Alligator Tears - siahatha - Interview with the Vampire (TV 2022) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter Text

June 2024: Mortal Pride, Several Consecutive and Compounding Nights of Poor Feeding

Louis finishes Wuthering Heights for the one-hundred and forty-seventh time and he’s never going to die. The hunger helps.

Not that Louis is particularly hungry. He‘s too exhausted to hunger, as well as too irritable. He feels like marching out of coffin to pick a fight with Lestat (maybe he could bring up the time Lestat had hissed from the piano bench that Claudia’s voice was shrill as a mosquito’s and if she does not halt this ceaseless whining she may find herself swatted to a spatter). Well, he’d argue with Lestat if he felt like getting up, which he doesn’t, because he’s resting his eyes right now. But it’s damn near freezing alone in the coffin. Louis realized this was a problem for mortal and immortal anorexics alike when he saw the circleful of sweaters that made up his recovery group in the swelter of New Orleans May. Not that it’s relevant because Louis can’t deny his hunger if he doesn’t feel hungry.

Louis knows Saniyah feels like this sometimes. How reassuring, to meet another battling the mind’s ravenous stagnancy. Sometimes he wishes he could text his mama like he knows Saniyah does when she’s like this, asking if her Ma could please bring by some hot gumbo or spaghetti or whatever she’s gonna make too much of anyway. And Miss Latoya always will because she adores her daughter and wants her healthy, knows she wouldn’t ask if she could make dinner herself. Just like how Louis would kill for Claudia without hesitation, if only he could hear her ask again. Louis knows it’s as easy as a broadcast to ask Lestat if he could please bring up a hot mug of human, strike that, animal blood and maybe spend a little time in here with him, if only to warm the coffin up a little. And he’s sorry; he’s sorry to do this again, he’s sorry he can't talk about it. Thank you, baby. I love you.

Of course, there’s no need to call Lestat because Louis isn’t hungry. When he gets hungry he’ll simply get up, go downstairs, and fix himself something to eat. Louis almost chuckles out loud at the thought of texting (telegramming?) his actual mama for some gumbo while bedbound with anorexia, strike that, womanish frailty. Louis’ stomach swoops with the memory of a spoon against his knuckles when his childish self had gone for another gluttonous helping of jambalaya. Maman, who was always reducing, had sternly explained that if he kept on gorging like he was destitute, the buttons on his fine clothes would pop off like cannonballs. Yes, better Lestat than Maman for this particular favor.

Louis can feel the press of his flesh against another piece of flesh and it is intolerable. It makes him want to–In 1980, after reading Foulcault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, Louis had become very interested in flayings.

The concept was irresistible. (Take that, Lestat! Louis really is a monster, enchanted as ever by the violence). It would have solved the Lestat problem he’d had back then, being flayed. Peeling Louis away until he was nothing but skeletal and circulatory system. Armand would have done it too, if Louis had asked nicely enough and could have survived it. Lestat was and is an inevitable fact of the blood. He will flow through Louis forever, present always when his blood is at its hottest, sure as the cord that binds and aches them. It’s not a problem if it can’t be solved. Lestat of the flesh, however, could be eliminated. It was flesh that forgave Lestat after he shattered Louis. Flesh held Lestat close in their coffin the night Louis had heard him insult their daughter and tell that white woman he loved her. The flesh quivered beneath Lestat’s large hands while ignoring Claudia begging for freedom on the other side of the wall. Louis’ flesh loved Armand's skilled touch, sure, but remembered Lestat. every. single. time. Things would be better, Louis had reasoned in 1980, if there was altogether less flesh.

It’s not 1980 anymore. Here in the startling present, Louis has fallen entirely to the flesh and to Lestat. He’s even allowed Lestat to flesh him outwards, sloshed full of blood like a hen for slaughter, and conscious the entire time. Lestat, who will apparently never flay him again. Lestat, who is once again more precious to him than anyone alive in this world. Louis isn’t hungry.

But he is weak, so infuriatingly weak—

“Les, honey? Will you lay up here for a spell?”

Lestat’s arms are around him in an instant.

Later, warm and f*cked and reunited with the ravenousness that made him, Louis eats.

******* The Next Evening

“Lestat, are you really fixing to make me sleep in a coffin forever?”

Louis turns over in bed, sliding his palm along the satin of the sheets until it comes to rest on the firm of his man’s flank. Lestat rolls over to meet his eyes.

“And where else would we sleep?” he asks, looking incredulous and—Lord, Louis is done for—quite handsomely so.

“This bed? Surely, you’re aware that UV protective technology has evolved past hurricane shutters.”

Lestat snorts. “In the open like that? Out of the question.”

Louis feels his eyes narrow. That tone was beyond aggravating; like Lestat’s is the final say, always. Louis fixes his gaze and raises his eyebrows because it’s not supposed to be like that anymore.

Lestat seems to understand this and his expression changes, eyes looking upwards and lips curling in while he musters the self control to respond appropriately.

“Mon amour you must consider your extraordinary luck to have thus far avoided a mortal mob in your extended lifetime. Not all of us have been spared the torches.”

“You think a mob is knocking at our door? What are they hunting us for? Buying animal blood on the internet?”

Lestat looks at him a little desperately, those violet eyes bugging out unattractively.

A lie. He still looks attractive.

“You and Armand slept in a bed together?” Lestat’s voice is skeptical.

Louis nods. He does not clarify that he and Armand slept in the separate rooms, near the end. It would be too much for Lestat’s ego which, though mercifully deflated, is still enormous.

“Armand is a foolish old man who forgets. I do not forget so easily,” says Lestat.

Ridiculous. Armand is a premium grudge holder and has never forgotten anything in his life. He simply isn’t as paranoid about the sleeping situation.

Lestat sighs, “But I admit your point. I think it is unlikely we will encounter the pitchforks of our neighbors on Terpsichore Street.”

“So, the bed?”

Lestat stares at him for a moment before relenting in frosty French.

“Oui, le lit le matin/ Yes, the bed in the morning.”

In the morning, Louis draws the shutters, then the shades, and it becomes apparent that Lestat cannot do it.

“I cannot do it,” says Lestat, looking apologetically at his slippers.

“I have not slept in a bed since I was taken from the one I shared with Nicolas. I will not be able to sleep with you so vulnerable.”

