Chapter Text
To Lestat’s initially eager surprise, Gabrielle has been adapting remarkably well to the twenty-first century and all of its many amenities.
As many slippery slopes tend to go, she first became reluctantly fond of these novelties, and then completely enamoured by their complexity. He’s keeping a list of the ones she’s found interesting enough to mention. Ubers. Vape pens, and then, in turn, nicotine gum. All-you-can-eat pan-Asian buffets with three-star TripAdvisor reviews (Clearly more for the atmosphere than the food.) Leaving three-star TripAdvisor reviews. The Do Not Disturb button on her fourth iPhone of the year— an apt technological adaptation of the state she’d been in since at least the night Lestat was born, if not before. Local feminist punk bands, of which she’s so far killed two obnoxious blonde lead singers and slept with four.
The latter, presumably, is why she’s decided to join him on tour. Easy vocalist access. Either that or she’s grown tired of living on the blood of jungle animals; twenty-something year old drug-ridden blood is some much-needed variety. Or maybe she’s now preferring to sustain herself near-solely on spite instead of blood, and just to piss Lestat off, she’s here to act as a Louis deterrent. They don’t seem to get along too well; so long as she’s there, he’s not setting foot on that bus. Well, if so, she’s doing a terrible job. She usually wakes before Lestat, giving herself plenty of time to take a brisk sunset walk around the city of the week, gather whatever she needs for the night, and fuck off to God knows where before he’s even opened his eyes. So he can do as he pleases— Louis could come around whenever he wanted, and then some. She’d never be around to find out.
He hasn’t yet, but that’s neither here nor there.
When she’d first shown up, he’d assumed she was there for emotional support. (Scratch that one, too.) She certainly is not here for the shows; after the first night, she has not once stayed to watch one all the way through. He’s tried to convince her, but every time she ends up sitting in the wings pointedly looking at some novel or other instead of at him, and he finds himself thrown so violently back to childhood that he ends up spending the better half of the set sulking on the other side of the stage. By the time he slinks his way back over, she’s already gone.
He’d asked her again that evening when he caught her at the bus’ kitchenette table filling in a crossword. She’d looked up at him and, in lieu of a hello or a good evening or anything resembling a normal greeting, he got “Idyllic place? Six letters?”
“Hmm,” he said through an unsatisfying mouthful of lukewarm O-negative in a coffee mug, taking a second to turn it over in his head. “Xanadu.”
She tilted her head, unconvinced, and then wrote it down and smiled at him(!). Finally: “Thank you. Good evening, Lestat.”
“Buongiorno, Gabrielle.”
She’d clearly been up for a while: her hair was buzzed in the way she liked to keep it now, almost to the point of there being barely any hair at all, and she was dressed, if you can call it that. Lestat certainly wouldn’t; her collection of board shorts made him want to claw out his own eyes. She’d also evidently already gone hunting: there was a real pink, almost humanlike glow to her features, the telltale mark of satisfaction.
She had no mug of her own, but was eyeing his up all the same, presumably just for somewhere to look that wasn’t at his prematurely disappointed expression. He’d offered it to her, sat down across from her, happy to bask in her company for as long as she’d allow.
She took the mug, smiling gratefully at him, and continued with her crossword. He added that to the mental list: puzzles of any kind, but she’d developed a real affinity for the wordy ones. He wasn’t anywhere near as quick at solving them, but he wanted to help, as always. If he pretended hard enough he could turn this into a good enough imitation of a morning ten times more mundane than it actually was and live there for a minute instead. Would she have enjoyed crosswords, he thinks, at their great long dining table in the Chateau, had they existed back then— or, more pertinently, had his father not been around to rip them out of her hands?
She clearly did not share in his fantasies. She lived only in the present; she was still smiling. May as well strike while the iron is hot. “You will be staying to watch my set tonight, won’t you?”
“Maybe,” she’d said, characteristically noncommittal. “I’d like to.”
It went like this every time. He knew the dance well. “I’d like you to. The crowd tonight is sure to be the most enthusiastic so far.”
“Mmm.”
“It would mean a lot to me,” he’d said, and not even in a manipulative way. In a cool, unbothered, couldn’t-fucking-care-less-at-all-if-you-come-or-not way.
