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Looking back, sluggish with grief and terror across three decades and the Atlantic ocean, not that he can lay out that distance logically, this had proved to have been one of the critical moments. There is a clear order now to the sequence of events and impressions that Louis can recall in this particular instance, the meaning established only after the fact by way of Lestat’s unfurling jealousy and rage.
How much of Louis’ life since the fall inflicted on him has consisted of blindly tracing this genealogy of pain, wearing the well-trodden searching tracks in his mind smooth to the point of nothingness. This behaviour in its final instance, foreshadowed here and originating there, entirely foreseeable and predictable, entirely avoidable had Louis had the strength to avoid.
Now, in Claudia’s much longed-for Old Country he has become particularly appalling company. Mutely furious, she has been forced to drag him along as so much dead weight, meeting the inadvertent blooming of his horror with grim matter-of-factness. His guilt, however, infuriates her.
“He was gonna kill me,” she’d hissed once. Louis had rolled over into wakefulness from a nightmare which he must have broadcast loud and clear to find Claudia sat up and watching him, her beautiful face clouded, the gleam of an eye lit only by the cherry red end of her cigarette. He had been standing at the incinerator, in his unconscious. Watching Lestat burn. Bristling at her expression, her - her self righteous condemnation, he had snapped “what?” and then “I can’t even dream now?” Her expression had shuttered closed, and she’d hissed what she’d mostly avoided saying; “he was gonna kill me.” She’d leaned over him, “He was gonna kill me, and replace me with that bitch.”
Louis had rolled onto his side, not wanting to hear shit, but she’d followed him, made him listen. “If it weren’t for me you’d be stuck there playing mistress to his new wife. A real one this time”
“Claudia” Louis had said warningly, met her eyes.
“He was gonna kill me Louis,” she’d said again, as if repetition could rend Louis open, make him hear her properly. “And one day he’s gonna try again.”
“No,” he couldn’t help but sit up and shake his head, “no.” Had tried to grab her hand, look her in the eyes. “He won’t, he can’t. Not in a million years.”
But, exhausted and worn down, they had shared if not an intentional link then a profoundly emotional subconscious for the past year. She had known he didn’t believe himself.
They’d sat in silence for long minutes, Louis crumbling the foul-smelling cellar dirt between his fingernails.
“It’s dark,” she’d announced. “I’m going out. Naw, just hunting.” Louis had shifted. “I’m good on my own.”
Only when the ancient wooden door had closed above his head and Louis was entombed alone beneath the earth had he allowed himself to feel relief. The memory of Lestat’s flesh melting off his bones was a subconscious composite of a thousand other corpses, a thousand other murders. Not real.
–
A month or so later, somewhere in Moravia, Claudia kills a young woman. Claudia has killed hundreds upon hundreds of young women, but this time she returns to the stone barn where they’re sheltering with a full bag, rifle slung over her shoulder as usual.
“Got us some goods,” she declares when she slams the bag on the ground. At the expression on Louis’ face she snorts “girl’s not gonna be needing any of this after what I just did to her.”
Louis comes to kneel beside her.
“Where’d you get all this”
“There’s nobody around for miles. Went in her house. Just her and granny. Did granny too.”
There are a couple of rough blouses and an overcoat for Claudia, gloves for them both and socks for Louis as well as cold cream and a mirror.
When he looks into it it is, strangely, his eyes that startle Louis for a second. The shock of them staring green out of his sunken face. All of these years and still his mind’s eye rebels by refusing to believe what has been done to him.
–
1911 and March or thereabouts, the city laconic and dozy from Mardis Gras with the promise of another torrid summer looming. Louis, body heaving and rust-red with sweat, is overrun and pried open, Lestat lodged all the way up inside him, the kick of his heart in his ribcage in sync with the pulse of Lestat’s ever-invasive cock. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Louis had let Lestat come down his throat earlier, shoved himself artless and hungry down the length of Lestat’s enormous prick, willing himself open while he gasped great gulps of his own saliva around it with nowhere to go. Let. Lestat advances and Louis acquiesces, a wall of blank need ready made to meet him.
When Louis had properly choked, a swampy wretched sound pulled from his chest by frantic involuntary swallowing, a futile physiological attempt at vestigial self preservation which served only to massage Lestat’s leaking crown, his lover had left him there for a second. Peering down at Louis kneeling between his legs where he sat on the edge of their shared bed, curious as to the extent of his perseverance. Louis had tried to push himself back down, precursor to a rhythm but had met resistance again, only halfway down, eyes smarting with copper tears and nose and throat sticky and streaming.
“Ssh, ssh,” Lestat had tutted finally, cutting through even the pounding of blood in Louis’ ears, pulling him off carefully, hands cradling Louis’ skull. Only marginally more obscene than the disgusting wet schick of him unsheathing from Louis’ throat had been the line of glistening froth connecting the purple head of his cock with Louis’ wet lips, gasping and empty. Lestat had inhaled sharply when Louis met his eyes, his prick twitching with the shining evidence of Louis’ labour, Louis’ lust.