Louis wants to roll his eyes at the last bit. Louis has never been more vulnerable than he was on Rue Royale, and Lestat slept just fine back then.

“Lestat, have you ever considered that I don’t like coffins? That they remind me of certain difficulties in our relationship that I’d rather not revisit?”

“And the bed does not remind you of Armand?”

“The bed reminds me of a bed. The place I’ve slept my entire life. Where mankind sleeps.”

Lestat looks about to burst with correction. Pas toute votre vie. Nous ne sommes pas des hommes, Saint Louis/ Not your entire life. We are not men, Saint Louis. It doesn’t come. Lestat heaves a mighty sigh.

They climb back into the bed that Claudia was born in. Which, now that Louis thinks about it, is impossible. Surely this bed spent months in the dump, monsooned by the Louisiana summer.

“Is it the same one, the bed? Or did you have it recreated?”

Lestat laughs, arrogant as ever.

“There was no need to have it recreated, mon chèr, I rebuilt it myself. At great inconvenience, I might add. Good wood, and by that I mean wood sturdy enough to support the vigor of our activities, has become increasingly difficult to find.” Lestat wraps himself around Louis beneath the covers. “It is, of course, not the original. Salvaging our marriage bed unfortunately became,” his smile twists into something a little meaner (or sadder, but the two were the same for Lestat for so long), “dépriorisé/ deprioritized.”

Paris makes Louis’ stomach hurt. He says nothing, turning around to lean back into the broadness of Lestat’s chest, to press the deadness of his spine against that which feels very much alive. Lestat’s embrace adjusts to the change in positioning, palm resting on Louis’ hip, the length of his fingers brushing the softest part of Louis’ underbelly. Lestat thinks he’s being good (and he is, Christ, hadn’t Louis prayed for this?), but Louis’s being good too, allowing this pressure against his bellyache, permitting Lestat’s firm hand on his soft flesh. He wants to shoo him away (no, he does not, living organisms cannot be without that which is hot and bright and Louis will not be without Lestat’s touch, never f*cking again); but this place, where his body stores red murder, is not for touching. Louis says nothing, however, because Lestat isn’t thinking about the soft of Louis’ sin. He’s holding Louis close because he needs to; because he loves him.

Louis warms, breathing deeply despite the location of Lestat’s hand, though if Lestat starts fidgeting with the meat of him Louis is gonna lose his doggone mind.

In 1917, delirious with new baby joy and once again sweet on Les, Louis had found himself letting go, too busy and happy to spare much shame for his increasingly omnivorous lifestyle. (Was he supposed to just let her suckle at the teat of Lestat’s unbridled savagery? Someone needed to teach her how to kill like a civilized goddamn person.) A couple undisciplined months of eating later and Louis could feel the cut of his clothes keenly, bashful in his nudity as though he’d actually given birth to Claudia and she’d left his body soft and stretched postpartum. It had taken Lestat a calendar year to notice and he’d announced his approval mid-copulation, Claudia playing elsewhere in the house and Louis squirming and pretzeled beneath him. Lestat had paused mid-thrust, his eyes dark with desire and Louis’ legs shaking upon his shoulders, to stare and ghost his fingers upon the fullest part of Louis’ figure.

“You surrender beautifully, ma mie/ my sweetheart (the fluffy inside of a loaf of bread). Satisfaction becomes you,” Lestat had purred, resuming his f*cking while squeezing appreciatively at the flesh on Louis’ hips. “Un homme a besoin de quelque chose à quoi s'accrocher/ A man needs something to hold on to.”

Louis had sputtered at this, before coming alongside Lestat; the both of them burying their hollering into the other’s neck so as not to alert Claudia to the dastardliness of their deed.

Hold on to him, Lestat had. For months (Years? How long had they been happy? Precisely how long had Louis’ warmest stretch of eternity lasted?), in those quiet moments between awakeness and the heaving slumber of dawn, Lestat (who’d crept into Louis’ coffin every night seemingly to fight stillness kicking and screaming) would fiddle mindlessly and lovingly along the matronly curve of Louis’ torso, the stung little swells of Louis’ breasts until, at long last, he stilled and slept. Louis hadn’t loved it back then (Or had he? It was so difficult to remember the past without present opinions rearing their ugly heads. It seemed equally likely that Louis would have been endeared or embarrassed by the fondling), but it hadn’t mattered much because before long Louis’ excess had withered alongside Lestat’s faithfulness and love for their daughter. Louis doesn’t want Lestat to touch him like that tonight, doesn’t want to feel like the soft breast fussy Lestat will suckle to sleep.

It’s only then that Louis notices how still Lestat is, how infrequently he’s breathing. How stiffly he’s holding himself and his uncharacteristic silence. Louis hadn’t thought Lestat was lying per se when he’d said he couldn’t do it. Louis had just wanted… Well, he’d wanted to test him, hadn’t he? How much is Lestat willing to sacrifice these days? How much will he acquiesce in the brightness of modernity? He got into bed, after all, but… A brush of Louis’ calf confirms his suspicion; the slippers are still on beneath the covers.

Something very terrible happened to Lestat once. (Something very terrible happened to Louis and yet you don’t see him refusing the air). But he chose Lestat and he returned to New Orleans, for all its scalding damp; he came home. Louis softens.

“You sure, baby?”

“Je suis pour toi/ I am for you.”

Louis sighs into the tough of his man’s shoulder. This is what he wants.

“Cherí?”

It almost sounds like Lestat is putting on a baby voice, he sounds so soft and sweet. For a moment Louis considers laughing, but he resists the unkindness.

“Uh huh?”

“Tenes-moi?/ Hold me?”

Yeah, okay.

Louis rather enjoys holding Lestat, wiping Lestat’s tears rather than literally and metaphorically dodging his projectiles. Having the upper goddamn hand for once. Had Lestat ever allowed this, back in the past? It’s hard to keep it straight with Lestat; that which was, that which Armand gave him, that which Louis gave to Daniel.

