, I need an instructor. A teacher, a mentor, Louis— I’m awful when I’m left to my own devices. You know how stupid I am.”

“Sure are. I’ve been trying to teach you basically my whole f*cking life at this point, and you still don’t get it.”

“Louis…” he whined and tipped my book closed.

“Leave me alone.”

“Just look at me once, Louis. You haven’t looked at me in days. You haven’t touched me in what feels like longer.”

“Want me to punch you again? You liked that?”

“If that is all I deserve, then please, do it.”

I shook my head and opened my book again. He knocked it closed yet again. “Don’t play with me right now, Lestat, I swear. Get out my face.” I opened it again, and he closed it again. “Lestat.”

“Louis.”

I stood up and started walking upstairs. He followed close behind. “Please get out my f*ckin’ face, Lestat, I’m warning you.”

“Look at me, Louis,” he pleaded, getting more desperate. He turned me around by my shoulder, but I pushed him off. “Louis, please! Stop this madness!”

“I’ll bleed you dry, Lestat, touch me one more time!”

“You wouldn’t.”

I continued up the stairs, but he had already sped to meet me at the top face-to-face, and he was staring me down, teeth bared.

“Look at me, Louis,” he insisted vehemently, and I saw the old Lestat rise from the ashes. It made me flinch and recoil, ready to flee or throw the first punch. Seeing my reaction, he withdrew back into himself enough to lower his tone, and his hand lifted to caress my cheek, but I batted his arm away. “Please, Louis.” It took me a minute to realize he was still pleading with me, as unhinged as he seemed. “Please— don’t do this, don’t ignore me. You can’t ignore me, just talk to me now, why does it have to be later? Later is an eternity outside your grace—”

I shook my head. “You’ve f*cked it, Lestat— you did that. Deal with it by yourself.”

Now that I had finally looked at him and he could feel my anger in my gaze, his desperation seemed only to get worse— or maybe he was just more confident he could break my resolve. “Louis, please talk to me. Don’t do this to me. Don’t leave me, please, do anything you like to your Lestat, but please don’t leave him.”

“I’m just going to the f*cking coffinroom. You take the bedroom— I don’t want to see you or even hear you.” I moved past him but he continued to follow me.

“Please, I can’t sleep alone, banished from you. I will suffer.”

“Suffer, then.”

“Let me suffer by your hand instead. Please, Louis, punish me.”

“No, because what makes you think I’d do that sh*t for you after this? What— so you can feel absolved and move on and not fix it?”

“I will fix it, I will fix it,” he promised, eyes bloody and panicked. “That’s what I’ve been saying, hm? Please, St. Louis, I put myself at your mercy. I beg you, on my face.” And he did the most astounding thing— he fell to his knees and bowed his head to the floor, arms stretched out to me, putting me in mind of Armand praying in the glow of a Dubai sunset. “Please, Louis?” he wept, nose to the floor.

“You’re sick. You manipulative slu*t, Lestat.”

“I’m a worm, I’m a beast, I’m a dog— crush me, slay me, beat me, or chain me by my neck to a wall— I’m whatever you say I am, whatever you want, just don’t leave me alone. Don’t be angry with me, I can’t help it. I can’t help it, I am what I am, but damn it, I love you so much, Louis— please, know it. I love you. I didn’t mean to ruin it, I know I’m the worst—”

“Shut up— there you go again!”

“— but if you give me one chance, Louis— if you give me a day, I will rectify my mistakes. I will smooth everything over, Lou— I will make it right, again. You will see how much your Lestat can do with one chance!”

“My Lestat? You sure you’re anyone’s but your own?”

“Please, yes, I’m yours,” he sobbed, laying out completely prone on the floor now, hands clasped together above him, utterly beside himself. “Please, Louis. Don’t disown me, it’ll break my heart.”

I watched him crying for a minute, observing his body language, listening to his sounds, trying to determine his sincerity— whether or not this was manipulation. Surely it was. At least in part. But as I watched him, stared at how his nails dug bloodily into the skin at the backs of his hands, how tightly he clasped them, smelled his tears on the air, and realized he had been in the same clothes for three days, I had no doubt that he really was distraught and unsure I would forgive him.

“Get up, Lestat,” I ordered him at last.

He lifted his head, face streaked with blood and eyes bloodshot and horrible, his hair disheveled.

“Qu’est-ce que?”

“I said ‘get up.’ Can’t you hear?”

Quickly he got to his feet, eyes low as if trying not to make me change my mind or provoke me with too bold a gaze. He dried his cheeks, smearing the blood so it looked like rouge on his pale face.

“Tell me how you think you’re going to fix it.”

He answered promptly. “I have already sent a formal letter of apology,” (a surprise to me), “but if that doesn’t work I will go to them myself. I will apologize very humbly and sincerely. I will explain that I am a fool but that you are a good person and plead with them to give you another chance. I will offer to stay away. I will flood them with meaningful gifts if I have to. Pay off all their debts. Anything. I know it is important to you. I would never forgive myself if I ruined this, for you, Louis. I didn’t think I had, but I can’t stand you even thinking I would do this, Louis. Now, I wonder, what if I did? I am most distraught and ashamed of myself, Louis, I mean this.”

“You’re a smooth talker, Lestat. No one can say otherwise.”

“I am smooth, but it doesn’t mean I am not earnest.”

“Please don’t talk unless I’m asking you a question. You got me f*cked up Lestat. Majorly f*cked up.”

He swallowed tightly and nodded. And this is why I hadn’t looked at him for so long— already I could feel myself feeling uncomfortably guilty for striking him the other day, however minorly, and for reprimanding him, and getting him even this emotional. I’m too sensitive and prone to indulging his every spoiled whim, to wiping every crocodile tear, though I know some of you will disagree after having read how consistent I’d been for three days— three days that are like hours to vampires, you must remember.

So I straightened up and steeled my voice, letting myself feel my anger which was just underneath my exasperated love for him.
“What you did was entirely unacceptable. I told you not to do it— specifically told you. But you didn’t listen, and now two of them pretty much don’t want nothing to do with us. Not because of me— but because of you and how wound up in each other they know we are.” He looked about to say something, but he caught himself, pressed his lips together, and lowered his eyes again. Folding my arms, I sighed. “What is it?”

“They like you. They will come back for you. I know it. I heard them think it.”

This gave me hope, but I didn’t let it sink into me, “What about you, Lestat? What am I going to do about you?”

“If they want you, then why am I relevant?”

“Because you’re part of the family now, too,” I admitted grudgingly, fully aware I was already soothing him even though I’d been determined to stay mad for a week at least. “If they know me, they’ve got to know you. That’s how it’s always going to work, whether we like it or not. You decided that the second you bit me.”

“I do like it. I do not regret it,” he said, and I could feel his heart lifting from the pit of despair.

I snapped my fingers so loudly he flinched. “Shut up. Me neither, but that’s beside the point. There are certain lines you do not cross. You especially. Now, Les, I want you to get along with the family, I really do. But more than that, I need to know we did all we could so that if it’s just me and you in the future, it wasn’t for lack of trying— you understand? And I won’t have you f*cking it up for me because you hate the concept of blood-family not forged through the Dark Gift. I know what you think. In fact, I know too much of what you think— I’m sick of hearing your endless cynicism! I’ve decided I want this! And I’m going to have it if they’ll have me, and I don’t care if you support me or not, okay? I’m done with your bullsh*t! I’m sick and tired of it! Understand?”

He nodded. “Yes, Louis, I understand. I do. I will try my best. And I want it. I support you. And I don’t hate your family. I keep saying this— I love them. They’re part of you, Louis, I would never harm them or separate you from them. Not if they are accepting. Not if you are happy. I mean this. I will make it right, Louis.”

“Good,” I sighed, passing my hand over my face, tired already and wondering how close to dawn we were. I checked my watch. It was only 2 a.m.

“I’m sorry, Louis,” he murmured, “for causing you to be so angry and distressed.”

“I bet you are.”

“I will do as you say. Instruct me to do something for penance and I will do it. I know I’m already disobeying your command to stay silent, but I am desperate.”

I sighed again, wondering to myself what I would even do with Lestat who seemed to enjoy pain more than suffer from it. Then I had an idea. Something childish and from the dark annals of childhood, but something cruel in me said it was perfect.

“Fine. But I don’t wanna see your face right now.” Moving downstairs again (Lestat basically on my back), I grabbed the thickest dictionary I had off a sidetable and I dropped it on the floor, a few feet from a corner of the main sitting room. “Put your heels on that and put your f*cking face in the corner.”

He tilted his head, studying my face like a curious cat. Judging correctly that I was serious, he silently moved to do as I asked. I watched with equal parts horror, trepidation, and amazement as he placed himself in the predicament I’d designed for him without complaint, and he folded his arms behind his back for good measure— the picture of supplication.

“Good,” I acknowledged him. “Now stay. I’ll come back when I’m ready to deal with you.”

“Okay,” he whispered wetly.

I went and stood in the shower under the hot water, resisting the urge to punch through the tile. It was expensive tile. Instead I went through a long, methodical shower routine that included three different types of exfoliation and four moisturization processes. Only when I felt like a new person did I come out. I didn’t think of Lestat immediately. Every time I did, I felt more pissed off. Part of me didn’t even expect him to still be where I left him, and this pissed me off even more.

It was about 45 minutes after I’d left him that I returned and found him still there, his calves trembling with the strain of trying not to let his legs buckle, his breathing shallow and meditative, if a little hitched.

His eyes were closed, when I walked up to him so silently, so that when I spoke he flinched.

“You’re still here.” He swallowed and nodded. “You’re really trying to get on my good side.”

“Yes, I live for your smile, St. Louis, especially when it’s for me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I love you,” he said with all the feeling inside him— so much feeling that it moved me in spite of my resolutions to stay cold toward him.

“I know you do. In your own way. You’re possessive. Obsessive. Insane.”

“I know,” he whispered into the wall.

“What are we going to do about it?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Yeah right. Come out the corner— you’ve been there long enough.”

Immediately he used his hands to push away from the wall and tremulously lowered his heels to the ground, wincing with pain.

“You good?” I worried unnecessarily.

He nodded. Two livid red spots stood out on either side of his forehead from where he’d been leaning. I almost laughed at him, letting my endearment show, but I hardened my heart once again, knowing I had to get my anger out, needed to make my point.

“You got something to say before we start?”

“No,” he sniffled. “Only be as harsh as you can bear to be, and take comfort knowing that it will still not be sufficient to cover all the pain I know I have caused you— both in the past and in the present and miles and miles into the future. I deserve anything you can bear to give me. Be harsh. Try to be a little cruel, Louis. Give me a taste of my own medicine, I need it badly.”

“Don’t worry about that. You go up to the bedroom and get undressed. I need a drink.”

He nodded, and leaned close as if about to kiss my cheek, but then reared back as if he changed his mind— as if thinking he probably didn’t deserve such an indulgence— and he went to do as I commanded.

I poured a chilled glass of our finest alcoholic victim and tried to come to terms with what I intended to do to my husband— a brat whom I loved, nevertheless. I never wanted to hurt him, even when he hurt me. He need only turn his beautiful face with those strange, hypnotic blue eyes to hold mine, stained and swimming with red tears, and suddenly I am weak. I am reminded of his lifeless body surrounded in a pool of blood, those same eyes rolled to the back of his head, dying in my arms, my hope in loving anyone ever again dying with him.

But as I drank, I shook the images from my head, told myself to get a grip.

We were doing this so that it never came to that again. This was a little bit of preventative pain.

Still, I felt guilty knowing he had no idea how much I was intending to hurt him. He thought he did, but he probably had no idea. This is what I thought anyway. My mistake has always been underestimating the ways in which Lestat’s insanity surpassed my own.

When I had drunk a second glass and felt the fire in my fingertips, I at last turned to the bedroom and entered to see him standing naked and still as a tree in the middle of the room, radiant and golden amid the jade greens, ruby reds, and vermillion golds of our private room. His eyes did not leave me, but he didn’t meet my gaze.

“f*cking hell, Lestat.” He gave me a curious glance. “Why we even gotta do this? You can’t understand plain English? Is my French bad now? You can’t understand me when I’m talking? You have no idea how to just not push things?”

“I have always been incorrigible,” he said without a thread of pride concealing his shame.

“I know you have. But Lestat, I haven’t been this appalled— this f*cking pissed in a long f*cking time, sweetheart.”

“I know,” he said softly. “I would say I will do better and that I will change right this instant, but I cannot say it would be true. I have a hard time controlling myself.”

“I know.” I took a moment just to look at him, considering his (still insufficiently) sorrowful face (which was yet enough to make me want to embrace him and put him to sleep with kisses) before crossing the room to the wardrobe and finding a plain leather belt. “Bend over the bed. Hurry up.”

He wasted no time doing as I instructed.

“This is going to hurt, Lestat,” I said unnecessarily.

“Thank you,” he breathed.

“And it’s supposed to hurt. So if you try to fight me and complain, I’m gonna assume you’re not getting it, and I’m only gonna keep going until you do.”

“You are so assertive, times like this, Louis. I almost have the nerve to like it.” And indeed, the ghost of a smile made his countenance the slightest bit less gloomy.

“Don’t keep pissing me off, Lestat, please,” I urged him, though it comforted me that his humor was still with us. I threw my still slightly damp bath towel down before him. “And don’t get blood in the covers with your crying.”

He nodded, and fell silent, taking a deep breath.

I took a deep breath of my own and looked down at the belt in my hand, already doubled into a loop. I wondered what sound it would make, knowing I would hate it as it would herald his suffering at my hand. Selfishly, part of me wished something or someone else would make him suffer in my stead— or that he didn’t want this or need this. I wanted to resent him for this role he would have me play, but I knew that I was doing this of my own free will, and that the feeling I was wishing to avoid was the catharsis of laying this hurt on the person I loved more than anyone.

I drew my arm back and landed the first blow across his immortally pert ass. He hissed and his fingers curled into the towel, but that was it. The flush was stark and red. I hadn’t drawn blood, but I could have if I’d hit him any harder. I dialed it back just a tiny bit so as not to go too hard too soon, and struck him again. He gasped and his shoulders flexed before settling submissively into languid acceptance. Again— another gasp, cut off as he bit into the towel. I saw a few tiny pinpricks of blood develop where the last blow overlapped the first and second. I turned my attention to his unmarked thighs and here I heard a muffled but swiftly aborted cry of pain absorb into the towel. This brought me some dark satisfaction. He didn’t make another sound, though, as I hit him a total of ten times, and then spoke.

“You paying attention, Lestat?” I asked.

He lifted his head. “Yes, Louis.”

“Good.”

“Am I meant to be counting them?”

I considered briefly before deciding to have mercy. “Nah, you just lay there and take it this time.”

“Thank you,” he murmured and lowered his head again. I wished I could see his face, read his expression.

I returned to his buttocks, hitting a little harder than before— right up to the edge of blood-drawing. I listened to him gasp aloud, his hair tossing back in his surprise. He lowered his head again and seized a fistful of his silken tresses to pull, grounding himself. I hit him again like that, and he made a sad croaking sound, which he quickly smothered in the towel.

“You listening?”

“I— I hear you, Louis.”

“Nah, don’t use my name. Not when I’m handling you like this.”

“Sir, then. Master, maybe?”

I frowned. “Don’t be weird.”

“You like it,” he observed.

I lashed him again and he choked on a yowl of pain. “Keep it ‘Sir.’”

“Yes, Sir,” he whispered. “Mon Dieu… putain d'enfer!” he snapped as I hit him again before he could suppress himself.

“I like how you scream.”

“Lou— Sir,” he corrected himself. “You shouldn’t say these things if you don’t want to turn me on.”

“Lestat, I swear, we will be here all f*cking night and all f*cking day if you get off to this. You hear me? I will tear your ass up until it looks like the sun got you and turned your butt into ash.”

He chuckled into the towel. “I was only joking. But seriously, Louis— Sir, how was poor Lestat to respond to something so flattering?”

Instead of answering, I belted him ten more times across his thighs until he panted and squirmed frantically, growling in agony.

“Just like that,” I huffed with exertion. He’d turned his head to the side, and I could see his first tears of pain. “And stay still.”

“Yes, Sir, as you wish,” he said softly.

“There you go.” I hit him again and again across his ass. He hissed and grimaced. “Getting sensitive?” He didn’t respond, so I hit him again. “Huh?” I demanded as he let out a dry sob.

“Yes, Louis, you’re doing a great job. I mean, Sir, I’m sorry— ah-hah! OW!” he shouted as I hit him again. “I didn’t mean to,” he pouted.

“I know you didn’t. You do a lot of things you don’t mean to do. Because you don’t take nothing I say seriously.”

“I do, Sir,” he insisted. “I do, I do, I do. I’m just very stupid and rash.”

“Yeah, not anymore. Starting today, you’re going to be better at that. I’m giving you new brain cells. New self-restraint. Every time you think about doing some dumbass sh*t, you’re going to feel this pain in your ass and remember what it costs you. Isn’t that the point of this? Isn’t that how you sold it to me?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Yeah? That’s what I thought.” I began whipping him once more. He flinched and buried his face into the towel again, keeping his noises in the back of his throat, his feet kicking up occasionally. “Keep your f*cking legs down.” He obeyed as best he could, and it lasted all of thirty seconds. Seeing his restraint crumble, I gave him a brief break. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Did you think I would go easy on you?”

He lifted his head, his breath wet with tears, and whispered, “No. I hoped not.”

“Good.”

“Putain— that really hurts,” he tried to laugh through his tears when I gave him a careless flick to his calf. “You’ve got quite the arm these days, Sir. Maybe you’ve always had it. Oh-ha, please, please, Sir,” he said as I began hitting him again.

“Yep. I can do this all day.”

“Thank you,” he winced. “I don’t seem to, right now, but I really appreciate it, Lou— FU-UCK!”

“You’re talking too much, Lestat. Just take it. Can you do that?”

He nodded with an expression that read of anguish, and buried his face in the towel again.

His lower half was so striped now, so red. White blisters appeared on the most rounded spots of his ass and dark purple bruising began to appear around the edges of most overlapping stripes.

I paused after about sixty-five total, threw the belt down beside him and walked up to him, kneeling beside him in bed.

“Baby, look at me.” He turned his face in my direction, but his golden hair shielded him from me still. Gently, I pushed his lovely, bloodstained locks aside so I could see his lovely, bloodstained face. He drew in a trembling breath and looked up at me for a moment, then down at my lap. “You good?”

“Don’t tell me that’s it,” he said dryly.

“I’m just checking on you. You okay?”

He sniffed and nodded. “Yes, I’m always okay. My capacity for enduring is vaster than you must think. I’ll be fine, my love, please make your point. I am listening.”

“Don’t worry, I will. Let’s take a minute. It might get intense. If at any point you really just can’t take it anymore, just… say ‘enough’ and I will stop. Okay? I ain’t tryna hurt you too bad.”

“‘Enough?’”

“Yep. Can you remember that?”

I could tell he wanted to retort that of course he could remember that, but instead he lifted his hand. I grasped it.

“I hate to do this to you.”

“But you enjoy it the least bit, alas,” he said, with his usual astuteness, though his voice was weak. “I hope that is the case, anyway.”

I kissed his fingers. “You’re right. And it feels awful, but… that’s what we decided we’re doing.”

“I’m sorry I’ve made it come to this over something so near and dear to your heart. Your Lestat can be a villain and a beast.”

“No, shhh-sh-sh. You’re just protective of me. I forgive you. You just can’t be acting out like this, because then next thing you know, people will come with the pitchforks and the voodoo dolls and we’ll have to board a red-eye flight across the ocean. You know how cranky flying makes you.”

“We’re not supposed to be in the air in metal fire traps. It’s not natural.”

“Neither are we.”

“And yet we exist— vampires and airplanes alike.”

“It’s poetic in a way.”

“Yes,” he sighed with a shuddery breath.

“I really love you, Les.”

“I know you do. I know it, and it’s such a tremendous responsibility concealing my worst parts from you, mon coeur. I never want you to see me like that—when I’m awful and I can’t help myself, I just barrel on being awful, awful, awful— even though I’m aware of your disgust the entire time. I don’t know what is wrong with me, but you cure me of it some of the time.”

I couldn’t help but smile the littlest smile, but when I felt it on my lips, I stood up immediately and grabbed the belt.

“This’ll be over soon. You need this.”

It was here that his lips curled ever so faintly, and he scoffed. “What do you take me for? Weak? Afraid? A trembling pupil? Please, give me your rage. Give me your hurt. I can bear it better than your pity. Aren’t I the maker between us?”

“Watch your mouth or it’ll run away from you,” I warned him, though I knew why he was saying this.

“Shred me, my love. Remember how brutish and ill-mannered I am, and realize that I can take it. Tear the skin from my body, I don’t need it. I’d rather it keep you warm.”

Unbidden, the mental image and jarring noise of him throwing the chessboard when Claudia wouldn’t take her victory flashed in my mind. In retaliation, I struck the bed beside him with the belt so that he flinched at the thick wallop. “Shut up, Lestat. I appreciate the sentiment, but please shut up.”

“What sentiment? There isn’t an ounce of sentiment in my words.”

I shook my head. “Alright, you asked for it.”

“Beat me. You know I deserve it. We both do.”

“I said alright!” I snapped and on impulse, I hit him across his shoulders so he gave a high, surprised gasp before collapsing back down. I hit him again just like that and again, again, again. The towel ripped under his nails and he panted heavily, nostrils flared and eyes red, pupils dilated. But he wasn’t angry— he was hurting and brewing in the feeling of being trapped, cornered in his animal desperation for relief or for a manageable grasp of what he was feeling. I understood the experience on a bone-deep level. Part of me was pleased that now he had to.

“Putain de merde, Lou,” he whispered into the towel, so low only one with vampiric hearing could hear it.

“What was that?” I demanded.

“I thank you, Sir,” he wheezed, then yelped and bit his lip around a curse as I struck his ass again. It was entirely flushed red and blood-beaded lines latticed it from hip to hip.

“You catching an attitude with me?”

“No, Sir,” he insisted. “I’d never. Your Lestat would never.” His fists trembled in the towel, and blood, not just from his eyes but from his palms became more and more apparent in it.

“Rip a hole in my silk comforter like you’re doing to that towel, and we’re gonna have a problem, comprenez-vous?”

“Oui, je vous comprends très bien, Maître.”

“The f*ck did I tell you? Hm?”

“Monsieur! Je voulais dire ‘Monsieur!’” he hastened to say, though under his desperate tone, I could hear his eternal laughter. In answer to its bells, I struck his thighs viciously, making him howl and rise on his hands, grimacing. “Putain!”

“I told you to watch your f*cking mouth.”

“Louis!” he sobbed in protest, then burst into breathless, hiccupping laughter even with those red tears streaming down his face.

“You think this is funny?”

“Non, non, non!” he insisted, wagging his head.

“Then stop talking. I don’t want to hear a word— in French or otherwise. I control your filthy mouth now. Unless you want a gag in it or unless you want to keep count for me, you better control it.”

I knew he wanted to say something like “A gag would be a sexy idea,” but Lestat hates counting things, and that likelihood was too scary to allow it to come to pass.

“Now lay back down. Don’t move. I ought to keep you in a more difficult position, but I’m being too nice to your scoundrelly ass.”

I knew he would have said, “The state of my ass would disagree.”

But I was met with obedient silence.

I began to use the belt on him again, watched the bloody lines accumulate and deepen, smear the blood around, and as I did, I listened to his gasps, hisses, gurgles, and squeaks, which were mostly hidden in the towel, an end of which he now bit down on.

After a time, when his legs were pretty marked up and they couldn’t stop trembling, I threw the belt down again and lay on my side beside him.

“Lestat?”

He couldn’t answer me, didn’t turn his face to look at mine, fearing his own ugliness I knew, though he could never be ugly to me.

“Do you need to stop?”

Through the shivering and the hiccupping and the tiny squeaks coming from his eyes and throat, he shook his head ‘no.’

“Lestat, you’ve had enough.”

Still, resolutely he shook his head.

“Babe, I’m looking at you, and it’s not pretty. I’m… I’m ashamed of myself, honestly.”

“You—you’ve endured—w-worse. A million t-times worse, L-Lou. This is easy. It’s pleasant with you doing it to me.”

“This isn't a comeuppance.”

“More. More... Louis. You can… do it, my c-consecrated… l-lamb.”

“Please, look at me.”

“No, I’m hideous,” he confirmed my guess. “My— my eyes get— very— very ugly when I’m cr-crying, you know this, L-Louis—don’t— don’t make me.”

“I’m not making you do anything, baby,” I said softly. “Do you need me to stop? Can I stop?”

“No,” he insisted with all the force left in him. “Please,” he added meekly, wetly.

I bowed my head and sighed.

Chapter 11: I Need A Different Kind of Love

Chapter Text

Now I know what many of my fans will say. Oh, Louis is a terrible man. How can he whip his husband like that? He must be a monster.

To which I say, f*ck off. You all know the hell I’ve put St. Louis through, much of it not exactly consensual (even if we were locked in mutual pettiness— I clearly had the advantage)— and you all blindly raved for me, demanding more, your shapeless mouths open as baby birds waiting to be fed more reasons to want to f*ck me thanks to your innumerable Daddy Issues and Brat Complexes.

And I asked him to do it— I begged him to do it. He did not lie! I’d been wanting this for eons, and it only happens that a severe trespass of mine gave adequate reason for the kind of flaying I desired all along.

If ANYONE disparages Louis in the comments, I will crawl through your screen and peel off your face with one fingernail and eat it before your lidless eyes. Understand? Bon. Glad my position is clear to everyone.

But oh, that night! Even though it happened only a little over a week ago, it’s probably one of my favorite memories I share with Louis now. The way he embodied with such convincingness the stern disciplinarian— the furious, slighted husband. He made me afraid, genuinely. I adored his attitudes, how he became as straight and quick and neat as a rapier! It turns me on, just thinking about it.

It’s a pity I’m such an ugly crier because I could not show him how ecstatic I was to have my new wounds. I couldn’t show him how dearly I wanted more. Not to say I wasn’t duly wrecked. I was. I was on the verge of passing out at several points. Louis is not just a fledgling anymore, and he has been drinking human blood, as well as my own— he can do a number on me if he so wishes and if I am as compliant as I made myself.

So as he lay at my side, nearly in tears, himself— asking me if I really could take it and if I might not allow him to stop, basically pleading with me— I very nearly considered taking the offer of grace. But I had a vision in my head of how long I wanted to be required to recover. (I am still minorly recovering today. I am prone as I write this, I am pleased to boast.) And I knew that a part of myself felt unrepentant enough to think I knew better— to think that Louis did not need his family and that I wasn’t really a part of them, so it wasn’t really my fault, and if it were, so be it— he would be happier and safer without humans and with me, his true and chosen family.

This is what I knew a small corner of my rebellious soul believed, even if my lips and my mind and my heart and my sorry ass were now in alignment with Louis’ agenda. My worship of this man is such that I wanted to transcend my flesh in my love for and obedience to my wise, beautiful, and merciful-to-a-fault Louis. So I egged him on, I encouraged him in his efforts to take the skin from the back of me.

When he sighed, as if to refuse my request to continue, I croaked, “So you’ll tickle me with a belt for half an hour, if that, and abandon me to this guilt? Some fine leader you are. If you can’t finish the job, Louis, from now on I will have to resist laughing in your face every time you try to seduce me. A child is what you’re acting like, Louis. I guess that’s why I’m the maker, not you.”

“Stop.”

“A few tears and you’re falling for my histrionics. I thought you were smarter.”

“Shut up, you’re delirious.”

“I’m not very picky, but the men I f*ck have to at least be able to put me in my place, Louis— I know you’ve got it somewhere in you. Or did it die with your squishy human insides?”

He slapped me over the head and huffed, tipping onto his back, arms folded, pouting in that cute way I can’t help but feel endeared to.

“puss*.”

“Lestat, do you ever stop? Be straight up with me. What are you, twelve?”

“Cane me at least.”

“You’re insane.”

“I scared away your nieces and nephews. I pissed off the nephews for sure. Do you think they’ll ever come back? I was bluffing, before, when I said I’d do all of that to get them back. I said that to manipulate you, and you fell for it. You’re so gullible, Lou. Always were naive to my professed good intentions. You know I’m not a good person, yet you still have faith in me. Don’t you ever get tired, darling? I remind you now, so you might get at least a few years worth of frustration out of your system tonight.”

“You’re really clumsy with your manipulation when you’re hurting aren’t you, ‘Stat?”

“This is a mild pain to me. You forget, I’ve been tortured multiple times in my life. Brutally. I just have ready-flowing eyes. They are too ready to applaud.”

“Lestat, I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

“Bullsh*t!” I laughed. He didn’t answer me to deny or admit a thing. So, still hiding my ugly face, I lay my hand over his heart. “You know I am fundamentally selfish and self-preserving, Louis. If I were in danger from you and your belt, I would have told you.” Briskly, I patted his cheek, and in annoyance, he swatted my hand away, then grabbed it and returned it to his face, kissing my palm and breathing me in.

“I love you so much,” he said.

“I know,” I answered. “Which is why you’re going to finish this, so I can enjoy your helicopter overindulgence in the coming days, and so I can get my beauty sleep.”

It took some more cajoling and persuasive reminders of how infuriating I am on a regular basis, not to mention to have for a life partner, but eventually, he kissed the back of my head, which was all I allowed him to see of me, and he asked, his big, earnest eyes sounding wet with tears as he beseeched me, “Are you absolutely sure?”

And I answered, “Yes, don’t be silly.”

And his hand closed around that cursed belt again as he kissed all the way down my spine before he stood behind me once more and brought me closer to realizing how much of a menace I am.