Kneeling at Lestat’s feet, naked as the day he was born, debased and disgusting with fluids and need he had felt the inevitable rising damp of shame. His trembling desperation was matched only by his inability to perform. All the while Lesat, devastatingly beautiful and cut from marble, the aching lines of his sharp abdomen a rigid path to his prodigious cock, the proud line of his arousal trained on Louis, before him and for him, had stared down open fanged.
“Mon cher,” he’d murmured, cock bobbing unselfconsciously, Louis panting wetly at his feet. “It is not so easy, non? For you?”
Louis knelt mute, Lestat his magnetic North.
“Will you let me,” he’d said, and dragged a thumb across the thick wet mess of Louis’ bottom lip, smiling when he opened it involuntarily, “put it here?” He’d put his finger inside, tapped Louis’ tongue, then snagged his finger on one of Louis’ fangs,
Louis nodded, finger heavy on his tongue. Lestat had moved his hand to his throat, the span of it huge, and stroked Louis’ Adam’s apple with a considering thumb, then the empty hollow of his throat.
“And here? My Saint Louis? Will you let me put it here?”
“Lestat,” Louis tried to warn through his wet and stinging throat. He’d sounded strangled even to himself. “Jus’ do it, if you’re gonna do it.” His voice was so small.
Lestat had smiled and mercifully held the blunt head of his cock to Louis’ lips, pushed it in a little, looming above him, leaking iron salt sticky precome onto Louis’ tongue before gently taking the sides of his face and pushing in.
Louis had concentrated on going limp, lifted his soft palate, willed himself quiet and receiving and opened himself up and wide for the demand of Lestat’s cock. Let Lestat fuck himself carefully into Louis face, trying to watch his maker through bleary tears, shaking with arousal as he began to feel him roll into the welcoming clutch of Louis’ throat.
He knelt like that for some time, suspended and aching, Lestat muttering nonsense to him. Towards the end, when his heavy balls must have been twitching and aching, drawing tight against his body, Lestat stood up for better leverage as he fucked into Louis’ face, began to lose an edge of control. Louis knew his eyes would be black, his hips kicking as he came prodigiously straight down Louis’ throat, stomach roiling and lips stinging where they’d stretched impossibly wide at the base of Lestat’s cock. Victorious, nonetheless.
To his humiliation he’d collapsed like his strings had been cut when Lestat pulled out of him, heaving breaths he did not need, face wet, chest rising and falling. He’d been improving, he’d gotten better, he had. Lestat had knelt down next to him, rubbed a soothing hand in circles over his back and pulled his head to his chest.
“You try so hard for me, my Louis, hmm? So diligent and so beautiful. You bring me enormous pleasure.”
Louis had laughed at that, a little adrenaline kicked in now, said “yeah? Think it’s my turn?”
Lestat had grinned and kissed him, hot and long, like he’d wanted to lick himself out of Louis’ mouth. As if his come wasn’t long gone, deep inside of Louis.
He’d pulled Louis up and heaved him onto the bed, a little play of strength for both of them, before flipping Louis onto his back and bidding his knees up. Pinned below him, cock twitching against his abdomen, Louis had followed instruction and pulled his legs up to his chin, left himself open and wanting under Lestat’s gaze. This particular pleasure new and only from Lestat. His world and body made anew under his tender ministrations every day, opened up and put back into himself.
Above him, lupine and searching, Lestat had spat out two fingernails and shoved half his hand in their current tin of petroleum jelly. Louis shook and Lestat brought his other hand to his face, pushed his claws at the seam of Louis’ lips until he opened them, sucked Lestat’s fingers into his mouth. He had been indulged for a second, allowed to suck at them while Lestat watched black-eyed and chest heaving between the tent of Louis’ legs, until he grabbed his chin delicately with his thumb as well. His fingers were like a bit, Louis’ tongue stuck heavy to the bottom of his mouth.
Then he’d felt, god, he’d felt Lestat’s two wet fingers rubbing gently at his asshole, smearing vaseline in the hair there. He’d felt himself twitch and his face colour as Lestat, entranced, peered down, rubbing in a circle at the silky hot hole that Louis had never seen but frequently had described. His leg kicked just a little. Lestat shoved in a finger all the way in and Louis arched his back up as if on command, head flung to the side with a little sob. Thick and heavy and nothing compared to what he’d needed, what he was gonna get, he’d been hard for so long now, whole body an arc trained right at Lestat, unfinished and demanding.
“C’mon,” he’d tried to say through the fingers in his mouth, pinned, and tried to hitch a leg up around Lestat’s muscled waist, almost gagging in frustration when it just slipped down again. “C’mon” he muttered hoarsely.
“”Mm?” Lestat hummed, almost to himself, glancing up to search Louis’ face.
“You have been needing this, yes? Today?”