Yes and no. It is true that Lestat usually held Louis back then, as husband holds wife, as cage holds bird. It is also true that on a handful of occasions (the exact number slipping through Louis’ fingers like water, someone that sounds like Armand breathing three and voice that sounds like his own sighing thirty), Louis had held Lestat as he’d cried. His sobs had been loud. Ugly and red, they were as out of context as they were out of control. The tears had been delicious, the time Lestat lost his sh*t shortly after Louis’ mother died. No answering questions, just high drama and blood, until he muttered into Louis’ breast “Je ne reverrai plus jamais ma maman/ I will never see my mother (my mommy) again,” shortly before biting down on Louis’ nipple and sucking them both to climax. Over the years, similar breakdowns occurred over Nicki, Claudia, potential suitors that could whisk Louis away, and, of course, Louis’ inability to love.

Later, Louis would show Armand and tell Daniel how he’d hated Lestat’s tears on principle because he hated Lestat on principle. Louis would wonder aloud what that white man had to cry about and remind his readers that Louis’ own mother had just died. He’d muse that maybe Lestat should have just prayed on it. In practice, in the face of Lestat’s babyish, masculine mewls, Louis fell like a house of cards.

Lestat isn’t crying yet tonight, but he’s close; Louis can smell it. Lestat’s body is stiff as a shrimp, hunched and rigid, and it would be pathetic if Louis didn’t love him so much; didn’t have his own sh*t that’s made him shrivel over the years. Back then, before television, and tiny Internet television, Lestat used to build towers out of playing cards to avoid reading when he couldn’t sleep. They would wobble, just before they collapsed.

Louis enjoys another thirty seconds of the switch, of feeling hard and strong with his palms against Lestat’s underbelly, before bestowing his gift.

“Do you want to watch Glee?”

Of course Lestat does (Louis, c'est magnifique! Si amusant!/ Louis, it’s magnificent! So funny!). They have a television in their bedroom (tacky) because Lestat occasionally likes to play a film to establish an atmosphere during sex (loose), but it’s a solid tranquilizer for he-who-will-not-lie-still. Armand and his iPad come to mind, and Louis does not share this thought with Lestat. Lestat relaxes about fifteen seconds into Rachel Berry’s first song and resumes his evening rant about her star quality, his volume and accent elevated by the stress of the sleeping situation. Louis personally thinks this song would have been better suited to Mercedes’ voice or the mean lesbian cheerleader’s, but he cedes Lestat’s point. Annoying as Louis finds that young lady, she has a lovely voice.

Glee is not Louis’ first choice (he’s serious to a fault; someone goddamn has to be), but Lestat’s laughter warms in Louis’ ears and chest. Besides, Louis likes the gumption of that little hom*osexual. It also better familiarizes the two of them with American high school, something completely foreign to Louis (tutored in their Esplanade mansion) and Lestat (definitively unschooled), but a necessity to pass as mortal in this time. The episode amuses.

The leading man is white, a football (tragically dull American pastime that Louis watched gain popularity with the disdain he reserves for any labor that uses up Black folks’ bodies; Lestat loves it like the half-heterosexual competent mortal conversationalist he is. He, Cookie, and the more masculine of her wives enjoy season tickets to Saints games in the fall and winter) player, and the worst singer on the show. Louis voices this sentiment aloud, and Lestat implies that he’s being insensitive as the actor has died. Louis has no choice but to point out (it’s possible that he’s what Saniyah calls hangry) that so are one-hundred thousand people by Lestat’s hand, may the arms of the Lord embrace the little boy from Glee. It shuts Lestat up quick, and the gush of guilt is swift, even though it’s honest guilt. Louis nuzzles closer to his man and presses a kiss to his bicep, listening to the lead sing longingly (if a little flatly) about Rachel Berry who has chosen to go steady with another young man. Jessie’s girl… Lestat’s girl… Armand’s girl… Daniel’s girl… All in just a year and a half, a beat of a hummingbird’s heart to a vampire.

All this thought about firsts and seconds has Louis thinking about Nicki, whom Louis does not hate even though he is dead, which makes him perfect. Insane and inappropriate, but the truth: the thought of Nicki behind Lestat’s eyelids when he touches himself or, worse, touches Louis, makes Louis want to lay out on the beach and immolate with the rising sun. Some things are just beyond.

Louis would, however, bed Nicolas, if given the opportunity. Louis remembers Armand’s memory of f*cking Nicki who, as if in a mirrored room, a memory within a memory within an endless hall of mirrored memories, could remember his and Lestat’s own lovemaking. Louis had found it horrible, if intensely erotic, his “dead” husband’s dead lover and their beautiful, candlelit bodies. Lestat had looked exactly the same, familiar in his performance and prettiness. Before seeing the memory, Louis had always pictured Nicki French white like Lestat, old as goddamn dust (as if Louis didn’t bed with Armand, older still, the cold stone floor the dust danced upon) like Lestat, slight and lithe like Lestat. But Nicki in Armand’s memories, while very handsome, was not slight; all barrel chest and hairy belly. Yes, Louis liked the way Nicki looked pressed against Lestat, even as he hated Lestat against Nicki. Louis would go through phases of asking Armand for the memory over and over again, most memorably when he had come back to Armand after a break in the early nineteen-nineties, sick with starvation after trying a rat in each American state. In Louisiana, Louis had made a beeline for Lafayette Cemetery, and stood over the place where he knew Lestat to be buried. Louis stood there for hours, then could stand it no longer, palms flat against the earth, screaming his head off like the last time Lestat was dead, hoping, hoping, hoping that Lestat might wake up and fill him the f*ck up. Lestat did not wake.

Louis looks over at the Lestat of the present, who is asleep again, fidgeting all the way down apparently, as Louis never noticed him going still. Perhaps the bed is not so bothersome after all.

Louis knows that it is.

Louis turns off the television with his mind, cutting the white teacher off in the middle of a humiliating rap performance. Then, in a moment of exhaustion (weakness, insanity, take your pick), Louis peaks open the blackout curtain, shining silver slivers of moonlight through the shutters. Eyes closed, Louis spirals until he can’t, dreams undulating like webs, like water.

******

Louis

“Louis”

“LOUIS”

He wakes. It’s bright and it hurts. There’s a stream of sunlight illuminating their bed, barred horizontally by the shadow of the shutters. Four little bars have been burned (and must have burned for a while, Jesus, he sleeps like the dead) into Louis’ forearm, hand, and fingers from where they smoldered in the little bit of light. Lestat must have moved Louis’ hand when he realized. Impulsively (premeditated), Louis slides his hand back into the light, eyes on Lestat.