It wasn’t easy nor enjoyable, the entire process. The thing with indulging in this way for pleasure reasons is that the pleasure comes from the feeling that one is utterly possessed by another person and, like I said, in thinking of bearing the marks. Those elements were there. But what was missing were the sweet, sensual words, the feeling that I might have gotten, if this were another context, that Louis was extremely turned on by my bloodying body, by my screams of pain. He lied when he said he liked the way I scream. At least, it became a lie as this punishment drew on.

In my abject state, on my face, covered in shame and my own blood (which never brings the same visual zest or aesthetic joy to me as someone else’s— a shame), my hair a mess, my writhing and weeping pathetic— Louis’ heart was breaking into a million fragments. I know this because he is my companion heart. He is connected to me in a way you, reader, will never understand. It’s like I’m his mother, and he is attached to me by an unsevered umbilical cord. I feel his pain in my body, I feel his sadness as if it were my own. His sickness becomes mine, and if he is poisoned, it infects me.

I act like this isn’t the case when I am distracted by stupid things, and in the past I would punish him with mockery and falsely oblivious ridicule and by taking other bedfellows— all because he has such a beautiful heart and I knew mine could never match it. It is the Bond that makes it impossible for me not to know him or care for him in my deepest soul. He is my flesh and blood. He is my lover across eternity. So of course I would know how little joy he took in giving me such a hiding, especially when I couldn’t express how much love I felt for him as he did it.

He did not lie, however— he did feel great catharsis through punishing me like that. I’m sure he thought of Claudia and how awful I’d been to her at times. I’m sure he thought of how I’m the reason he would never have children again— fearing that I would essentially devour them the same way. I’m sure he thought of how I cheated on him and lied to his face for decades. I’m sure he thought, of course, of how I had beaten him to a pulp in my rage and jealousy and had let my precious angel fall though I knew he had no wings, condemning him to a darker Hell than the one I’d already forced him to reside inside with me.

I knew this. So I urged him, though my voice was ugly, hoarse, and cracked, “Harder, Louis, please, don’t give up, I can take it, I want more.”

His catharsis came with tears that he shed. I heard him sniffling in between the loud snaps and thunderous claps of that horrible, ugly belt. When I turned my head to look at him, because I had to see it, my ugliness be damned, he hid his eyes behind his wrist, but I could read the rest of his contorting face. As he hid from me, he paused from giving me my dues. I waited, breathing and staring at him until I was sure I wouldn’t stammer through my next words.

“Are you crying, St. Louis? Mon cher, why do you cry? Never disgrace your face with such sorrow, beloved. Who made you cry?”

“You’re making me cry, Lestat,” he said as if I’d done it on purpose. Perhaps I had. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

I caught my breath for a few more moments so as to sound calm and reasonable when I would rebuff his offer (which wasn’t really an offer) to stop. “How come?”

“I don’t wanna hurt you like this, babe.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t,” he hiccupped.

“You hate that you do, but it’s true, alas,” my voice scratched. “Your Lestat is perfectly fine. Better than he’s been in a century, even.”

“You’re in pain,” he said through his lovely, trembling lips.

“For evil’s sake, Louis, I can handle it.”

“You just look so….” He couldn’t finish his assessment. “I’m sorry,” he wept, dropping the belt.

“Hey!” I protested. “That was only five minutes after the last time you stopped.”

He was drying his cheeks pointlessly in his hands which were already slick and red with his tears. “I don’t like feeling like this.”

I was about to protest that he should embrace it and start again, but then I recalled something or another that I’d read about listening to one’s partner’s quiet pleas for understanding. And there had been something so plaintive and sweet in those six words I figured this must be my cue. So I dried my own face on the towel he’d given me to protect his precious silk (even though I can buy him boats full of silk), and I attempted, groaning, to get up, then realizing I’d neither be able to stand nor sit for long, I lay back down and thumped the bed beside me, beckoning him to me.

“What do you feel like, my love?”

Drawing in a shaking breath, he gave up trying to hide his tears from me and crawled forward, using carefully curled fists, across the bed to lay beside me. “Tired,” he whispered. “I’m tired of all the pain I carry without even realizing it. Letting it out as anger feels fine and good for a second, but… but I don’t like what changes in me.” He cleaned his hands on the same towel I’d all but soaked in my own tears and ripped numerous holes.

“What changes?” I asked him, stroking his cheek, amazed that he would let me touch him at last.

“I become more like your bad side,” he sniffed, holding my hand against his cheek, nuzzling a little, his eyes large and as wise as the moon. “The badness that we share. That which attracted you to me. I’m not a good person when I… let myself let out my misery as anger.”

“You’re always a good person. And Louis… what have I been saying? Hm? You don’t listen very well, either, it seems— you see, now, I’m not the only one. I told you that you would not have done that if I didn’t want you to.”

“That’s not the point. You think I want to do that to you— that it would make me feel better.”

“That is not why I asked it of you— I’ve wanted this for a long time. But doesn't it make you feel better?”

“No. Well…” he shifted. “I feel less… on edge. Got some nervous energy out. But I could’ve just gone for a run or something, I didn’t need to do all that.”

“But it was fun.”

“No. Seeing you cry like that isn’t fun to me. I don’t like feeling like I can take your power from you.”

I rolled my eyes. Louis can be so naive and abstract in his thinking— every metaphorical instance becomes a glimpse into truth. He should have been an oracle.

“You can’t,” I said. “And you didn’t. And you would be well within your rights to do so. I’d give you all my powers, all my strength and let you give it back to me only if you saw fit. That’s how much I love you and trust you. I want you to have power too.”

“I do. My power doesn’t come from hurting people. At least it shouldn’t.”

“Sure, but hurting people does help emphasize the sensation.”

“That’s terrible, Lestat, shut up.”

I laughed. “I’m just saying you can hurt me if you like. You can throw yourself at me with all your strength. I don’t mind. I owe it to you, as maker and as lover and as friend. You are everything to me. Your wellness should have always been my first priority. Emotionally you need… how do you say— an outlet. This vampiric life is hard. Let me be your outlet, Louis. I get jealous if it’s anything else, anyway. You’re doing me a favor even if it doesn’t seem that way.”

“Lestat, you twist everything every which way. Now I’m confused.”

“As I’ve said many times, you are a library of confusion. I just bring it out of you by driving you insane.”

“My library’s organized,” he mumbled, using my hand as a pillow and rubbing his face against my palm, breathing me in as if I were a beloved blanket or stuffed animal that had been returned to him after a long time.

“Not when I’m around, f*cking it up.”

Finally he chuckled, and I felt I had won a great victory.

“I love you, Louis,” I said, running my thumb over his brow bone.

“I love you too. So much.”

“I love you even more.”

“Not possible.”

“I love you so much it drives me to madness.”

“You were already mad when I got you, don’t blame me.”

“When you got me? Am I a pet? A car?”

“Feels better than saying when you stalked me and forced your way into my life and my affection.”

“I think that way sounds romantic.”

“Of course you do,” he laughed again— a success! But then he burst into tears.

“Oh, cherí,” I crooned. “My angel face. Come here.” He sidled under my arm and shoulder. I held him tightly to myself. “You are right, I did an awful thing to make you mine. Many awful things. And much worse things afterward in an effort to keep you mine.” His breath hitched and he pressed his face into my neck, his warm tears wetting my skin. “But you are so important to me in ways that I did not completely understand back then, and which made me irrational. But I am older now, and more mature, though it doesn’t seem like it. I know what I’ve done to you, and I’m very sorry, mon amour. Grievously sorry. It hurts you so much every day that I have taken you and taken cruel advantage. I took your power and now I clumsily try to give it back.” He sobbed aloud again and flung his arm across my shoulders. Inwardly, I cheered at my accuracy and eloquence. “But you have always possessed it, darling. I never really took it from you. You can take a prince’s crown, but not his birthright.”

“I love you so much.”

“I know.”

“I hurt you so bad,” he said, his fingers stretching up and tugging lightly on my hair, rubbing it between his knuckles as was his favorite way to self-soothe when we lay together.

“Nah. You could go for longer, but if you want to stop, I won’t make you indulge me.”

He sidled completely underneath me, I scarcely know how— Louis is always good at squirming into the smallest spaces like some cute little burrowing creature. He wound his arms around my back completely, and I could almost ignore how my skin on my upper back stung to the touch still.

“You’re not pathetic,” he murmured shamefully. “I don’t pity you.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. I was just really mad. I never should have said that kind of thing to you. I meant to hurt you, but I was wrong to do it.”

“You don’t have to say it wasn’t true if it is, mon coeur. Lestat can take it.”

“Why do you always talk about yourself in the third person?”

“Because I’m a probable narcissist.”

This made him laugh again. “I guess there could be worse things you could call yourself.”

“What, like Daddy?” I asked, watching his face for the reaction. He cringed, scrunching his nose adorably.

“You’re not a… you’re not that, I’m sorry,” he laughed.

“Aren’t I? It makes you cum, calling me that.”

“You’re a brat. Way too childish.”

“What, so are you Daddy? I could get used to that…” I teased him, rolling down my hips so he could feel my penis even though it was not nearly hard, as distracted as I was by the heated, throbbing pain in my entire ass and what felt like electricity shooting through my legs, lightning dancing on my skin.

He wet his upper lip, toying with the idea. “Nah.”

“Non? How come?”

“Because it’s gross.”

“Gross gets the job done, sometimes, doesn’t it? Daddy?”

“Stop,” he said, hiding his blushing face against my neck. He continued playing with my hair and stroking my back. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m over the moon. I’ll hopefully feel this for at least a week. Can you take photos for me? Can’t you do it on the glass box?”

“You know it’s just called a phone, Lestat.”

“It’s also a camera and a typewriter and an image-compressing-thing. It contains all of the world’s knowledge by connecting to some imperceptible wavelength. It’s not just a phone anymore than you are just a man, Louis.”

“Fine. Whatever you gotta tell yourself to waste $450 every few months because you can’t keep up with it and keep ‘accidentally’ washing them with your clothes, the rare occasion you do laundry.”

“It is not my fault they are designed to break.”

“Whatever. Lose another phone, and I might consider doing this sh*t again.”

“Do you promise?” I grinned.

“Ugh. You’re such a slu*t.”

I love it when he lovingly calls me a slu*t.

“Do you know what I wish?”

“What do you wish, mon petit gosse?”

I whispered in his ear, “I wish you used your pimp stick on me.”

“Oh, God,” he groaned as if I’d farted or something. I don’t know why he reacts this way whenever I tell him my fantasies.

“I do! It would have been sexy.”

“You know I never hit a single woman with that thing— it was all for show.”

“Sure, but I’m not a woman. I’m a hot-blooded man who gets on your nerves. I’m a ‘manipulative slu*t.’”

He laughed again. “Yeah, you are.” He squeezed my biceps.

“Maybe next time?” I prompted.

“I don’t even know where that damn thing is.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Ugh. Lestat. I don’t want to beat you like you’re some whor* who stole my money in one of those sick 1980s mafia films.”

“Ooh, Louis, I love that fantasy scenario. I could pretend I hate it, and you can keep asking, ‘Where’s my money?’ and I’ll cry and say, ‘Non, I would never steal from you, sir,’ and you will say, ‘I don’t believe you,’ until I am covered in pretty bruises, and then you f*ck me to make up for the difference of what I stole.”

“You’ve clearly thought about this,” he groused.

“I want to do it.”

“That’s sick, Lestat. All my ladies were virtuous and we trusted each other.”

“And I’m the sinful bastard that perpetrated your chicken coop. And as I said, despite my beautiful, flaxen hair and smooth, ageless face, and theatrically baroque attitudes, I am a man— a vampire— who can bear it. I promise my uterus won’t fall out or something.”

“That’s not a real thing, you know.”

“Whatever— I’m with a man, I don’t need to know the latest about female anatomy this century.”

“You’re so stupid,” he snorted, then pulled on my hair pressing my lips to his own. Eagerly I kissed him, licking into his mouth like a puppy with no boundaries. “Thank you for trying to make me feel better.”

“No, St. Louis. Thank you for letting me take my penance.” I continued kissing him in between words. “You are a merciful husband. What did I do that I should have such mercy in my life?”

“Wouldn’t call it mercy.”

“What would you call it?”

“I don’t know. I just love you a lot and—” I interrupted him with a kiss. “— and I never want— mm— to hate you again. Or—Lestat— or be afraid of you again.”

“You’re not afraid of me, are you, bébé?”

“No. But I used to be… for a time.”

This broke my heart, of course, and I wanted to say he had nothing to be afraid of even then, but alas, he did. To say otherwise would be to lie and warp his reality. I’d promised not to do that anymore, no matter the intention. So I said, “I’m so sorry, angel. I would never make you afraid on purpose, ever again. I will only ever be your safety, now, baby— you know that, hm?”

“I know.”

“Good.” And because I can’t help myself, I kissed him again, and his lips worked as well as a morphine drip to ease my suffering.

Louis bit his lip so blood gushed forth when I sucked it into my mouth. When I realized what he’d done, I stopped. “Non.”

“I want you to have it. Please, cher, you can’t stay like that.”

“I want to. I told you I want to feel it all week. Longer even. It makes me feel good. Don’t deny me, sweetness, hm?”

He sighed but let his lip heal and let me continue kissing him, making his mouth my mouth again.

He did eventually get up and insist I stay down while he went and got warm water, towels, and antiseptic.

“I can’t die of this, Louis. Nor can I get infection.”

“Still. You ain’t seen it yet.”

“Take a picture, then you can play nurse.”

Huffing, he found his phone and complied with my wishes, then immediately set to work bathing my raw skin, being careful with my wounds and applying the ointment with utmost love and gentleness. He asked repeatedly if I was okay and if anything hurt and would apologize profusely if I hissed with a little bit of inconsequential pain.

“Louis, I’m fine.”

“No, it looks bad.”

“It’s not that bad. I think it’s sexy.” I was still captivated by the photos, flicking back and forth between them.

He shook his head again and again. “No. Why are you like this? That’s mental illness, Lestat, and I enable and take advantage of your mental illness and I—”

“Ughh, Louis, if I’m insane, lock me up, already! If you’re so evil and mean, do something that would actually break me! Do it the old-fashioned way! I’m not insane. I don’t need a psychiatrist, I don’t need coddling. If it makes me happy, it can’t be that bad.”

“Don’t quote Sheryl Crow at me,” he frowned.

“She endorses my needs.”

“Lestat, can’t you see how bad it is?”

“Écoutez-moi. Not another word about it, don’t sh*t on my fantasy. Merde. If you’re that torn up about it, kiss it better.”

Promptly he did kiss it, and then laughed. “Fine. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

“As it should be.”

He sighed. “A lot of emotions in one night. Guess I’m just feeling more sensitive than usual.”

“It’s almost time for coffin,” I noted.

“Can you sleep in mine tonight?” he asked. This made my heart float. We hadn’t done this in a while. I looked over my shoulder at him, feeling so endeared to him I could break into atoms.

“Nothing would make me happier, my precious… my radiant fledgling.”

He blushed and continued his unnecessary work on my already scabbing skin. We fell asleep in his green velvet coffin, me on top to spare my back half, whispering sweet words of love and forgiveness, and caressing each other in the dark until one of us succumbed first to sleep as the sun outside our nest warmed the earth and the mountains and refracted off the many glass buildings and the water alike. As much as I complain about how boring and serious it is in this city, it is also very beautiful.

Chapter 12: His Mouth In A Variety of Contexts

Chapter Text

For all the reasons I can’t explain, Lestat loved how much I’d hurt him. I was concerned because my mind won’t let me accept his strange joys without cringing with sympathy at how much abuse he must have been subjected to in his life, not to mention how much abuse he gives himself internally— because how could such treatment bring him so much bliss?

I’d never seen him happier, more giddy than he was with his ass and thighs having become one big bruise.

On his pale skin, it was stark. I almost liked the way it looked. I certainly would have if it didn’t make me feel uncomfortable with shame.

In the days after, he was more physical with me than usual, kissing me constantly, his hands roving over my body— and he kept urging me to touch him. He wanted me to f*ck him, but I refused. It would have been too painful for him, and I didn’t want to hurt him.

“Please, Louis,” he pleaded.

“No, please, lay down. Jackie’s coming—and Madeline. You’ll like them.” They were part of my rotation of live suppliers from whom Lestat had not yet indulged.

“You know I prefer to hunt. You can have them.”

“No. I don’t want you going anywhere right now. And you always make a mess. I know you won’t clean it up when you track blood into the house.”

“You’re sexy when you’re authoritative.”

I gave him a look, to which he grinned and moved closer, with a look of his own that I can never resist. Then I had an idea. “If you lie down and promise not to go hunting, I’ll do that thing you like.”

“Which one?”

“The thing I never really do. Except for on your birthday and when I’m really, really happy with you.”

“Ahhh,” he sighed wistfully, eyes closing with remembrance. “I do love that. But no, Louis, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t want that right now. I want something else. I want to give you pleasure, not the other way around. I want you to use my body.”

“I can get pleasure from it, I just don’t wanna do it all the time.” He gave me a knowing look. “I mostly like it when you do it to me,” I admitted.

“I know, I punch that ticket at least monthly,” he said wryly, but I knew he liked to give it as much as, if not more than, he liked to receive it. “But you know what I would love? If you won’t f*ck me until I heal….” He undid the clasp of my pants with a quick motion that made my face warm, and he tugged me over to the couch where he kneeled over the arm and made me stand in front of him. “Use my face.”

A tempting offer. A beautiful face.

“You sure? You’re still not feeling 100%.”

“Louis. Don’t make me beg. I’ve done enough begging.”

“Fine. Take off your shirt.”

“Already ahead of you,” he grinned victoriously and flung his shirt across the room before leaning forward and pulling me out. “Ooh, look at you. You’re so cute.”

“Shut up.”

“My sweet baby Louis,” he teased, trying to rile me up.

“Uh-huh.”

He grinned up at me before giving a kittenish lick to the very tip, digging his tongue in as if trying to split it in half. I hissed. He laughed, then made it up to me by sucking my balls into his mouth, a sensation that never gets old with him. I slipped my hand through his silken hair. In answer, I saw him rock downward on the couch and could feel him sighing warmly through his nose.

“Yeah, baby?” I whispered. He nodded and his eyes were dark and full of sin, looking up at me. I caressed his cheek and tightened my hand in his hair. “Open up.” He opened wide, his tongue rolled out like a lush, pink carpet. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

The corners of his open mouth quirked upward with delight and at that moment, I slid inside. He didn’t miss a beat, closing around me with gentle but threatening pressure, his sharp teeth always a threat as much as an invitation— just as his skill was a playful threat to make this come to an end faster than I wanted if I didn’t focus and take control. I pulled his head onto me, arching down his throat. He choked but adjusted swiftly and moaned around me, still using his tongue to caress me and even timidly knocking the back of his throat against the head.

“You’re such a pro.” He slowly humped the couch again at my praise. “So perfect when you’re like this. You’re impossible to humiliate because you just look so damn good. And you know it.”

He grabbed my hip with one hand and tried stuffing my balls into his mouth as well with the help of the other.

“Damn, you got a big mouth on you, boy.”

His throat convulsed as he choked once, twice, with amusem*nt, then he calmed again. “You’re making such a mess. Nasty creature.”

The arch in his back deepened.

“You’re so disgusting. You like this?”

“Mmphmm.”

I pulled his hair harder and began thrusting into his throat. He let go of my hip and his hand instead wandered between his own legs just to open his pants and nothing else. I saw the bulk of him unfurl when I tilted my head curiously to see, and I bit my lip until it bled, just thinking about what lay underneath his slu*tty little briefs.

“You like that?” His throat gurgled in response, and breathing through his nose, he began to cough, but cruelly I moved faster and more brutally. “Here you go.”

His face went slack as he let it happen, and as usual, I was impressed. I could never be so good, and not for lack of practice and wishing.

I pulled out completely, letting him breathe. He gasped and coughed violently, his lips and chin coated in his own saliva, a string of which connected us still.

“I’m fine,” he said immediately. “Why’d you stop?”

I walked around to grab his legs and flip him over so his feet were planted on the floor but his back stayed on the seat of the couch, his head propped against the back. I pulled off his pants and underwear so they bunched around his ankles and his blood-heavy co*ck sprung upward as if catapulted and tapped his stomach. “Stay like this,” I ordered him tersely before kneeling on the couch and bending to take him into my own mouth. Recalling the days as a human and in my early vampirehood when I used to never do this—for what I felt were personal dignity reasons— I thought now, with satisfaction, as I often did these days, how powerful this act made me feel. It isn’t what you do to another man, I’ve learned, but how you do it that could make all the difference in who was the predator and who was the prey in our little games. Lestat’s legs set to trembling immediately, and he whined. “Louis.”

“Cum before I say you can, and we’re gonna have a problem,” I warned him.

“You make me weak, Louis.”

“I want you inside me. Do you want that, or are you going to ruin it because you can’t hold a partial bridge while getting your dick sucked?”

“f*ck, Louis.”

“That’s what I thought.”

When he was slick enough, I stood and straddled him. He winced as I took him in hand, and ignoring the fact that it had been a few days and I wasn’t prepared for the stretch, I pushed him in past the head and wincingly sank completely onto him in a couple of downward rocking motions.

“f*ck, Louis, baby,” his deep, velvety voice rumbled.

I breathed harshly through my nose, tried to regain some composure as I reflexively clenched too hard around him before everything could relax.

“Yeah, you like that?” I asked, hiding how much it had kind of hurt.

“Your puss* is so good,” he whispered, and his hand slid under my thigh to touch where we were joined with light fingers. I shuddered and fell forward, my hands spanning his broad chest.

“Yeah? You act like you forget sometimes.”

“I never forget.”

“No? Tell me how good it feels.”

“It’s the best puss* I could ever touch, the most exquisite. The most supple,” the tip of his tongue lingering sensually on the last syllable, making me drip milkily into his navel. “The most delicious, sensational puss* on this earth, Louis, I’ve never felt a better one. I know there is no better.”

“Damn right.” I began to move, and his abdomen tensed and his heart pounded recklessly. I forced eye contact with him, which he met with his typical, stubborn ferocity. “Don’t you dare cum. Don’t you dare f*cking cum.”

“You know my stamina is outrageous,” he said.

“Then f*ck me.”

“You’re such a pillow princess,” he pretended to complain, then seized my hips and snapped upward into me, predictably making me yelp. He grinned, his fangs extending almost to his chin. “I love it.”

I squeezed his chest, pushing his tit* together and digging my nails into them with satisfaction. He winced. “Still, I’m in charge. I might not even let you cum. I could tell you you’re not allowed until next week. Would you obey me?”

“I worship you.”

“But would you obey me?”

“I’d fail,” he admitted with chagrin, “but not for lack of trying.”

“So little self-control, Les. What’s to be done about that?”

Still, he was beaming like the sun at me. He began my favorite rhythm, a steady staccato that barely separated his hips from me except to pull partially out perhaps twice a minute to reemphasize that incredible stretch. My eyes closed partially, and I leaned forward, enjoying myself immensely. He set his hand in my hair and gently pulled me down further for a kiss. I opened my mouth to him, panting and horny and adoring him, melting into him although I knew he wanted me to keep dominating. He didn’t push it though, letting me luxuriate until I was good and ready.

After a time, I made him stop, and I began riding him again, head floating with endorphins and oxytocin. “f*ck, Lestat, you’re so f*cking pretty. I wish you were good enough that I could let you cum inside me,” I taunted him.

He hissed as those words affected him. “Please, Louis.”

“No,” I said coldly.

“I’ve been very good.”

I threw my head back and cackled. “No, you haven’t, you horny trick.”

“Where may I cum, then?”

My mind raced. “On the floor. Then you can lick it up.”

His breath stuttered and his nails dug into my thighs. “Lou….”

“Yeah, you like that, you nasty slu*t?”

“Putain…” he whispered, eyes squeezed shut against the pain of holding off org*sm.

“You’re lucky you’re so cute, Lestat— if you looked like what you truly are inside, people would keep you chained outside like a zoo exhibit and let visitors use you for target practice with their pellet guns.”

He grabbed my hips and tried to stop my movements, caught up in the humiliation and shame of it. “Louis, please—”

“Make me cum,” I said, out of breath, myself. “Make me cum, Lestat, hurry it up.”

He angled his co*ck and began thrusting in a way guaranteed to make me org*sm, and he grabbed my dick for good measure. “Please, Louis— please, please, s’il vous plaît, mon amour,” he sobbed urgently.

And then I came— tiny suns bursting and dissolving into fire showers behind my eyelids and the warmth of expanding galaxies blooming inside my chest like spring flowers. When my body stopped clamping his magnificent co*ck so hard, I slumped forward onto him, getting a faceful of his golden hair— it smelled like evergreen. “Louis, please, sweet angel,” he whined in a strangled voice.

“Go, you big baby,” I slurred. He lay me aside with surprising care, then hurried to kneel at the edge of the carpet, poised before the hardwood floor. I watched him through blurry vision as he came copiously on the floor in front of him with a scream of relief. Thick, pearly ribbons pirouetted in the air before hitting the floor in a viscous, pale pink puddle. He maneuvered around his mess, so I could see it more clearly, leaning forward heavily on his hands as he caught his breath. His pupils shrank slowly as he blinked at me, his hair in his eyes and fluttering outward with each ragged puff of air.

“Good, Lestat,” I mumbled. “Very good. What do you say to me?”

“Thank you, Louis,” he laughed weakly. First he collected my own spend from off his chest and sucked it off his fingers with low, satisfied groans. Then he stretched out, prone on the floor, making sure I was watching, then meticulously, savoringly licked up his own cum.

Lestat has no qualms about ingesting any substance that comes out of either my body or his own. In fact, he seeks to taste, smell, or swallow pretty much everything quite enthusiastically. It turns him on; and his enjoyment, in turn, arouses me (albeit not without a degree of awestruck disgust)— which arouses him, and so the cycle continues.

I watched with fascination as his eyes closed and his tongue flattened to lick a broad stripe of his cum from the floor, then as his tongue retracted and moved in his mouth, so he could taste and swallow, and then as he continued. He went over the spot twice, being sure not to even leave a residue behind.

“Hmm,” he purred before straightening. “Thank you, Louis,” he said again.

This last thanks made me blush. “Come here, you’re such a good boy,” I said, reaching for him. He crawled to me and I opened my arms to him where he happily enfolded himself, his face buried against my throat.

“I loved that,” he sighed.

“Good.”

“You came so hard,” he laughed. The doorbell rang. “Merde.”

“sh*t. They’re here.”

He put on his pants and helped me into mine, knowing it was unlikely I could bring myself to stir. I ruffled his perfect hair in thanks. “Who’s a good boy?”

“I really am, now, aren’t I?”

“Yes, keep it up and I won’t be able to control myself.”

“My obedience and subservience is sexy to you?” he asked, kissing my hands before straightening up to answer the door.

“f*ck yes,” I said, maintaining my grasp on his fingertips until the last second.

“Noted.”

He went to open the door, still without his shirt, and I felt a zing of joy that he was mine and people could only look. I like it when people look at him— at least, when he doesn’t pay them any mind. Knowing I have the prettiest bitch in any crowd does something to my ego that feels nice to awaken every now and again. I think it’s why I share so much more than I thought I would about our sexual relationship. Well, I did start enjoying having an audience when I began my relationship with Armand. He liked to let his servants watch. He’s perhaps even more of an exhibitionist than Lestat, albeit more understated in his approach to giving and taking pleasure. But Armand belongs to no one, really. Not like Lestat belongs to me, nor as Lestat can make himself belong to the world, if he so desires. So I guess I like to keep Lestat more or less to myself.

I greeted Jackie and Madeline. They smiled and clasped their hands together in nervous anticipation. They liked doing this, but naturally, the risk of dying is never zero with a vampire— and I’d informed them that Lestat was going to be taking from one of them today.

“Where does Louis find such beautiful volunteers, hm?” Lestat asked, coming up behind them from the foyer. He passed them by and retrieved his shirt from the floor. “You caught us engaged in our nightly delights.”

“Sorry,” Jackie said. “Louis did say 8 p.m.” The boy fiddled with his lip piercing.

“So I did. My apologies, for the surprise,” I smiled. “Come on in.” I glanced over the couch, and seeing no evidence of our “delight,” I motioned them to sit as I stood and looked expectantly to Lestat, who was smoothing and fluffing his hair in the mirror. “Lestat, do you have a preference?”

“Hm,” his lips pursed with distaste for the idea of either of them. “You know I have a bigger appetite than you, Louis, I’m 264 years old.”

“You agreed.”

“I did no such thing. I could drain them both cold and still be hungry.”

I gave him a hard look and spoke into his mind. Lestat, are we gonna have this conversation now?

He sighed. “Fine.” He directed his gaze to the two of them. “It’s nothing personal, darlings. You both have lovely blood profiles. It’s just that Louis prefers it when I’m ethical, but I’m from the Old World where aesthetics rule over ethics. Understand? I much prefer the aesthetic of blood as it sluggishly pulsates out of my victims who are on the brink of death. I enjoy their thoughts more too.”

“Lestat!”

“They like it. Poor Madeline is very, very interested in my sadism. She’s attracted to me. As is Jackie, here, though I can hear his bunny heart pounding. He’s wondering whether he should excuse himself. Whether you might save him if I go feral. Don’t worry, my pretties—” Lestat said with a genial smile, spreading his clawed hands, “—I won’t hurt you.”

In my mind, he spoke now. You should let me hunt.

Nice try. No.

Shall I rip out their throats before you let me?

You’re f*cking insane.

I want to hunt. Why do you bring me meals like I’m senile? You’re making me act out.

I sent him the mental threat of slapping his tenderly bruised ass right then and there, but he only grinned and rubbed against the thought like a cat rubs against one’s legs.

You feel nice in my brain. You should visit more often.

“Are we… still needed?” Madeline asked. I realized that we’d been silent for too long.

