Chapter Text
Louis is dizzy with the reality. They’ve made it.
They’ve had it out, the tears, the anger, the regrets and might-have-beens. They’ve spent time apart and crashed back together and screamed and cried and held each other. They’ve spent years trying and failing to fix things they’d broken, and coming to terms with the reality of going on anyway. They’re ready.
Their beautiful eternity starts with them sprawled on each other in the entryway of Lestat’s Garden District mansion, where they’d landed after Louis had stood on his threshold and confessed his undying love. Lestat had stared, eyes welling red, then yanked him through the door so hard Louis had come off-balance and taken Lestat to the floor with him. Louis had barely managed to kick the door shut before Lestat had collapsed on his chest, weeping and clinging to him.
They probably could have gotten up from the carpet after the first time they came, rutting inelegantly against each other, crying and kissing madly and gasping into each other’s mouths. They definitely should have made for the bedroom after the fourth round, Louis incoherent with joy and ecstatic release while Lestat took him on his back and sobbed praise in his ear.
But they’re still here, clothes and necks shredded, grinning stupidly at each other, nuzzling their faces together. There’s blood and come all over the rug.
“I want to play a game,” Lestat says, and drags his tongue up Louis’s neck. “The game is called ‘Louis de Pointe du Lac gets whatever he wants, forever’.”
Louis shudders. He understands what Lestat is asking for, here; God knows they’ve talked about it enough. Lestat wants to know that Louis loves him in the same burning, crazy, frantic way that he loves Louis. Louis wants to know Lestat is willing to break all his old rules for him.
He noses at Lestat’s silken throat. “Love me, and only me. That’s what I want.”
Lestat sighs, long and soft, like he’s letting out a breath he’s held for a hundred years. “Anything else, chéri?”
Louis smiles; he can’t help it. “Drink from me.”
Lestat whines. “I’ve taken too much already.”
Louis shakes his head. “I ate about four tourists on the way over. Enough for two.”
“Oh, Louis,” Lestat moans, sex-drunk and indulgent, teeth already teasing at his throat. “I’m going to get so fat if you let me do this all the time. Would you like that? Having me here waiting for you, fed to the brim, lying around lazy and hard for you whenever you want me?”
“My little housewife,” Louis murmurs. He feels dazed and sticky and a little insane. Lestat whimpers and sinks his teeth back into his neck. “I’ll hunt and bring it home for you. Spoil you rotten.” Lestat is drinking in earnest now, sucking out the blood of the drunkest frat boys from the ghost tour stop at their old place. He was hesitant earlier tonight, but now he’s gluttonous, slurping at Louis’s jugular, hands eager in his hair.
It’s a long while until he pulls off, and when he does Lestat is radiant, pupils big and black, blood dripping down his chin. Greedy and indulged. Louis loves him like that.
Louis grins. “One more thing I want, mari. Levitate us to the coffin room?”
“Oh, mon cher,” Lestat moans, floating them both towards the stairs, Louis caged safely in his arms. “How I’ve missed you.”
So it’s been close to a year of that, now, of heaven. They bicker and fuck and dance and scream and sing and fight and make up constantly. Louis has never been so happy.
They’ve been taking a “week off,” which is silly, but they do it about once a month anyway, lock the doors and shut the curtains and gorge on each other until they nearly lose their minds.
The goddamn doorbell rings right as Louis is teetering on the edge in their luxurious bedchamber, appointed flawlessly for sex and nothing else, Lestat buried deep inside him, babbling French in his ear.
“Fucking salesmen, I’ll kill them, I swear to- oh, oh, oh, oh fuck,” Louis slurs, as Lestat takes a bite of his neck and rams up so deep he can almost taste it. He comes all over both of them, one hand in Lestat’s hair and one with his nails dug through the skin of his back. Lestat follows with a violent shudder and a howl of his name, and slumps onto him after, stolen blood purring contentedly in his veins.
The doorbell rings again, and again, and again. In the back of Louis’s mind, which is soupy with pleasure and Lestat, there’s something vaguely familiar about the presence outside the house. But before he can pull the thread-
“I’ll get it, mon coeur.” Lestat drops a kiss on his forehead and slips lightning-fast out of the room. Louis stretches and looks at the ceiling and soaks in the sensation of his aching body. He smiles.
“Jesus Christ,” Daniel says. He’s been hoping to finally meet the object of Louis’ affections for over fifty years, but he hadn’t anticipated it going like this, which is maybe a failure on his part to expect the obvious. Lestat has opened the door shirtless, neck covered in bitemarks, stinking of blood and sex. There are even more bites over his hipbones, above the obscenely low waist of his loose sweatpants. He’s about as pretty as Louis had said, though he’s not really Daniel’s type.
“We do not wish to buy your vacuum cleaners,” Lestat says. He moves to shut the door.
Daniel pushes forward before he can. “Uh, I’m, no, I’m Daniel Molloy? Armand’s fledgling?” He knows Lestat can tell he’s a vamp. Asshole.
Lestat pauses and looks him up and down. “Oh.” So much judgmental energy in that one word. He and Louis really are soulmates. “You are Armand’s one and only fledgling?”
“Hey, hey, Les, be nice,” Louis says, appearing out of nowhere in the doorway. “Daniel. I didn’t know you were in town. Do you want to come in?”
