Chapter Text
He can feel it coming. All night, he knows. But the sun pulls on him, and he lays his head down to rest, and then…
…it’s like he’s burning from the feeling of hands on him. They cradled his head.
And the whispers in his ear. My child. And the coldness of his breath. Kneeling at his altar. In the moonlight. Murmuring a prayer. Hoping—for mercy, for grace. Even now, still hoping.
Lestat.
Oh, he thinks, maybe if I am good he’ll let me go, but he doesn’t know how to be good. So he writhes in his grip and snaps at the hand when it wanders close to touch him, and bites at his fingers, and curses at him.
But the dream spirals downward into the darkness that follows, like it always does—
Les, please.
The wolfkiller becomes a wild and desperate thing , twisting in his arms, crying and screaming out. Jaws pulling back with rage and madness, how dare you, and hatred, how could you.
This thing snarls and bares its teeth. Skin like ivory and eyes that were blue as a lake. Naked in the moonlight. In the moonlight, this thing like an animal, struggling and writhing to spare itself from the butcher.
No, the thing cries out, no, no, no…
Les—
A pain through him, a pain, searing and ripping—through him, through him—
A voice: stubborn wolfkiller, will you give in at last?
Sucking the blood out of him. A searing pain, everywhere.
The voice: will you, I wonder? Or will you hold on another week? A month? Do you love it? I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
He gasped and sobbed, face pressed to his neck.
I’m sorry, wolfkiller. I can’t keep you here any longer.
The paralysis as his hands and feet went cold. Blood rattling in his ears. Body and soul pinned to the ground under him. Can’t stop him. Can’t stop him. You did nothing, nothing.
Les, wake up!
He startles awake. And he cries out in fear, eyes bursting open. And he fists his hands in the bedsheets, looking around wildly with bloodshot eyes, looking for Louis, for Louis.
Things are different now, Louis isn’t always there. Sometimes he’s in New Orleans. Sometimes he’s in Dubai. Sometimes he only talks to Lestat through Facetime. Sometimes he’s dead in San Francisco. What year is it? What year, what year?
A hand cups under his chin. He flinches from it, no, and the hand withdraws, but then, suddenly, there is Louis above him. Perfectly imperfect, with hair mussed from sleep, with eyes a little too bright, with a slant of concern to his mouth, and a crack in his voice—”It’s okay, it’s okay. Just a dream, honey. Only a dream.”
At this sight, Lestat cannot help but smile. His guardian angel of the daylight hours, framed in the blue light that seeps in through the dark curtains, the light of the evening as it gives way to dusk. Dressed in a red sleep shirt that drapes down beyond his clavicles. Lestat lets his eyes slide down it.
“A dream,” he says, from a voice that sounds far away, “Well, I must still be having it, to see such a handsome man in my bed.”
Louis’ mouth twists with emotion—Lestat cannot say if it is a good one. But he leans closer, a tender fragility to him, which Lestat is sure he can find mirrored in himself. They are a mosaic of cracks in a church window which will never break, they are the crumbling walls of an ancient house which will never fall.
“Come here, chéri, ” Lestat murmurs with a sultry tone, perfectly soft and low, sure to send the blood in Louis’ veins flowing lower.
Louis sucks his lip between his teeth, staring at him. Lestat expects that he must be feeling electric, but when he responds to him he actually asks, “Are you sure?”
It’s more humiliating than any day spent with his Maker, more horrible than the snap of the wolf’s teeth at his heels. A new warmth in Louis that sometimes borders on coddling , almost designed to harm him with a secret barb, but the worst part is no, he isn’t sure.
It’s automatic, to reach up and stroke his face, and say, “What a silly question, mon amour, ” to say, “With you, I am always sure.”
Louis’ expression softens, which is a bad sign. His fears are confirmed when Louis pulls away and off the bed.
“It's okay if you don't wanna tell me about it,” says Louis, standing framed in the glow of the curtains, a carefully neutral expression adorning him. “That's fine. But maybe you wanna write it down? Or talk about it to someone?”
Is it truly tenderness or is he only speaking tenderly, afraid of triggering Lestat into anger by stepping over an unknown landmine?
With a growing sense of dread, he wonders what he said when he was still in the throes of the dream, to have Louis acting this way.
“My dear, these events happened nearly 300 years ago. I'm sure it goes without saying that the details have escaped me over time. I couldn't write a memoir half as intriguing as yours—it'd be full of holes.” He layers condescension thickly into his tone and his words, in hopes that Louis will take offense and get distracted by an argument.
He knows Louis would have fallen for it in the 10s, the 20s, but one look at him says this is no longer the case. His Louis, older now and wiser, gives him a look so full of love it makes his heart clench.
“And yet you just had another nightmare about it,” he says. “So that can't be the whole truth, dear.”
Lestat settles back onto the pillows, letting his eyes fall away from him. He feels a lump in his throat. He doesn’t mean to play these avoidant, manipulative games—he does it without realizing, sometimes. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to lie to you. I just—I don't want to talk about it.”
“I know,” says Louis, but it's not acceptance and it's not a way out.
They are together again, but ‘together’ is a tremulous word, sticky with uncertainty.
They speak, but don’t always talk. They hear, but don’t always listen.
Louis asked once if Lestat wanted to accompany him to visit the cemetery, where three generations of Pont-du-lac’s are laid to rest side by side: his mother, his sister, and her youngest daughter.