“I’ll try my best to make it, Lestat,” she’d said. Which, of course, meant No.
Today is the second of their three shows in a too-small goth club in Kansas City, which is, to his great and amused surprise, not actually in Kansas at all. (Americans!) It is, according to his manager, supposed to fit about seven thousand people, and they’d sold out both nights within a few hours. The place has seen better days. The floor of the pit is sticky and stained with approximately four million types of sugary liquor; the stage is covered in tape residue and slightly raked so he constantly feels as though he’s about to fall headfirst into the crowd.
He loves it, feels at home immediately. He orders ten shots of tequila to the green room for the band and knocks three back himself straight away, half for the buzz and half just to feel included, grimacing through the feeling of the salt on his teeth and the acid-cement slide of it down his throat. He keeps an eye on the door at all times in case Gabrielle feels like surprising him, like she’ll show up, arms wide, ready to rock. Of course, she doesn’t; he takes a fourth shot, says Fuck it, let’s get this show on the road, shall we, mes amis?
When they get onstage the crowd is every bit as good as the others have been so far, if not better: loud, enthusiastic, screaming every word back in his face as passionately as if they’d written the songs themselves, grabbing at his heels like a pack of— well, he needs not go there. There are two girls clinging onto the barricade that have been in the same spot for both nights so far, and one of them— bleach-blonde, decked out in leather and chains— still almost passes out the first time he grabs her hand. She’s fun to play with. They all are; they love him so much he could be drunk on that instead, doesn’t even need the liquor.
Later, when he goes out to meet the stragglers still waiting outside after the venue’s curfew, the girls from the barricade are standing right at the front with a metallic Sharpie in hand, practically bouncing with excitement. The two of them can’t be older than twenty-five, he guesses, and they’re staring at him, different colours of perfectly messed-up hair catching the light, pupils blown wide and glitter covered-eyes shining with anticipation as if they’re about to meet God.
“I fuckin’ knew you’d finally come out,” says the blonde one. “Or, I mean, I was hoping, but I knew you wouldn’t leave us hanging.”
“Never,” he says, flashes a hint of fang, makes a strong second of eye contact with them all in turn. “Thank you so much for coming to see us.”
“I love you so much. You inspired me to start making my own music. Yours literally saved my life.”
“And mine,” he replies, and takes the Sharpie to sign the band’s logo on her twenty-dollar tour poster, and then on her arm. She shakes her head when he asks if she wants it made out to any specific name, says no, just write whatever the fuck you want, go crazy!. Big swooping L, sharp V, little dots above it so it looks like a face with fangs. That’s his new thing, they fucking eat it up. She asks for a lyric underneath; he obliges; she says she’s going to get it tattooed the next day. A good number of them have already. There’s a rather significant number of young adults walking around with lyrics he’s written about people they’ve never met inked in big, bold letters on their arms next to hearts, or bats, or knives. He thinks it’s beautiful. “Oh, do!” he says. “And send a picture to me on Instagram so I can add it to the— the Stories.”
“It’s been so good having you in town,” her friend pipes up. She’s taller, with truly blood-red hair and dark-skinned arms covered wrist-to-elbow in silver bracelets. “Insane, really. Is it true you’ve never been to Missouri before?”
“Non, but I regret that deeply. Your state is full of such— what is the phrase?— such hidden gems,” he says, thinking fondly of the sights he’d seen in the past few days, which is to say: the inside of several gay bars, two 7-11s, and not much else.
“That’s so funny,” the redhead replies. “Her new FWB— ” and she pronounces it just like that, like the full words are beneath her, eff-double-u-bee with all of the roll-off-the-tongue grace of a piece of roadkill, “— said exactly the same thing the other day, right?”
Blondie shoots her back a glare that could melt through steel and shakes her head in a way that she likely thinks is subtle. In her mind, he sees sudden and abrupt memories of a night of passion clouded with excitement and guilt brimming in equal measure. Trouble in paradise, he thinks, suddenly absolutely dying to find out what the problem is. Is he witnessing the beginning stages of a breakup? And he didn’t even have to lift a finger to cause it! But Blondie doesn’t seem to want to stick around to let him be privy to this argument, which is a shame; she turns back to smile at him, face a few shades paler, and takes one last pouty peace-sign selfie with a shaking hand.