“Sorry— yes, Lestat’s just being difficult. Les, sit down, they don’t got all night.”

“We’re fine,” Madeline said. She squeezed Jackie’s hand on the couch. “Right?”

Jackie took a breath and nodded and tied up his locs, hands shaking. “Yeah, I’m good.”

His pulse was calling to me. “Lestat, you take from Madeline. Be careful.”

“Hmm,” he intoned in a way that made me almost certain he wouldn’t. “I’ll be most deliberate.”

Unable to do anything about it now, and suspecting he was f*cking with me, I moved to Jackie’s side and patted his knee. “Don’t worry.”

“I’ve had almost nothing but honey, citrus and stone fruits, and wine this week— as you requested,” he said.

“Wonderful. Thank you, Jackie. I really appreciate that.” I brushed my knuckles against his cheek, and he closed his eyes and turned briefly into my touch before he exposed his neck to me.

Be good, I urged Lestat before at last I sank my teeth into Jackie’s inviting throat, a deep, umber brown, tender to my invasion like a fawn to an arrow. I caressed his cheek and squeezed his arm bracingly as I drank. He was a nervous one, but he said this monthly bloodletting helped with his anxiety. And of course, he liked the sensual practice of it, the mild danger.

I listened as Lestat spoke now to Madeline.

“How are you, my dear?”

“You want to kill me?” she asked carefully but with a clearly flirtatious and aroused lilt to her quivering voice.

“Of course not, pet,” Lestat crooned. “But I do want to devour you. I want to rip into your soft skin and revel in your body heat as it leaves you. Unfortunately, you fragile, snappable humans do tend to die after that. I could break you like you could break a carrot, sweet girl, but that’s not because I’m a monster and want you gone from this earth. It’s because it would be fun. I don’t think much about the lives of my meals before I eat, unfortunately. I hear it is a wholesome practice. Do you, little lamb? Consider your meal’s life before you eat it, I mean?”

She swallowed. “All the time.”

“Well,” Lestat smiled. “Aren’t you extraordinary? I do love the sensitive ones.”

“You can… you can drink as much as you want—um, without me dying, I mean— I’m good as long as I can get an Uber home. I’ve given 40 percent before.”

“How generous, ma cherie,” Lestat said in a syrupy tone and tucked a framing piece of her pink hair behind her ear. “I know that idea is going right down to your pretty package,” she blushed and unconsciously tugged her skirt down, pressing her thighs together, “but I must try my best to restrain myself. What did you eat this week before you came to offer yourself up to us?”

“Um…” she blushed, “same as Jackie. And… duck.”

“Duck, you say?” Lestat asked. “So that is where that divine fragrance is coming from.” He leaned close to her collarbone and inhaled her skin deeply. She trembled. “Beautiful. Do you like this life?”

“Yes. And it pays the bills and lets me save too. I’m a grad student. In the arts. I… I’m a fashion designer.”

“So that’s why you dress so well and look so lovely.”

Her blush deepened and she chuckled nervously. “Why’re you being so nice?”

“I’m trying to do as you do. To consider your life. Make you real to me. But I see you are getting impatient for me. I won’t make you suffer. Should I just dig right in?”

“Please just don’t kill me. Otherwise, you can have… as much as you want.”

Lestat smiled. “Good girl.”

I stopped drinking. “Lestat!”

“What? She likes it.”

“I’m right here, in case you forgot.”

“I’m not flirting, they taste better when seduced— you know this, Louis.” And he glanced pointedly at my hands where they were poised on Jackie, who was hazy, his expression org*smic even as he grew increasingly more ashen.

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Very well. Give me your neck, my gazelle.”

She tilted her head, and Lestat cradled her head in his hand and kissed her jaw before biting. She winced with pain, grimacing, and I knew he didn’t have to bite her that hard— but she soon relaxed into it, sighing. She grabbed Jackie’s hand again and her thighs rubbed together.

I wanted to be mad. I really did. But mostly, I found I was amused. Especially as Lestat maintained eye contact with me, his pupils expanding across his irises like an oil spill, swallowing and covering me in his slimy, sick humor and eroticism. I knew what he was thinking without him putting it into my mind.

“No,” I said firmly, before returning to the punctures I’d put in Jackie’s slender neck.

Lestat eats faster than I do, and doesn’t bother being gentle or taking his time so they don’t wake up the next day with a pounding headache. For him, the pleasure is in the rush of blood, the heavy gush down his throat, filling him.

So he was done before I was, and Madeline, pale as a ghost, her freckles standing out on her cheeks, eyeliner smudged with reflexive tears, fell back against the couch with a soft moan. Lestat looked down at her skirt where there was an obvious damp spot spreading. “I told you she liked it. And look. Not dead. I can behave myself.”

He checked the punctures to be sure they were closed, then leaned back, himself, and stretched his arm over the back of the couch to play with my hair as I took my last sips from Jackie who was sailing almost as high as Madeline, although I had given him a more gradual ascent.

When I’d finished, I took out my phone and ordered the Uber that would take them home. I would be sure they got there safely later.

“Admit you feel better,” I said, clicking Madeline’s saved address as Jackie slumped against her, his head on her chest as he dozed.

“I do,” Lestat said. “But we were having so much fun.”

“Fun can resume. Especially since you didn’t kill my sweetest and most discreet hires.” I switched apps and put $2750 into both of their accounts. It is still amazing to me how many things one can do with the technology these days.

“You’re fond of them, I see.”

“Young people here interest me.”

“They aren’t disinteresting.”

“You see? How’d you like the duck, citrus, stone fruit, and honey flavor profile?”

“Satisfactory, though I could have sucked her dry.” I glanced at her to make sure she was asleep.

“It’s in your best interest that you didn’t, believe me. Besides, how often can you make such a specific choice of what your food tastes like when you go hunting?” He shrugged.

When they departed, I settled back down with Lestat on the couch. He massaged and scratched my scalp lightly.

“I’d never had one like Madeline before,” he mused.

I raised an eyebrow, curious which way he meant this. “In what sense?”

“So eager. And so interesting.”

“She’s great. Very cool,” I mumbled, trying not to think of a certain eager and talented songstress he found interesting.

“And very captivating, sexually. I saw her fantasies.”

“We’re not f*cking them.”

“No foursome?”

“No. You were just saying I’m the only one you want and how I’m the best, but now you’re already looking for some new puss*.”

“Not for me, but you like them.”

“They’re too young for me. Jackie’s only 23 and Madeline’s 25.”

“Perfectly legal.”

“It wouldn’t be ethical, I hire them.”

“You pay them more than enough.”

“The rent here is insane, and Madeline’s in school. I’d prefer them to be safe and not on the streets. Plus, Madeline is particularly vulnerable to exploitation. I’m not gonna put her in a position where she has to do stuff she doesn’t want to do just to get her hormones and finish school. And Jackie’s parents are dead. He needs stability. Did you know he’s trying to break through the music scene? And he’s an artist. He works with charcoal and watercolor.”

“Fascinating. You should run an orphanage for twenty-somethings. But, I get it. You feel protective over them. Fond of them, even. I respect that. If that’s the case, I’d like to see their art, at least. I must judge if they are at all talented. Perhaps, I can help finance their careers in future—as a gift.”

“They are talented,” I assured him.

“Hm. For the record,” he took the trouble to add, “I wasn’t trying to f*ck them for myself. I just thought it could be fun to see you engaged with them. I’d be content to watch. You’re not jealous or angry are you?”

“Nah,” I admitted, which surprised me. “You don’t love either of them yet.”

“I will never love them. You know my lust is just naughty and wandersome.”

“I do.”

“And I promise you as I’ve promised before that I will never f*ck anyone else without you there condoning it and participating. I live for your attention, Louis. That was the main reason I was being so lewd.”

“I know.”

He stretched, a whining yawn reverberating in the back of his throat as he moved our positions so he could lay his head in my lap.

“Thank you for sharing,” he said. “I do feel better, even though I would have liked to go hunting.” I rolled my eyes and dragged my fingers through his hair.

“You’re such a brat.”

“Infamously.”

I pulled his shirt up and over his head and rubbed his back, digging into his broad, muscular shoulders. He groaned with pleasure, and I felt a bone-deep, domestic satisfaction.

It was a strange feeling to know we were living out the best days we’d ever had together. To not be at war or locked in mutual hatred and resentment, borne of unwilling love.

Chapter 13: Something Is Haunting Me to the Point of Distraction

Chapter Text

Hello, my favorite perverts. Daddy’s back.

How did you like that last post? I’ve touched myself at least twelve times to thoughts of it the last few days alone. Louis truly is gifted at writing erotica— he should make a career out of it. At least that would fund his exorbitant tastes— not that I’m complaining; I’d empty oceans of pretty pennies for his pleasure. And I have. After accepting that his Lestat is here to stay like a recurring hemorrhoid, he has also discovered how it turns me on when he makes me buy him things. We make a game of how ridiculous an expense he can make me take out my cheque book for, even though I know he has mountains of his own cash somewhere (due to his brilliance as a businessman) that he won’t show me. Not to mention the ridiculous gifts Armand sends him, unprompted, just to piss me off and to remind him of his options whenever Louis calls him to cry to someone about how insufferable I am.

Tangent.

I’m NOT jealous of Armand. He’s just horrible and sad*stic and I believe that Louis could do much better. Not to mention he’s tortured me and is probably responsible for the death of our daughter from what I’ve dug up, but whenever I talk about that, Louis looks like he’d rather sit out in the sun than hear any more about his rebound lover who basically held him captive in his cult-leader thrall for years before I came for him. Armand is an evil, manipulative, scheming, mind-raping bastard and I hate him. I am NOT jealous. There’s a difference.

His advantage is that he looks so young! How old was he when turned? Scarcely 22? He says 25, but I don’t believe him. That’s why his skin is so dewy, his face so unmarred by his evil. That’s what I hate most about him, perhaps, apart from his business with my Louis. People are more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He makes people believe he’s got something magical about him— or that he is divinely favored by Allah, after he got over his emo satanic coven phase. Well, who’s to say I am not so favored? We have similar histories in studying the Holy Scriptures. If Armand wasn’t as old as dirt, I would say he copied my story of woe. Perhaps Louis does have a type—those mutilated by religion and made whole again as monsters.

Where was I? What did I want to write about?

Ah, yes, while we’re on the topic of Armand: Daniel came by. A few days ago. The little opportunist. He gives me such reproachful, judgmental looks that are somehow so mild as to suggest his boredom with me, as if he can predict what I’m about to say.

He came by to discuss some legal, intellectual property stuff with Louis. I didn’t join in, I’m afraid, I have far too many hobbies. And anyway, I got a great deal knowledgeable about that kind of thing when I was still touring. I hate talking about that stuff— one’s art should speak for itself, and interested readers or listeners should be able to tell to whom a piece belongs if the artist is any good. Of course, I don’t just rely on that— I do take precautions; I’m not an idiot. But still, I find it vulgar, how people can steal work from you so easily these days.

Daniel eventually left, and Louis and I went out for a stroll around ten and took a few buses to see where we’d end up. It amazed me still, somehow, sitting beside my most beloved in a public bus with no pretense. In the old days, we at first avoided buses when it was time to hunt because it made me furious watching him move to the back. I would sit as near to him as I was permitted by society’s rules if I could be discreet, but sometimes that wasn’t possible or safe. But now Louis can sit wherever he pleases, as he should. I don’t know how I could bear it at all, those days. But it is simply the thing to do, for anyone that lives and wishes to remain, to adjust and ignore dark feelings as much as can be withstood. Still, I think now that the version of me that Louis made do with in the past was inadequate. I like to think now I would have moved us both to China if it meant he didn’t have to bear such indignity and struggle not to let it bow his head. However, I know that I am not so selfless, and travel was not easy back then. I do hate myself sometimes.

Armand was in my mind as we traveled to nowhere, Louis’ cheek on my shoulder. I could smell Armand, the red-eyed devil, on Daniel, and I kept thinking about how at any instant he could swoop in and lure Louis back to him. Louis wouldn’t go, of course. He prefers me. I know he does. I’m often mean, my way of relating to people can be called toxic, and my manners are appalling, but he prefers me.

I closed my eyes and tried to expand my senses, feeling for Armand across the states and over water and land, overseas. Daniel hadn’t answered when I asked where Armand was hiding out. After a time, I thought I could feel him— he wasn’t far, by vampire standards. In fact he was in America. Of course he would be— because Daniel was here, and how often could Daniel be expected to travel far distances in his geriatric state? Armand may be an amoral little man with a voyeur’s fetish for watching the deterioration of mortality, and he may kill and eat children for all I know and be trying to steal my bride, my husband, but he is a gentleman. He would not let his companion out of his sight nor his care so long as Daniel was still tolerating him.

“What are you thinking about?” Louis interrupted me eventually. “What are you plotting?”

“Nothing,” I answered, which never sounds innocent.

“I can hear your brain grinding its gears.”

“I’m not thinking of anything. Except I think we should get off here. Look at the moon on the pavement. And do you smell that? People have gorged themselves here.”

“We’re not hunting tonight,” he told me sternly, as if he were my father.

“I said nothing about ‘we,’ chéri. But I am peckish.”

“You’ll get blood on your new suit.’

“When have I ever cared?”

“That’s because you don’t do all the laundry or take them to the cleaners.”

“I do a great deal of laundry.”

“You’ve halfway done a load here, halfway done a load there— then left them to molder in the wash instead of remembering to dry them. You’ve also only attempted a few times a year since we've been back together, and only when I bother you about it.”

“Yes, well, how often does laundry need to be done, anyway, Louis?”

“Weekly.”

“40 days a year you do it, maybe ten I do it—” he scoffed at that generous number, “— it’s not so bad in the grand scheme since we live so long. Who’s to say I won’t have phases where I do all of the laundry in a year?”

He shook his head. “Nothing gets done if I don’t do it.”

“That’s not true.”

“Remember our old house? How nasty it got when I was too depressed to clean up?”

“You were also hoarding newspapers at the time— it’s hard to clean around those things.” I kept my tone light, hoping he wouldn’t think too much about that time so that the night wouldn’t be coincidentally dampened.

“Well, you could have thrown some away,” he laughed.

“You’re right, I am an animal without you, Louis, but that’s why we make such a stable pair, all things considered.”

“I wouldn’t say stable.” He pulled on the noiseless bell and we got off after the automated lady in the ceiling read our street aloud.

“You have to start at least taking our stuff to the dry cleaner’s, man,” he said, weaving his arm casually through mine, almost not looking around at all. I pressed his arm close to my body.

“As you wish.”

“And you gotta start taking your shoes off at the door— it’s too wet here not to. I hate feeling grit under my feet in my own house.”

“Of course, my love.”

“And you should really be mopping after yourself when you track in so much blood or when you spill a glass. I don’t know who you think cleans it up, but it ain’t the maids we don’t got and it’s not fairies.”

“We don’t have maids? We did before, at the second place in New Orleans.” We had returned to that beloved, haunted, sinful city before we’d wound up together here in Seattle.

“Well, wasn’t as much of an expense there and I was busy on the computer with Daniel, editing the book to something publishable.”

“Well, I almost didn’t notice we don’t have maids— I thought they came in when we slept.”

“No, bae, that’s me!”

“You’re very efficient. Very good at it too,” I teased him.

“You’re helpless without me, Les.”

“I am,” I agreed happily and dipped close to place a sudden kiss on his neck.

“No hunting tonight— please.”

“Lou… I’m hungry.”

“We’ve got blood at home.”

“I don’t want that blood.”

“Why not? You just heat it in the bottle warmer and it’s just fine.” We’ve purchased a baby bottle warmer to use whenever steaming blood on the stove feels too tedious. Louis mostly got it for me— he’s developed an untiring, un-cringing, unironic taste for blood straight from the fridge and even with ice cubes floating in it. Very untraditional is my fledgling, but at least he drinks the blood now.

“Do you ever think what it would be like if we were normal and could go on dates in restaurants?”

“We went to restaurants when I courted you—before I told you my secret.”

“No they weren’t open late, so we went to night clubs—bars. I mean a proper restaurant. Had a dinner and talked across a table from each other with intent.”

“You want to try it?”

“Nah, I’m just saying. I wonder how much easier things might have been if we could have been together under normal circ*mstances. But then, normal back in the old days and normal now are different for various reasons.”

“Yes,” I agreed, noting to myself how we must be of an attuned mind tonight.

“We might not have got together— you and me. If you weren’t a vampire when you were. If you didn’t stop in New Orleans. If you weren’t unafraid.”

“But I did stop. I was a vampire. And… I wasn’t unafraid.”

“You weren’t?”

“I was very afraid. Uncertain. I’d not tried for a relationship since… Nicki. And I was in a new place, surrounded by new people. I was afraid constantly that you wouldn’t like me— that you would find me boring and irritating with no redeeming qualities. I tried to respect your mind and not read it too often when you were not yet reborn. Still, I knew you were cautious of me. You had every reason to be, notwithstanding my status as a vampire— but I looked precisely like the kinds of monsters you dealt with daily— who would rob you of your work, your dignity, your happiness— who would disrespect you to your face and to whose faces you had to only smile. Never safe. I know you told yourself I was French so it was different, but still you were cautious. I wanted to tear that caution down, so I did. I was brutal and callous, the way I went about securing your attention and your love.

“And that’s not even touching on the sexuality thing. If I couldn’t defend myself as I can easily do as a vampire, I think it probable that I might have been more secretive— have taken a woman and then had my infidelities regarding my male cravings on the side. Which would have further disrespected you. With all our years together, and all I know about you— how I have known you in your head and then in my spirit and my body and in my heart, Louis— I cannot bear the thought of having ever treated you in some multiverse as a mere indulgence on the outskirts of my ‘normal’ life.

“So no: I try not to think about how it would have been if we were together under more normal circ*mstances, even if much of those social limitations were gone and everything could have been ideal, I still do not trust that I could have been good to you, so I don’t wish it. I’m very happy as we are now, working towards being better with all of my worst qualities out in the open, and you— unafraid, choosing to be here, at my side, loving me for all that I am and all that I am working very hard not to be.”

Louis only smiled and squeezed my hand and said one word to all of that, “Good.”

It took me years to learn this— some of those years in New Orleans’ most disgusting garbage dump. But when Louis gives few words to something— like a huge admission or a plea for understanding— it doesn’t mean that he isn’t listening or that he isn’t caring or that he is being cold. In fact, it rarely ever has meant that.

When Louis gives few words, though his beautiful head is full of words, and he is the most effortlessly eloquent man I know, it means that something inside him has quieted and he is moved by what he is understanding or by what has been said. Or perhaps, if nothing groundbreaking has been said, it means that he is merely thinking or he is disappointed but knows there is no point in expressing such disappointment— perhaps because he loves me too much, or perhaps because he knows I’m an idiot— or perhaps, and I’m realizing this is most often the case, because he is just tired. Tired of explaining himself, tired of defending me, tired of carrying the world on his shoulders and in his heart.

He has a labyrinthian mind, my Louis— and I am the monster that lives in it— Claudia and I live in it together, as well as Armand and the rest of the damned world. Though it was Claudia and I who played chess together, Louis had his own game taking place internally, inside the labyrinth, where instead of taking someone else’s valuables to conquer them, his game’s primary objective is about creating something out of nothing— bargaining with sphinxes and answering riddles of dizzying perplexity, reinventing and repurposing not only himself but the other players. He is a genius.

Anyway. I obeyed Louis and did not kill anyone that night. We shared a coffin again, and he could be on top this time— I’d healed completely to my partial sadness, but to be able to hold him as he likes to be held was worth it.

I forgot what I wanted to talk about initially. Why was I sharing details of our stroll? And why am I talking about Armand so much? The evil little f*cker is probably broadcasting thoughts of himself to every vampire in the world just to feel relevant.

Oh, yes! I remember now. We are invited to the twins’ home. In a week. Everyone will be there. Louis is nervous about it, but we’ve agreed not to talk about it so I had put it temporarily out of my mind— a skill I’ve developed. It can make me seem quite stupid if I’m not careful, however.

I am not nervous about it— I am mostly nervous for Louis. He aims so sweetly to please, but he can’t please everyone— not that I’m expecting the twins to be vocally disapproving. That’s the thing about being the swiftest, most deadly predator in the world— people tend to be respectful (unless their Freddie, but his testosterone levels make him an idiot).

Anyway, that’s exciting. I have decided that I will be on my best behavior. We’ve bought gifts for everyone so as not to show up empty-handed since we’re not even hosting, and also because Louis is hung up on the paper dolls he never got to give the twins.

“I promise you that they neither remember nor care about the dolls you never gave them,” I repeated. “They were very very small and you had, in fact, kicked in their door, terrifying them half to death.”

“Still,” he muttered, trying to choose between two bracelets.

“You realize they are on their way out of this world? They would be more thankful for a prayer that they get into heaven, although I don’t think they’d care for either of us vouching for them.”

“Shut up. Which do you like better? … Or should I get them earrings?... Why is everything so expensive?” His perplexed mutterings amused me to no end, how worried he was about them liking the gifts, or the fact that even though it turns him on that he can drain my accounts for everything I’ve got and I will only ask if there is anything else he desires, he still finds it in him to worry about money.

Money don’t grow on trees, he scolds me whenever I snort with laughter at him for asking if I have the bill. And I would agree to this assertion— these days especially, since identity theft and obtaining all of someone’s hoarded wealth is a lot harder these days. Hardly anyone carries cash or invests in quality jewelry that can be stolen without authorities being able to tell with the laser-etched codes they put on them. It’s so annoying that now it’s not enough just to kill an entire family. But still, anything for my Louis. I have heaps of riches and am also good at making my own money whenever I want to, not just by killing. Tangent. I’m so distractible—it’s how I know it’s time for coffin.

Anyway, long story short, we got gifts for everyone. I hope this family night at the twins’ goes well.

Louis’ coming, so I’m closing off before he insists on reading it before I post. It’s not even like I wrote anything salacious this time, and I can’t even be called the worst one between us given all the naughty things he discloses.

Bisous. xx

Chapter 14: Made Clean

Chapter Text

I actually wouldn’t mind being an erotic author, swapping my morbidity and self-seriousness for a double life of indulging or awakening the fantasies of a public— sex is good if it’s what you want to be doing and with the person you want to be doing it with, and I think more people should be more real about how much they like it— or else, be more real about how much bad sex they’re having.

That’s one thing I can never fault Lestat for: underwhelming me or giving me bad sex. And in all our years and all our fights, he’s never forced himself on me or pushed me to do anything, nor let me be in unwanted pain for his pleasure.

Please, if there’s someone in your life with whom this isn’t true, leave them. I know I’m having an uncharacteristic Uncle Louis moment and it’s like I’m talking down to you young’uns, but I’m serious. I wouldn’t wish that kind of thing on none of y’all.

Anyway. I’ve been neurotic as hell, is all I can say. Lestat told you about the shopping— I returned some stuff and bought other stuff instead, then rebought the other stuff just in case. I can’t make my mind up. I don’t know what women like, really. Jewelry seems too intimate and somehow misogynistic, but there’s monetary value in it. Books— I don’t know them well enough to know what books they’d find interesting or have read already. I did get a rare, signed copy of my old friend James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain for Lisa— she and I are most similar in interests, but even then, I can’t really say that with any real ownership or a pride in her that isn’t partially artifice, constructed of my own fantasies and projections. Anyway, it made me feel close to her to share a friend, to let her be touched through time with things in proximity to who I was years ago. Ugh, I sound like Lestat just casually mentioning that he was friends with Franz Liszt. But James was actually brilliant and a sweet, wonderful person— you all should go and read him. I still miss him.

As I stared at the bed strewn with gifts of immense monetary and sentimental value that I knew I couldn’t make them feel, I folded my arms to stop the nervous jitters from making my hands shake.

“You are thinking too much, mon cher,” Lestat crooned from behind me, wrapping me in his arms, stacking them beneath mine, and kissing my neck. “They will be happy with whatever. In true Pointe du Lac fashion, they are snooty but not quite so spoiled as to be mannerless.” I almost laughed but the worry compounded on itself.

“I’m imposing myself on their lives and giving them compensatory gifts. Maybe I shouldn’t bring them that day, but like, sprinkled throughout the week as if I just happened to think of them?”

“One doesn’t just happen to buy $15,000 earrings on a whimful Tuesday, angel-face.”

“Does it seem like I’m trying to buy their love?”

“Not at all. Of course not. You’ve apologized for your having reached out at all enough and offered several times not to ever contact them again. They should know that you are being sincere and earnest. It might be… a lot… but they have elected to know you, and you are nothing if not generous.”

“Grace didn’t think so.”

“Because you weren’t so generous with your presence,” he said placing another kiss on my neck, beneath my ear. “It wasn’t your fault, though. They never would have understood. Levi was simple, and Grace accommodated him. Your mother resented you for nothing, and Grace made excuses for her. The twins are grown up now— perhaps they will have thought about why their life in New Orleans did not continue, and they will have had time to reflect on their mother’s biases. They don’t seem to have an unfavorable view of you. In fact I think they adore you.”

“Why? Why do you think that?”

“I just do.”

“If it’s because you read their minds—”

“I don’t rely on that, Louis— it might surprise you but I can read faces very well.”

“Don’t read their minds,” I reemphasized.

“I got it, chéri. My ass remembers that rule very clearly.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Non,” he breathed, and I could feel his pale eyelashes fluttering against my cheek.

“Good.”

“Why good?”

“Because if it still hurt, then I was way too harsh.”

“No, you should have gone harder.”

“Mm-mm.”

“I like it rough, bébé, I don’t know why you don’t believe me and indulge your violence.”

“I just don’t want to be a violent sort of person.”

“You couldn’t be that kind of person if you tried. But you still should let out that form of expression occasionally— within my very vast parameters.”

I tilted my head back on his shoulder and stared at the ceiling as he pressed hot kisses against my throat. “Maybe I should just wait till Christmas.”

“Or you could say… Christmas came early.”

“Mm.”

“You could say some of these things are heirlooms.”

“The younger ones could fact-check that, easy.”

“Oh, well. What are they to do? How unfortunate of them to have rich and immortal uncles…” he purred, one hand unzipping my pants.

“Not right now, we have to figure this out,” I insisted.

“You are stressed, my cupcake. Let me take care of that.”

“I’ll be less stressed if I didn’t feel completely out of touch with my humanity.”

“What’s more human than f*cking?” he said, though he didn’t touch me yet. “I’ll give you everything you want. And I’ll let you write about it.”

“I write what I want— the censorship doesn’t go both ways.”

“Hmm, yes, but if your loving husband was planning on doing something so terribly disgusting to you that lacks precedent and qualifies as obscenity, and he kindly requested that you not tell anyone how hellbound he is, would you honor his wishes?”

“Depends. How obscene are we talking?” I guided his hand back to the open gap in my pants, giving him permission.

“So obscene,” he grinned.

“I think we’ve done just about everything by now.”

“Not true, sweet lamb. Not even close to true.”

“What do you want to do to me?”

“Innumerable things, but I was thinking for tonight, since you are so stressed, I might just give you a massage and eat you out until you cry tears of joy.”

“Is that all?”

“Would you like more?”

“I mean, what about you?”

“I can come from your taste alone, but if you want to assist me….”

“You’re so full of sh*t.”

He laughed silently and placed his teeth gently on my neck. “I meant it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say no if you wanted to… you know. Use me a bit.”

“Use you? I could never,” he feigned affront.

“Could be hot if you threw me around a bit. Treated me like an object.”

“My tender bébé Louis, no. I could never,” he teased me, sliding his hands up and down my thighs.

“What if I wanted you to?”

“You are sure it would be no imposition?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I must hear you ask me for it, so I know.”

“Lestat, I want you to f*ck my brains out and use my body like an object— treat me like there’s no real person inside of me.”

“Oh, darling…. Beg me then.”

I whined. “Please, Lestat.”

“Please what? My short-term memory is not what it used to be.” He pressed up against me, and I felt him fully hard and straining in the confines of his clothes.

“Please, Lestat, f*ck me like I asked you to— please, babe, I want you. I want you bad. I’m stressed and now you got me horny as f*ck with your sweet talk, but I don’t want you to stay sweet all night. I need you mean and rabid for me.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, rubbing subtly, lewdly against me. I thought I would fall, how weak this made me.

“Please, please, please, baby.”

“Okay,” he relented at last with a soft kiss to my shoulder before moving to sit on the edge of the bed, one leg draping over the other with his dancer’s grace. “Strip for me. Do it prettily.”

I hate when he makes me do this. “Come on….”

“No complaining,” he said sternly— a sudden turn. “For tonight, I am in charge.”

I hesitated, a small part of me unsure I wanted him in charge at all, fighting my need for control and awareness of my actions or his— the resistance taught to me, to resist objectification (even though I’d asked for it) and the fear of being out of my depth with someone so often unpredictable. Seeing my struggle, he gentled his tone.

“Let me give you pleasure and help unwind that beautiful mind, chéri…. It worries me when you are so unhappy. You know why,” he said, guessing the question poised on my lips. “Trust your Lestat. Trust your loving maker, hm? You know I love you more than myself, more than all the beautiful things in this world. I wouldn’t hurt you, only give you joy, my beloved fledgling. You can trust me with this. As always.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“So take off your clothes,” he said, a slow smile spreading across his face and his eyes taking on that magnetic quality that promised many good and terrible things. “Give me a show. Show me how much you trust me.”

“Okay,” I said and tried to wet my lips as I realized my mouth had suddenly gone quite dry with anticipation. I started with my shirt, peeling it off my body, letting it slide down my arms to the floor.

He purred, his eyes blinking slowly, lids heavy with lust. My hands shook as I unbuttoned my pants and pushed them down with my underwear.

“Excited are we? Cher, you’re trembling.”

“‘Cause you’re looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re gonna eat me.”