“Absolument pas!/ Absolutely not,” Lestat snarls, wrenching Louis’ hand back into the shadow. It hurts a little, but maybe only because of the burn on his arm.

“Joues avec moi/ play with me,” Louis whines, and he means it. Lestat is overreacting (typical, Louis can only be harmed on Lestat’s terms apparently) and Armand would have gotten it, would have let him burn just a little, and allowed him the grace of repentance.

“I will not,” Lestat works his jaw. “I will never harm you again.”

“Dramatique,” Louis mutters.

“That will be enough of that, merci. You’re the one who is making me sleep in the death trap, then apparently undid the curtains to catch us aflame, now you’re asking me to burn you myself? You’re sick, Louis.”

“Maybe I am, but what’s wrong with some sexual processing? What’s the difference between a spanking and a little sun?”

Lestat stares at him for a long while, his expression one of catlike appraisal.

“The difference, mon amour, is that I am not Armand. I get what I want, and what I want is my darling safe and sated. And by the way, don’t think I haven’t noticed how poorly you’ve been feeding these last few days. No wonder you’re in such a state.”

“Remember that first morning?” Louis says loudly, guiltlessly guilt tripping, “You weren’t so concerned then.”

“Again and again and again!” Lestat groans. “I’ve told you that I should have told you, and then I sucked you off even though you smelt of rotten milk, it’s time to let this one go, Louis—Ah! Ah! Ah!”

Again, Lestat wrenches Louis’ hand out of the sliver of sunlight it had crept back into while Lestat was talking, the tip of Louis fingernail smoking ever so slightly.

Christ, what’s gotten into him?

Lestat is still gripping his arm tightly, staring at Louis like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.

“You know what I think, chèri? I think you like to hurt, but you like it even more when I stop you from hurting.” Lestat leans closer, almost whispering, eyes a little wild.

“I think you spent seventy years hurting yourself, and that personification of impotence you shared your bed with couldn't do much more than ask you to—” Lestat’s voice thins and poshens in mockery, “please stop for me.” His lips pout and eyes widen in (decent) imitation of Armand’s expression of therapeutic seriousness.

“Or else perform the vampiric equivalent of a lobotomy,” Lestat scoffs, “Which is, of course, tasteless cheating. Imagine altering your mind to keep you in my bed, je pense que non putain/ I think the f*ck not.”

Lestat’s speech has quickened, the first bubble of a boil, and of course it has; it’s the middle of the day and it’s been forever since they fought. What if the June heat starts to feel stagnant?

A barb, just for the hell of it, for the enormity of the past and the lateness of the hour: “No, Lestat, it’s not your type of cheating. No girls; no broken bones.”

Lestat’s nostrils flare. “Impossible! I wake up to the smell of you burning your arm off, and now I’m being punished with century-old pettiness, for what? Declining to indulge your suicidality through the thin veneer of sado-masochism? Why would I pleasure you with pain when I am so very skilled at pleasuring you with pleasure? No, Louis, I will not burn you with the sun when I can take you into my mouth instead. Now, please, let’s go to coffin so that I may do just that and we can get some f*cking sleep.”

So there it was. Lestat was the best lay of his life and he wouldn’t let him hurt himself. And brother, Louis does feel warm here in the shadows with Lestat and all his loving firmness. Louis continues to be pleasantly surprised by New Lestat’s patience. He’ll return the blow j*b. He feels his honey deserves it.

“I think antidepressants would be a more apt metaphor,” Louis says, because he’s not about to just roll over. It’s the middle of the day and he’s tired, even though he knows human antidepressants ideally don’t cause you to lose entire weeks of time and mindlessly obey your companion’s wishes.

Lestat rolls his eyes, actor expressive. “Regardless. A—what is the English?—a pushover! I am not. I will not allow you to hurt yourself and I do not give up. I will always be there to steady your hand.”

Lestat tightens his grip on Louis’ arm.

“And I will play no more of these games,” Lestat says, ending the discussion, scooping Louis up and carrying him to coffin, where he enjoys feeling weightless as Lestat steps over the coffin room’s threshold.

Later, Louis is being held in the true dark of the coffin, where it smells like Lestat and everything that means to Louis. He smiles, ignoring the sinking feeling. He’s gotten what he wanted.

“I love you,” he whispers into the dark.

**** The Following Evening

The concept of New Orleans Gay Pride is surreal to Louis, who is wearing the sort of outfit that would have gotten him murdered in the street had he worn it in this city when he was actually thirty-three. Louis fusses with his clothes the whole drive to Earline Skate Center, tugging his “Y’all Means All” shirt up and down to expose just a glimmer of the navel he’d had Lestat pierce while they were getting ready. Saniyah’s friend is apparently the pansexual heir to the Earline Skate Dynasty and got permission to host an after hours Pride party at the roller rink. Louis is letting Lestat drive, arguably a mistake due to Lestat’s attention deficiencies and road rage, but as usual this time around, he’s being very good. That said, no amount of restraint can make Lestat a good driver, and Louis does his best to be subtle about gripping the passenger bar as Lestat swerves across four lanes of traffic, turning the music as loud as it goes, and actually closing his eyes to hit a high note. Louis bites back the criticism. He’s told Lestat he’s a bad driver before and he will tell him again, but not tonight. Besides, they both used to drive drunk.

The shorts are damn near minuscule and Louis is being really normal about it, thank you kindly. He knows he’ll probably enjoy the attention later, but now, with the humid scrape of leg meat against itself when he walks, with the flattening of his thighs against the the leather of Lestat’s passenger seat, Louis wants desperately to hollow out a little, for a man to scoop him cantaloupe clean. Thinking of his therapist, whom he’s promised not to entertain these sorts of thoughts, Louis reminds himself that he owes nourishment to himself anyway. Even as his daughter is dead by his hand (his lovers’ hands, all of their hands knotted in their grip of wretchedness). Even as he profited from the best case scenario coercion, worst case scenario rape (well, that’s what it was) of women in his own community. Were they your community? You certainly thought yourself better, back then, Louis finds himself thinking nastily. Even as he’s lost count of the murders he’s committed. He hasn’t fed tonight.