“We’ll be here tomorrow,” says Bracelets, wrapping an arm around her friend’s shoulder and walking her back out of the alleyway before anything can get interesting.
He’s leaning on the wall after the rest of the fans trickle out, all autographed out and nearly down to the filter on his third cigarette in five minutes, when he sees Gabrielle rounding a nearby corner, head tipped back mid-laugh, with what is clearly her short blonde girl of the week on her arm. He briefly contemplates turning around and smacking his head as hard as he can into the bricks behind him. Gabrielle doesn’t see him, or she doesn’t act like she can see him, as she leads whoever it is she’s with towards the buses. He cranes his neck to get a good look (cool, unbothered, couldn’t fucking care less at ALL) but fails; this paramour is short, and they’re far away, and Gabrielle is fast on her feet tonight, faster than she should be able to get away with. So the girl is drunk, or high, or both. Too out of it to notice. Whatever. Hopefully this means she’ll be out cold before he gets back to the bus. Asleep? Dead? He watches the bus door slam shut behind them both with a scowl, crossing his fingers and wishing for the latter.
And as if on cue, before he can start wallowing, Alex kicks open the stage door. Both of his hands are occupied by assorted guitar cables and the like: he likes, apparently, to be helpful, thinks he’s doing the cute new little stagehand a real favour by taking her job for her. Alex is hardly a subtle man. Lestat thinks, not for the first time, that he should be extremely grateful his thoughts are only being broadcasted to a few people on their team or he’d be, as TC likes to put it, shit out of luck.
Alex smiles when they make eye contact in a way Lestat chooses to process as I’m glad to see you! and not Thank God, there you are.
“Thank God,” he says, “there you are. Larry’s been trying to find you for forty minutes. We’re all going out.”
What happened to Hello, Lestat, would you care to accompany us for a wonderful night of substance abuse and karaoke to celebrate your fantastic performance, and we’re so very grateful to have you making us obscene levels of gay-goth-famous?
“We hire a very qualified team to busy themselves with all of this menial stagework,” Lestat snaps in lieu of any real reply. “You should think yourself above it all.” Alex gives him a guitar-cable-wrapped middle finger. “And who is ‘we’? Out to where?”
“Everywhere,” Alex replies, already halfway back inside. “Hurry up, dude, I need to be drunker, like, ten fucking minutes ago.”
Lestat throws his cigarette butt against the floor, petulant as ever, and heels.
Tough Cookie is leaning on one poster-covered wall inside, twirling a drumstick and, as always, letting everyone else do the work. They pull Lestat into a one-armed hug when they see him, face still half-covered in glitter and sweat. “Killer show,” they say, and then, when he doesn’t take the easy pun bait, “Who pissed you off today?”
“Nobody, cheri,” he lies. “Are you coming to the club? I assume we are all going to the club.”
“I assume we’re going to many clubs. Set your sights high, babe.”
That’s good. Many clubs mean many opportunities to find many eager half-undressed sweaty conquests, blood already running thick and appetising with many substances to take his mind far, far away from here. He runs a hand through his hair and physically shakes his head like a dog coming in out of the rain as if to clear it; he takes TC by the hand and, well, off they go.
Their night out starts as most of them do: Salamander has picked the first place they go. They were here last night; he must have enjoyed it. It wasn’t awful. Small enough for them not to get hounded, or even recognised, aside from a few dedicated fans, but big enough for the place to have some bite to it. So they roll up into the VIP table Salamander has managed to score. Alex looks at the various bottles of alcohol, acts like he’s considering anything that seems truly drinkable, then picks the second-cheapest just to keep up appearances, and gets a round of shots for the table. He and Larry take one; Alex takes two and offers one to— oh, the stagehand girl. Go, Alex! TC takes one, places a second in Lestat’s hand, and they cheers! each other as they knock them back. They then pretend not to notice when he slinks off to the bathroom to immediately throw it back up, and are mostly gone from the booth anyway when he returns.