Lestat declined, and it wasn’t graceful—he stumbled over an ugly apology, feeling shaken until Louis pressed a kiss to his lips despite it, telling him it was fine, he didn’t have to.
How could it be fine?
Lestat felt like taking it back in an instant, felt like giving in to whatever Louis wanted, so that he wouldn’t lose him again, wouldn’t watch him walk out that door without knowing for certain if he was going to come back.
The quick flash of anger-fear-jealousy that runs through him is just as familiar as the sour taste of rat blood.
The next dream is worse. Having these events on his mind during the night brings them up to the surface like bile the next day, even minor things he thought he had forgotten.
But first there is the smell, and that he could never forget. The stench of them rotting. Like meat. Like garbage.
He remembers gagging. He remembers throwing up all his food.
Here’s what is new: Magnus wiping the vomit from his mouth with the back of a gnarled hand; then running that same hand through his hair as he kissed him gently, first on his forehead, then his cheek, and then his lips.
Something sweet in the midst of savagery, leaving him dazed and confused. The first scrap of comfort he had felt since the sun set six days ago.
He remembers that he did not try to fight him off, or even pull away. When Magnus pushed him down onto his back, he didn’t try to stop him. There wouldn’t have been a point, but he didn’t even try.
He does not wake up screaming or in a panic. He wakes up slowly, pulled easily from sleep, and it’s like everything is wrong and nothing is wrong, and he looks to his left.
The bed is empty. Louis took a private jet back to Dubai last night, had a viewing scheduled for a new art piece, a portrait of the virgin Mary, and he’d said, “There’s nothing special about it, and I like that. The Madonna never looked so human.”
Lestat stares at the empty space for a long time.
Louis prefers a bed. “I don’t do coffins anymore,” he’d said, when Lestat asked him why, years before the book came out, before all the secrets of Louis’ life were laid bare. “Haven’t slept in one in 77 years.”
“Why?” Lestat asked, scandalized. Who could prefer the barren landscape of a bed to the warm intimacy of a coffin?
Louis had pulled him by the hand to sit, and Lestat did so, feeling uncomfortable but also curious about this change in him. And Louis clasped their hands tightly together, and let his other hand curl around his own ankle.
“They didn’t banish me after the trial. They kept me. In the theatre. In the morgue. I was a corpse, buried alive. Buried under rocks. I was going to starve to death. I screamed for days. Armand told me he could hear it. Screaming from starvation. If I opened my mouth the rocks would get in. They’re in my ankles, now. I was buried for a week before he freed me.”
Lestat didn’t know what to say to console him—he felt tongue-tied, and thought maybe the end of this thread would be an awkward silence and a more awkward night.
But then Louis sniffled, and suddenly the thread snapped and Lestat was pulling him in by the elbows, by the shoulders, until their bodies were flush together, as one, and Louis’ head was on his shoulder, and Lestat was stroking his back.
Despite this, when Louis wakes up screaming from a nightmare it’s never about the coffin.
Lestat doesn’t ask about Louis’ dreams anymore, because the first time he did, when he pulled Louis close and wrapped him in a hug and asked him what it was about, Louis said: “You.”
It's a horrible truth. His bad dreams are about Magnus, but Louis—Louis’ bad dreams are about Lestat.
The worst nightmare was—oh god, the first one, about two weeks ago.
It was unexpected, and it was quick, on his back among the corpses—and he just woke up in a puddle of sweat, his nerves tingling, the phantom pressure of hands on his hips, and phantom pain striking through him.
He hadn’t screamed, nor made a sound. So he looked to his left, and saw Louis still asleep there, like an angel in their bed.
Lestat could not wake him up. Couldn’t wake him and say, “Louis will you hold me?” Couldn’t explain: “I’m fine, just a nightmare. Just need to be held.”
He couldn’t do that.
So instead he turned away and silently cried into the crook of his own arm—for hours, for hours.
While Louis is in Dubai art trading, he will not answer his phone. Lestat knows he will have to wait until the sun comes up.
He paces around his flat, drumming his fingers against his thighs with nervous energy left over from the dream. Eventually he finds himself in his rocking chair with his tablet in his lap.
“Dear Siri,” he says. “What is the cure for bad dreams?”
Siri says: nightmares can have many causes. Certain lifestyle changes such as cutting out caffeine, alcohol, and cigarettes, limiting screen time before bed, and reducing stress and anxiety may help prevent nightmares.
Lestat thinks about it, but these factors simply do not apply. He isn’t stressed—he lives in a handsome flat in the quarter and Louis is with him again, after eight decades—he doesn’t drink or smoke but even if he did it wouldn’t affect him, and he certainly doesn’t spend too much time on his ipad, he’s composing!
The only fault with Siri is she’s made for humans and can only give human answers. Not always helpful for someone who’s lived nearly 3 centuries.
“Siri,” he says, “Why am I having bad dreams lately?”
Nightmares are most commonly caused by anxiety. Additionally, stress caused by traumatic events such as the death of a loved one, sexual abuse, or a car accident, can cause intense and vivid dreams.
Lestat flings the ipad away. Then he goes out to the park and drains a pretty couple.
“Shouldn’t have been out so late,” he tells them, after the last drop is sucked dry and they are pale, empty, things. “You never know who’s watching.”