Lestat, eyes on Louis instead of the road, seems to notice the nosedive and puts a gentle hand on Louis’ thigh.

“It’s a good thing you’ve been trying to eat better. I wouldn’t want you unsteady on your skates. As a novice myself, I’ll need your support should I topple over.”

Lestat has apparently only been skating once before, to this very skating rink for Zaya’s 14th birthday party. One of her little friends broke her arm, and Larry had apparently gotten very terse with Lestat, who’d had to use his coping skills.

Yoncé shifts to Partition, and Christ Almighty, that man’s smile, Louis drinks Lestat in for a moment, maybe several, then gazes off the interstate, that goddamn interstate that bisects the neighborhood he grew up in like a slash to the chest. They’re driving over the cemetery now, and did they move the dead before they paved the road or is Louis speeding along in the passenger seat over the bodies of his contemporaries? Does he drive upon anyone dead by his hand, or rather his hunger, his enormous regretful hunger?

Louis needs to eat, he’s getting melodramatic.

“Est-ce que tu aimes le sexe?” ask Beyoncé and Lestat.

It’s a loaded question, but of course Louis does. He tries to convey this with the sensuality of his seat-dancing, and Lestat looks away from the highway to grin at him, pleased that Louis has joined the performance. Louis mouths along to the end of Partition, gyrating his hips against the passenger seat, and it’s nice, dancing next to Lestat at ninety-five miles an hour. Then, because Louis' vampire brain can tolerate happiness no more than his stomach can tolerate food, Louis remembers a time when he forgot how to dance because Lestat was dead and Louis had killed him.

After Louis remembered how to dance, it became apparent that Armand had retaught him, not to dance together, but in order to watch Louis dance. Armand would entertain none of that Lestatish possessiveness, certainly not toward mortals at the bar or the balls in New York, San Francisco, or Miami. Louis would arrive in his black and leave wearing nothing but the sweat and scent of his admirers. There were so many eyes on him while he danced, and he knew he could drive men crazy—he’d done it at least twice—but under the disco ball, fed and f*cked and forgetful, Louis shimmered with power, he dripped with it like a c*nt; like diamonds. Armand loved to see it. Later, Louis would ask Armand to dance with him, and while Armand would deny Louis nothing, he didn’t care for it, didn’t like the pressure of performance, certainly didn’t care to be compared to Lestat and be found lacking. It wasn’t something they did together. They did, however, spend most Saturday nights in the late seventies at the rink: short shorts, tube socks, afro pick in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Armand is graceful when he walks, when he floats, when he kills, and on a pair of skates he’s Mister Damn Smooth. Armand had laughed when Louis called him that even though he hadn’t completely understood. Louis isn’t bad skater himself, and they’d made a beautiful pair, gliding through the seventies back when things were good, when things with Daniel weren’t so complicated, when for the first time in a very long time, life was worth living, even as Louis took unexamined swallows of “dead” Lestat. Lestat, whom he chose. Lestat, who, here in the present, is driving recklessly. Louis is eager to skate again.

Earline Skate Center broils in its suburbia, the concrete of the parking lot and the building still hot as devils even though the sun has gone down. Les backs into the parking spot the way he always does, which is irksome. Perhaps it’s unfair of Louis to think so, he’s trying to be less critical (it’s making him unhappy), but honestly, who is Lestat trying to make a quick getaway from at the Earline Skate Center? But escape weighs heavy on Lestat’s pretty head, always has, probably always will. Lestat does look pretty tonight, always does, and it eats at Louis, how shallow he is; how much he’s willing to give up for a handsome face, how he factually did damn his soul eternally for the opportunity to run his fingers through Lestat’s silky, yellow hair. Among other opportunities.

The Anything That Moves shirt is taut where Lestat is broad and as violet as his eyes. Louis had burst out laughing the first time he’d seen it because accusing Lestat of f*cking anything that moved was a regular shouting point in their arguments on Royal Street. Louis would feel guilty about this apparently anti-bisexual phrasing if a) he wasn’t being terrorized by racism in the American South at the time and b) Lestat hadn’t cheated on him with a body count in the low-to-mid thousands during their first marriage.

In this marriage, where miraculously Louis is the only moving thing Lestat f*cks, long mesh sleeves emerge from underneath Lestat’s t-shirt. His jorts (one of the only upsides to living forever is the infinite expansion of one’s vocabulary) cover approximately seventy-five percent of his ass, and, comedy of all comedies, Lestat is wearing knee pads. The hussy.

The Earline Skate Center smells like feet, and the hom*osexuals within smell like body glitter. The interior design scheme is an assault of color: black and neon solar system motif carpet that shocks of the eighties, a disco ball throwing rainbows onto the silky white skate flooring, cartoon roller skates graffitied in glow paint along the walls. An arcade flashes and chirps in the corner. Kid friendly.

Louis remembers for a fact that they’d bought Claudia skates: the old-type, with leather straps and aluminum soles. He remembers because Les would grumble about the hardwood, but his eyes had been soft because things were good back when Claudia had allowed herself to be their baby. Of the mountain of regrets that stuff the Dead Child Hole in Louis, giving Claudia another couple years of childhood isn’t one of them. In the early years, she’d loved being spoiled as much as they’d loved spoiling her. Her previous caretakers (who had done their best under the impossible conditions of poverty and racism, when Louis is feeling charitable, and who hadn’t deserved her when he isn’t) had loved her, but it was a wrung out, tough kind of love. Louis’ love had been as warm and soft as feathers, mother hen on her egg. Claudia would have liked the arcade too (even once she was grown, Louis thinks), especially the pistol games.

Louis is jolted from his remembering by Lestat shouting in French and launching forward to kiss Saniyah on both cheeks, a custom that was not prevalent in France when mortal Lestat was growing up, and is definitely something he does now for attention. Saniyah looks good; her twists up in short pigtails and a tank top with a handsome stud on it, who is also wearing a tank top.

Lestat leaves to rent their skates while Louis gives Saniyah a hug.

“Now, who’s this young lady on your shirt? You know I’m old, you have to explain these things to me.”

“Oh, you mean my man, my man, my man?” Saniyah twirls around on the toes of her skates to reveal lettering on the back of her shirt.