Daniel stares a little as he enters the house. There’s two things he registers at once, both equally fascinating. The first is that Lestat’s whole expression melted to simpering adoration as soon as he heard Louis’ voice, and now he seems to have forgotten that Daniel is there at all. The second is that Louis is glowing, like a blushing bride, his face so soft and unguarded that he’s almost unrecognizable. He has bitemarks on his neck to match Lestat’s, and the air of freshly-fuckedness surrounds him too, which is no surprise. They’re wearing matching rings.
Daniel starts to wonder if this was a terrible idea.
The house is predictably gorgeous and lavish and creepy. Daniel notes with a roll of his eyes that the couch in the parlor is tipped over on its back, and there’s a notable crack in the half-paneling along the hall.
Have you guys done anything other than screw and make doe eyes in the past year? He only means to send it to Louis, but he’s still getting the hang of aiming his messages. Lestat immediately responds, Yes. We have had endless heartfelt conversations and gone to all our favorite operas and drained each other to the bone in slow, sensual cycles for hours on end.
Ignore whatever filth he just sent you, Louis says, twining his fingers with Lestat’s. Out loud, he says, “I must apologize for the state of the house. We were not expecting guests.”
Lestat is staring at the side of Louis’ neck and thinking dreamily about biting him while he fucks him from behind. Daniel can’t tell if it’s a memory or just a plan for later in the day. He does know, given Louis’s abilities, that Lestat is absolutely capable of blocking his thoughts from Daniel’s view if he wants to. So far, Louis’s description of him is surprisingly accurate.
“So is this, you know,” Daniel says, watching Lestat pull a sweater that had been tossed on the couch over his bare chest with an exaggerated sigh, “just a regular Tuesday?”
“It’s our honeymoon,” Louis says. Next to him, Lestat’s eyes go soft and liquid and Daniel receives a number of images of bloody teeth and cum-splattered abs and kiss-marked necks. Great.
“Uh-huh,” Daniel says. “You’ve been on your honeymoon for, what, ten months?”
“We’re making up for lost time.” There’s that glow again. Lestat is remembering a luscious-looking getaway in a white-curtained cabana over a gleaming azure ocean, Louis curved against him, smiling in a way that could end the world.
Daniel is developing a headache, which he’s pretty sure shouldn’t be possible. “I was wrong, you’re not a telenovela. You’re Penthouse Letters. I’m happy for you lucky fuckers.”
Louis laughs, soft. Mercifully, Lestat turns off the tap of images of newlywed bliss.
“Thank you,” Louis says. “Now, not that we mind the intrusion-“
We mind it, Lestat says.
“-but I imagine you wouldn’t show up on our doorstep without a reason. What’s going on?”
Daniel shrugs. “I was in town. Thought I’d say hi, finally meet the famous Lestat.” Not exactly a lie.
“Well, you’re welcome to stay - you can take my coffin,” Louis says. “I’ll share Lestat’s.” Lestat nuzzles him and Louis wraps a fond hand around his waist.
“That’s okay, I have a hotel,” Daniel says.
“It’s no problem,” Louis says. “We share most nights anyways.”
Daniel sighs. He’s not sure he’d survive the jealousy he’d feel at hearing their hearts in blissful harmony, maker and fledgling nestled together in silk lining, not to mention the insult that it’s only due to him they’re here in the first place. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Ah,” Lestat says. “Yes. Armand will most likely not appear in this house, if he makes a visit.”
Daniel pinches the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t even been thinking about it that much.
Well, in for a penny. “Have you heard from him?”
Louis and Lestat exchange a look, a silent conversation passing between them, telepathy or no.
“We’ve reached a … fragile understanding,” Louis says, finally. “Trying to be friends. He’s very lonely, and - we’ve all done terrible things. Lost people horribly. And he’s alone.”
And yet he won’t see me. He’s wallowing in it now. He looks again at the livid marks healing on both of their necks, the aura of sated, pleased vampire.
“Is that why you’re here?” Louis says, very gentle and sorrowful.
Daniel snaps, a little. “I want my happy ending, god damn it,” he spits. “I want your stupid toxic codependent murderous arsonous eternal love. I want my maker.”
He … hadn’t really meant to say that. He’s been eating too many people hopped up on kratom at interstate rest stops lately, it’s bad for his self-control.
“Oh, pauvre petit,” Lestat says, with what might be genuine pity. Daniel resists the urge to ask Louis if he thinks killing him would be easier the second time.
Louis, meanwhile, glances at Lestat with a soft little expression that makes Daniel want to punch something. “We could-“
“Mm,” Lestat says. “We’re due for a vacation anyways, aren’t we, cher?” Louis sighs, almost imperceptibly, but Daniel can see the stupid fucking hearts in his eyes.
“We’ll help you find him,” Louis says. “When can we leave?”
Daniel almost cries with relief, which is idiotic, what does he owe these goddamn drama queens but his own predicament? “Whenever. I’m ready.”
Oh, cher, you’ve got it bad, Lestat says in his head.
Fuck off, Daniel says back, not even caring that Louis probably hears it too. If Armand doesn’t want him after this, well, there’s not much more hell he can put himself through. That’s what he’s hoping, anyway.