“I am going to eat you. And you just made it easier for me to get at you. Thank you, Louis.” He set his floating foot down and opened his pants without standing, freeing his erection from his outer layer of clothing so that it strained against his boxers, the tip already wet. It was an aggressive erection. He patted his thigh. “Now come here.”

“Why does it feel like I’m in trouble?” I mumbled, warily edging nearer to him.

“Have you been naughty, Louis? Are there behaviors of yours that need reviewing?”

I shook my head with a smirk. “I’m never naughty.”

“Au contraire. You are extremely hard on yourself. That’s punishable in my books for people like you. You don’t get to be hard on yourself.”

“Well, what you going to do about it?”

His long arm extended suddenly, and before I could leap out of range, he grabbed my ass, nails just on the verge of breaking skin, and he drew me closer, until I stood between his legs. “You have to kiss me.” He reached up and cupped my cheek, ran his thumb over my lips. “And you have to take everything I give you, and remember to thank me for how good a job I’m doing, and promise not to get yourself worked up into such a terrible state again over matters of your self-dislike.” He pulled my lower lip down, baring my teeth, and I opened my mouth, inviting his thumb inside where I sucked it contentedly. “Can you do those things for me, my fledgling?”

I nodded, thinking of his dick and how his thumb, while he had nice hands, was not a substitute.

“Good, fledgling,” he crooned. “My beautiful dove. I know you’re going to be so good for me.”

“Please,” I began to say, but he pressed down on my tongue, silencing me. He pulled my head closer to him and kissed my eyes, forcing me to close them and lean heavily into him, my mouth still propped open by his thick thumb’s heavy pressure. “Ahh.”

“You’re so smart, Louis,” he whispered against my temple. “But my goal tonight is to spin all your thoughts into feelings, like I’m your sexy Rumplestiltskin. I’m going to make you a creature of feeling and sensation. I’m going to drive you wild and show you heaven. Would you like that?”

I nodded, drool dripping and sliding down his knuckle and the back of his hand and gradually, with a certain artistic suggestiveness, around his wrist.

“Good. You’re the most beautiful and the most intelligent man I’ve ever seen, even when all you’re thinking about is being f*cked stupid.” I made another inarticulate sound and tried to pull away to restore some of my dignity, but his grip tightened on my jaw and he pulled me closer. He made me straddle his thighs and sit in his lap. “I am always your willing servant, Louis, if it pleases you, but sometimes I must tell you what to do. What to feel. I must decide what’s best for you. What’s best for us. Do you accept that as true?”

After a few moments, I nodded.

“Good. I know I needn’t remind you, but sometimes I think you forget because of how shamelessly exuberant I am… but who’s been on this wretched earth for longer?” Finally he took his thumb out of my mouth.

“You. You’re f*ckin’… as old as the pyramids.”

He didn’t protest or feign offense as he might usually do, but continued, still somewhat serious, “So that means who is more experienced at weathering this eternal life thing?”

“You are,” I conceded, suppressing an eye roll.

“That’s right. And who’s maker?”

I sighed. “You. You’re maker.”

“Good.” His voice was deeper and coarser with obvious arousal, and it made my spine vibrate. “You’re so f*cking cute when you acknowledge it.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re all that much smarter than me.”

“No one would disagree that you have the brains between us, but I have things to teach you yet. And sometimes, Lestat knows best.”

“You really wanted to say Daddy knows best.”

“I held myself off, see?”

“I appreciate it.”

We laughed, a release of heavy, sexual, predator-prey tension.

“I know you got stuff to teach me. So teach me, then,” I said, pulling on the collar of his shirt. He grabbed my offending hand and gently bit the knuckles.

“Where is my kiss?” he asked me, back to stern. Blushing, I pressed my lips to his, chastely, but a dark chuckle warmed my face before I’d even pulled away. “No, no, that won’t do, Louis.”

I played stupid. “No? What kind of kiss you want?”

He surged forward and kissed me again, more aggressively, sucking my whole lip into his mouth, sucking sucking sucking, almost hard enough to bruise.

“Urgh!” I protested and pulled away, but his hand braced the back of my head and he pulled me nearer.

He bit down, enough to prick me deeply with his fangs, and he sucked the blood from the tiny wounds. I managed to pull away once more, only to kiss him back, biting him now, harder than he bit me. Then it turned into a sweet kiss and my hand was snared in his hair and I was rutting against his shirt. He let me.

He stopped us after a time and grinned, all bloody teeth and merry eyes. “That’s it. There’s the spark. Thank you, Louis.” He clapped a hand over my ass and squeezed, the tip of one finger teasing penetration. “Now, lay down. On your belly.”

I whined with a new feeling of loss when he let me go, but obeyed him, and once in position, tried to shake off the vulnerability I felt. I didn’t always feel so exposed and raw like this, but my nerves were bad from the start. He seemed to pick up on my changed energy, so he leaned down close to me and kissed my back, between my shoulders.

“Thank you, Louis— you’re being so patient and trusting.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I’m going to make you feel amazing.”

“Yeah, you always do.”

“It’s my job,” he said as if it was that simple.

“Take off your clothes,” I said.

“Non. And if I do get naked, you won’t be seeing any of it for a while. See, I’m going to blindfold you so all that you will experience is what I am doing to you and what I am saying to you.”

“‘Stat….”

“Don’t ‘‘Stat’ me, you know you’ll get too overwhelmed and plead with me and send me desperate looks, and then we’ll be doing the rabbit dance before I get a chance to do any of the good things I said I would.”

“Lestat, I don’t wanna be blindfolded.”

“I will hear none of it, Louis. Do as I tell you for once in your life.”

I sighed but didn’t fight him anymore as he snatched his tie from over the door of his armoire and knelt beside me to affix it.

“Don’t you like being looked at?”

“Too much, which would go entirely against the point. Now don’t make me gag you. Then we’d certainly be ruined.”

“You scare me like this, Les. That’s the truth.”

“I scare you like what?”

“When you’re unpredictable. You’re always unpredictable but I can’t even read your face now or your body.”

“No more reading. It’s bad for your ears.” I scoffed. “How will you ever listen properly to the innumerable words coming out of my big mouth if you’re always reading me with your eyes?”

“Very clever.”

“If I were such a complete idiot, you would not have fallen in love with me.”

I felt him move around the room.

“Okay, just— can you not do anything before you tell me?”

“Shhh…. I’m not doing anything you won’t like. Right now, I’m going for a special massage oil I got for just such an occasion. It comes in a beautiful glass bottle….” He tapped his nails against it for my benefit. “And now I am pouring it in my hands…warming it for you. Oh, my poor baby, you’re shaking.”

I shook my head. “I’m just so wired for some reason.”

“I understand. You have a lot on your mind. A lot to lose. But you’re not going to lose anything. In fact, with your permission, I am going to give you… everything.”

“I know you will try.”

“And I will come through. I am very serious about making you happy, Louis. I work very hard at it.”

“I know. Thank you.”

“Of course— it is all I can do. And now I am coming to you and I will place my hands on your back which is where I will begin. That is the extent to which I am going to narrate what I am doing. You will just have to use your senses… get into your body and out of your head.”

Then he was beside me and his hands were on me, laid over my shoulderblades like wings. I shivered under his touch and I must have made a soft sound of consternation because he laughed, but not unkindly.

“So tense.” He kissed my cheek. “Breathe for me, even though you don’t need it so much.”

His hands were strong and with measured strength he began to heal me with his hands, forcing me to feel muscles I’d forgotten existed, pressing groans and whimpers of pain from me that transformed into relief. First in my back and shoulders and neck, and then both arms and then he bent my leg at the knee and began massaging my foot, which he kissed worshipfully.

“Les,” I muttered in protest. In answer, he kissed my foot again and sucked my toes into his mouth. Any further protests were unconvincing under the pathetic whimpers I uttered as he continued adoring my feet with his mouth. “I love you. So much,” I gasped, glad for the first time that I was blindfolded because I was crying and didn’t want him to know.

“I know,” he said. His breath was ticklish. “I am so happy to know it.”

He continued pushing his thumbs and the heels of his hands into my body, up my legs, banishing tension I hadn’t been aware of.

“Do you experience pain, Louis?” he asked. “I am afraid of the answer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your body was once completely broken. I would not be surprised if it didn’t heal completely. I broke your body.” His voice was quiet and it was as if there were something strangling him as he spoke. “I wonder sometimes if you experience any lingering pain.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Not even a little bit? No phantom aches where your bones were shattered? No creaks or stiffness where there were none?”

“Nah. Nothing that isn’t psychosomatic. My body is fine.”

“Tell me of the other scars I can’t see.”

“Why we doing this now?”

“Because I want you to feel better.”

“I do feel better. You just want to hurt yourself. Any tension in my body right now is because I have terrible posture when I’m reading. And because you stress me the hell out.”

“Only recently have we been officially back together.”

“Yeah, well, even all the times I couldn’t see you were stressful to me because I knew you were out there engaging in improbable and dangerous shenanigans. I’m less stressed and much happier with you around for some reason.”

“Okay,” he said softly. “I will take your word for it, if that’s what you want.”

His hands slid up my thighs with perfect pressure and I groaned, partially from what he was doing, partially because I was gonna say something sappy.

“Sometimes, I wake up feeling like I’m falling— or you know, I go to sleep and before I’m there, that feeling you get of falling makes me panic. You know this, I’ve woken you up a few times because of it. But you always make me feel better. You’re the antidote for any harm I suffer, even if it was your fault. Wasn’t always the case, and I needed space from you after everything, but at the end of the day, you’re the one I care about most in this world. Even when I was healing, I wished you were there to care for me sometimes. Wished I could at least see you. But that’s how I knew I was too down bad. Our separation was good for us, I think. Each one had its purpose. But us together, when we’re good, is how I always want it to be. It’s all I could ever want. And I’ve wanted a lot of stuff, and I’ve had a lot of stuff. It was all meaningless though. We find meaning in people, and I’ve had the privilege of loving a few…. But none as deeply as you, none as crazily as you. I’d do anything for you. It’s actually kind of scary.”

“It’s the Bond.” He said it like it was so simple, as if it were something to be resigned to else it would force our submission to its mysterious ways. Naturally this concept made me feel some type of bitter.

“It’s a curse.”

With hope, he supplied, “A beautiful curse, at least?”

“Yes. It is. It’s beautiful.”

“Oh, Louis… you’re crying.”

“Your hands just feel so good, is all.”

“You will always have them.” His hands curled under my hips and his fingertips dug into my hip flexors. I winced. “You are so tightly strung, my darling. Loosen up for me,” he whispered to my body. Turning me over and manipulating my legs thoughtfully and pressing deep in certain painful places, somehow he did coax my tendons and muscles to release. It was only when he was satisfied that he seemed to relax as well. I hadn’t realized how worried he’d seemed beforehand until this change in his demeanor, in the air around him.

“All better?” he asked me.

“So much better, thank you,” I said. “Didn’t realize I was so wound up.”

“You don’t hunt, but leaving yourself like that can affect your agility and efficacy in other instances, mon petit chaton.” He kissed my chest. “But with me you can consider that problem solved.” He kissed my stomach, making my flesh jump and quiver with sensitivity, heightened by being blindfolded. He turned me over again, easy as I could turn a page, and began trailing warm kisses down my spine.

“Thank you, Les,” I whispered, unable to stop how quickly my breathing was coming.

“You’re so very welcome to it, sweetness. Especially if it affects you like this.” He kissed the base of my spine three, four, five times, and then his tongue came out and stroked slowly back up my spine with spaced, heavy, warm licks.

“Oh, Les,” I gasped. “Please, baby.”

“Mlumn,” he acknowledged me, and I could hear his smug delight. “Anything you want.”

“Please, please— you gon’ f*ck me?”

“If you would like.”

“Yeah— yeah, please. Need you in me. You feel so good.”

“I haven’t even put my body on you yet. In fact, I am still clothed, angel.”

“Your mouth is so good, holy sh*t.”

He laughed and the warm puffs of air on my back drove me wilder. I arched my spine halfway, trying to find him, trying to entice him, but he stayed above me, not touching me with anything but his lips.

“Naughty, naughty. You tell me you want me in charge— want me to take control for a moment— wear your body out on my own terms and use you up, but now you try to use me. What does that mean?”

“Please, Les.”

“What did I promise I was going to do?” He kissed my left hip, then the right. It was like an electric shock, remembering what all his pretty pink mouth had promised. “Hmm?” I couldn’t answer. I reached back for him and he caught my hand. “You want it?” I nodded wordlessly. “Then you shall have it.” He placed my own palm on my ass. “Show it to me.”

“f*ck, Lestat.”

“I will, just let me see how pretty you are.”

“f*ck.”

“You like when I talk dirty to you?”

“Stop, I can’t,” I whispered. “Gonna make me cum.”

“No one said you couldn’t. Cum as many times as you want.”

“You’re so… f*ck, Les.” He kissed my tailbone and then licked it, trailing down in between….

“I could just eat you, Louis, you look so good,” he murmured. “I had to try so hard not to rend you open before I could transform you when you were a human. It’s why we had such a hasty wedding. It otherwise would have been such a loss. But now I can eat as much of you as I want, over and over and you’d be just fine.”

“Lestat—” He bit down on my ass, shutting me up. When he pulled his teeth out of me, I winced at the bloody sound.

“Show it to me,” he commanded again, his voice rougher than ever.

Without resisting any longer, I did, feeling my face aflame.

“Mon Dieu,” he whispered as if he had never seen it before. “Louis, Louis, Louis.” And then his mouth was on me. My eyes rolled back from under the blindfold.

“Les,” I whispered, thighs quaking as if unsure whether to run away or fight off the pleasure of this vulnerable sensation. “Please—please, Les!”

He shushed me and bit deeply into the tenderest part of the underside of my thigh, then licked up the blood before returning to licking at the hole again, eventually wriggling his strong tongue inside of me. I gasped and squeezed the pillows beneath me.

He pulled away as he laughed. “No matter how many times I do this for you, you act so shy, so shocked and scandalized. My good little Catholic altar boy.”

I bit my lip until I tasted blood. “Fu-u-uck.”

He pressed his thumb against it, rubbing gently. “I love doing this, probably more than you love taking it.” He grabbed the cheek I wasn’t holding and squeezed, hard enough to bruise, then shook my untensed flesh in his grip with a ravenous, leery growl.

“Ohh, God!” I moaned, picturing how lewd and debauched I must look, and feeling the burning shame that lived within me uncoil and shed its scaly skin to reveal the pleasurable mortification of being helpless to another’s lust, of being savored and consumed like food or music or art— purely sensual, purely aesthetic, purely instinctual— not in this moment, for any of my intellect or my sweetness or any other quality Lestat appreciates in me.

“Such a f*cking pretty hole. You have no business having an asshole this gorgeous.” He took away his thumb and spat thickly on it, making me flinch and blush. “Mmm. Gonna make you come your silly little brains out.”

His thumb returned and he pushed it in, this time, making me gasp and flutter around his intrusion. When I relaxed enough, he f*cked me with his thumb for a minute before pulling it out and plunging his tongue back inside, deeper than before, now.

“Oh, sh*t,” I whispered.

That’s right, he spoke into my mind. Take it. Let me eat you. Let me f*ck you. Gonna f*ck you so good, so deep. You’re mine, mine, mine, mine, Louis. You should smell of me so potently that any other vampire stays far, far away… knowing that if they touch you it will be on pain of a horrible death.

“Lestat, I’m gonna—” My hips bucked forward, seeking friction, but he grabbed me and held me still.

I’m going to make you carry my evil seed, Louis. You will carry my evil to term, and it will be yours and mine. I shouted hoarsely and jerked against his powerful grip, whose claws were digging into me like bear traps. But first I have to f*ck you deep and nasty, my beautiful angel. First you will have to be my victim and see yourself transformed by the ugly force of my desire.

Here, I finally came with a sob.

Good, Louis, that was beautiful. You’re the only man I’ve known who can come so hard just from having his puss* eaten. He reached under me for the milky evidence of my pleasure and withdrew his tongue to f*ck me with two fingers, sticky with my own release.

“Is that…?” I slurred.

“Of course,” he said breathlessly. “I’m not one to waste something so precious. Oh, you look so good. You look so good.” He pressed his mouth to me and made an obscene slurping sound. “f*cking sensational, Louis.”

“You’re so f*cking nasty,” I wept.

“Getting dirty with you makes me feel clean,” he said. “Makes me feel like I’ve been to church.”

“Sacrilege,” was all I could say to that without sounding like a babbling, crying baby.

“Maybe so, but I don’t care— it’s true. Anyway, come on, love, how dirty can you be? Not that it would matter to me either way, but it’s not like you’ve had human needs in over a century. Your secret passage is just as pointless and ornamental as you are when you’re being this much of a horny little slu*t.” He slapped my ass again, and I moaned, so far gone that I found myself chasing his touch.

“Take your clothes off, please— lemme feel you, baby, please, please, please.”

“As you wish, St. Louis.” He moved away from me and I listened to him taking off his clothes.

“Hurry, please….”

“You have such good manners tonight.”

“Please….”

“I hear you, angel.” And then he was back on the bed and he kissed my cheek. I lifted my head and tried to find his lips. He laughed at me and granted me a kiss before straightening up, towering above me. “Open wide for me.”

Guessing what he was going to do, I felt around for his legs, for his waist, something to stabilize myself against, but he snatched my hand out of the air.

“Open,” he said again. So I did, and he pushed past my lips while I was still belly-down, neck craning. I loved the taste of him, already wet with coppery, salty arousal. “Good. So good, my love. You’re such a natural co*cksucker.”

I reached for my blindfold with my free hand, but he took that wrist too and grabbed my head in both hands, forcing me to lace my hands at the back of my skull and take it as he pulled me further onto his co*ck, making me gag.

“Oh, Louis. You have such a pretty head. Gonna f*ck all your thoughts away. Would you like that?” After a few more gag-inducing plunges down my throat, he pulled out completely and released me. “Have to stop now before I lose control. Now, Louis, tell me where you want me,” he said, and I could hear him grinning. “Your pleasure is number one in my mind.”

“Lestat…” I rasped. “Les, come on. f*ck me. f*ck me.”

“Where shall I f*ck you? Your face? Your armpit? Between your legs? Time has shown all three are pleasurable for me.”

“Man, if you don’t quit playing, I’m calling Armand.”

He laughed contemptuously, and it made me shiver. “What then? Is Daddy Armand going to come rescue you? Or is he going to f*ck what’s mine in front of me? Hm? You would dare do that to me?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You bet.”

“Careful, my love,” he warned me, though not very seriously.

“What else is it going to take for me to get some good dick around here?”

“You’re trying to get me angry, but not with much skill.”

“You hate him so much,” I laughed.

“I am this close from f*cking your throat and calling it a night, Louis.”

“You wouldn’t. You aim to please, too much. You’re a good dog— always dying to please.”

“Oh, you must have meant it when you said you wanted it rough. Very well.” He turned me over again before I could say a word, and he wrapped his hand around my throat as he lifted my hips and pushed into me while I was practically in midair. I gasped and squirmed a bit— most of the weight he wasn’t holding now balanced on my upper back and neck. I couldn’t put my feet down, but he made me hold still and suffer it. “What— is that too much too quick for you, baby?” He jabbed in and out a few times and it hurt so good.

Is this okay? he asked me.

Yes.

“f*ck, your puss* is so tight. How does it stay this tight?” I reached out trying to touch his chest, but he evaded me somehow. “Tell me what I want to hear, Louis, and it had better be the truth. Who f*cks you better? Does Armand compare?”

“I was— I was just messing— you do it better, baby.”

“Oh, it’s ‘baby’ now, is it? Not bastard? Not dog?”

“You are like a dog.” He snapped his hips into me cruelly, making me cry out.

“I’ll remember that, Louis.”

“Please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry— I just wanted you in me too bad and I can’t say all that humiliating stuff.”

“Non? You can’t? Your only option is to piss poor Lestat off? Your loving husband who gives you everything? Who takes care of all your needs without asking? Boiling my blood was the only way to do it?”

“Yes,” I said stubbornly, then shouted with pain and then laughter as he underhandedly slapped my ass quite hard. “Ow!”

“How do you like that, Louis? Hm? You’ve developed a taste for giving it, but shall we see if you can take it?”

“No, no, no! I don’t— I don’t want to. Please, babe, I’m sorry,” I laughed, squirming on his co*ck.

“I won’t. If you call me that thing I like. You want to avoid humiliation so badly, this is your punishment.”

I laughed again. “You’re so corny, you know that? I can’t even take you seriously, you f*cking brat. Ow!” He slapped my ass again and squeezed the darkening bruise so the blood rushed to the surface faster. “f*ck, man!”

“If I’m so corny you should be embarrassed how easily I can take you apart with my words, my tongue. Yet here you are— shaking and leaking your own cum out of your hole and moaning on my co*ck like you’re paid to do it, Louis.”

“You’re not wrong….”

“Rarely am, about these things. Now, say it, and I might forgive you.”

“Can I see you?”

“No.”

“Can I touch you?”

“Not yet.”

“Please?”

“What I want to hear, Louis.”

I fought with myself before relenting. “Please… Daddy….” He hooted with delighted laughter. “f*ck me. Please, Daddy, I want you so bad,” I mumbled as if reading off a prompt card.

“Ouais? How much?”

I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see it. “So much.”

“You’re going to be a good fledgling and let Daddy take care of you?” I could hear him grinning the more I blushed and shifted against the sheets.

“Yes, Daddy,” I whispered.

“Louder,” he commanded, his voice resonant and authoritative even though he wasn’t quite being loud.

I flinched. “Yes, Daddy!”

“Good,” he crooned, gentling again. “And who’s your maker?” He withdrew completely and played with the aching vacancy with just the tip of himself.

“You are…” I said, distracted by the way he teased me.

“Are you sure? You don’t sound certain. Is it Armand? Was it Frankenstein?”

“No. You are— please,” I urged him frustratedly.

“And who loves you the best? Who has committed atrocities in your name? Who bleeds for your indulgence, and most importantly, who f*cks you the best?”

“You,” I said, wishing I could hide from his intensity somehow as he repeatedly laid his claims to me out in the open and as I had to verbally admit to having given myself over to him as much as he had given himself over to me.

“Yes,” he said graciously. “Yes, Louis. You’re being so honest and cooperative for me, now,” he chuckled. “That's not so hard, is it?” He slid back in. “Now, you’re not going to cuck me, are you, mon chéri? You wouldn’t do that to Daddy, would you? Wouldn’t disrespect me like that?”

“No, Daddy,” I sighed, already floating from the way he now rocked into me with the most shallow but skillfully-paced of thrusts.

“Good. I knew you wouldn’t break my heart. Not after I’ve crawled on my hands and knees through muck and mire to claw my way back to you. Whose puss* is this?” He pushed my legs back until my knees were around my ears.

“Yours,” I whined in a cramped voice as he moved on to long, languid, self-indulgent strokes. “Les!”

“That’s it, take my co*ck, just like that. Ohh, I love your pretty puss*. If anyone else ever f*cks it, I’ll have to kill them, understand? I will kill them but not before I make you eat their raw flesh at the table with me.” Before I could respond, he withdrew almost completely, then punched a choked cry from me with the next collision. “Do you understand me, pretty baby?” he asked, grinding into me.

“Yes, Lestat—”

He gripped my face tightly, his claws threatening to leave pinpricks. “What did you call me?”

“Yes, Daddy,” I whimpered, my voice pitched embarrassingly high.

“There you go. Good f*cking fledgling. Oh, look! Look how hard you are again. I know you like to call me that.”

I shook my head but my body spoke louder.

“Come for me again. No touching.” He angled in a way he knew would get that result quickly. When it happened, my tears soaked through the tie so much it felt soggy. “That’s the only order you follow without giving me a hard time. Funny how that is, isn’t it?”

“f*ck I look like doing whatever some white man tells me to do?” I mumbled. He laughed and petted my softening co*ck fondly. “Hold me,” I said, feeling a little shy now.

He laughed again. “You think I’m done with you just because you came? You are such a dude sometimes, Louis.” He let my legs fall then flipped me over again.

“Wait—hngh!” I hunched my back as he pushed in far too fast.

He sighed with satisfaction and slapped my ass yet again. “You look so f*cking pretty.” He pulled my hips back onto him, then pushed me away again— then back onto him….

“Ow, Les—” He slapped me again. “D-Daddy! sh*t! Slow down, man.”

“You’re going to have to work for me, baby.” He only went faster, meeting my forcefully manipulated hips with powerful, speedy thrusts.

“It’s s-sensitive!”

“I know,” he purred, happy about it. I buried my face in the pillow and moaned, riding waves of overstimulation that were like if the ocean of org*sm were populated with millions of stinging jellyfish. “Oh, you feel so good. You feel so good. Putain…. Try to get away from me. I love to watch you fight it. I am too strong for you, Louis, and you’re too much of a slu*t.”

“It’s so good,” I slurred, “and it’s too much.”

“Just like my love?” he asked aptly. “Come again for me, baby. I love to feel your whole body squeeze.”

I shook my head and tried to tear myself away but it was pointless, he just pulled me back onto himself like it was nothing. I loved it.

“You can’t? You can’t do it? But I’m working so hard, Louis. You can’t do this one thing for me?” Suddenly he wrapped his forefinger and thumb around my sex and began pulling me off. I writhed in his hold.

“Stop! Stop it, it’s too sensitive— it hurts!”

He slowed but he didn’t stop. “Aw, is that right?”

“Fine, I’m sorry for giving you a hard time, alright?”

“No, it’s not alright.”

“What do you want, then?” I half-laughed, half-cried.

“You must promise not to spend another instant worrying yourself to death before we see the children.” This made me pause, shaken out of the intensity of sex back into my reality before we got so frantically engaged. “Or else you’ll end up exactly in this same position, understand?”

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” I thought aloud.

“It doesn’t?” he asked, rubbing his palm over the head of my dick with flippant cruelty.

“AH-HAH! I’m kidding! I’m sorry! I won’t!” I struggled. His hand paused.

“I have no problem making you feel so good you can’t take it anymore, Louis—I will do it every time you are terrible to yourself. I will love you so aggressively you will beg me to stop. Do you doubt me? Do you doubt I have the patience to do this every single time you break that rule?”

“No, I don’t!” I yelped as his palm threatened to glide again over my raw glans. “I don’t doubt you— I know you got the patience.”

“Good.” He released his grip and instead wrapped his arms around me, almost romantic except for the one hand gripping my throat as he f*cked me. “Now tell me how much you want my evil inside you.”

“I want it bad,” I said, voice shuddering with each snap of his hips.

“Are you going to contain my evil for me so I can be good and nice to you while we cuddle?”

“Yeah, I’ll hold it for you.”

“Don’t let it slip out or it will run loose, and then who knows what will happen?” he teased, nipping at my ear.

“Lestat, you’re doing too much,” I huffed.

He only laughed and then his teeth were in my neck. I hissed and my body arched in his hold as if I were ascending into heaven, and it felt like I was. Animalistic, wet grunts escaped the corners of his mouth as he drank and f*cked me to completion, and the feeling of him jetting inside me added contentment to my golden haze of f*cked-out bliss.

His teeth stayed in me longer than the rest of him, even as we fell. He tightened his arms around me and entwined our legs, lapping at the new wounds in my neck.

When he was content, he sleepily nuzzled the back of my neck. “How was that, Lou?”

I gripped his hand and kissed it. “Thank you, Daddy.” I could feel his teeth as he grinned against my nape.

Eventually he tipped me onto my back and gently lifted the blindfold off my eyes and cast it away. I blinked blearily up at him, and his expression was so loving and sweet, and transformed as he was by the afterglow of sex, it was like I was seeing him for the first time all day.

“I admit, I missed your beautiful eyes even in that brief time,” he said. He kissed one blood-stained eye, then the other. “But didn’t you like that more than you thought you would?”

“Sounded like it was going to make me more anxious than before, but it was actually quite… helpful. Lestat knew best.” He grinned again, and I was so pleased to see it that I kissed his teeth. “Thanks, Les. I appreciate the lengths you go to just to make me feel better. You’ve got a much kinder heart than I give you credit for most of the time.”

“Only my husbandly duties. Hardly kind, Louis, you exaggerate. You are kind. Laughing at my terrible jokes.”

“You’re not actually evil.”

“Of course not— like I said, I gave most of it to you just now,” he grinned. “Now I can be less insane for a bit until the supply builds.” I smacked his chest.

“You’re so stupid— your evil is in your cum?” I squinted incredulously at him, trying not to laugh.

He made it hard with his own unashamed laughter. “The thought of it gave you pleasure earlier. You couldn’t see your face, but I saw it.”

“Nah.”

“You like thinking about how you have a supernatural, magical puss-puss. Magic enough to make me good and normal for a time. And you do, it’s true. You have a soul-redeeming body.”

“You’re so gross and sacrilegious, don’t say that.”

“Hey, I don’t kinkshame you, so don’t shame yourself— no judgment in this bed, mon chéri.”

“Maybe you should judge me a little. One of us has to occasionally be like, ‘nah, that’s weird and unrealistic and maybe a bit… irreverent— even for us.’”

“It won’t be me. Personally, I could get much weirder and much more fantastical with you. What are you afraid of? We’re already damned.”

“Speak for yourself,” I finally laughed, sliding my fingers through his hair and rolling onto him, covering his beautiful face in grateful, adoring kisses.

Chapter 15: Mon Petit Prince

Chapter Text

I’m in love with myself as I seem through King Louis de Pointe du Lac’s eyes. Who gave me permission to be so sexy? I’d f*ck myself. I’d f*ck my clone for sure. And it wouldn’t even be infidelity.

I aimed to refrain from advertising in the beginning, but now I feel as though Louis is showcasing my skills and preferences to the public in order to get rid of me, like he wants to pass me off to the highest bidder for a weekend. If he wants alone time, he need only say so. Hang on, I have to write an idea down.