“Young Ma,” Louis reads. “I like her swagger.”

“Em-Ay,” Saniyah corrects. “See the period? Abbreviatory.” She turns back around. “But, yeah,” Saniyah winks. “She has a way about her.”

Speaking of: Lestat returns, dangling a pair of skates by the shoelaces in each hand. They move to a bench, while Saniyah scoots her skates awkwardly in place along the crisp of the vinyl carpeting.

“Did you talk to Zaya?” Saniyah asks Lestat, regarding his play-niece.

“Non, we only just arrived. Are you two on or off right now?”

“Off, but I’d consider us besties with benefits. She keeps texting Zion’s bum-ass daddy and my therapist says I need to protect my peace. My puss* says otherwise.”

“Naturally. Long live the sapphic way.” Lestat says before shooting Louis a look that translates to Women! What can you do? Louis does not return the look because to do so would be misogynistic, not to mention hypocritical given the squelchy marsh of their own romantic history. He’ll have to broach it with Lestat later.

The song blaring from the speakers shifts to a synthesizer riff that Louis recognizes as impossible to escape since the early 2000’s, even scaling its way up their tower in Dubai. The gays and transgenders in their twenties and thirties on the skate floor go wild, bending knees and chorusing, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”

“Well, that’s my cue! I’m not about to miss what could be the only Usher all night because y’all took too long getting your skates on. Come see me and my girl,” Saniyah gestures at Zaya, who is in the center of the rink testing the limits of her leather pants by attempting to drop it low on wheels. “Unless we’re skating real close, in which case, f*ck off. She got a babysitter, and I’m trying suck some strap tonight!”

Saniyah glides off, leaving Louis and Lestat to chuckle in the wake of her vulgarity.

“Next thing I knew, she was all up on me screaming,” sings Lestat in an operatic baritone, pausing to look at Louis expectantly as if he’s going to sing along, which he isn’t because he’s allergic to fun.

“Honestly, Louis, I’m surprised you weren’t flattened by the rock Armand had you living under.”

“Very funny,” Louis replies, remembering the time Armand had run a train on Louis that included Lenny Kravitz in the VIP area of a New York City club. Some rock.

It takes an eternity to get their skates on, and Louis pities the mortals lacking in vampire dexterity for whom it must take even longer. From the bench, Louis can see Saniyah gliding at a crouch, nourished legs beautiful in their exertion. Louis gives his own legs a glare before rising to support himself, the electric pink wheels of his skates stilled by the friction of the carpet, the balancing act easy and familiar.

Lestat is still seated and watching the rink with what looks like legitimate uncertainty. He looks cute: expression so, so much younger than his years, rainbow socks gloriously earnest, if the tiniest bit tacky. Lestat extends his arms forward and flexes his hands for the holding.

“Aides-moi/ Help me up.”

Louis does, and Lestat doesn’t hold an ounce of his own weight; giving it all to Louis, knees knocking and shaking like a newborn foal.

For such a confident dancer, Lestat bumbles on a pair of skates. In fact, Louis is genuinely surprised at how bad Lestat is at this while they scoot along the exterior of the rink at a snail’s pace. Lestat grabs at the wall several times to prevent himself from falling.

Balancing the two of them on skates, the balance of their new life settles over Louis. Could they really keep switching? Not the faux submission of being maître without any magic or memory, but the genuine equality Louis has yearned for since his mortal birth. Could Lestat really be his baby? His studious pupil? If Louis teaches him how to skate will Lestat teach him how to fly?

They’ve nearly completed their orbit around the rink when Lestat busts his ass, cussing up a storm en français. Several gays slide over to check on him and Lestat preens under the attention, flipping his hair around and rubbing his wrist that is unlikely to hurt because he’s a vampire and he… He didn’t fall on it. Ah. Louis sees now.

Lestat won’t get up on his own so Louis wrenches him up with enough force to unbalance a human, and sure enough, Lestat rebalances with preternatural skill.

“Cut the bullsh*t, Lestat.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mon cœur,” Lestat smirks before reinstating his carefully constructed sheepishness about “falling.” They begin another circle around the disco ball, Lestat’s skating becoming increasingly competent.

Lestat is a liar. It is as plain as it is simple. Louis had known it from the park bench to the church. He’d lied that Mardi Gras (don’t think about that) and he’d lied during the trial (DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT). Louis had detected lies in the email Lestat had sent them in Dubai, and Louis had—and this is important—come to him anyway. To bed with Lestat is to be lied to, and Louis had accepted that fact of the universe this time last century. Since returning to New Orleans, Lestat’s lies have been pleasantly trivial: claiming to have watched “all eight seasons” of Breaking Bad when he can’t name a single character, saying that he’d seen RuPaul at The Bourbon Pub in 1992 when Lestat had been asleep in the earth until 1995, telling their mailwoman that his accent is Portuguese. Louis doesn’t think Lestat can help it, the lying, perhaps due to an innate personality flaw, possibly as a side effect of being turned during his time as an actor. Louis is pretty sure that lying about that which does not matter is a compromise proposed by Lestat’s wonderful, transgender (irrelevant, but a positive in Louis’ book) therapist, Pat, to whom Louis owes his immortal life. Nearly a year into their reunion and Louis is fairly confident Lestat has not cheated or even lied about his whereabouts. Louis knows because this time, Lestat is around a lot more, and when he does leave on his own, he has the tendency to go into excruciating detail about where he was at, what he did, and what was impressive and/or annoying about the excursion. He’s trying so hard, and Louis loves it, the striving and effort from perhaps the least disciplined individual Louis has ever met. Louis has the tender urge to tell Lestat that he sees him, that he appreciates him, that he loves him. Alas, Emma comes to mind. Maybe if Louis loved him less he’d be able to talk about it more.

Besides, a lie is a lie is a lie, and Lestat hustled the sh*t out the mortal (and immortal, Louis was definitively hoodwinked) inverts at the Earline Skate Center. (And inverted they are! So many queer souls sparkling, transgressing, and attracting slick-wheeled love).

Now that he’s been caught, Lestat has mostly started skating as Louis’d expect him to, fluidly and with vampire grace. Though, Louis notes with smugness, Lestat isn’t nearly as graceful as he or Armand is on a pair of skates. Was the performance to protect himself from Louis’ judgment about his form?