Louis had nodded, spit soaking Lestat’s fingers in his mouth, twitching around the one inside him. Lestat added the other one; he’d moaned a little mournfully, tried to hitch his hips back down onto it, wanting, wanting as Lestat screwed his fingers up into him, avoiding his prostate, just letting them hang heavy in his body as he heaved and kicked around them.
He’d pulled them apart only a little, a cursory little stretch that had Louis scrabbling at the sheets, thinking dizzily oh god, that’s it, he’s going to- and then he had, pulled them out and released Louis’ chin and hauled him up by his thighs and rested the blunt fat head of his cock at Louis’ hole.
Louis, delirious, had watched as he shoved it in, just the head, screwed it in meanly and with his months-worth of expertise at rending Louis open. Another little shove and Louis’ mouth gaped open in sympathetic symmetry. It never ceased to be such an incriminating violation, rent open and shivering in sweet should-be pain, his guts clenching down in involuntary near-panic as Lestat cleaved a home inside him so sweetly and smoothly.
Not his fault, his size, his need to be inside matched only by Louis’ need to have it. His back had arched involuntarily, feet scrabbling at the small of Lestat’s back, desparate for it as Lestat fucked in a little more each time, “oh,” Louis heaving and clutching at his shoulders, “oh,” the back of his neck, “oh,” anything. One more thrust, balls jammed up against Louis’ vaseline matted crack and Lestat stopped, snarl frozen into a death rictus, impossibly deep.
Louis twitched like a caught fish, hung on Lestat’s cock, and Lestat flew out to grab his jaw again. Louis had gasped breathy and high.
Now Louis has been suspended like this for long minutes, nearly weeping with frustration, as Lestat makes a new exploration, still lodged deep, the bones of his thin hips digging into Louis’ ass. He prises open Louis’ mouth silently and runs his thumb over Louis’ straining fangs, appraising, peers down into the open and wanting place where he’d shot his come. Then he moves up, traps Louis’ right eye between thumb and forefinger, tugs his eyelid open and looks at his iris. Louis, pinned and desperate, tries to rock down into him and earns a prick of nail in the soft skin beneath his eye.
“Ssssssh,” says Lestat.
When he has peered at each eye he reaches to prise Louis’ hands off his shoulders, one and then the other. Holds them captive in one great grip against Louis’ chest, where they had been pressed on their first night together, Louis’ undoing. Louis lets him manipulate them, look at the nails on each of his fingers, run the pad of a thumb along each one, testing their sharpness. A bead of blood blooms bright into the air. Louis pants. Satisfied, Lestat gives him his hands back.
“What-” Louis’ voice is wrecked. “What was that for?” And he tries to squirm again.
Lestat grins suddenly. “Appreciating what I have made, mon cher. My finest creation.”
Louis stares at him, his face burning hotly suddenly.
“You didn’t make me, Lestat,” he protests against the swoop of his stomach, the sudden sharp ache of possession.
“On the contrary my Louis,” he says conversationally. “Now, I will give you what you need, non?”
And Louis can’t argue because Lestat is leaning back and grabbing his waist and finally, finally fucking up into him, nailing the buzzing softness of his prostate and coring him open. Louis’ cock aches and he’s gasping, too much to take really, trying to clench down, trying to do anything but wilt beneath Lestat as he’s split open, gasping “oh, oh” with wounded animal noises.
Lestat grunts, hair flying about his face, laying right into him and Louis twists in the sheets, pinned by his gaze and the deep ache of his cock, building at an alarming speed, everything Lestat does to him alarming.
He tries to hold on, tries to swing back down to meet Lestat’s thrusts but it’s futile, he has to hang on and just take it, watching his maker’s devils’ eyes, his bone white fangs, the feel of the prick of his monstrous claws, all of them his mirror, and when Lestat leans down to sink his teeth, the progenitor of Louis’ teeth, into his neck Louis nearly shrieks and comes blindly, taut and shaking with his cock spurting wetly on the ridge of Lestat’s abdomen, the world shattering around him until all he can feel is Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, in him and on him.
When he calms down a little, exhausted to the bone, Lestat is still above him and still in him. Still hard. He grins.
–
This possessiveness had struck Louis as one of the roots of the problem, and this otherwise inconsequential night had long provided a particularly illuminating example of the issue. The proprietary way in which Lestat had always handled his body explained by this clear reasoning; Lestat had thought himself Louis’ creator, his progenitor. If every part of hi fledgeling was merely an extension of his vampiric father-figure, then what real right had Louis over it? What right had he to refuse?
And yet, as he replays the night, cock twitching in half-hearted interest in the godawful cave where Claudia has led them of all places, there had been a generosity to Lestat’s searching. An awe at being seen through his new eyes.
The following night Claudia shoves a victim at him in a miserable sod cottage they’d run across. Louis hasn’t eaten in a week.
The old man is weak and dying, Claudia’s perfect teeth marks imprinted in the meat of his shoulder after he’d tried to run. Hers too, a perfect crescent moon, a perfect simulacrum. Her claws at the man’s neck.