Where were we? Oh, yes, I am a massive slu*t. My favorite pastime is giving oral while gently f*cking Louis’ beautiful mind with my own surgeon-accurate probers. He has cultivated the most extraordinary imagination and his thoughts are like… cool fingers on the temples, or white linen curtains blown in the wind— or the moon shining through a window on a blue summer night. Or like the earth beneath bare feet after sunset when it is still warm from the day— the grass verdant and tickly between the toes— and the knowledge that the whole vast world is one’s own and there is no shortage of people to embrace and devour. Other times it is troubled and confusing like the labyrinth I told you about— or it’s quite colorfully psychedelic and gorgeously disturbing. But most of the time, Louis’ mind feels like home to me when he allows me to touch it.

Anyway, that is as much of him that you will get to imagine. He is mine, and I am a jealous lover when it comes to him. Only I can see him, only I can touch him, hear him, smell him, taste him. Can you tell how much it irritates me that Armand is able to feel his mind in a way more immersive sense than I, given he is not his maker? But no one affects Louis like I do. He’ll tell you himself. Our Bond is more sacred than theirs. It is! f*ck the naysayers! f*ck you all!

I made myself angry.

I’m not angry at you, my ducklings, but at myself, for allowing there ever to be competition.

One day I will have to rip out Armand’s heart and eat it to avenge myself and to prove my love to Louis…. Well, no he probably wouldn’t talk to me for decades if I did that. And Armand is far too powerful, the old geezer.

Whatever, I don’t have time to mope. We’re going to the twins’ dinner tonight and Louis won’t stop pacing. There is actually a visible tread line on the rug where he has gone back and forth in a figure-eight for hours, the same path every time without even meaning to, except when he’d occasionally go to the kitchen to scrub or polish something or walk around with a damp cloth inspecting the walls for blood spatters (even though we’re not having the dinner at our place), or run upstairs for the infinitesimal time to reconsider his clothing choices.

I’m on a couch pretending to be emailing someone who wants to manage a reunion of my band and who doesn’t know I haven’t aged in the 35, almost 40 years since we started, and that that might be a bit of a publicity fail. I could always lie and say it is plastic surgery and a wig, but I’d have to cover my body and neck and hands as those are harder to operate on. Maybe I could get a gray wig. And wear special effects makeup to age myself. That could be fun.

f*ck, I’m hungry.

We had two more live-ones come over today. One tall, burly man with a shaved head and tattoos all over his scalp, throat, and what could be seen of his body, and who wore a thin, subtle choker with a lock on it that only opened with a key. The owner of this key was not Louis but some small, slight, poetically tortured man with a control complex— or at least that was how he seemed to me from what I could glean from the mind of the meal who happened to be just Louis’ type. Handsome, masculine, and calm. Steady. Accommodating. Obedient. Arguments could be made regarding how many of my own qualities bleed into the middle of that Venn diagram.

The other human was a sensitive, red-haired, brown-eyed doe of a woman— beautiful form— repressed and stressed out of her mind with her job. She had to pretend to be tougher than she felt. All her colleagues were afraid of her, but looking at her I couldn’t understand why.

Well, I know which one is for me, I’d said.

It’s just how their schedules lined up. They’re both good. And they’re busy.

I get it— I won’t play too long with my food. Shall we swap halfway?

He sighed silently, a ripple of irritation in his mind-space. Fine.

If you don’t like women, you shouldn’t get them.

I like women just fine, it’s just not the same.

What, do they smell too good for you? Is their skin too soft, their sighs too high-pitched?

It’s not a sexual thing.

Louis, it’s always a sexual thing with the Blood.

For you, maybe. Have some couth, they’re looking at us.

The redhead could give more blood than the muscle man— or maybe Louis held himself back less with him. It was like she was floating in a drugged haze as I drank from her, her hand curled in my shirt sleeve. She was on her way to sleep. She happily took Louis’ bite after mine and they held hands. They were friends in the way that I can’t be with women.

To clarify, I have women-friends! I’m no misogynist. I just have, at one point, f*cked them all. Just as I have eventually f*cked all the men I’d been friends with. I have very little self-control— don’t come for me. I have not long kept platonic friends of any orientation or gender. But I don’t do the casual sex thing anymore. Louis and I are exclusive right now— unless we f*ck other people together, for all of you asking in the comments. These terms are the leash he chooses to keep me on to maintain his sanity and keep me from inviting unwanted complications, and I don’t mind it.

Anyway, though they were both exquisite snacks, I’m starving. Not because I’m not fed, but because I just want more— to be singing with the blood of other people rushing in my veins, not merely sustained and sated. But I am learning self-control. I am learning. I am learning. I am learning. I am learning. I am learning. I am patiently learning. I am patiently learning. I am patiently….

Oh, it’s time to go. It’s dark enough that we can fly there, but Louis insists on taking a cab because sometimes the air so high up makes us damp. A pity— I like holding him so close to me for such long distances, and I love his anxiously whispered words as we sail past birds and not so far below planes and over the water…..

All went well. I will let Louis tell it, but he was so pleased with me after the fact, my angel, that the moment we got home, he pushed me against the wall and kissed me.

“I was that good?” I had to joke, to temper how aroused I get when he is hungry for me.

“That’s not it. Just… I like seeing you with them. You’re good at the Uncle thing.”

“Am I?”

“Uh-huh,” he agreed nonverbally and shut me up with another kiss, his fingers clenching my open collar. “You had a good time?”

“Of course.”

“Good. You looked good tonight.”

“I did, didn’t I? A bit pale.”

“It’s okay, white boy, I can live with it.” He buried his face in my neck and mouthed over my pulse. “I love it. I love…. Can I?”

This stopped my breath. “Yes, please, mon chéri.”

He bit me and gulped down my arterial blood for the first time in a while. I held his head to me like a mother holding her baby’s head to her breast, encouraging him to drink. He whimpered at the taste. I wouldn’t know, but I imagine nothing compares to returning to the first blood one has ever tasted— especially if it is also someone one loves.

When he pulled away, at last, he only returned to kiss my lips and to press his forehead to mine, panting softly. “Thanks, Les.” And I knew he wasn’t just thanking me for the blood.

“My blood is your blood,” I said.

“And mine is yours,” he answered with a meaning that nearly made me weep. And then he astonished me. He pulled open my pants and swiftly, gracefully, he knelt. St. Louis never kneels. Not for me. I began to protest that we could go upstairs, but he shushed me. “This is fine.”

“You’re really happy with me.”

“I just love you,” he said, blushing, letting my sex caress his beautiful face, kissing it as I hardened practically instantly, blood loss be damned. “You taste so good.”

“Louis, you’re doing terrible things to me,” I whispered and I held his face and marveled at it—at the softness and luminousness of his gorgeous brown skin, the shape of his bright eyes, how they stared with such humor and with the love I could always find there if I knew what to look for. I even marveled at the boldness of his eyebrows, beautifully balanced with his somewhat feminine features— his forehead, broad and smooth as amber glass, belying all of the troubles in the world behind it, but in this moment, unclouded.

For me.

I pulled on one of his incredibly cute, sensual, tempting coils and watched it spring back into even more defiant perfection.

Can you blame me for being obsessed with this man? Sometimes I worry I have a fetish, now, partially because of him. And maybe I do. But I can’t help it, I love beauty—and Louis and people who share aspects of his beauty have always been a weakness of mine when it comes to preference. I try my best to be respectful and to not make my admiration creepy, but for years, I would ache every time I saw anyone with skin his shade or deeper, or anytime I saw Black curls or that delightful frizz that with my fastidious and previously quite presentationally self-conscious Louis was only ever mine to see, or anytime I heard a Black man with that distinct New Orleans accent, how I would feel so wounded in the heart of me. I’d find myself crumbling to pieces and have to immediately hide somewhere to cry. I would long to throw myself at all these fractals of Louis and devour them with kisses and suck them dry so they’d reside in me, but I would hold off and go for people who were completely unlike Louis in appearance or people of whom Louis would approve of me making meals— the criminals and ugly-hearted and such.

He interlocked one hand in mine, still looking up at me and he took me in his mouth. I squeezed his hand, fighting how instantly I could have finished, fighting for containment. I growled against the shock of it, and he squeezed my hand, too, grounding me.

I have had my co*ck in many mouths, many times in my life, but no giver has affected me with so little effort as Louis does. It’s not even just the feeling. It’s the psychology of it. How he gets in my head— or rather, how much I wonder what is in his head. What I know is happening (or what I am so uncertain whether it is happening) in his mind as he is handling me. Louis tells me I understand him better than most people— practically anyone— but I am often still left so confused. Perhaps what squeezes my heart is how he knows me so well, too, and how he loves me anyway. I have been my ugliest self with Louis just as I have felt my most beautiful.

I couldn’t contain my moaning and gasping as he lovingly trapped me against that wall and turned my legs into liquid. His clever fingers, smooth and delicate, practiced in gentleness for all his page-turning, slid between my legs and under me to massage a secret place I still remember teaching him about. I tell you, I could have screamed. Perhaps I did, I do not know, I was so transported by this touch.

I am ashamed to admit how quickly he ended me there in that foyer, but it was alright because what followed made it clear to me it was not nearly the end of the unusual kind of intimacy he was willing to share with me that night.

In our room, we lay together, in soft linen pajamas and his arms encircled my waist, and his head lay on my chest, and he asked me to read Le Petit Prince to him and to do the voices. Of course, I agreed, how could I say no to such an endearing request? Any excuse— we hadn’t done this in years, and it made me wonder how all that time had gone by without indulging in so simple a pleasure even though I know he favors it. When it got to the bit with the fox, and it asked the prince to tame him so they could belong to each other, Louis, rendered helpless by the meaning of the story, though he’d read it many times in both English and French, began to cry, and he did not hide himself from me this time. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said, “I want us to belong to each other. Do you want to belong to me?”

“More than anything,” I said.

“Say it.”

“I want to belong to you more than anything. You tame me every day, but I was committed to following you, back and forth, from one end of the universe to the other, from the moment I saw your face.”

“Can I belong to you?”

“I would never think I could possess you as you possess me, but I will be deliriously happy to take care of you as long as you allow me. I will always try to understand you. I will always try to learn from you. And I will always try to be the best friend you have ever known. I will always strive to be ever more dedicated to our friendship.” Then almost convincingly as an afterthought, “As well as our passionate love.” I thumbed his cheek and tapped his nose with a ridiculous little sound effect that somehow didn’t completely ruin the moment.

“I want….” He swallowed, eyes moving between mine. “You’ve got me, Lestat,” he said. “You’ve got me, and you can’t get rid of me either. I don’t think I’m as… strong as you… where the will to go on enduring is concerned, but… but I care just as much. I love who we are together. I like who I am when I’m with you and we’re doing good. I really like it,” he said very softly as if it were a secret. “I want you to understand me, and I want to understand you. I want to be known by you and I want to change beside you, as long as… as long as we can.”

“Then let’s be very careful.” He seemed about to say that being careful could not possibly be enough, but I hurried to soothe his worry. “I will be very careful… with your patience, so as not to exhaust it...with my vices so as not to disappoint you or bring shame to you… and you will be very careful to let my trembling heart know how you love it, and to look after yourself so I am not so often inspired to take drastic and violent measures to bring you out of your malaise so that you’re at least yelling at me again. There will be no more yelling necessary.” His brow lifted incredulously. “Well, perhaps some yelling, but only on very special occasions, like anniversaries. Above all, we shall swear to always take care of each other.” He nodded, and I kissed his forehead, and risked sounding pathetic to tell him what I wished in the most disgusting, soft, putrefying part of me: “Take care of me, Louis. I only ever want you to take care of me.”

I must have sounded like a wounded animal because he responded promptly and with fiery determination.

“I will. I take care of my family, you ain’t never gotta worry about that, cher.” And it brought tears to my eyes, as it does every time when he calls me his family. “Just tell me how, and I’ll break my back trying to do it in a way you can feel it.”

“I don’t want to be difficult.”

“You’re not. You’re not too much for me. I can handle you just fine.”

“I’m a lot.”

He sighed and looked on me with fond sadness, perhaps regretting that I ever heard him say this. But it was true and I’d always known it—it wasn’t his fault. “I love it. All of it. I can take it. I got you. You’re the only one whose sh*t I actually enjoy putting up with. Just means you’re full of surprises and you’ve got more heart than anyone I know. Can’t have some and not all of you.”

“If I’m ever too much, I understand—”

“f*ck I look like married to someone whose needs I can’t meet? You think I’m too flimsy for you?”

I laughed. I love when he starts a sentence like that. He knows how to make me feel better.

I shook my head, “No, of course not.”

“Be sure, now,” he teased and moved up enough to kiss my lips.

“I’m sure,” I promised.

“Better be.” He bit down gently on my chest and sucked a bruise there. “You’re a mess, but you’re my mess. I wouldn’t rather be with anyone else.”

“Not even Armand?”

He rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue. “Man, why’re you always talking about Armand?”

“Because you call him when I piss you off enough.”

“Well, he’s my friend.”

“That you also f*cked for decades and called the love of your life.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I love him a lot differently than I love you.”

“Because he requires a lot less work?”

“No, because he’s different. It’s never gonna be as intimate as you and me, though.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Well, we’re not getting back together, if that’s what you’re worried about. Not after what I know now about him. I still… I love him, and he’s always known how to comfort me, but I can’t see myself getting wrapped up in that again.”

“Wrapped up is a way to think about it. He’s a snake and he wants to squeeze the life out of you like a boa constrictor. He wraps around your mind and befuddles you like some noxious fog—”

“We’re not talking about Armand tonight,” he said, his nails on the verge of accidentally gouging my back, how stressful the prospect was to him.

“Bon,” I seethed and held him tighter, hooking my legs around his as if the lanky little slip of an ancient college boy would steal my Louis away this instant.

After a minute, he added, “You know… he’s always admired you a lot. He’s actually got a huge thing for you. He doesn’t talk about it, but a couple times he slipped up and I caught on to something.”

“Well, of course, everyone wants to f*ck me.”

“No, I mean… I think he’s in love with you.”

“He’s tortured me.”

“Not personally.”

“He’s so f*cked in the head, it’s never going to happen. Why are you talking like you want it to happen? What, is it only a gripe you have when I’m thinking about women?”

“No, I’m just saying. You don’t have to hate him.”

“Well, I do.”

“At least he’s got good taste.”

“That’s the only thing good about him.”

“Are we fighting?”

“No, mon chéri. Of course not.” Not for that homewrecking weasel.

“Good. Can you keep reading?”

“Of course, my angel.”

So I kept reading to him, and he held onto me tightly through it all, even after the little prince perished in the desert.

Chapter 16: The Twins

Chapter Text

Not even gonna try addressing any of what Lestat just wrote. Except that, yes, I was very happy with him after this dinner. Beyond happy.

The twins are beautiful in their old age. Same funny selves.

They stared at me when we joined them in the living room after Lisa let us in.

“You look exactly the same,” Bette said.

“And so do you,” said Florence, named after my mother.

“You flatter us,” Lestat said with a silky smile.

“You both dressed better back then,” Florence commented. “Now you’re like everyone nowadays, dressed all cutesy, but with cheap, no-good fabrics.”

Lestat laughed. “Truly? I’m affronted. I’m very particular about my fabrics, Madame. Would you like to touch it?” So he approached and held his sleeve out to her. She tugged him closer by the wrist.

Bette said, “You smell good, though.”

“It’s too floral.”

“I thought it was rather fruity,” Bette quipped back at her.

Lestat snorted. “Indeed?”

“Yes, indeed,” she giggled.

“Ooh, this is nicer than I thought,” Florence admitted. “But what happened to the suit?”

“Out of fashion, I’m afraid, but I can wear one next time if you like the figure I cut in them. Whatever brings you pleasure.”

“You’re a nasty one, I can tell. You act nice, but you’re nasty, nasty, nasty.”

“How do you mean?” he asked innocently but with a smirk.

“I know what you meant, I’m still sharp. Flirting with old folks. Weirdo. And ain’t this your man?”

“Hey, Baby Florence,” I said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “Little Bette. Y’all look good.”

“So we heard,” Florence snorted. Bette smothered more giggling behind her wrinkled, age-spotted hand, nails painted a coral reddish-orange, and fingers gleaming with gold rings.

“You brought us presents?” Bette asked when her laughter subsided.

“Always the first question you ask,” I couldn’t help but laugh. “You girls ask everyone who comes to your house that?”

“Only if they’re men,” Florence said dryly.

Lisa clicked her tongue. “Y’all said you weren’t gonna cut up if y’all hosted.”

“Hush, we ain’t said anything wrong. Y’all hungry?” Lisa suppressed a sigh. “Oh, wait— hm. We ain’t got nothing for you that you’d like to eat. Wanna watch us eat, like you used to?”

“I told you I ordered something for the uncles, it’s just running late,” Lisa said exasperatedly.

“Oh, you didn’t have to, Lisa,” I said, surprised.

“Nonsense, Louis— and it’s quality stuff. From a hospital. Wasn’t easy to get, I won’t lie, but I know enough residency students who owe me favors or would like some extra cash.”

“Wonderful,” Lestat beamed. “I knew you’re my favorite grandniece for a reason.”

Lisa rolled her eyes with a shy smile. “It was nothing. Just being considerate. Must be hard getting blood on a daily basis.”

“Not if eschewing Louis’ human ethics,” he said. “I could find a meal anywhere I go, but Louis has such an infectious conscience, that it gets less easy every year I’m with him.” I knew this wasn’t the case, and that he could take blood from any stranger without feeling remorse, but that he said this for their benefit.

“It’s not so hard, we got connects,” I said. “And also, believe it or not, people volunteer their blood or give it for money.”

“Must get expensive.”

“Fortunately I’ve made some pretty decent investments at my big age, so it’s no problem.”

Lisa smiled at me, eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that I knew was genuine. She was happy to have these details about my gruesome diet and lifestyle. She liked knowing more.

“But the twins are right. What churlish uncles would we be if we showed up with empty hands?” Lestat said with a promising smile.

The expression is emptyhanded, I told him.

Oh, shut up, baby, you just wanted an excuse to escape into my consciousness. Stop trying to dissociate. We must entertain.

Like your consciousness is so pleasant, I approximately grumbled, widening my smile. And I’m not dissociating. I’m not scared.

Never said you were.

“Presents for the indefatigable twins,” Lestat said, bringing from behind his back as if by magic the large, pristinely black bag with gold lettering and blooms of red tissue paper.

Bette gasped. “You did not.”

“We did. How couldn’t we? You two are our first nieces, and we do adore an excuse to buy pretty things.”

“We’ll have to see if you have any taste,” Florence scoffed, but her eyes were wide and her hand hovered over her heart. “Give it here, already! Before we’re dead!”

Lestat seemed genuinely endeared to and adoring of them. He crouched and held the bag between them. They raced to pull away the sheafs of tissue paper and then to reach inside.

“You did not!” they exclaimed together at what they felt inside, though it couldn’t have been more than the surfaces of the velvet boxes. Lestat grinned.

In perfect synchronicity, they extracted flat rectangular boxes and opened them. They glanced at each other, then back at their necklaces, then up at Lestat, then to me. I could have laughed if I wasn’t so terrified to know their opinion.

“Do you like them?” Lestat asked.

First Florence then Bette slapped his arm.

“I’m never leaving the house without it,” Bette said.

“I’m getting buried in it,” said Florence.

“I’ll send it down the laundry chute to hell for you, in case you forget.”

“Not if you die first.”

“Whoa,” Lisa interjected without alarm as if they talked like this all the time.

“Thank you, sweethearts, you shouldn’t have, but you can’t take them back now,” Florence said.

“No takebacks.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it.”

Lisa chuckled, shaking her head. “Come on, y’all it’s time to get situated at the table.”

In the hallway, I handed Lisa the book. “For you,” I said in explanation. “It’s, uh…. He was my friend. He signed it.”

“You were friends with James Baldwin?” she whispered

“Yep.”

“Did he know….”

“Oh, yeah, he’s one of the first humans I told. He was a great listener. An even greater teacher.”

“Were you two….”

“Nah.”

“Was he a…?”

“No, sadly he was just as mortal as you are. Wouldn’t let me turn him. Insisted the stomach cancer was a fair price to pay for death at last— a release from this exhausting form and planet. I was hoping he would say that. I’m afraid if he ever became immortal, he would have been the most miserable vampire on this earth.”

“Isn’t that you?”

I had to laugh at myself, even though her question shocked me slightly. “Yeah, I suppose it used to be. I’m taking it easier, these days.”

“I’m glad. The vampire world needs some like you, I think.”

“Some like me?”

“Sensitive about how humans are. You are the most human of them all, Lestat has said.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe it’s just the Catholic guilt in me.”

She laughed. “We all got that, even when we let go of the title.”

“It’s good to see you, Lisa.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Uncle Louis.”

When everyone was seated and had begun on the wine and salad, the doorbell rang and Lisa got up and came back with a cross-body cooler bag presumably stuffed full of medical blood pouches.

“No looking,” she teased, her cheeks flushed from her no-doubt awkward exchange with the delivery person. “It’s perfect timing. I’ll be right out with all the food. Warm-water heating for it okay with y’all? I read I should do that on Reddit,” she said over her shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen with the bag on her hip.

“You don’t have to—” I started.

“Excellent,” Lestat said. “Let me know if I can be of help.” He secretly gave me a disapproving look as if to suggest I’m a disgrace to vampires everywhere, and especially to him as my maker. I rolled my eyes. Cold blood is refreshing, and I’ll fight everybody on that.

“So why are you two in Washington state, of all places?” Bette asked. “Long way from New Orleans— France— wherever else you’ve been.”

“And how long were you stalking our mother?” Florence added.

My mouth fell open and I glanced at Lestat for reassurance, but he was already laughing.

“I— I didn’t! You know… the war….”

“After, then?”

“Not for some years. And then I got curious. Every birthday, I remembered and it hurt. But I kept my distance.”

“Until she died?”

“No. I… I went looking for her before then. Found her. Found you. Found… everybody. Then I just kept occasional tabs. That’s all.”

“Saw your shadow… saw your reflection in the hospital window. Saw you once on the street corner, just staring up at the house. Then like the movies, a bus passed and you were gone.”

Florence clicked her tongue as if tired of that story. “You were dreaming all those times—”

“Yeah, that might have been me.”

Bette clapped her hands together, sending Florence a smug look. “How’d you disappear like that?”

“I’m fast,” I smiled.

“Making me look crazy,” Bette scolded me.

“Well, I’m sorry, miss ma’am, I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“They said you aren’t intending to make anyone in the family like one of you. What’s the point of that?” Florence said.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, we’re gonna be dead and you will only like us and love us—” Bette said.

“Inevitably,” Florence smirked.

“—more than you could before. Now you’ll just be sad.”

“Or do you have a fetish for grief?” Florence wondered cynically.

I’m sure I was blushing, as flustered as I was, but Lestat was not so shocked and was good with humor like this.

“Why would we give you powers so wretched? You’d be cursed. Cursed to be the best-looking people in any room for all eternity and not have any viable vampires to nest with.”

“You’re too much!” Bette laughed, slapping the arm of her chair.

“We vampires are all like a band of awkward, strange, and insufferable theater students—I’m afraid Louis was fortunate in that he scored the hot one in the group and added to our ranks, but if all the de Pointe du Lac’s joined the club, there’d be a problem of all the hot vampires being related to each other.”

Lisa was standing in the doorway, arms folded, “Is that right?” she smirked.

“Very right,” Lestat said. “I would never lie.”

“Mmhmm.” The door opened and Elsie and Mikey came in. “Perfect timing— Mikey, come here and help me with something. Elsie, you too.”

“Hello to you, too,” Elsie grumbled. Lestat and I stood up to greet them, hand finding hand, cheeks pressing either corresponding cheek. Mikey was positively beaming.

“It’s good that this is becoming a thing— I was worried you’d both get run off.”

“No, mon ami, it takes a lot to make me disinvite myself from a good time,” Lestat said. “And Louis could not be dissuaded with a knife to his heart. Nothing more important than family to Louis. It would be worrying if not for how I benefit from it.”

Dinner was served and Lestat and I drank from deep crystal wine glasses.

“So what does blood taste like to you?” Elsie wondered. “I’ve tasted my own blood before and it just tastes like… salted pennies.”

Lestat chuckled. “Oh, dear.”

“It’s more of an experience than a simple taste,” I began to explain, then realizing I sounded ridiculous and I might be misconstrued, stopped to reconsider.

“May I try to explain it?” Lestat asked. “Being as I am the prouder blood glutton between us.”

“If you like.”

Mikey leaned forward, paying close attention, Lisa and Elsie exchanged glances, and Florence and Bette held their breath.

“The Blood is… well it’s euphoric. How it is drunk is very important to the experience too— a vampire could get endless pleasure and not to mention, strength, from drinking from the vein. It’s good for us to drink that way most often, so as not to forget the drive. From glasses and when the blood has been long out of the body, the pleasure is tempered, although it is still quite satisfying, and depending on how one keeps the donor, it can yield more for sharing, which in itself is an intimate kind of communion. Blood tastes… well everyone has a unique taste. Some people are sweet and others savory. The skin, fat, and muscle of our donors’ necks vary in tenderness and depth. The younger, the more tender; the older, the more chewy…men can be gamey, women tend to be smoother, but not always. And most pleasurable of all is the heat. The feeling of being filled with life, especially when one has been very hungry, is like… being born. As to what I can compare it to… hmm… mortal food escapes me… sometimes the sensation is like eating perfectly ripe strawberries, warmed by the sun, but stolen from your neighbor’s garden…” he smiled mischievously, “...and with the pleasure of a thunderous org*sm—”

“Lestat!”

“— and the clarity of a cloudless sky after months of rain. Anxious people taste of salt and citrus…. Happy and hopeful people are like eating buckets of whipped cream or fresh, pillowy bread. Angry people taste sharp—pungent. And of course you all taste of meat, but that’s neither here nor there on the experience. I wish I could explain it to you.”

“What does the blood you’re drinking now taste like?”

“Citrus and basil. The donor probably doesn’t like needles and they have a garden they grow herbs in.”

“Do you taste all that?” they asked me.

“Some of it, sure…” I reflected. “The experience varies from person to person, I think. I’ve learned to enjoy it without… hurried guilt. I used to try not to think about how much I liked it. Felt perverse.”

“But… you need it,” Lisa said, tilting her head.

“Well… it’s much better than animal blood. Killing people and not feeling the guilt I thought I should feel…was hard to wrap my head around.”

“Louis is an unusually kind soul. His obligations in how he must live, from the time he was born, have always been against his innate constitution.” Lestat stroked my arm briefly. “He didn’t take after me even though he has my blood in his veins.”

“You found it difficult when you were first turned,” I pointed out.

He assented with a tilt of his head. “Yes, but I had no one to teach me except a monster. I was brought into all of this quite… jarringly. I soon got a taste for it, though. I let myself become all the things I feared. You were more morally stubborn than me,” he smiled. “When I was human, I always tried to be a good little boy—dedicated to something with all devotion—but you have that beauty in your spirit. Enough that my dedication to you feels religious.”

Of course, I had to wave this out of the air. “He always talks about me like I’m a saint, but really I’m not, I’m just… I didn’t want to see myself as a killer.”

“And you never were,” Lestat said with rueful love. “An angel of death, perhaps,” he added, refusing to allow for my self-effacement when he would venerate me. “The most beautiful face a human could see before they are sent off to their own makers.”

“Stop, we’re among company,” I muttered blushing.

“Lestat’s got game, not gonna lie— you need to put me on, man,” Mikey said. “What was that you said— your dedication to him feels religious?”

“Yes,” Lestat smiled and squeezed my hand.

“Tuh—if someone said that to me, I’d fold like that,” he snapped his fingers. “And I ain’t even gay like that, not even gon’ hold you, but it’s the way you say things, man.”

“God, Mikey,” Elsie rolled her eyes.

“What? Is ‘gay’ a slur now? Gay’s cool, I’m just, saying if someone called me an angel of death for killing someone, I wouldn’t care ‘bout none of that—like, I’m yours, boo.”

“Ever think you might not be straight?” Elsie asked, tapping her chin, exaggeratedly pondering the question.

“Nah…well…?”

“Check his internet search history,” Lestat said, mouth curling, and while everyone laughed I laughed because I didn’t know he knew what that was. [I’m not a f*cking idiot, Louis, google has been around for 30 years, or something.— Lestat]

“Seriously, though, Mikey,” Lestat said in an anything-but-serious tone. “I’m so pleased if I have been at all helpful in your self-discovery. You may use as many of my lines as you like, though I’ll have to start charging you the longer you are in pursuit of love. ”

Mikey grinned and winked at him. “‘Preciate it.”

As I took a sip, I noticed Florence watching me. I paused. “Sorry, is this off-putting?”

“Nope,” she said. “I was just trying to remember… I don’t know why we were so scared of y’all.”

“Rumors, probably. Not your fault. Y’all were little. And then that time I kicked in your door wouldn’t have made things easier to understand.”

“Yeah, well. We shouldn’t’ve been,” she said gently. She looked so much like my mother even though my mother had never admitted fault or regret in her life, much less to me.

I shifted, feeling a little emotional with this admission. “Um…. Did y’all ever get those paper dolls? I’ve thought about it way too much for the last 100 years, you know. I don’t know why. Or did your ma and pa burn ‘em?”

“Oh, we got ‘em,” Bette said. “Loved those dolls.”

“They were too nice to burn,” Florence joked. “Though we had to play with them away from Gramamaw. She always turned her mouth up when we did.”

My nose stung and my throat constricted but I hid it behind a sip of blood. “Good…” I said a little hoarsely. Lestat was looking at me with affection and understanding. He set his arm on the back of my chair.