Abandoning the hustle means they can finally show off a little: grooving backwards, holding hands, spinning in and out of each other like figure skaters; like lovers. Louis feels eyes on them, and it’s familiar as the thrumming blood, those center-of-the-dancefloor eyes. Louis wills himself to enjoy it. What’s the point of being beautiful and coordinated forever if he can’t occasionally reap the benefits? Lestat certainly does, admiration for his skill evidently even more intoxicating than the piteous concern he got for pretending to fall down.

The DJ is playing Diana Ross and Louis can’t help but hum a little I’m Coming Out over the dazzling disco beat. Skating fast, he can feel the wind on his lower ass cheeks and he really can’t bring himself to give a f*ck, because here with his man and the music he likes, and the fact that this skating rink is integrated and will not be raided, he might just outskate the melancholy. Until:

“Hot damn! Lewis, right?”

The speaker is behind them, a white twink that’s a friend of a friend of Saniyah’s friend. Louis has a vague memory of deciding not to Big Gulp from him at the bar because the boy looked a little scrawny, like blood loss in combination with his fasting in sexual preparation might take the little guy out. The boy slurs on, ignoring Lestat’s indignant correction of Louis’ name.

“When did you get so thickiana and where have you been hiding all that ass?”

Louis cannot respond because he’s trying to will away his fangs and the urge to decapitate by mouth. He knows that this unprovoked commentary is meant to be construed positively, even as his stomach drops and sucks in instinctively.

Lestat’s eyes have iced over and he takes a firm skate closer to the boy, rising a wheel’s diameter above his full height of (almost, but not quite) six feet and threatening to hover, looking every bit capable of the murders he’s committed.

“In his trousers, obviously. Louis’ beautiful body is no surprise to those of us with the privilege of removing them. You, however…” Lestat tilts his head without breaking the eye contact.

“Didn’t your maman teach you that it’s frightfully gauche to comment on the physiques of strangers?”

This is ironic, since Gabrielle apparently raised Lestat without teaching him a single manner or iota of couth, but Lestat’s fury on his behalf glows pleasurably against Louis’ pelvis anyway.

“Geez, diva. Sorry. It’s a compliment.”

Lestat laughs, but it sounds like a snarl.

“Apology and compliment not accepted. Now f*ck off.”

The boy looks at Louis. “Your boyfriend’s an asshole.”

Goddamn, if Louis doesn’t know it. But it’s hardly this child’s place to tell him so. Not when Lestat’s been so sweet.

“Go on now,” Louis says coldly and the boy skates away. Louis concentrates on the front two wheels of the boy’s left skate and locks them, sending the twink palm first into the linoleum.

Louis skates over to kneel beside him, making eye contact and speaking firmly:

“My husband. And you’ll do well to mind that slick mouth of yours before I let him eat you alive.”

Louis clasps his hand in the young man’s and lifts him to stand steady on his skates.

“You take care now.”

The boy skates off at a run and Louis hears him tell his friend on the other side of the rink, Saniyah said they were getting married in October, not already married and batsh*t f*cking crazy.

Louis snorts. Many things can be true at once.

Louis returns to Lestat who greets him with a sharktooth smile and f*ck me eyes. Lestat kisses him with tongue, dipping him dramatically on his skates and balancing both of their weights in a stunt that would be impossible for the “man” who was stumbling around the rink twenty minutes ago, the idiot. It’s a wonderful kiss.

“Louis, my angel of justice, you were magnificent. You’ve never been lovelier, mon chèr. I dare say, I’ve never been so in love with you as I am this very night.”

Pretty words, good Lord.

“You don’t think they’re too much? The shorts?”

“Non, my heart, I do not.” Lestat meets Louis’ eyes and answers the unspoken question.

“Nor do I find you to be too much inside of them. You know I’ve always been partial to your posterior, even more so when you’re feeding properly.”

Please. Louis kisses his man on the cheek. “Thank you, baby.” He can’t resist. “But I’m not worried about any sort of too much. I know what I got going on back here,” Louis gives Lestat a wicked grin and a little shimmy of ass.

Lestat bursts out laughing, throwing his head back and extending his hand to be held.

“There’s the spark! Now, come, Louis. Those two mortals are about to do amphetamines in the bathroom.”

They skate into the men’s bathroom which has a sign taped over it that says BATHROOM WITH URINAL! ALL ARE WELCOME!

The bathroom smells like sem*n, the urinals empty save two women making out in front of one, and the two stalls occupied. Lestat stops time because as much as he and Armand used to practice, Louis still can’t get the hang of that trick. In the gap between floor and one cubicle, Louis can see the knees of the giver and high heels of the receiver of what is apparently excellent fellati*, if the mind of the woman receiving is to be believed.

“Perhaps I should have lent him my knee pads,” Lestat says with a wink.

Louis unlocks the other stall with his mind gift and swings open the door.

Two hom*osexuals in twin mesh tank tops are frozen mid-snort of ADHD (something Louis would consider twenty-first century mortal pathology of regular human behavior if he wasn’t positive that Lestat was afflicted) medication off of a toilet paper dispenser. Louis locks the door, Lestat resumes time, and the mortals startle at their presence in the cramped stall.

“Thank you for inviting us to share your drugs,” Louis says, balancing kindness and sensuality in his tone and infusing his words with syrupy spell gift. He addresses the burlier, hairier gay whom Louis would categorize as a bear if he still ran in those sorts of circles and cared about that sort of thing.

“Can my husband taste you?”

The bear nods, eyes a little twitchy from the adderall and movements a little sluggish from the magic. Lestat’s fangs extend.

Louis turns to the smaller one. “May I?”

The little one angles his head to bare his throat and Louis bites, soft as a kiss, and the mortal’s eyes roll back.