So the fun part begins: who is he going home with tonight? Nobody in the room particularly looks like Louis; he lowers his standards and scans again. There’s a guy in the corner with similar-but-not-quite-as-bright green eyes, but he’s in a completely heinous tank top that Louis would never touch in a million years. Close enough? They lock eyes for a second. Lestat can’t help himself, he pushes into the boy’s mind, just enough for something surface-level, and finds fragments of a recent breakup, a boring-to-disappointing home life. Well, they have that in common, at least. He considers it, starts to slink over, when—
“No fucking way,” from a voice he’s heard before but can’t place. A bracelet-laden hand on his shoulder, spinning him around. “This is crazy. Hi, Lestat!”
And, see, fans aren’t not an option, but he has to be in a specific mood for that level of blatant ego-stroking. Sometimes anonymity is an underrated blessing. Still, if she came all this way!
“Hello, ma chérie,” he says, affecting the kind of surprise one would have if they weren’t talking to a girl they know planned her night around making this conversation happen. “What a pleasant coincidence. I don’t think I got your name.”
“I’m Sydney,” says Bracelets. Or it could be anything within that realm. Loud room.
He bends down to kiss her knuckles, makes a real show of it. “And your friend?”
“Oh, she couldn’t make it. Hinge date.” She rolls her thick-lined eyes and looks at him as if they’re both in on some little joke. As if he’s ever used Hinge in his life. “You know how it is!”
“I do,” he grins, though he doesn’t.
Maybe-Sydney is not much for good conversation, even now she quite clearly has a few drinks in her. She’s young for his tastes, and she keeps checking her phone. And her vice of choice tonight is a double vodka Sprite, which makes her seem even younger. And he tries to push about the clear drama from earlier, but she doesn’t want to seem to talk about the undoubtedly far more fascinating sexual exploits of the friend that is not here. Instead, she asks him over and over again about the band, the tour, how he’s liking the tour, plans for new music, and so on, and so forth. He wishes for a brief second that he did want to fuck her— the push-and-pull of that is always interesting for about ten minutes at least. His phone pings as she’s about to, presumably, ask about a second album.
“I’m sorry, my love, but I really must take this,” he says, eyeing up the nearest smoking area exit. “I’ll see you in a second,” he lies, and then he’s out.
The satisfaction of freedom lasts all of about thirty seconds until a black cloud descends on his mood once more. Gabrielle’s new girl’s name, apparently, is Zoe. He finds this out when, mid-cigarette, he unlocks his phone to see, miraculously, a text from her(!).
I have brought Zoe back onto the bus, and she will likely be accompanying us to St Louis. Be nice. - G
He thinks, what a classy way to rub salt into the wound, bringing someone along with her to St Louis when his Saint Louis will inevitably be absent. She may as well have spat in his face for good measure— he would have taken it with more decorum.
He wants to type,
You do not need to sign off your text messages because I have your number saved in my phone,
or
I hope she already has an appropriately fucked-up sleep schedule or there is really no chance this will work in your favor,
or
Absolutely no she will not, thank you,
or
Who the fuck is Zoe?
He types,
Of course, Maman!,
adds six pink sparkly heart emojis, hits Send, and has to try very hard not to throw his phone with all that preternatural strength onto the concrete at his feet, stamp on it until it shatters, and roll around in a million tiny glass pieces. Fuck the club. And the band— though TC won’t be happy they’ve been left to take shots alone, but they’ll cope.
In the Uber back to the bus, his Instagram circle of friends-of-friends brings up fourteen Zoes. He thumbs through each profile in an attempt to dissect them as people, but many seem to be boring, and brunette, and, crucially, absolutely nowhere near Missouri.
His Uber driver has no partition between the front and back, and a little sign on the back of the driver’s seat telling him he can feel free to charge his phone, or eat a snack, or request any music, or make some small talk! How kind of her, he thinks, and how foolish he would be not to take advantage of such a blatant offer of counsel.
“Can I have your opinion on something?” he asks her.
She nods.
“If someone that you didn’t know was sleeping with your—” he starts, and then has to take a second to reevaluate what is about to come out of his mouth, “your ex, but you were living together, how would you cope with that without killing yourself?”