“I’m so glad we are doing this,” he said airily. “We would have had paper-doll themed nightmares for three more centuries. It really bothered him, no matter how many times I told him he wasn’t a terrible uncle and that the isolation is just part of the transformation.”

“What made him say yes to it?” Bette asked.

“Well…” Lestat began. “I can be very… persistent. He was very grief-struck after your Uncle Paul died. I took that time to assail him with love, calling him to come to my side so I could comfort him. But I was terrifying him. It was too much. He didn’t interpret any of what I was doing as anything more than a devil’s work and the consequence of him having given himself to me a couple of weeks before. It wasn’t innocent or fair how I… how I offered him the gift and my eternal companionship. It was manipulative. I’ll admit that. But I was so afraid he’d die that night. He was in a church telling a priest all of his ‘sins,’” he said, forming air quotations with his fingers. “He said he wanted to die. And I felt his grief….”

He looked at me, and I looked back at him.

“It was familiar to me. And I knew that if I didn’t do something to intervene, he might follow his brother into a premature grave and I would be beside myself with sadness. He would not have been the first person I loved to do this to himself. My persuasion was more forceful than it should have been, but it was because of love and fear. Louis realized what I had done to him after the fact, when he could not be in the sun, couldn’t keep his family close. That’s when I knew I had been wrong. But to this day, I can’t say I regret it. He has changed me more than I have changed him, I believe, and for only the better. And I love him… so very much.” His eyes were tinged with blood tears, but he blinked them away, then reached across his body to take my hand and kiss it. “Is that a sufficient telling, mon amour?”

“Yeah,” I said, half-breathless with overwhelming love for him. I could hear our hearts beating in sync.

“Aspirational,” Elsie said. “Why do I feel it? Like, it’s almost like you two are glowing and the energy is sucking us in. Is that what all vampire relationships are like?”

“There is nothing like the bond between a vampiric maker and his fledgling,” he said. “Though I like to believe you would have felt our connection even when Louis was human.”

“How are your kids, by the way?” I asked because I was blushing from all the attention, both his and theirs. “How old are they now?”

Elsie had a daughter who was three years old and she was a single parent to her. Lisa was married to a widower who had children before she married him. She adopted them (two sons, now 14 and 16) and later had a daughter of her own with her husband, who was now six. Lisa also was in the middle of qualifying to be a foster parent for young kids, and when her youngest was older, a foster home for troubled youth.

“I’m passionate about children, you know. Always felt protective of them, especially after meeting Ken.” (Her husband.) “If he weren’t such a good father, his kids would have fallen through the cracks. It happens all the time. And I just can’t shake the feeling that it could have been my kids if they were born into anything else.”

“You have a huge heart,” Elsie said, hand hovering over her own heart. “It’s not for everyone.”

I looked to Lestat, thinking naturally of our daughter—then of the overwhelming paternal feelings I had for Madeleine. How it felt like my soul was being ripped from my body when they were—

Lestat put his hand on my thigh.

“Louis has wanted for some time to go back to active parenthood. Fostering might be an option we look into since we can’t very well keep a human child forever. But I imagine there is a rigorous background check process?”

“Yes,” Lisa sighed. “It can be intense. Depending on what state you’re in, certainly. Yet awful people end up with more children than they deserve.”

“Perhaps nothing that money couldn’t fix?”

Lisa considered. “I don’t know. How do you two even handle banking?”

“Some banks specialize in our… situation,” I said. “Or at least, they’re discreet. I’ve been my son and grandson many times, though.”

“I bet the world’s gotten intense to participate in,” Mikey said. “Why do you want kids anyway? Not that you shouldn’t, I’m just curious because—” he hastened to explain.

“I’ve always wanted a big family,” I said. “And when… when we had a daughter… words can’t explain the simple joy of it.”

“What happened to her?” Elsie asked softly.

“She… died. She um….” My vision was narrowing and my throat was tight.

“Don’t ask questions like that,” Bette snapped. “Uncle Louis, don’t answer questions like that if you don’t want to. Eat your blood, baby.” Florence elbowed Elsie and I couldn’t help but laugh, startled out of my melancholy.

“It’s alright,” I said. “Yeah. Anyway.”

Lestat squeezed the back of my neck and rubbed my shoulder.

“Her death was no fault of his,” Lestat specified. “Along this line of conversation… I have an idea, and I emphasize, I do not wish to push anyone into something they will be uncomfortable with.” He spread his hands. “I know we are undead, and as of yet, slightly strangers. And I know I, at least, am a bit weird. But it would bring my Louis— well, both of us— immense joy to look after your little ones on some night out.” I looked to him, eyes wide, hardly believing my ears. “Fire the sitter, hire us instead. What do you think?”

“Oh!” Lisa said, eyebrows raising. “Really? You’d be interested in that?”

“Yes, we’d love to meet the rest of the family. Bring your husband, too, next time.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I— I’d love that. If you… if you trust us enough.”

“Well… we’d have to think about it. I mean I’d have to discuss it with Ken.”

“I’m fine with it…” Elsie said. “I need a hand, I really do. Well, first— I’d have to see how you are with toddlers.”

“Of course!” I said probably too eagerly.

“Of course,” Lestat echoed, disguising his horror at the prospect. Small children scare him.

“If you’d like to supervise the first few times, you can— yes, this is—”

“Mikey babysits, sometimes. He can show you how he does it the first couple times, right?” Elsie asked Mikey.

“Yep,” Mikey said. “That’d be fun. Three guys watching a bunch of kids.”

“My 16-year-old can help out too, but sometimes he’s immature, you know.”

“Oh, we know how it is,” I laughed. “Thank you. Thank you for even considering it. I’m so grateful.”

“You’re the one blessing us, Unc,” Elsie laughed. “Shouldn’t have offered because I was only too ready to jump on that opportunity. It will be nice to have a single Saturday night to myself. Besides you’re not the weirdest people I would let babysit my kids— I have a friend who forages for all her food and thinks that mushrooms talk to her. And she’s a bird person.”

Florence and Bette went to bed eventually, letting the more youthful stay up “hootin’ and hollerin’ with the owls.” I embraced them both, kissing their cheeks, and Lestat did the same. We talked until 1 in the morning and Lestat and I helped with putting away the food and washing the dishes. Then we departed.

But yeah. When we got home, I jumped his bones. What about it?

Chapter 17: Love-shaped Agonies

Chapter Text

Louis was in a baby-making mood for several days thereafter.

Anytime he thought about the night with the twins and the way I had vouched for us to be unpaid babysitters, he would get this dazzling smile on his stupidly beautiful face that made me forget that I hate children and that I already told him we are not having anymore. Next thing you know, we are on the floor or against the piano or on the staircase, and I’m swearing that this time I will put a baby in him, and then he’s cumming his pretty brains out.

But then of course, this would sometimes be followed by melancholy, because God forbid we have a happy time that is not tinged with melancholy.

He was sobbing into my chest after my ruined org*sm— ruined because the second I got off he couldn’t contain his tears and I felt the need to console him (I am not complaining, I’ve had several lifetimes of org*sms, I’m illustrating the scene)— and he said to me, “I’m sorry that I ever thought you didn’t love her enough….”

“What do you mean, mon cher?”

“I really didn’t—didn’t realize…until I made Madeleine, a stranger… how it feels. It must have killed you and yet I’m the one who doesn’t know how to move on—doesn’t know how to compartmentalize, at least. You’re dying still… you feel her absence…. Yet you still would make me a father again… still try to give me the chance to feel like I can have a family, against your better judgment.”

“Well, what can I say?” I said, caught off-guard that he was apologizing for misunderstanding my love for our Claudia in the together-days. “I cannot say no to you.”

“Maybe you should,” he said quietly. “I only know how to f*ck up my own chances at happiness.”

“Next time you’re doing it, I’m going to point this out to you, and you’re going to tell me to swallow glass.”

“Well, you’d be right.”

“I think you’re having a hard drop from that one, angel,” I said, referring to his own series of spectacular org*sms, courtesy of me. “And you haven’t been eating enough. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“I haven’t noticed, myself,” he said hollowly, not really indicating by his tone that he cared to do anything about it before his sex drive dried up and his sleep became awful. “Guess I’ve just been in my head.”

I considered the places I could take this. 1) I could distract him with something, though this would only last so long before he returned to the gloomy thoughts. He is not as easily amused as me, alas. 2) I could thank him for reflecting upon my still sensitive feelings about her, even though that’s not what he wanted by bringing it up—essentially talking about it without talking about it, to give him the feeling that we discussed all the important things. (I’m spilling all the secrets of my evil, dastardly tendencies. It’s just as well, I suppose.) Or, 3) I could actually deal with the problem before its roots webbed through and cracked our painstakingly rebuilt foundation.

I decided on the last, but not without some reluctance.

“Are you sure you want to talk about….” I couldn’t say her name. It’s a wonder I can write it.

“Yeah. Please. If you want to.”

“Okay.” I rubbed his back. When I thought I had the words, I opened my mouth to speak them, but then I had to close my mouth again. I continued rubbing his back until I was sure that it was getting rather annoying. I began again, failed again.

Louis tried to save me, “We don’t have to—”

“We do,” I said, voice a little terse.

“Okay.”

I refused to let this go unspoken, no matter how clumsily it came out. I knew we had to talk about it now. We have been together again for approaching two years. We would have to have this conversation someday and I needed to be strong enough to do it. I began with my feelings, the only thing I know of with any intuitive certainty because I am primarily self-obsessed, or so I’ve been told.

“You’re right. The grief is agonizing. It’s as bad as you think it is, sometimes. It leaves me breathless. I have never known such grief. I will never….” I cleared my throat and blinked rapidly. “I will never… ‘get over’ her. That’s not going to happen, Louis. I can promise you that. She will always be… ours. Ours to hold in gilded memory. Our daughter. Our firstborn. I will always… f*ck.” He looked up at me, blood in his eyes, too, and he kissed my cheek and caressed my face. “I will always love her,” I continued. “I never stopped.”

“Never?” he asked softly, though he must have known the answer. Still, I assured him:

“No. How could I? She is part of us. She was so like me, especially, to my constant chagrin. The curse of my blood. As parents do, I feared she would become a reflection of me— a monster who would love and break the things she loves, indirectly and repeatedly breaking herself— so I treated her coldly when she would make the mistakes I had hoped she would avoid. I was too cold. I was callous and cruel. I hurt her more than I anticipated I would. Pushed her away. My temper…. Many times—too often for forgiveness— I was rough and vicious with her. But she was… she made me feel true pride. No, it was more profound than pride. I was not prepared for it. For the first time in my life, I had someone to pour selflessly into— for what could she give me in return? She was absolutely beautiful, yet she was of my blood. Her attitudes, her humor, her kill-instinct—all mine. It was as if I had birthed her myself from my own body. Most shocking of all was that I could look at this reflection of myself and feel joy. I could feel compassion for myself through my compassion for her. I could see beauty in myself where I never had before because everything she was was beautiful.”

“Yes,” Louis breathed, nodding. “Yes.”

“I lied to you, you know. Or, I withheld…. I felt her through our Bond when she was… at college,” I said euphemistically. “I told you this, but I didn’t tell you that I missed her, too, and that I took comfort in checking that she lived, tugging on the cord of our tenuous connection each week to make sure it was still taut at least.” I sighed. “Words! Words, words, words. I’m just talking. What can I say? What is it that you would know?”

“We don’t… I know we can’t make another one. I won’t ask you to. And we don’t have to raise any human ones just because I want to. I know you… I know you don’t really like kids.”

I sighed again, wishing I could get out of this conversation, but instead I breathed in and out, filling my sawdust-filled skull with oxygen, and I tried to become extremely conscious of the softness of Louis’ skin, the comforting sound of his heartbeat, the springy thickness of his hair between my fingers. I told myself, meditatively, that he and I were together; that we were in love; and that as long as we loved one another properly, I wouldn’t have to be without the simple joy of him by my side like this.

“No, Louis…. I only hate being around children because I have a record of… mishandling delicate and precious things…almost as if to prove to myself that I can only ever break them and I’m better off not having them.”

In my head appeared Louis’ broken body in our old backyard on Rue Royale, but I shoved it out, lest I became hysterical with horror at myself and failed in my attempt to soothe Louis.

“I will not deny your paternal instincts—nor mine, as fleeting as they are—all because of this irrational fear that I have. I am trying to gain more self-control. And this time… if there is a time that we make a choice to… expand our little family… it will be different. They will be older… and we will be very certain… and we will be much less volatile as a pair, hm? If it is a human child, we will bring the human child into a world of peace and we will teach them how to be good and how to be kind, like you… and they will have no idea that we are both utterly deranged.”

“We’ll teach them to be better than both of us,” Louis said resolutely.

“Anything is possible with enough books on the matter, right?”

He made a noise of annoyance and dug his nails into my arm. “I never said those books are the key— most of them are trash, anyway. I’m just trying to take preventative measures if we’re gonna be looking after someone else’s kids from time to time.”

“Yes, you might as well get the entire shelf next time you visit the bookstore. Detailed manuals on raising every single age. Soon, family we’ve never heard of will be offering their kids to us like sacrifices.”

This brought to mind a worry I had since Louis expressed his desire to forge connections with his relatives—the inevitability of the day, that an injury or an illness would befall someone too young, and we would be turned to for help— pleaded with to give them the Dark Gift that they may live. And we would have to refuse. Of course we would have to refuse.

“I miss her,” he whispered, breaking my cynical spiral. “The sound of her little feet running through the house when she was new and young and excited. Her loud laugh.” He grinned with tears in his eyes, thinking of it. “Her pen, constantly scratching away.”

“Me too,” I said. I did not think it helpful to mention right then that sometimes I still hear her feet creeping softly, her bursts of contemptuous (or joyous, in the early days) laughter; could hear the scrape of her pen from her coffin late into the day as I tried to sleep; could smell her hair and would often be sleeping and feel it brush my cheek, cover my face, like when she would crawl into bed between Louis and me, heedless of what we had been doing…we had been sure to pull on our pajama bottoms post-coitus after that first awkward time, when we tried to keep her above the sheets and had to subtly maneuver her away from the bloody wet spot (me, sacrificing myself for the cause).

She was so innocent at one point. Always wanted to be in between us and lavished with the attention she had never known before, given her unfortunate upbringing in the children’s home and with her evil aunt. Sometimes when she was pissed off at her Daddy Lou, she would crawl into her Uncle Les’ coffin, and I’d indulge her, unable to refuse her rare moment of preference for me, whispering and entertaining her with stories and jokes about Louis late into the morning until she fell asleep, her mass of poofy hair tickling my face, getting in my mouth. Her hair would get very unruly before Louis and I learned to do it for her and taught her how to care for it herself. My frizzy darling terror.

“You don’t want to try again?” Louis wondered.

“Lou…it won’t be the same. You know this, mon cher, oui?”

“Yes….”

“And a human child comes with complications. They will grow old, we will not. They will resent us if we will not turn them… you know this, too.”

“...Yes,” he confessed, and he sounded so despondent.

“Oh, my love… you are very sweet and appealing to me somehow when you have baby fever. I wish I could give you everything you want. I wish I could make you pregnant with my evil pups,” (he banged his fist weakly against my chest in protest), “and that we can have a large family house that is overflowing with rambunctious children that give me migraines. And maybe I will. I’m going to try very hard to build a family with you before our eternity runs out. We just have to go about it the smart way. And I’m an idiot who never learns, so we have to be especially cautious, yes? It’s not a no. I can never say no to you. But give me some time, mon cher…. Can you do that? Will you wait for me?”

“I love you, Lestat,” he said. “Even if it’s just us… I can be happy. I don’t think I could do it again, anyway…. The grief would be… and it never ends well. I know we can’t. It was stupid to bring it up. I don’t know why I did….”

“You could never be stupid, hush now. You’re just hungry. Drink from me, mon cher. Let me feel your teeth. I love them inside me.”

Reluctantly, he agreed and latched onto my neck, and at the first taste, his hunger made itself apparent to him, and he drew from me ravenously with relieved moans. Sometimes this is the only way to get Louis to feed when he is feeling depressed. I stroked his hair.

“Very good, mon cher. You feel so good.”

Our first babysitting session is going to be with Lisa’s children—the 14, 16 and six year old. They are to come visit tomorrow night. Lisa and Ken want to go out for dinner together, have a little date night that lasts into the morning. I am most worried about the teenagers. Louis has prepared rooms for them, altering the decorations in some of the guest bedrooms to be more fitting to boy children. He learned about video game consoles and has bought practically every single one and has created a play room with a television and a soundsystem and more games and films and animations than anyone will ever be able to watch.

I am familiar enough with his phases to know that when he is concerned about showing his love to his loved ones, he will spare no expense or amount of labor to dispel it— often he shoved his hands in Claudia’s new shoes and walked upside down in them so that they could be broken in— she loved new shoes except for their painful beginnings. For me, he used to consistently supply me with new sunglasses, for I have sensitive eyes, even at night, and tour was difficult because I would often misplace or break them. They were always expensive and engraved with our names and a sweet message. (I secretly would take great pains to find the broken or lost glasses and keep the engraved pieces because they were so precious to me. I have a box just full of them.) [👀]

Still, the constant fussing over children we haven’t met yet is mind-boggling to watch. It would be one thing if he would eat and if he would sleep at hours appropriate for a fledgling of his youth, but instead he makes himself more and more upset. [Louis here, to remind the audience that I’m 147 years old, not a fledgling, and that I don’t need as much sleep anymore, and to inform you all that Lestat’s level of worry is unfounded and that he is always going to worry about me even when I’m perfectly fine. Which I am.][Disagreeing with Louis on this point because while he is 147, sleep and regular feeding are essential to the sanity of vampires of any age, and his bad feeding and sleeping habits are making him moodier than he would be otherwise. Someone reason with him in the comments!!!!!]

“Do you like the blue or should we go green?” he asked me about a duvet.

“I don’t know, my love, are we sleeping in these beds?”

“If you’re not going to help me, then why are you just standing over me, watching and sighing and rolling your eyes? Do you want some attention? Is that it?” He turned to me, finally, eyebrows raised in challenge.

“What if I did? You’ve been at this for days, what do you think it matters?”

“If they don’t love it here, they’re not going to want to come back.”

“And you think young boys care about duvet covers?” I asked him somewhat seriously. I never know, with Louis.

He folded his arms, looking back to his color conundrum. “I should have called and asked Lisa, but I don’t want her to know we’re doing all this.”

“Because you know it is silly, what we’re doing here.”

“No, she’s a working woman. And also she’d think it’s weird I’m doing this anyway.”

“We are the witch with the candy house, luring Hansel and Gretel.”

He frowned, reassessing. “Oh… is it too much? Should we move some of it up to the attic?”

“Louis, I was joking.”

“I’m being so creepy.”

“No, you’re not,” I hurried to calm him. “You’re a natural-born uncle. You’re going to be an instant favorite, I can see it now.”

“Should we learn how to play these games with them?”

“I’m sure they’ll teach us whether we want to learn or not. Didn’t your gremlin play video games?”

“On an iPad. It’s different, I think. And I never played with him.”

This pleased and amused me.

“Best case scenario would be that they find us utterly uninteresting and play by themselves,” I told him, tempering his expectations.

“What happens if they find out we’re vampires?”

“Now you’re concerned about that? You’ve already told their parents.”

“Aliens exist and the humans don’t even care…. I can see them either not believing us or just rolling with it. Can’t you?”

“I can. But are you suggesting we reveal ourselves?”

“No,” he sighed. “But if they ask questions, I might just tell them point blank I’m a vampire. Make it seem like a joke. And if they believe us, I mean, it’s Seattle—what’s anyone gonna do?”

“Very true, although the security in our little house here isn’t as effective as it was in the Al Sharaf Towers.”

“Between the two of us, we got all the security we need.”

“If we are burned down while in coffin we’d be terribly f*cked, mon cher.”

“It’s why we got a powerful-as-f*ck sprinkler system in our room and fire resistant shells to our coffins.”

“And if they force us out into sunlight?”

“I ain’t worried about that, Les.”

“Hmm, well, that’s at least one thing you aren’t worried about.”

He laughed softly, then set his hand on my hip. “You’re jealous ‘cause I’m not giving you all my attention, huh?”

“Not jealous. I am restless.Your worry sets my teeth on edge.”

He gave me a droll look. “What can I do to help you out, hm? Sounds like you need an attitude adjustment.”

Realizing what he was offering, I’m sure I blushed. “Depends,” I said as if I hadn’t been so very ready for this. “Pleasure or pain?”

“Relief either way. It won’t matter because I’m paying attention to you. You’re a whor* for attention in that way, Lestat. Don’t pretend you have preferences.”

“I’m only a whor* for your attention,” I corrected him.

He pulled me close by my belt loop. “Yeah right,” he said, and chuckled at the sound I made when his hand slid around my hip to rub and pinch my ass.

“Are you in….” I had to bite my lip to stifle another pathetic, whorish sound as his hand started gripping low, finger pressing against the seat of my linen slacks as if he could get at me if he pushed hard enough, even without claws— and it thrilled me to think he probably could. “Are you in a mood enough to relieve yourself as well?” I completed my question. “Since I’m just here to be irritating?”

“Just might have to,” he said. “But not in here. Get your bad ass into the bedroom. I’ll be with you in a few.”

“No, come with me now. Don’t make me go without you, you’ll be here for another hour rethinking the paint on the walls.”

“So what, if that’s what I choose to do? You really don’t want to be a brat, right now, Lestat.”

He’s so sexy when he warns me to behave myself. Somehow even sexier when he’s saying it’s his right to ignore me. I kissed him because how could I help it?

“Louis,” I whispered, not wanting to whine, but desperately turned on.

“Go on ahead,” he said with a butch affectation. [The f*ck does this even mean?]

Stealing another kiss and feeling him up in turn to keep him motivated to hurry it up and come ravish me, I all but skipped off toward the bedroom, my feet barely touching the floor.

I didn’t know what to do with myself as I waited, so I ended up folding and hanging up clothes I had left laying around for longer than would please him. All he has to do to get me to clean a room, apparently, is to tell me to wait in it for him with horny implications. [Noted.]

He arrived and I threw myself at him, one leg lifting to lock around his hip as I kissed him. “Louis,” I whispered.

“What does my favorite slu*t want?”

“Only to please you, mon amour. f*ck me.”

“No.” I whined, feeling wounded. “Not yet,” he clarified. “I wanna try something.”

“Anything you want,” I said, because I’m ready for anything when Louis is involved.

“Your birthday’s coming up,” he reminded me. “Less than a month. I think I can give you your birthday treat early… and again and again.”

“Oh, Louis, Louis, Louis,” I whispered, kissing his neck. “Why, suddenly?”

“I dunno. Just feel like it.”

“But you don’t like to do it—”

“I do, baby. I love to do it. Weirds me out how much I like to do it, if I think about it too much, is all. Catholic at heart—hard to shake. But you’ve been such a good boy, haven’t you?” he cooed with loving condescension, stroking my hair, scratching my scalp. This made me weak in the knees. “What monster would I be not to reward that with panache? However, there’s gonna be a new element added.”

“Ouais? Whatever you want, just name it.”

“I wanna see how much abuse your little hole can take before I kiss it better. I want to spank it red and swollen, then f*ck you with my tongue, then f*ck you for real.”

“f*ck, Louis.”

“Does that sound good to you?”

“Oui, oui, oui, whatever you say, Louis, I’ll do it. I’ll take as much pain and pleasure as you want to give me.”

“Great. Then take off your clothes.” He went to open the armoire and searched it for a moment before taking up a hauntingly familiar belt and rummaging around for the riding crop we’d purchased months ago for sex reasons before we’d gotten fully into this punishment dynamic.

I was quick in taking off my clothes. He sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Come here,” he said, patting his thigh. I went to him and perched on his lap, twisting around to kiss his lips. He smiled and kissed me back before dropping his kisses to my neck and shoulder. “I’m really happy with you, you know.”

“I’ve heard rumors this may be true.”

“I am, I really am.”

“Lucky me.”

“Yes, you’re a lucky, lucky boy. I’m gonna make you feel so good.” His nails dragged lightly up and down my spine, and I had to bite back a moan to voice my one trepidation.

“Belt says differently, but I trust you.”

He laughed, and his hand came around to play with my co*ck, bringing me to full hardness, almost instantly. “Belt’s here for a few attitude-maintenance licks, okay? Just a few. And not hard. I’m mainly going to use this here riding crop on your slu*tty little hole. I’ll stop whenever you want me to, okay? Just say the word.”

“Okay.”

“This isn’t a punishment. This is ‘cause my slu*t likes a little pain with his pleasure, doesn’t he?”

I really do. “I really do.”

“Good. Now slide down to your knees and get on your face, ass up. Let me see it.”

I knew he was taking satisfaction in making me show myself so lewdly as I get him to do when he’s a cat in heat, but the thing is, I am as much of a hedonist and exhibitionist at heart as he is a Catholic. So I did as he instructed, exposing myself to the cool air of the room. I savored his sharp intake of breath, his swallowed back moan, as if his body couldn’t decide whether he was more scandalized or turned on, even though he’d told me to do it. I thought I could hear his palm against the fabric of his pants, pushing down his erection at the sight of me.

“Like this, Louis?” I asked.

“f*ck, Lestat. Yes, just like that.” He set his bare foot on my ass cheek, then slid it down the slope of my back until it reached my shoulder. I turned my head and kissed his toes. I could feel him smiling. He pushed his foot against my cheek, then used his big toe to lift the scarred corner of my mouth to bare my teeth and fang, as if inspecting my mouth, like an animal— like something lower than an animal. I stuck out my tongue to lap between his toes.

“You’re so nasty.”

“I’d lick the ground that you walk on. I’d lick your feet to clean them of the filth from the streets.”

“Lestat,” he exclaimed, wrinkling his nose.

“You like that? You like that it’s true?”

“If that’s what you’re into, I love it for you—but honestly, I can’t say I know what your deal is, anymore.”

“It’s always been the same thing—I worship you, Louis. You can use me as you please, whenever you please. I’d beg for it if that’s what was required for your attention.”

“Something’s wrong with you.”

“I know.”

He slid his foot up my back again, and his other foot joined the first. I moaned into the floor as he pushed down, pressing me harder into the carpet.

“Good boy,” he murmured, mostly to himself.

“I love you, Louis,” I said, because sometimes it’s all I can say in moments like this, when I have no words, awestruck as I am by his beauty and his tentative but precise cruelty. How he is an ice prince when he wants to be.

“I know you do, babe.”

“Won’t you say you love me too?”

“I do. I love you so much. But I’m still going to enjoy this.”

“Mm, fledgling after my own heart.”

I heard the clink of the belt as he folded it and brought it closer to himself. “You ready for this?”

“I don’t know yet how you will hit me with that when you’re only playing, but I’m ready to know.”

“Good.” He reached under his bent legs to caress my ass and thighs with his fingertips. After a moment he took his feet off me, leaving me feeling quite weightless, so that he could feel me up more greedily. “I like you like this. On your face, not saying much— just looking pretty for me, waiting for whatever I want to do to you.”

This brought a smile to my lips. “I like you like this, too.” He let his nails drag along my skin as he caressed me in expanding—then shrinking— circles. He gave me light slaps and squeezes, enjoying me carnally and objectifying me in a way that usually he left up to me to do to him. He prefers to be devoured, not to embrace himself as the devourer all the time. It’s too much responsibility, he explained it to me once. There is no penance necessary to be made in church if you are a victim of some lewd crime, so his mind lets him have it more easily. Louis is not religious as far as either of us know. Not truly. He doesn’t know if he believes in God, but I think he wishes he did. So he keeps his somewhat religiously centered meditations, which connect him to the preoccupations of his dearly departed brother when he was still alive. I don’t want to frown at this thing that seems like a masoch*stic practice to me, because it is a personal thing for him, but those places with stained glass windows were never nice even to people like him. I wish he only believed in and served that which serves him most, but he says that’s incredibly selfish and would turn him into a sociopathic monster. I disagree, but then again, I am not exactly a philanthropist. Tangent.

But oh, how I love it when he devours me back! He’s so good at it. When he gives in to lust and the simple, carnal hunger of the body, he’s so very thrilling. But of course he thrills me too when he wants me to wrestle him into submission and hold him down while he struggles, taking him roughly as he screams into the pillows as if he expects the angels to intervene on his behalf if he cries sincerely enough. It never works— I suspect because he can’t stay in character; he’s always moaning for more before they can get their round-trip to Earth paperwork filled out.

Louis paints a lovely picture when tearstained and pleading and pitiful, a perfect model for a St. Sebastian— I may commission a painting or statue. But there’s something about him when he, himself, visits me like an angel of destruction, armed with a cold, laughing sneer and sharply humorous eyes to match— his sword in hand ready to split me open and slay me. He looks vengeful. He looks devilish. He looks holy.

“Tell me you want it, Lestat,” he said.

“I want it, Louis,” I murmured.

“Mmph,” he bit his lip. He underhandedly slapped my ass with both hands, three times, then squeezed so the blood rushed to the surface of my pale skin. Marks show up so very easily on me, and that’s part of what makes him enjoy this, I think—getting to paint on me like one of those scratch-and-reveal art boards.

He took up the belt again and let it touch me, trailing it up and down the skin he’d just brought some heat to. It felt quite cool and harmless at the moment.

He tapped it against me lightly, gradually increasing the impact until it was like light slaps that felt like kisses. I groaned, feet flexing and toes curling—this made me realize I was enjoying this.

“You like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Downloaded some stuff on erotic spanking. Needed new material I hadn’t used with….”