A Petit Coup (or Big Gulp in modern English), with drugs in the bloodstream takes an incredible amount of restraint, which means that Louis on an empty stomach has historically been terrible at it. Lestat had never bothered to teach him Le Petit Coup during their first marriage. To do so would have lost him the Is Louis Allowed To Abstain From Murder argument, so it was obviously out of the question. Armand had tried to teach him, but Louis had killed enough people by accident and self-destructed accordingly that Armand removed Louis’ victims before they died pretty much every time. This was before Dubai of course, back when they still did drugs and went out in public. Louis didn’t get the hang of it until Lestat taught him the Big Gulp this time around, making him practice until he could do it by himself and actually enjoy the drugs and alcohol the sip provided. For someone who would never allow Louis to open his own door or light his own cigarette, twenty-first century Lestat sure waxes on about the importance of self-sufficient feeding. Of course, ensnaring his hunger instincts is a lot easier when Louis isn’t ravenous, which he is, because Louis prefers to exert on an empty stomach.

Louis is not going to kill this young man, whom he’s selected on purpose to increase this likelihood. The boy is beautiful, and shining with life ahead of him, and Louis trusts himself to find gentleness amidst the blood frenzy and preserve this mortal. He’s also tiny, which is convenient for Louis, who really doesn’t need more than a sip of human blood in the sort of outfit he’s wearing right now. Since that particular truth does not promote body liberation, Louis can tell Lestat that the littlest of gulps he’ll take is for the boy’s safety and the fact that Louis is a lightweight when it comes to stimulants.

Taking his sip is challenging, but not impossible, because Louis is nothing if not disciplined. He can feel the adderall from the first drop on his tongue, all of his vampire senses standing at attention to accomplish the task precisely and efficiently. Five… four… three… two… one… one and a half… one and—Louis pulls away, wiping his mouth and cutting his thumb in the same motion, rubbing a little of his own blood to heal the boy’s wound in the next.

Lestat is finished, leaning against the bathroom wall and vaping, watching at Louis with blown pupils.

“Fini/Finished?” Lestat says loudly, presumably emboldened by the stimulants. “Ha! Hilarious of you to think I’m about to let you get away with such meagerness, mais c'est bien/ but it’s fine, I brought plenty of blood. Allons-y/ Let’s go.

Louis grimaces, but digs five dollars out of Lestat’s pocket and presses it into the hand of his victim. “Forget all about us and go get y’allselves a big co*ke. Not diet,” Louis adds with vampiric persuasion.

They leave the bathroom and skate to the locker where Lestat is keeping his tiny bisexual backpack that contains three opaque bottles: one full of thawed human blood, two filled with blood from a cow that Lestat paid someone in Westwego to give alcohol poisoning before draining. Not for the first time, Louis wonders about the calorie content of alcoholic animal blood, but this is a question he’ll never get an answer to now that he’s left Armand and his experiments. Louis can’t google it and he definitely can’t broach the subject with Lestat, who wouldn’t understand at all and would probably make him drink all three bottles as penance for thinking about restricting. Louis has no plans to throw a dinner tantrum tonight (though he’s pointedly ignoring the human bottle, Lestat is delusional if he thinks Louis’s going to drink it in public like this) because he is a little parched from all the exercise and the drugs in his system hobble his restraint and demand a little liquor down the hatch.

Lestat drinks the human bottle, oblivious to the blood on his teeth, and ranting about not wanting to negate the effects of the speed with alcohol because it is a depressant, Louis! And depression has no place in this roller skating establishment. They finish their dinner (Fine. Louis finishes much of his dinner and ignores the narrowing of Lestat’s eyes when he stows the bottle and notices its weight) and return to the rink.

Alcohol makes Louis fuzzy and desperate, and the next few hours tumble out like loving conversation. In Dubai, Louis would fantasize about parties with Lestat, even if their spontaneity was obnoxious back in the twenties. Louis never felt more frustrated with Armand than in a glittering group; the two of them staring at each other, each waiting on the other to bend the crowd in their favor and bring new life and voice to the endless, dull silence. There was no silence with Lestat, who was yelling over the music to anyone who would listen about the talents of his and Louis’ imaginary medical aesthetician and, of course, the irrefutable excellence of Glee.

Lestat has been telling a beautiful bald someone about Rachel Berry with single-minded clarity and focus for about ten minutes now. Louis tunes in and out, but when he pays attention again Lestat is talking very fast saying:

“Well, as they say, the devil sure can play the fiddle.”

Lestat smiles widely (Radiantly! God damn), then winks at Louis. He’s got that right.

The drugs loosen Louis up enough to find himself voguing old way on his skates to the adoration of the crowd. When Dance for You comes on, Louis is loose enough to rollerdance on Lestat in a way that would have gotten them arrested seventy years ago, and has even the most sexuality liberated of the party’s attendees blushing and looking away. Across the rink, Zaya and Saniyah are skating very closely and Louis spares a prayer for Saniyah to get lucky tonight alongside him.

The bubble pops when a mortal starts screaming bloody murder.

The music cuts off and the lights come on, revealing to the humans what their vampire eyes could see that whole time, that a person (whom Louis can only assume identifies as nonbinary by their haircut) has fallen on their arm and broken it, the shocking white of bone puncturing the skin, freeing the blood to pool on the floor like draping velvet. The mortals gasp and cuss, their minds and voices chattering with hushed fear and empathy and Louis feels… absolutely nothing.

Innate coldness is one of the more serious obstacles to happiness he’s encountered along the Devil’s Road, and Louis is so very frigid that he can take an even further step back, see that he’s being callous, dislike this about himself, and carry on being cruel. No one has died, and Louis has obviously had worse. A glance at Lestat’s blank face tells Louis that Lestat feels the same, monstrosity rising up in both of them like arctic waves. Then their eyes meet and they do something amazing: they try. They try to feel for this mortal in pain, to drag up the humanity buried centuries deep and… They fail. Or at least Louis does, craving a cigarette more than anything else. Lestat, in a move that makes Louis wonder whether the whole concept of Maker’s Silence is just another one of his lies, brings two fingers to his lips in a cigarette motion, and they leave the Earline Skate Center without saying goodbye, skating past the empty rental station and into the parking lot where the attendant is currently trying to get that androgyne’s bone back inside their arm.

The cigarette is lovely, and so is the flight (provided Louis does not think about the year 1931) that they take home because they’re too f*cked up to drive. Arms around Lestat, skates wheeling in the wind with the lights of New Orleans beneath them, Louis tries not to let the blues get to him; to feel like the dead f*cking weight that he is. Head against his husband's chest, Louis allows himself his proudness, even as pride is for mortals, not monsters.