“You live with your ex?” asks the driver. “Rough, man.”
“It’s a complicated situation,” Lestat replies. “An… extremely hard-to-break contract.”
“Ugh, been there.” She taps her hands on the wheel to the song that’s playing— T. Rex, which he can’t fault. “Well, have you spoken to them about it?”
He laughs. “No.”
“Are you planning to?”
“Not really,” he replies, and then: “Absolutely not.”
“Well, sweetheart,” the driver says, rounding the corner to the venue parking lot, “I think you have to invest in some really good earplugs, and if they don’t work, you can kill yourself.”
It shouldn’t shock him when he steps onto the bus to see the girl from outside the show on Gabrielle’s lap on one of the pull-out couches, but it does. All the signs were there, and he’s not, though many would beg to disagree, stupid; something in him was, against all odds, still hoping this would be a forgettable encounter. Painful, yes, but forgettable. Another to add to the tally, nothing more.
She— the girl, Zoe— looks up at him, and her eyes widen like she’s been caught. Because she has been caught, he tells himself. Is this not strange to her? She still has his autograph on her arm in Sharpie. She told him she was going to get it tattooed.
Gabrielle smiles at him, a slight warning glare in her eyes. Be nice. “Welcome back, Lestat. This is Zoe.”
“Zoe,” he says. He despises how the name feels in his mouth. “We’ve met.”
“Mmm,” Gabrielle says, tracing a finger up and down the Sharpied arm. “I had a feeling.”
I bet, he wants to say. Are you planning on signing it next?
Zoe looks back and forth between them, seeming half blissed out, half terrified out of her mind. Lestat finds himself wondering for a second if she has any inkling that they could both kill her here and now if they really wanted to. Probably not the ideal threesome she’s likely envisioning, but it’d be just as good for him, and better for Gabrielle. It wouldn’t take much, he thinks. He could have her spine snapped in a matter of seconds, and there’s nobody around. They’re good at cleaning up kills, the two of them. A bit out of practise from Paris, but they can fall back into lockstep quickly, it’s in their blood—
“Lestat, I’m actually so glad you’re here,” Zoe says, patting a space on the couch next to her, clearly dying to ease the tension.“Because it’d be so cool to get to know you for real. Like, this is the perfect time.”
And he would genuinely rather die a million dramatic deaths, but what’s the alternative? Go back to his room and cry, while he pretends he can’t hear them fucking through the walls? It’s bad enough when the band has anyone over. Their thoughts are so loud.
The couch is cramped at the best of times. He doesn’t feel like chancing it, and so perches himself on one of the horribly uncomfortable stools next to their breakfast table; he has multiple clear getaway paths, should all go awry. He doesn’t know how to do twenty-first century small talk— what could he possibly have to ask, he doesn’t care!!!— so ends up settling on asking how they met and seeing how far Zoe can go without inevitably mentioning his name.
Gabrielle gives him a look. Really? Zoe laughs as if he’s made the funniest joke in the world. It’s a simpering sort of laugh, and Lestat decides immediately that he never wants to hear it again. She pushes a curly blonde lock out of her eyes in a way that reminds him of the protagonists of all of the terrible, cliche movies TC made him watch a few months ago when he was particularly sad about Louis— chick flicks, they’d called them. Gabrielle’s trying to meet Zoe’s eye, but she’s too busy fiddling with her hair, which doesn’t seem to be cooperating. He’s pointedly not poking around in her head, but if he was, she’d be thinking about how much it’s annoying her, how sweaty and humid this bus is, et cetera, et cetera. What a terrible shame.
He reaches behind him for the thermostat and cranks it up a few degrees.
“We met online,” Zoe says, which is not what he expected, but sure.
“That’s incredible.” Lestat smiles, all faux-wide eyes. “I didn’t realise you’d suddenly become such a technological wunderkind, Gabrielle, considering just two weeks ago I had to show you how to save my number for the fourth time.”
“I’m a fast learner.”
“Clearly!”