Armand, my brain unhelpfully supplied, and just like that my arousal was getting confused with feelings of anger, possessiveness, smugness that he was trying out “new material” on me, and most of all, jealousy and disbelief that he was thinking of the little devil while my unholiest of unholies were right before his face! And ALLEGEDLY, he didn’t even love him with the passion he does me! The lying, conniving, red-eyed demon!!!!! While Louis claims he doesn’t forgive him (yet) for how the emotionally stunted, immortal college boy tortured me when I went to Europe for his help in recovery and to find my fledglings, nor for how he lost control of his own coven in such a way that it ended in the worst heartbreak either of us will likely ever know, he sure takes the 77 years they spent together arguing and lying to each other and collaborating in suspicious art trading very seriously, and as a testament of their true friendship despite dire circ*mstances. He said something about how for 77 years, having someone was the only thing that kept him alive, and that if not for his horrible life (which resulted in his deformities of character) and the coven (which kept him in “constant paranoia and transitioned him to a life of even more ritualistic abuse and encouraged complacency and deified subjugation to authoritarian, mind- and personality-starving power structures,” as Louis’ said word for word a dozen f*cking times—wow, do I actually listen when he speaks? I sounded very literate just then—), he and Armand might have worked out and maybe all three of us could be a thing. But certainly not now, with these circ*mstances, he tells me.

I think he thinks I would like Armand’s kinks. That must be what it is. Whatever, but I don’t think we owe him the debt of calling him a friend after decades of evil-bastard behavior! They may be “friends” of some kind unknowable to my mind, but I’ve had goldfish survive longer than their passion for each other. What’s that thing—bed death? Bed death for them probably happened so many decades ago, which would explain why Louis was practically a virgin again when I got him back!!!! Who can waste his beauty for so long?! Can’t relate! And why is Louis so forgiving?? Is it pathological??? Is it even forgiveness?? Someone explain to me what this is about!!! Or is he just trying to piss me off????

[Now see, this is why he needs his own f*cking blog. It was one f*cking slip, okay, we’d been together a long time, I’m GOING to think about him occasionally but not because we’re getting back together or I’m into him like I’m into Lestat, okay?? I’ll continue this in my next entry, just can we shut up about it?! By the way, mon cher, and for the record, I appreciate having your unholies in my face. I was completely enthralled, which is why my brain wasn’t working. f*ck, I hate that we started this stupid-ass blog, why am I talking in public about your—everyone get your hands out your pants or I’m cutting your sh*t off— don’t get it twisted, no one goes near his unholies! Next bitch who tries to make a cuck of me will see the inside of my— EDIT: Serious threats redacted by moderator. For legal reasons, Louis de Pointe du Lac cannot and will not harm his readers, who are anonymous, anyway.]

“Ugh, Louis, darling, I don’t want to know too many details of your background research just now, cher, no offense.”

“Right, sorry, killing the mood. I forget my sweet slu*t doesn’t have room for more than three thoughts in his head at any given time, even less when he’s horny.” This made me quite a bit harder, and I was able to forget Armand— it says a lot that he’s so forgettable.

“Mm, I love when you call me a slu*t.”

“Good, because I see you, and that’s the first word that comes into my head. With your slu*tty little walk… your slu*tty little waist. Your big ol’ back and shoulders signal to most people you’re some tough guy, but you know what they say to me? That you’re at my service. Gonna move all my furniture, aren’t you?”

“Are you complimenting me?”

“Ass fat as f*ck, and for what reason? The ratio is insane. Pure slu*ttery at work. Your build is: sex toy.”

This set fireworks off in my brain and all over my body, prickling my skin. “Ah, Louis… can I touch myself, mon cher?”

“The answer’s always gonna be ‘no,’ Lestat.”

“f*ck, Louis. What else am I?”

He gave me the first semi-painful slap of the belt, and I hissed. His foot caressed the spot, soothing and demeaning at once. “Categorically the worst…. But you’ve been defying expectations, haven’t you, my little demon? What are you plotting?”

“For exactly this, mon cher. For you to be so happy with me that you degrade me so deliciously.” I gasped and moaned as he strapped me again, twice more, then scraped his nails over the hurt. “Louis.”

“Yeah? You like that?” He struck again and squeezed the mark into a livid welt. “I don’t know why I even bother tryna punish your whor* ass if you ask for it.”

“Louis, Louis, Louis, Louis,” I groaned like a prayer, rocking back and forth on my knees.

“That’s right,” he said, then gave me one parting stroke of the belt that this time left me breathless with agony but did nothing to bring down my erection. “That’s to remind you to keep behaving yourself, you understand?”

I sucked in the air that would not fill me and wheezed, “Yes, Sir.”

“Good boy,” he said, crouching down and smearing sweet smooches across the throbbing red lash that spanned both cheeks.

He got up again, sitting back on the bed and picked up the riding crop, tapping my lower back with it. The leather piece was heart-shaped and would leave marks like valentines.

“You want this?”

“Yes, please, I want it desperately, mon cher.”

“Good, slu*t.”

He tapped the riding crop directly on my hole. Reflexively it recoiled, then relaxed again, and he saw it happening as he took it away.

“Already winking at me… what a flirt.”

“Oui,” I breathed, stretching my arms out before me, becoming wildly hornier the more he talked. “Make it as red and throbbing as my heart which beats for only you, mon cher.”

I smelled blood as he bit his lip. He touched the crop to his mark, then took it away before snapping it down with stunning speed and sting. I gasped and rocked forward before rocking back, presenting myself for more.

“Oui, chéri.”

“You liked that?”

“So much. Again.”

He obliged and I tucked my pelvis from the pain of it which only made it hurt worse, clenching it.

“Ow, Louis. Louis, Louis, yes. f*cking love it. More please.” I was becoming a rambling noise machine, like I become when he’s doing a damn perfect job.

I exposed myself to him again and he chuckled softly, trailing the crop across my lashes from the belt, pressing the redness lightly, turning each use of pressure from the crop into bright white hearts that would return to red, before he gave his attention to my anus again, using the edge of the crop to rub it lightly, then a little roughly, teasing me.

“I’m starting to love indulging your masoch*stic little ass, you know that?”

“I thought you said I have a fat one, which is it? Fat or little?”

“Oh, you’ve got the fattest ass I’ve ever seen on a white man of your stature.”

“You don’t believe the words you’re saying as you say them,” I noted.

“I do not,” he laughed, “but it’s adorable. You’re proportional. And you’re f*ckin’… built as f*ck. Stacked up.”

“Yeah?”

“Should model.”

“I have modeled.”

“I mean like really model. Like you should be in Vogue. And on runways.”

“I’ve done runways for Mugler and Vivienne Westwood, what do you mean?”

“You should be a regular, though. And you should be on TV. Should be a f*ckin… household name for more than your rock-stardom, which is cool and all, but you know…. Something classy.”

“We both know I am not classy.” He burst out laughing, a sweet sound made sweeter when paired with his next vicious stroke to my hole. “Ahh, f*ck, Louis….”

His hand settled on my back, voice concerned, bordering on alarmed. “Are you okay?”

“I’m excellent, do it again, please,” I asked, tears in my eyes, but already getting back into ideal position.

“You sure?” he asked, and I could hear him getting excited at the prospect that I love this pain, that he had come up with a perfect activity for us, and it made me even more certain, more ready. His joy is my joy.

“I’m so sure. That one felt…. I can’t describe it.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“It does, but I love it. It’s such a rude sensation. So shocking. No one has done this to me before, I want so much more. And the sting building…. It feels like how it burns badly the first time you get a fumbling or uncaring idiot’s co*ck inside you, but then the way the afterburn can be satisfying in a dark, clarifying way.”

“Yeah? I’m giving you clarity?”

“Yes….”

He hit it again, somewhat more tempered but still quite hard, and I moaned but strove to stay in position as it was quickly followed by a half dozen more. “Yes,” I said, my voice an airy whimper now.

He rubbed my ass, “Good boy,” he cooed, fawning over me as if I were doing something very good and brave. “You should see what you look like.”

‘Take a picture,” I told him.

“When I’m done. Can’t people see the sh*t that we put on our phones? I don’t trust these things.”

“Don’t you have a camera?”

“Somewhere. Needs a new memory card.”

“Mm.”

His thumb pressed against my anus like he was trying to use fingerprint verification to get into my body. I felt so raring-to-go he might as well have succeeded.

“Feels so warm,” he marveled.

“Yeah? You like that?”

“I love that.”

He took his hand away only to wet his thumb in his mouth and return it to the place. The moisture, applied to what felt like the equivalent of a blistering, cracked, chafed nipple, was welcome.

I was silent throughout this tender treatment, closing my eyes with a sigh. After a couple minutes of playing with it (only externally, so far mind you, because he’s not one to spoil me too soon) and also stroking my perineum and fondling my balls and so on, letting me feel very nice, he surprised me with the crop again, and it hurt so much more.

“Merde, Louis.”

“It’s turning such a pretty pink, Lestat,” he said, his tone suggesting he wasn’t worried any longer if I were in too much pain.

“Thank you, mon cher,” I said tightly, as his disinterest made me harder.

He hit it about ten more times. Then crouched down and gave it a kiss. I gasped. I couldn’t luxuriate in the feeling though because he immediately followed it by another dozen, and then another kiss.

Another dozen, then another kiss.

“Oh, you’re opening like a flower. It likes it when I give it kisses. It’s kissing me back. It’s definitely kissing its new friend over here. Just loves it.”

“f*ck, Louis. Don’t talk like that, mon cher, I’ll cum and you haven’t even gotten to f*ck me.”

Louis teased my traitorous hole with the edge of the riding crop again, and he laughed at how it shrank away, then ultimately reached for it. His laugh was so full of wonderment and genuine enjoyment— as if he were learning so many exciting things about my body in this moment, things I didn’t know and that were just for him to exploit at a time of his choosing. My toes curled with arousal.

“Please, Louis.”

“Please, what?”

“Is it as red as my heart?”

“Getting there.”

“Get me there. You are so good at this.”

“You beg real pretty, Lestat. What’s a man to do if you’re begging like this?” He kissed again the harsh lash the belt had left and ran his hands up and down my sides. He nipped with kittenish randomness at my buttocks, occasionally sinking his teeth in, fangs piercing deep, for the pleasure of it, marking me up, lapping at the blood that oozed out. I trembled with equal parts agony and euphoria, my self-preservation instinct ordering that I get up, but the weakness of my body—brought on by the pleasure of giving my humiliation and submission to his whims, to my Louis—kept me there on my face and knees. At one point, however, I reached back and pushed on his forehead as his bite right above my thigh caused the most excruciating pain to shock me. He just laughed and licked up the blood, then grabbed my wrist and pinned it to my back, kneeled upward, sliding his leg beneath the steep bend of my waist before he took up the riding crop and gave me twenty, not-gentle swats on my ass for stopping him, until I was squirming and almost weeping over his thigh.

“Louis!”

“Lestat!” he mimicked me.

“Ai, mon cher! Je n'ai rien fait! Je n'ai rien fait!”

He laughed and rubbed my back, peppering my ass with kisses. “Sorry, love, I got carried away. Where were we? Oh, yes.”

He lowered his leg, leaving me to keep myself bent over again, red-faced and panting, stunned. Rarely does Louis manhandle me, but dammit, if it isn’t sexy of him! I wish he would do it when he’s annoyed at me too.

He knelt behind and to the right of me and pulled on one cheek exposing me more lewdly for his pleasure, then, stretching the screaming skin around my anus wide and tight before starting a harsh and rapid pace with the riding crop on the hole that lasted so long and burned so badly, it brought me to tears again. It was constant and each impact made me feel terribly sorry for being so bratty. Rarely do I feel regret for this character trait of mine— rarely do I realize the Brat Prince is in the room with us until something goes awry. But this is why it’s good that I subject myself to these kinds of humiliation rituals. It makes me very self-reflective.

“Putain de merde, Louis,” I wept, “it hurts so bad.”

“Mmhm, should have thought of that before you got an attitude with me for ignoring you for five minutes so I could see about the kids’ room, huh? Now you got my full attention.”

“It wasn’t five minutes! It’s been days! And I was helping to a certain point! Ah-hah! Please, Louis, thank you,” I whined, feeling rather pathetic for how tearfully I was approaching my limit. But that’s how he likes me— pathetic and tearful.

“Thank me for what?”

“For—for giving me your full attention,” I stammered, voice thick with a pain that throbbed in my head and in my nethers. I was distantly aware of how my co*ck, uncouth beast that it is, drooled onto the carpet beneath me.

“Of course, Brat, I’m always happy to. All you gotta do is piss me off.”

“Louis, I’m sorry,” I laughed through my tears.

“No need to be sorry, this is what you wanted. I’m giving it to you in abundance because I love you so very much. Nothing but the very best for my special, most important boy, hm?”

I nodded, then hissed as the pain peaked again. “Ah! Louis, my love, my darling, can we— can you get the camera, already, and torture me with your tongue, instead? In the nonverbal sense, now?”

He laughed and finished spanking it with three more vicious snaps of the riding crop. He retrieved his phone and took the pictures, then tossed it aside. I didn’t have to wait around before he was back on his knees beside me and a little behind me, hands grasping and his tongue swiping across the red lash before dipping down to taste my hot, red blister of a hole. I exaggerate, there was no blistering, but it FELT like a blister.

But his tongue— his tongue was hot, melted heaven. I gasped and turned my head as if I could see him do it. “Louis, yes. Yes, baby. f*ck yes, get it all the way in. Oh, please….”

He kissed it, then spat thickly on it, pushing a finger in gently, being careful with his nails, although personally, I don’t mind being cut in the throes of passion. Then his tongue returned and I could have wept with bliss. He dug his thumb into my perineum, massaging with heavy pressure as he did this, and my co*ck jumped in response.

Urgently, I reached between my legs and covered his hand, trying to stop him. “Louis, I’m going to—”

“Go ahead,” he said.

“I can’t tell if you’re serious.”

He laughed and didn’t clarify, and his breath on my stinging skin drove me wild. His hand gravitated to my co*ck and he tugged gently, his other hand coming down to cradle my raw and leaking glans, rubbing it occasionally to electrify me, but mostly there to keep me from making more of a mess on his beloved carpet. My thighs trembled and I moaned into the floor pathetically as I tried to decide if I should take him up on his offer. Hedonist that I am, it wasn’t long that I considered it, and I came in his hand with a guttural growl, clenching around his tongue. He laughed and kissed all the way up my spine, then took his cum-covered hand and held it out to me. I lifted my head to lap it out of his palm.

“Good boy,” he praised me, scratching my scalp and sweeping my hair back from my face.

“Yeah?” I asked in between licks. “You like when I’m disgusting?”

“You look so pretty,” he said, petting my ass and sinking a finger in again, then two. I sucked the fingers of his other hand into my mouth and moaned at the feeling that I was like a finger-trap, and wondered within my fantasy if I could pull him in deep enough that his hands could touch inside me.

He pulled on the corner of my mouth, dragging me up on my knees and then to my feet. He shoved me facedown on the bed and smacked my ass three hard times that made my knees weak and almost left me slumping to the floor.

“Such a good boy,” he emphasized. He crouched behind me and then his tongue was in me again. I’m sure I sobbed because of how little I’d been expecting him to continue in this way, and how that made the pleasure all the more intense. His hands gripped and spread my ass so lewdly that anyone with decency would have been embarrassed— I on the other hand, have none, so I pushed back on his tongue, f*cking myself on it.

“Yeah, you like that?” I whispered. “You like how I taste, little freakling?”

He squeezed my ass in answer, nails digging into my hips, the resounding message being, “Yes, a thousand times, yes.” To reward his giving in to his more guilty delights, I reached behind me and cut myself above my tailbone so my blood trickled down and into his mouth. “f*ck Les,” he moaned. We often incorporate blood-drinking into our romps— it’s the vampire’s highest delight. It just gets a little messy.

“You going to f*ck me, mon cher?” I asked him, though I knew the answer.

“Yeah,” he whispered and kissed the marks he’d left on my ass over and over again before digging his tongue into my self-inflicted wound.

I’m going to leave the rest to his point of view because this is getting long and I’m tired now, and also because I need to make how horny writing this is making me his problem.

Get f*cked, darlings. xx

Chapter 18: Cry Baby

Chapter Text

Convenient timing, Lestat. And I was just getting invested in the nasty sh*t you was talking. I’d clown you in front of everyone and say you were embarrassed, but I know you’re just lazy.

Anyway, he would have let me tattoo my government name and address on his ass, that’s how good I rocked his sh*t. The sounds he was making alone were enough to let me know he ain’t never had anything close, and the way he looked at me when I was done with him confirmed it. He has such eloquent eyes.

Lestat has a few tells when he’s losing his sh*t. His legs get weak and jerky, and he eventually has to lay down, and his voice trembles. His English also gets incomprehensible, even for me, and he starts rattling off French so fast I have to strain to understand what he’s saying. Sometimes, I have to just let it be background noise so I can concentrate. Another tell is that his eyes lose focus, getting cross-eyed or droopy or his irises migrate to the top of his head like he’s dying again, and he’s leaking tears with the most serene expression on his face. And then there’s the way his body is seizing from below—it’s only really noticeable when some part of me is inside him or if I’m paying attention, but if I’m doing it right and it’s been long enough, it starts pulsing rhythmically beyond his body’s control and then his abdomen is tightening with this pulsing, and suddenly he gasps— his body arches, and then he sinks back down and it continues with less frantic pulsing, building into another. org*sm after org*sm after org*sm, all from anal stimulation. On this night, I was determined to see how many times I could make him cum.

He left off with me eating it from the back with him bent over the bed.

One thing about this man’s mischievous, ne’er-do-well, spankable little ass is I love it so much. I love watching him walk, and the long, sinewy, angular yet robust lines of his body just complete the picture. He’s utterly mesmerizing to me (and to everyone else, but I’ll fight everyone else, so I’m not worried), and the fact that he’s mine doesn’t escape my appreciation every time I wake up with him in my coffin and I am caressing and squeezing and clawing his pale, plush, and muscular cheeks as he f*cks me into the stratosphere. I just love how his body feels in every way. It’s probably more to do with our soul-connection, our Bond—but damn, the simple things of the body are so gratifying, too, if one lets them be. That’s something he’s definitely taught me to submit to— the pleasures of the body. I mean… not only him.

f*ck. Let me get something out of the way.

Armand and I were together for 77 years before I got back with Lestat. Everyone tracking with me? We had a lot of sex. A lot of orgies. A lot of freaky sex and a lot of freaky orgies. I learned a lot from Armand, sexually. How couldn’t I, I mean he’s been alive for almost 300 years more than Lestat. He’d also had a lot of what he learned sexually and about others’ sexual proclivities taught to him not by choice, so there was that element to it. Armand had a lot of information and a lot of trauma, as well as a lot of… resulting particularized fetishes which he taught to me and which I helped him realize in a sexually therapeutic sense. It healed some parts of him I am not at liberty to share with you all and it also intrigued me and opened up a whole new world of insight into the erotic for me.

I can’t act like I didn’t have a lot of sex in a lot of different ways than Lestat. Lestat joked that I was practically a virgin when we got back together— not even close to true. I’d f*cked about a third of the queer community of San Francisco and New York (and eaten it) before we got to Dubai and had to get a bit more discreet—at least that’s what I told myself. I think by then I had just tired out of my “slu*t phase.” I mean we had an orgy or two here and there in Dubai. But yeah.

I learned a lot from Lestat before we split— but back then I was a lot more afraid and sheltered. I still lived in New Orleans, my birthplace. St. Augustine’s, my childhood church, was blocks away. I was tethered to this old version of myself, this old morality, this old… human limitation of perceiving myself as beholden to my body’s sanctification, as if a man could make me defiled. I don’t know, maybe if I were still human, I’d think that still, but friends, I literally drink human blood and killed people regularly; I sold the flesh of young, trusting, hopeless women for profit for many years, even after I didn’t have to— like, I have so many sins that, to me, are much more harmful, that I could hang all the reasons I’m going to hell on, at least by my raised religion’s schema; and as far as my sexual awakening and nigh inevitable falling into indulgence go, I feel just the same as I did in my body before I started sleeping with a lot of men who weren’t Lestat. (After Lestat’s and my marriage, I felt dirty for a while, but then I told myself that he was my one exception— that God would forgive me one exception, and that I would keep our marriage-coffin holy, and that I basically couldn’t help it. And anyway, we’d had a real marriage in the church.) Maybe a bit less stressed out, for sure.

Some could say I swapped alcohol for sex, though, for a time. I wouldn’t say all the sex I had was entirely about pleasure. I’m realizing a great deal of it was about destroying myself, punishing myself. I wanted to feel the after-guilt, and bury myself in a deeper and deeper hole, as if freedom was at the bottom of nowhere— as if nothing was real and the real me was still in the coffin, covered in rocks, hallucinating this life, and I had to break through somehow with enough pain and risky behaviors. When I’m greatly distressed, I have tendencies that lean toward self-harming. Lestat has been good about keeping an eye on me and helping me return from the brinks of such episodes, just as Armand had genuinely done, f*cked up as his methods had been.

Now, about Armand.

As of right now… well, when we met we were friends with some base-level attraction, and then we were lovers. It never felt like what I have with Lestat, though, and I didn’t necessarily need it to. It was different and it was good when it was good. I needed and desired him for different reasons than I needed or desired Lestat. The lies and the devastation ruined things, for sure. I didn’t f*ck with him at all for a few years after it all came out, and then we talked, and he’s been working on himself. He’s stopped the lying, and confessed to some things I never prompted him to. Made a few… not apologies, but shows of understanding as to why he’s a bastard and deserves to have been left. He’s cried and mourned a lot, but not just to manipulate me, I can always tell the difference. He tells me he wishes me all the best with Lestat, and that he hopes one day we can be close again, but only when he’s sure he won’t hurt me so atrociously.

After making Daniel, he seems to understand the intensity of the maker-fledgling bond, and is more regretful for having kept Lestat and I separate and for having aided in the Paris incident that I can’t write about right now or I’ll be sick— f*ck, sometimes I wish Prozac worked on vampires.

Anyway. His new empathy has changed his outlook and the quality of his regret, which is something I can appreciate for what it is. And he has been very persistent about making sure I am well (through Daniel initially), yet remaining respectful of my space. Gradually, what memories he had taken have returned to me—either with distance from him or because he has released them, I don’t know. Either way, some of what he hid was incredibly f*cked up, and I’m still processing, but most of it was just stuff he was embarrassed about or arguments he wanted to win which was… kind of funny to me? I don’t know. I’m too old to take too much personally, now. I know most of it was because he’s a person and people are selfish as hell. Sometimes, I’m very angry and I could hop a plane to wherever he is to throw his ass through another cement wall. Other times, though, I can think of him and mostly just see him as the sweet, thoughtful, attentive, loving, albeit immature and compulsively over-controlling vampire I ended up loving back in spite of his (many) flaws.

Now, I’d say we’re kind of cool. We’re on Speaking Terms and occasionally we get to talking and Reminiscing about certain things— it ain’t that deep. We’re vampires. I’ll have to know him forever whether I want to or not, and it’s better for me and my spirit not to hold grudges that I can conceivably get past. He’s like a brother to me—that sounds weird, but I can’t f*cking hate him like that. We’re too intertwined. It’s also lonely not being connected with other vampires— if you’re alone, you’re like an island surrounded by a world of ocean. And I basically wiped his coven out, which doesn’t make us anywhere close to even, but it’s something to consider.

Me and Daniel (and Lestat) are all he has. Plus, he’s the only one who gets me when Lestat is being a f*cking headache, so I call him sometimes. He drops everything to talk to me. And yeah, I can’t help that he sends me gifts on the regular: items he says he thought I would like or find interesting— worthless things, he says, even though the bidding price was well over $10 grand. Lestat hates that I don’t burn the gifts like I burned all of his after he dropped me from the clouds, but to be fair, I probably would have kept his, too, if not for our daughter’s disgust with my weakness for him, and the fact that she spent so much time and labor putting me back together, and the fact that he’d also traumatized her personally and through me.

Daniel only ever tells me to dump him whenever Lestat’s pissing me off or we’re falling into toxic patterns. That’s his solution to everything. Break up with him and then don’t take him back until he’s crawling on his face. He says it’s the only thing that worked on him when he was an asshole to his ex-wives. But Daniel’s just protective of me in his blasé, tough love kind of way. He’d probably sic Armand on him if Lestat so much as broke my fingernail.

This was supposed to be a 100% sexy post. Back to it.

As I was saying, I love the way Lestat’s body feels. In every way. Under my hands, inside my body, in my mouth, inside his body, inside his mouth. I love his hair, the heat emanating from his skin after he’s fed gluttonously, the wetness of his mouth— some people’s mouths are too wet when they kiss, others’ are too dry, but his mouth strikes the perfect balance, and he is great with his tongue. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. Am I bragging? Or doting? Am I just writing this for posterity or for myself when I need to remind myself why the f*ck I put up with his universally bemoaned brattiness?

I don’t know, but I want you all to know that he’s radiant, and I love him and no one could ever love him more than I do because they wouldn’t even know where to begin. I can name the ways and detail every aspect of him in such vivid precision that it would give the gods a map of how to recreate him down to the individual hairs on his legs, the texture of his elbows, the ridges of his hard palate, and they would recreate his shell precisely, but afterward compare it to the prototype and weep, for they could not reproduce his soul— the light that beams from him— and they would know instantly how deeply he is loved by me that I could recall all of his details with such an accuracy and that their failure is that he is yet substantially even more resplendent than they could replicate; and they would know that in all their millennia as gods in the sky and ocean and air and in the universe, they could never feel the love I feel for him reflected back to them, not through any kind of sacrifice, not by deceiving any maiden, not by walking into hell and back for some comparably pallid lover. No one can love someone else as completely as I love my Lestat— my demon, my angel, my blond and beautiful big-mouthed bastard. He is my soul, and when he is apart from me, I feel his absence like a hollowness that will never leave, like a depression that yawns like the bottom of the universe.

[Aw. :’) je suis f*cking cryng my eys out.]

That was what I was thinking as I was licking into this man’s spanked red asshole.

“Louis,” he wept. “You like being nasty for me?”

Nothing about you is nasty, babe, I spoke into his mind.

It’s especially true for vampires— it’s not like we actually use the orifice. The last time I used mine was back in late 1911 as the last of my human-specific organs finally fell out of it. And anyway, even with humans, with a certain amount of foresight, it’s really just skin or like the inside of one’s mouth. I don’t know. But we all grown. Even if something did happen with one of you that actually uses your anus not-just-recreationally, as our moderator mentioned so tactfully, it probably isn’t that big a deal. Shouldn’t be at least. I mean, no one should go to the Anchovies On Pizza Shop as someone allergic to anchovies and expect to get an allergen-guarantee promising no essence of anchovy on their pizza, like, come on, now. Some things don’t need extra warning labels. Just use proper protection and get tested regularly or something, if you’re risky, I don’t know. Y’all know you’re mortal, so learn what you need to and act accordingly. Anyway. Good talk. Human sex-educator LDPDL, retiring indefinitely. Never hire me again.

Yeah, I don’t do this for Lestat all the time— partially because of the mental hang-ups that come with being repressed for so much of my life (“too Catholic, and not in the permissive and sexy way” as Lestat would say) which make me get too self-conscious of myself, and partially because it’s not exactly my fetish like it is for him, but sometimes I get in the mood to feel Lestat dancing on my tongue, his fine ass bouncing on my face, and to get him crying like a baby, crumpling in on himself like paper before explosively blossoming as he experiences pleasure upon pleasure. He deserves it, as regularly as his lovemaking gets me crying to heaven and losing my mind. I have to one-up him sometimes, remind him I’m versatile.

I lapped the blood out his crack as the wound he made began to close, not caring to disguise my greedy groans of desire. His blood is the most fulfilling thing on this planet to me. Not only is it probably the most nourishing thing I could eat, but it was also my first meal as a vampire— my “mother’s milk,” if you will. And it makes me feel stronger every time I take from him—in seemingly small ways that exponentiate over time. The feelings of intimacy it awakens in me are no small thing, either. I licked the rest of the blood off the small of his back and smacked his ass a few times just to watch it jiggle and to hear him moan.

“Up,” I said, even though I ended up tossing him fully onto the bed, myself. He settled on the bed, face down, ass up, whimpering, pleading for more. I knocked his knees apart and slid between his legs, lying down on my back, and patted his ass. “Come on baby. Sit on my face.”

“f*ck, Louis,” he whispered and bit his lip.

“Uh-huh, back that ass up. Park it right where you want it.”

“f*ck,” he whined, legs trembling so much I had to brace his thighs with my hands, steadying him. “Louis, je t’aime.”

“Mmhmm, I bet you do,” I mouthed at his balls and licked up his perineum before sliding my tongue back inside him.

He gasped—a high, surprised sound.

Right there? I asked him.

“Oui! Putain d’enfer— Louis, f*ck!”

Ride it. Grind your beautiful ass all over my face. I don’t care if you break my nose.

His head tossed back, and he let out a choked scream before unsteadily doing as instructed, his hole spasming rhythmically around my tongue, as it does, and the tension locking his abdomen making it difficult to control his motions, but he obeyed, chasing his pleasure.

His hole still tasted faintly like his blood because of how much I’d tormented it. The blood that had been shed from the brief belting had dried but the scent was still in my nostrils.

I stretched my arms up and caressed up and down his sides, smiling to myself at his ticklishness which made him gasp and writhe a new rhythm.

And then he pitched forward, his puffy, red hole pulsing, pulsing, pulsing. I could feel his co*ck dribbling on my shirt. I was still fully dressed. He took in a ragged breath, then whimpered.

“Louis. f*ck me.”

“Nah,” I said, as though I wasn’t very interested in doing exactly that.

“I’ve been good, Louis,” he whimpered. “I’ve been… your good boy.” He sounded so confused and on the verge of actual tears. It’s hard to be mean to him when being f*cked makes him this vulnerable and naïve to predicaments he can usually manipulate to be in his favor easily. So I offered a little mercy to him.

“I think you got another in you,” I explained with a little more warmth in my tone. “Think you can come on my tongue again?”

“Combien? It’s already been three times, I think.”

“Nope, I counted two,” I lied. I had actually counted the second org*sm when he was bent over the bed, but it was a small one, so I didn’t care to add it to the basket of ground-shattering org*sms I wanted to give him. “I want four.” Another lie. I wanted seven.

“Please, mon cher.”

“You can have my fingers too, but that’s it.”

“Je peux te sucer la bite, baby, please?” he said, nuzzling my clothed crotch.

“No, you can’t suck my co*ck,” I said in a condescending, stern voice as if he were a kid asking for money for alcohol. “You’re gonna come on my tongue again without that kind of assistance.”

“It will help if I can—”

“No, Les, this is all about me giving you my full attention. What, now that you have it, you want to act charitable? You want to pretend you aren’t a self-obsessed little devil, who can come instantly from a tongue in his ass?”

“I may be self-obsessed, but I’m always, always charitable when I give you pleasure, mon doux beignet, please,” he said, desperation thick on his tongue. His oral fixation was hijacking his mind completely, now that I said he couldn’t fulfill it. The one thing I said he can’t have, now becoming the very thing he would die for, which is his way. It’s too easy with him.

“No, brat. Now f*ck yourself on my tongue or I’ll give you something to whine about.”

“I’ll let you spank me again, please,” he hissed as I bit into his left cheek.

“You want it that badly?”

“Oui, s’il te plaît…” he sniffled, theatrical as hell.

“Fine, get me the belt.” With only slight reluctance, he handed it over. “Ass up.” He bent at the waist, arms wrapped around my ankles. He kissed my feet, sucked my toe into his mouth just because I didn’t say he couldn’t suck my toes, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re such a brat.”

I folded the belt slowly, admiring the view from where I lay, then lay one on him, watched him tense and relax with a soft whimper. Another, another, another. I gave him five for the honor of sucking my dick. His legs trembled, and I could see his hole spasming still, faster than before I’d started.

“Alright, now you can suck my dick, you absolute baby.”

He sighed and leaned back again to perch on my face, wasting no time to my amusem*nt, and unclasped my pants and pulled down my underwear, ridding me of them completely, manhandling me out of my clothes. I laughed against him, making raspberry noises against his ass, which made me laugh harder.

“Tu es un enfant, Louis,” he grumbled, embarrassed by the unsexiness of it, but it left his mind as he began to suck. It definitely worked to shut me up. I luxuriated in the feeling for a moment, before opening my eyes again and being reminded of the perfect position he was in. Because I had to taste him, too, I pulled his tip back between his legs and into my mouth. He shouted around my co*ck, making me hiss and let him go, throwing my head back, overwhelmed for a moment by the vibration.

He laughed around me and I shook my head and stuffed two fingers into him. He moaned and spread his knees further apart, laying more completely on me, resting his head on my hip as he sucked me.

“Oh, that’s good,” I whispered, transported again. “sh*t. See, you’re distracting me. Guess that’s my fault, though. Yeah, you can keep going, baby. Ahh, you’re so good at that. Alright come here, give me an angle to work with.” He complied and I pushed my aching tongue into him again, determined. He shivered and whimpered, thighs closing around my head. I pulled his thighs even closer together. “Cross your ankles— cross your calves if you can.” He did and I used his flexible legs as a pillow to elevate my head making adjustments until I could find the best angle. “Didn’t know you could do that— that’s so sexy.”

He hummed, delighted with himself, as he should be.

I ate him out with devotion. He came a third official time, legs clenching and bending my neck at an awkward angle that would have been concerning for a human, but which just pinched a muscle for me and would heal fine in a bit. I immediately began working on number four, and grinned with gratification as he sobbed and squirmed but refused to take me out of his mouth. I held him still and kept doing what I wanted, occasionally nibbling at the abused rim and adding in my fingers. I got org*sm five and six in two screaming waves one after the other that left him weak and gnawing my thigh.

“Louis, please, mon cœur, please! Je ne peux pas, I swear on my mother.”

“Hmm, I think you can.”

“f*ck, Louis, you’re a demon! You call me a demon, but it’s you! You tricked everyone! f*cking hell, you f*cking c*nt-gobbling incubus!”

I was very happy to have gotten him to curse me out because of how much I’d made him cum. It had only happened once or twice before. “Hmmm, one more time,” I grinned secretly and teased him with a gentle lick.

He flinched and began to beg. “No, Louis, please—just f*ck me now. I’ll never ask you to eat me out again, if that’s what you want from this—”

“No, I’m loving this, are you kidding?” I protested. “I’m the one who wanted this.”

“Whatever, I’ve had enough of my birthday treat, I’m going to puke, Louis,” he complained. “I’ve cum so hard my entrails are wrapped around my heart!”

“One more time. Just one. We’re on six. It’s an ugly number. Seven is better.”

“Louis,” he groaned.

“Lestat.”

“Fine! f*ck you, very much! Connasse!”

Smugly I began again, gentler than before, interspersing a lot of soft kisses externally first and soothingly rubbing up his sides and massaging his glutes and thighs until he was lured into calm and acceptance. Then I lapped up the heft of his balls and over his perineum before diving back into his hole. He moaned and rocked tentatively on my tongue. My poor slu*t, unable to resist even his own doom. I curved my tongue down and deeper and slapped his ass a couple times, making him gasp, and roll his hips. Soon he was f*cking himself on my tongue without my having to do much. Eventually, I stopped working almost completely, just kept my tongue out. With his crossed calves, he nudged my head forward.

“Louis….”

“Mmn?”

“You’re such an asshole,” he muttered realizing what I was doing.

He nudged my head forward and back of his own volition, and I was immensely pleased with myself. Rarely do we find a new position we haven’t tried, but this might have to join the rotation, convenient and delightful as it was. Eventually, his breaths became more labored and his legs stuttered and he was unable to move my head coordinatedly enough to f*ck himself on my tongue.

He whimpered. “Louis, help me.”

I laughed, but gave him a little bit of help. Still he tried controlling the pace and his breathing quickened. He rocked his ass back further and further on my tongue and it nearly overwhelmed me, how perfect it all felt. Then he shouted and his spine hunched upward like a startled cat and he trembled in the air, panting and whining, sounding utterly taken aback.

“L-Louis,” he gurgled and tipped over onto his side, wrapping his arms around my legs, his own legs jerking and hips bucking into the comforter. I turned him over.

“Ah-ah,” I said. Don’t ruin my silk comforter.”

But he could only cum in weak dribbles into his own belly button. He reached for me, wide eyes roving blindly around the ceiling. I curled at his side and rubbed his chest and stomach. “Shhh,” I crooned. “I’m here. You did so good,” I whispered as he sailed.

He shuddered at my words, eyes half-closing legs still moving against his will, hips ticking forward almost mechanically, abdomen clenching painfully tight, making him groan. I let my fingertips drift across the contours of his body, admiring him openly.

Finally, after a handful of small minutes, he gave a long inhale and his eyes focused a bit and found me.

I stroked his cheek.

“Hi.” I kissed his cheek, then his nose and lips, and then his eye. “You good?”

He snorted and laughed weakly. “f*ck the comforter, Louis. Never let me hear that sh*t when I’m cumming my brains out again.” I laughed too. He took my hand. “Yes, I’m very good. That was….” He had no words, so he pulled me down into another kiss, a deep one, his hand bracing the back of my neck.

“Yeah?” I asked when we broke apart, hearts beating in sync.

“Yeah.”

I twirled a lock of his hair around my finger. “Guess what I’m tryna do now?”

A slow grin spread across his face. “You tryna f*ck nasty?” he asked in a fair approximation of my accent.

“Yeah. So turn over,” I said, taking off my shirt.

“Yes, Sir.”

As soon as he did so, I pulled his arms behind his back, holding his wrists at the base of his spine, then slid my hand up in his hair from the back, gripping in such a way that it wouldn’t hurt. Going for tenderly but securely trapped with an edge of discomfort as he liked to feel.

“Do you like this?”

“Yes,” he breathed. “You feel so good to me, Louis. I love you. I love when you handle me how you want to. I like giving you what you like. Makes me feel like I’m yours.”

“You are mine. You’re all mine, and you better hear me on that.”

“I do, hear you, Lou,” he said, shivering with delight.

“You ever forget that and start acting reckless, I’mma always tear your ass up to remind you, you hear?” I slapped his flank and he hissed and squirmed in my grip on his hair, keeping his arms behind him even though I’d let them go.

“Yes, Louis. Thank you,” he purred.

“You’re most welcome.” I soothed the spot with a caress and pulled his cheek aside to expose his hole to the air, watching it gasp at me. “Your slu*tty little ass is mine. Your slu*tty little noises are mine. Got it?”

“Oui. Je comprends.”

“Good. Let there be no confusion. I don’t let my bitches run loose. Not anymore. You picked the wrong one if you think that’s how it’s gonna be.”

“I didn’t pick the wrong one,” he whispered, mouth half-open, eyes glazed. “You’re perfect for me. I need someone I can respect. Someone I can adore. Thank you, St. Louis, thank you for your promise to keep me and correct me and humble me.”

“Anytime, anyplace, babe,” I said, and finally, unable to hold off any longer, my erection painful now, I pressed against him.

“Oooh,” he moaned, almost convulsing.

“Yeah? You want it?”

“Please, put it in. Put it in. I’ve been so good, I’ll do anything—”

“Shhh, you don’t gotta beg,” I teased him, only inserting the tip, then pulling out to smear it around the circumference. Turns out, I could hold it, so long as he was desperate for it. I’m a spiteful creature.

“L-Louis, please,” he said in a broken croak after a minute of teasing, of pushing in only to the tip, when it became apparent I did want him to beg, his arms still dutifully folded behind him, his hair still in my fist, keeping him in an artful arch.

“You’ve got the prettiest hole I’ve ever seen,” I commented, ignoring his plea.

“I bet you’ve said that to—”

“Shut the f*ck up,” I warned him, yanking him around by the hair.

He closed his mouth with a clop. Then he tried begging again. “Please.”

“Say it again.”

“Please, Louis.”

I pulled him close by his hair and kissed his shoulders, the back of his neck, between his shoulder blades, nuzzled behind his ear, grinning at the high-pitched noise that wavered out of his mouth. “Whatchu want, babe?”

“I want your pretty co*ck deep inside me, please,” he tried sweet-talking, arching his back, trying to snag himself on my co*ck, but I avoided him easily. When still I waited, clearly expectant, and he couldn’t come up with the right thing to say, he began to get irritated, which was exactly what I wanted. “Are you waiting for me to get wet back there, or something? Do you have a sudden desire for a pu— oh, putain de merde! YES!”

“Yeah?” I growled, straining against finishing instantly. Teasing him has the double-edged effect of teasing myself too. “You like that? You like this dick deep in your f*cking guts?”

“Yeah, please, please, please, please! sh*t,” he trembled, about to bring his arms back around in front of him, but I grabbed onto them first, using his forearms as a handle as I f*cked him.

“Tell me everything I want to hear.”

“I’m your bitch,” he panted. “Only yours. You have tamed me like a lamb taming a lion, Louis—” He stopped suddenly and his eyes rolled back and he shuddered, his delicious hole clenching like a vice as he came dryly. With immense self-control, I weathered it without succumbing, myself.

“Yeah?” I whispered in his ear when he’d calmed, his gasping slowing to ragged wheeze. “Tell me more about that, baby.”

“I put my… my life and pleasure in… your hands. No one f*cks me like you do. No one has ever made me cum so many times. Louis. Louis, my love—I’m so tired now. Please let me… let’s have a rest, non? I can’t make it good for you when I’m so tired. I feel so slow and stupid….”

“Shhh…” I soothed, head floating as I f*cked up into him. “Keep telling me the pretty thoughts I’ve spent so long f*cking into your pretty blond head.”

“Mmm,” he moaned, rocking back on me in spite of his exhaustion. “Je ne sais pas. You’re maybe the only man I’ve enjoyed f*cking me. I don’t think I knew pleasure before you. I must have… did I hate it before? Non. I didn’t. I enjoyed myself with others. But you feel so good. You’re perfect inside me. Only you know how to make me see heaven. I think I have seen more than just heaven. I have seen the face of—”

“Shhh, I get it, don’t say that.”

He laughed through his nose. “My pure-hearted altarboy Louis. Even though you are f*cking a devil, you are…vous êtes un ange. An angel.” A wide, dreamy smile covered his face, and he was heavy in my arms, near boneless. "Please, cum inside me. f*ck me until you are satisfied, just be sure to let me hold it for you.”

“Okay, I’ve turned your brain into soup,” I said, biting his shoulder.

“Yeah…” he hummed with barely sparking braincells.

Content that there was nothing more I could get out of f*cking him roughly, I released my hold on him and turned him over on his back so I could look upon his face and make proper love to him. As I entered him at this angle, he gasped and the light of reinvigorated pleasure flickered back on in his eyes. “Mmm,” he exclaimed, as if to say, This position feels better than usual for some reason.

“Good?”

“Yes.” He grabbed my ass and urged me forward, legs wrapping around my back. “Kiss me.”

I kissed him and he groaned aloud, bit down on my lip. I pressed my forehead to his. After a moment, we both opened our eyes and held the other in the intimacy of our gaze. I could see and feel all of his pleasure, pride, and joy radiating off him. He caressed my skin as I f*cked him lovingly but persistently in a way I knew would make him cum if I were very lucky.

He laughed, picking up on my intention.

“You really are so pleased with me, aren’t you?” he whispered breathlessly.

“Yeah,” I grunted with exertion.

“You’re that ready to see me be…” he gasped as I angled his left leg a little higher, “off-putting to some teenagers?”

“Teenagers are… off-putting, too.”

“Hnghh, sh*t, sh*t, sh*t!” he strained as his pleasure mounted. “Louis!”

“Les, go ahead you can—”

With a hoarse cry, he came for the last time, and my vision went white as I finally came, too.

I woke in his arms with him blowing cool air in my face, shaking me a little. “Louis. Louis,” he whispered. As I blinked my eyes open, confused, he laughed. “I thought you had an aneurysm. You weren’t waking. It’s been some minutes.”

“I might have actually had an aneurysm, sh*t.” I laughed, looking up at him. He was watching me with soft eyes, blue and hazy— adoring and sentimental.“What?”

“Nothing. That was… you surprised me today.”

“Good surprise?”

“Don’t play coy.”

“I was just f*cking around with you most of it. Tryna see what you can take.”

“Or what I would take. I would take anything for you.”

“Anything you didn’t like?”

“Hmmm, yes.” I listened, worried I was too rough. “The fact that you got me to cum so much I turned into dumb putty in your hands. That should be criminal. We must be sure to revisit that to be sure I disliked it, though. Obviously, you were perfect, Louis!”

I rubbed my cheek against his chest to hide my smile. “Good. I’m glad. I get nervous when I’m throwing you around, you know.”

“How come?”

I shrugged. “You’re just more of a natural at it and you like being in charge. It’s easier with someone who doesn’t like being in charge because then I don’t have to do any wrangling or convincing, you know? I can get more in the mindset to compensate for their weaker output.”

“Hm. So what I’m hearing is: finding my weakness is harder for you? You have to earn my delight in your dominance?” he smirked.

“Well, you have strong emotions about everything— except you’re consistently obliging and endeared by what I do. It’s hard to tell your preferences, sometimes. I like to leave an impression.”

“I can’t think of a time you haven’t left an impression on me, St. Louis. You do it without trying.”

“You’re very sweet,” I laughed, blushing.

“Thank you for indulging me like this, mon cher.”

“I should be saying the same.”

“Then say it.”

“No,” I smirked at him, chin on his chest.

“Good,” he smiled and kissed the tip of my nose. “Modesty is a coward’s cloak.”

Chapter 19: Babysitting Diaries Part 1

Chapter Text

Okay, so maybe six-year-old children are more my speed. Niejah, to me, is the most sensible person in the de Pointe du Lac family. At least, she’s direct and she makes sense to me.

“Do you got any juice?” she asked the second her dear maman was gone.

“Why of course we do!” I told her, delighted because she was talking to me directly, and had clearly imprinted on me as her preferred uncle despite Mikey and Louis being there. Louis says she just knew immediately who would let her do what she wanted.

“She should probably only have half a juice box— diluted in water. The sugar…” Mikey said, wincing apologetically at our niece.

“Noooo,” she protested. “I want the whole thing. Mama says—says I can.”

“No, she didn’t,” Mikey said.

“Are you a girl?” she asked me, ignoring Mikey now. “Why your hair so long?”

“Because I stole it from a princess,” I lied.

“Can I comb it?”

“Why of course!”

“Does the princess… want it back?”

“She’s dead now—” Mikey cleared his throat and made a cutting motion at his neck, giving me an uncharacteristically reproachful look. “I mean, she decided she was okay with it. I understand, the darker humor must wait until you are older, yes?”

“Huh?” she wondered, eyes and nose scrunching not unlike the way Louis’ does when he’s confused or judging me. I instantly liked her miles more after that. After a time, she said, “You could go play games, Uncle Mikey, me and—and…”

“And Uncle Lestat…” he finished for her gently.

“And Uncle Lescott— we gon’ do each other hair!”

“Yes, Mikey, you should see how Louis is getting on with the teenagers. I worry for him.” Mikey snorted and squeezed my shoulder.

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“Remember—dilute the juice.”

“Absolutely.” And he departed. “Absolutely silly!” I whispered to her with a conspiratorial face. She grinned at me. I wondered whether I should pick her up— she was so close to the floor and I was so tall that I had to stoop to have a proper conversation. Deciding against it, I went to the refrigerator and selected a box of apple juice. “You’re old enough to have your own entire juice box, aren’t you, ma chérie?”

“Yeah!” she agreed ecstatically.

“I know. None of that half-box, diluted nonsense with your favorite Uncle Lescott.”

“You really my Uncle?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why we ain’t—” She tried and failed to climb into a barstool. Here, I picked her up and set her on the counter. She giggled and kicked her legs. “Why we ain’t never heard of you and Uncle Lou before?”

“We’ve been traveling for a very long time, but now we’re back in town. We wanted to get to know you as soon as possible!”

“You brothers?” she asked, brow furrowed as she fought with the plastic covering her straw.

“No, we’re married.”

“Married?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh,” she said. “Can you open this for me?”

“Absolutely, ma chérie.” I freed the straw from its prison and poked it into the box for her.

“Thank you, my cherry!” she replied, and I could have died right then and there. I could have squeezed her to myself, crushed her tiny little body against mine until all the cotton candy and glitter that composes her came out of her seams, that’s how much joy her mispronunciation of everything gave me. A dangerous impulse. I looked it up, worried something was terribly wrong with me and that I might hurt her, but it’s called cute aggression— and even you humans have it. I just have to NOT squeeze her that tightly— nor bite her, even though she smells so… I understand now Louis’ horror that he was close to eating his nephew. Not that I was anywhere close to biting our little Niejah, but you understand the predicament? New humans smell amazing! No one told me children could be so f*cking cute!!! And not all that annoying!! Maybe it’s because she is my blood— yes, I have Louis’ blood in my veins as much as he has mine— that I feel this connection. Or maybe she is a witch.

“But if you are uncles— where’s the auntie?”

“No auntie, you just have double the uncles, I’m afraid. Is that okay?”

“Uh-huh! I like uncles the most! Well, I love my aunties, too.” She took a long thoughtful slurp from her straw, then giggled. “I don’t know. I can’t pick a favorite!”

“I know what you mean!” I said, watching her with intrigue.

“You got a big house.”

“Really? This old dump?”

She nodded. “You got a pool?”

I clicked my tongue, as if ashamed of myself. “You know what, we do not! Should we get a pool, do you think?”

“Hmm, I don’t know.”

“Do you want to look out back and see if you think it would fit?”

“Yeah!”

She tried to slide off the counter, then changed her mind, shuffling to set her feet in the barstool and use it to get down, but I intercepted her and set her down safely on the floor. “Wheeee,” she cheered.

My heart beat fast now. “Yeah, you like being picked up?”

“Yeah! Sometimes. Well—a lot of times. But I’m 6 now! I can’t be carried everywhere no more. But sometimes I still use the stroller. Like at Disney! We did a lo-o-o-ot of walking. My feet were hurtin’. I fell asleep in the daytime, and then it was night when I woke up!”

“That happens to me all the time!” I remarked.

“It gets dark so early now!”

“It does, don’t you love it?”

She wrinkled her nose. “No! Mama and Daddy— they think it means we have to go to sleep just because it’s dark! But the clock says— the clock said 6:50 p.m. the other night, and you know what she said?”

“What did she say?”

“She said—” she sucked with emphasis from her juice box again, leaving me on the edge of my seat. “She said that it don’t matter, because when it’s dark that’s when we go to bed. But the boys didn’t have to go to bed! She was just tired and cranky!”

“How unfair!”

“I know, right?! I was so mad!”

“Well, here, you don’t have to go to bed at 6:50. In fact, your Uncle Louis and I love the night time.”

She skipped over to the windows beyond the kitchen and dining room. “Why your windows look like that?”

“Umm… I have a sun allergy.”

“You get sunburned inside?” she said, pulling a face of utter pity and horror.

“I can if I’m not careful— believe it or not, Uncle Louis gets a worse sunburn than me, these days. So we put a special tint on our windows.”

“But— ain’t Uncle Louis Black? How he get sunburned inside?”

“Hmm, good question! You should ask him!” I said brightly, already anticipating Louis’ scolding look.

“Mama says we all need to wear sunscreen whenever we go outside no matter what, but Daddy says sometimes it’s okay if we don’t. ‘Cause…” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “...Black don’t crack. But Mama says not to say that around people who ain’t family, and that it’s a joke. I don’t get it though. Nobody’s skin cracks.”

“Oh, ma petite, you are positively adorable, I could eat you.”

She beamed at me and skipped back over to me. “I think you should put a pool. And a hot tub!”

“Perhaps you’re right. Maybe then we would go outside more.”

“What’s your accent?”

“It’s French, ma chérie. I am from France. But I’ve lived in America for a long time.”

“Say something in France!”

“In French, you mean. Well, I have been. Ma chérie, means, ‘my dear.’ Ma petite means ‘my little one.’”

“Oh, I thought you called me a cherry!” she said bursting into hysterical giggles.

“You can call me your cherry, if you like,” I said, wishing suddenly I hadn’t elucidated my endearments. Her versions were just so much sweeter.

“What’s your name again?”

I pronounced it for her. “Less-stott.”

“Less-stott!”

“Exactly: Lestat!”

“I like that name. How do you spell it?”

“L-E-S-T-A-T.”

“Where’s the O?”

“In French a lot of the A’s sound a bit like O’s, I’m afraid.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said, still unable to find her million-and-one questions exhausting. “We should find out one day.”

“Your house is so big!” She skipped to the den, around the sectional and back to the kitchen area to circle the island. “Why is it so big if you ain’t got no kids?”

“Why, for our nieces and nephews, ma chérie.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.” It felt wrong to let go unmentioned that Louis and I did have a kid, so I said, “Besides… besides we do have a kid.”

“She grown up now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where she live?”

“She went overseas. To France. For school.”

“You miss her?”

“Everyday. She never got to see this house, though. I think Louis and I were just hoping to have more kids in it one day. And now you’re here! Yay!” I clapped my hands.

“Yay!” she giggled. “When she coming back?”

“I don’t know,” I said sincerely, remembering her promise to return from the afterlife if she could. “In the meanwhile, I have you and your brothers and your cousins and uncles and aunts to keep our house nice and crowded, hm?”

“Yep!”

“Is your house in… France big too?”

“I don’t have a house in France anymore.”

“Huh? Where your mom and dad?”

“My father died a long, long time ago, which is good because he was a bad person. My mom is…. I don’t know where my mom is, isn’t that funny?” She giggled as if to agree.

“I wanna comb your hair.”

“Ah, yes, let’s do that.”

“I like your clothes!”

“Really? I like your clothes!” Honestly, her clothes could use some work—she wore a pink skirt (that was actually quite pretty, even if made of material that would not last if stained and requiring scrubbing) over leggings of the most unsavory material (at least it was comfortable-looking, I suppose) and a t-shirt with some cartoon character I didn’t recognize on it, and which I imagined she demanded to wear at all costs and all the time, judging by its fadedness. This century and its fashion, I do not understand.

“Thanks! You don’t dress like other adults.”

“Thanks! What do I dress like?”

She shrugged, humming, “I don’t know.” She was jumping in place now.

“Close your eyes and count to ten, and I’ll get the comb. I bet you I can do it in under ten seconds. You want to bet?”

“Where is it?”

“Upstairs.”

“You can’t get back in 10 seconds,” she giggled. “It’s far away.”

“Yes, I can. Close your eyes. No peeking.” She covered her eyes, one eye covered by the juicebox the other by her small hand.”

“One… two…”

I zipped upstairs and grabbed the jade comb I knew she would find pretty— as opposed to the comb made of bone, I didn’t want her to touch anything of the sinister dead. I returned as she got to seven.

“Bonjour,” I said, tapping her nose. She shrieked with delight.

“How’d you do that?”

My heart filled with overwhelming feelings at her surprise and delight and trust in me. It gave me a sharp lancing of déjà vu of someone else. I hugged her to myself to hide my face. “It’s a secret.”

“You were so fast.”

“Did you peek?”

“No….”

I suspected she had, but I did not care. “Good girl.” I kissed her chubby cheek and lifted her in my arms to take her to the couch. “You were so good at counting.”

I sat on the floor while she sat on the couch. “It’s soooo pretty,” she said.

“Yours is so pretty,” I replied. “Does your mama do it for you?”

“Uh-huh. And Daddy sometimes, but he’s not as good. He can only do regular braids, and sometimes it looks a mess. But I leave ‘em in because I don’t wanna hurt his feelings.”

This made me smile. “What do you think my hair needs, ma chérie?”

“Hmmm. I don’t know, my sherry!” she revealed, then began touching and arranging and inspecting like a proper scientist. “Is your hair natural? You didn’t straighten it?”

“Oui, I’m afraid it’s not so delightsome as to take more than a few forms.”

“This comb is soooo pretty!”

“It is jade. A precious stone. All the way from China, if you can imagine.”

“Wow,” she said. “But all for a comb? Was it expensive?”

“All beautiful things are worth their price if we believe they are.”

She began combing my hair from the ends and then gradually to the roots. It was rather soothing. I eventually dozed off. In my defense it had been a long day— Louis and I did not sleep much, and the night before had been recreationally intense in a way that left me feeling sore and sated.

I woke because Louis spoke in my mind asking, What are y’all doing down there?

I’m getting my hair done, I replied.

I could feel his amusem*nt. Well, y’all come on up. They’re explaining the game to me and I want to be around Niejah, too.

I’m her favorite uncle, I think.

I haven’t even had a chance, he protested.

I let her have an entire juice box.

Lestat! She ain’t gonna sleep.

Don’t be so pessimistic.

“Wanna see?” she asked.

“Yes! Show me.”

“Get your phone.”

“Uhhh. It’s upstairs I think— I don’t know. I always lose it. Don’t tell Uncle Louis I’ve lost it, though, he’ll be upset. Want to go upstairs with your other uncles and your brothers?”

“Mmm…” she hummed indecisively. “Are you coming upstairs too?”

“Well, of course, ma chérie. I wouldn’t dream of being parted from you.” I tilted my head back in her lap so I could see her face upside down. She beamed at me and patted my jaws, rubbing my stubble.

“Okay.”

“Okay. Your Uncle Louis is eager to get to know you, too. I think he’s jealous we’ve spent all this time together, all by ourselves.”

She laughed at that. “How do you know that?”

“He just told me to bring you upstairs.”

“How?”

“We speak to each other with our minds,” I whispered conspiratorially.

“How?”

“All soulmates can do it. Want to ride on my shoulders?”

“Yeah!”

“Okay.”

So we went upstairs with a quick pitstop at a hallway mirror to admire the way she'd turned my hair into a deconstructed, stringy mess with random decorative braided pieces. I loved it.

Alan and Tyler (the young nephews) were busy explaining the lore of certain characters Louis could choose in order to fight their own. It was a game they said was “a little retro” but still fun. (Mikey demanded, in horror, whether they actually considered this “super smashing” game “retro,” and they said his head was old.)

Poor Louis’ brow was bent in stressful concentration as he tried to select a character he believed could win, while complaining he didn’t understand the power-ups and strength levels of each. When Niejah and I made ourselves known, Louis brightened up and paused his pivotal choice-making to greet us and hold his hand out to Niejah.

“Hey, Niejah, you wanna come sit by me and help me beat your brothers?”

“Yeah!” she said excitedly. I set her down, expecting her to run to him, but she pulled me by the hand to come sit with her and Louis on the couch. Mikey sat on Louis’ other side and Alan and Tyler occupied beanbags in front of it. Children just love beanbags.

“Uncle Louis, it really don’t matter who you choose,” Alan said, his glasses reflecting the screen. “I promise you Kirby is fine.”

“How am I supposed to beat anyone with that bubblegum-looking thing? I feel like y’all are setting me up to lose.”

“No, seriously he’s one of the most powerful!” Tyler laughed. He was the younger one— 14, braces, mop of curly hair with a somewhat frizzy dyed-red streak framing his face on the left side. “Anyway, it’s how you play the characters that matters.”

“Mikey, are they setting me up?”

“Pikachu’s my personal favorite, but Kirby’s good,” Mikey said. “Or Princess Peach. She’s cool.”

“How does she fight in a dress like that?”

“I don’t think this game’s logic cares much about physics, mon cher,” I teased him. Louis tends to overthink things.

“Alright, I'mma just pick one.”

And thus began one of the most engrossing three hours of my immortal life.