“I messaged her a few days ago, thinking, like— well, I don’t wanna be that person, but I’m pretty used to the general dating app population around here, right? And I’d never seen her before. And then she mentioned she was in town for work, so I thought it was fate. We met up last night, and really hit it off.” She pauses for a second, like she’s turning the words over in her head. “I honestly— like, I know how it looks, but I had no idea she was your…”
“You don’t see the resemblance?” Gabrielle deadpans, gaze like steel meeting Lestat’s. “I’ve always thought we look an awful lot alike.”
“No,” Zoe says. “I can see the resemblance. But I thought it was a funny coincidence, and then when we met for the first time, she noticed— oh, God, this is so embarrassing.” She pulls out her phone and the screen lights up to a picture of him. Vogue, three or four months ago; he liked that shoot, their makeup artist was not shy with the glitter. “So we did talk about you. But I thought she was your sister or something. It wasn’t until today that I found out she was your mom!”
“Well, the cat is out of the bag,” Lestat says. “And she wasn’t even so kind as to offer you backstage access?”
“She did, actually. But my friends that were coming to the show don’t know, and I didn’t want to go without them,” she continues, slurring slightly. “Or I think Syd knows— the one that almost blew my fuckin’ cover— but she doesn’t like her.” Her voice drops to a mock-whisper. “Thinks she’s too old for me.”
“No!” Lestat smiles, matching her tone. “How scandalous.”
He can see Gabrielle zeroing in on that stray piece of hair she’s still messing with, too: it only takes a second before she’s taking it in her hands and re-tying the loose ponytail to secure it out of the way. It makes him think of Paris, as many things tend to. He misses being able to braid her hair so badly. He misses being trusted to be the one cutting it off for her. These days she does it herself in the tiny bus bathroom mirror, every evening like clockwork, and then he has to pretend it’s been like that the whole time.
“Don’t, Lestat,” she chides, tone dripping with disapproval, sharp nails running back and forth over Zoe’s scalp. He breathes in and out, in and out, bites the side of his cheek so hard blood starts to pool on his tongue. “It’s hardly a big deal.”
“It could be.” Zoe’s suddenly sounding remarkably pleased with herself. “How old are you, Gabi? I never asked.”
Gabi. What the fuck? “Older than she looks,” Lestat snaps.
“What,” Zoe says, “like fifty, then? You must have had him young!”
“Yes, you could say that.” Gabrielle meets his eye from across the room, and if looks could kill, well.
“And how old are you, Zoe?”
“Lestat.”
“Oh, no,” Zoe says, “it’s okay. I’m twenty-seven.” Then, through a giggle: “God, I hope this isn’t too weird. Wait, how old are you, Lestat?”
“Two hundred and sixty, give or take a few years.”
She rolls her eyes, big and exaggerated. “Ooookaaayyyyy. But like, really.”
“Like, really,” he says, getting up, trying not to look too much like he’s on the verge of snapping something in half. “If we’re finished with the meet-and-greet, I’d like to get to bed.”
“Come on,” Zoe says. “You can’t commit to the vampire schtick when I’m asking you questions and then admit you still sleep like a normal person!”
“I’m sorry, ma chérie. It’s been a long day.” For more reasons than one. “And I need my beauty sleep to be ready for the show tomorrow. Will you be there?”
She’s still all smiles. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
He turns to meet Gabrielle’s eyes. “Will you?”
And why would she, now he knows she has better things to be doing? Maybe a better question: how the hell is he meant to get back on that stage tomorrow and sing the same songs at the different-but-functionally-the-same audience, knowing the girl standing at the barricade is the same one he’s competing with for slivers of affection— and losing, as if that wasn’t bad enough? He should have brought her friend home from the club. He should have found all of her friends and brought them too, just to make sure she felt left out. Fuck it— he has half a mind to swipe her phone when she’s not looking and call up her mother, just to level the playing field.
But then Gabrielle smiles at him, and it doesn’t seem at all laced with vitriol. She looks tired, he thinks, like she’s about to get dragged along to someone else’s plans she desperately wants to avoid. He recognises that look well. But, for once, he feels almost let in on a secret: it’s not directed at him, not entirely.
“I’ll be there,” Gabrielle says, and suddenly maybe this girl is worth having around after all.