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"Research says that the only way to keep memories intact
Is to lock 'em away and close the doors to countless years of past
I guess that explains why the strangest things can conjure up the past
And forgotten time will find its long way back"- Smell, Sleeping At Last
"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year
Runnin' over the same old ground, what have we found?
The same old fears, wish you were here"- Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
The storm followed them inland like a mournful hound. Rain smeared the windows of the high-rise hotel in long, twitching streaks, wind howling at the glass as if seeking entry. Louis let the door fall shut behind them with a soft finality, the hush of the carpet swallowing the last echoes of their passage through the hallway. He turned the key card over once in his fingers, the quiet whir of the lock disengaging now irrelevant. They were inside. Safe. For now.
Lestat stood just beyond the threshold, motionless.
He hadn’t even taken a full step into the room—just hovered there, his bare feet half on the tile of the entryway, half on the plush carpet. The robe clinging to his frame had once been luxurious—Louis remembered it vividly, a thing of drama and indulgence, black and gold with a rich sheen like old-world theater curtains. Now it looked exhausted. The velvet had worn thin, the brocade dulled by mildew and time. Threads pulled loose at the seams, the once-bold gold trim now a sallow echo of its former luster. It hung from him like memory, clinging out of habit rather than fit.
Louis didn’t speak right away. He observed.
The room around them was angular, modern, filled with clean lines and polished surfaces—glass, steel, soft neutral upholstery untouched by memory. It was the kind of place meant to erase the world outside, to offer no resistance to whatever you brought into it. And still, Lestat looked alien in it. Not timeless, not elegant—just wrong. Like something unearthed. Like an old statue hauled into a gallery that didn’t know how to hold it.
He stood with his arms wrapped around himself, fingers clenched in the crooks of his elbows, his shoulders hunched—not with cold, but with something smaller and crueler. His eyes, when they lifted for the briefest second to meet Louis’, held the flicker of an animal who has known the cage, and the lash, and the moment the door swings open without explanation.
And then his gaze dropped again, quick and guilty.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t ask what came next. He stood there in silence, waiting for instruction. For judgment. For a command.
Louis’ throat felt thick. This was not the man who had filled cathedrals with his laughter, who had raged and danced and kissed and killed with impunity. This was something else. Someone else. Smaller. Worn down to a sliver of himself.
“Come in,” Louis said, his voice low, unsure if it was permission or plea.
Lestat didn’t move at first. Then, slowly, one foot followed the other. Not quite a step—more a shift of weight. As if he didn’t trust the floor not to vanish beneath him.
He entered the room the way a cat might, after days of absence and punishment, unsure if the open door was a trick. Each movement was quiet, deliberate, as if he thought the sound of his own body might offend. He made it only as far as the edge of the bed and stopped, standing there with his arms still locked tight around his ribs, staring at the floor.
Louis watched him for a long moment before crossing the room. The air between them was thick with salt and damp and things left unsaid, unhealed. But he was here. That mattered. That was something.
“Sit,” Louis said gently, almost too softly.
And Lestat, without lifting his eyes, obeyed.
Louis didn’t move.
He just watched him—watched the way Lestat sat there, arms clenched tight as if holding himself together by force of will alone, head bowed as though the weight of his own presence was too much to bear. The hotel room's warm lamplight laid a soft gold over everything—muted, expensive, artificial. But Lestat flinched beneath it.
He didn’t recoil, exactly. But he squinted, eyes narrowing against the glow, shoulders curling inward even tighter. The light made him look thinner, hollower, the bones beneath his skin drawn in sharp relief. Louis noticed how his gaze wouldn’t settle. One moment it was locked on the floor—a blank, fixed stare that spoke of absence more than focus—and the next it was darting about, scanning the space in frantic bursts as if the walls might disappear, or rearrange themselves.
He looked disoriented. Not just unsure of where he was—but when . And Louis couldn’t tell if he truly saw him standing there.
Lestat’s eyes—those ever-dominant eyes that had once commanded rooms, commanded him —now held a fragile wildness, like something freshly pulled from darkness. He looked at the nightstand as if it might strike him, at the drawn curtains as if unsure they would stay closed. He did not look at Louis.
Louis, who had always been the one being led . Who had followed Lestat across blood-soaked theatres and ballroom ruins. Lestat had always made the first move. Always set the tone, the rhythm, the story. And when Louis had rewritten it in his mind, again and again, it was always that Lestat who appeared—the glittering tyrant, the charismatic monster, the insolent, glittering sun he’d never been able to look away from.
But the man in front of him?
Louis searched the vaults of memory for any image that resembled this—this hunched, trembling figure, this unsure breath clutched between cracked lips—and found nothing. There had never been a moment, in all their years together, where Lestat had looked like this. Not even in Paris. Not even in Magnus’ tower.
This was someone else. Or what was left of him.
“Is the light bothering you?” Louis asked softly, unable to keep the ache from his voice.
At that, Lestat stirred—not fully, but enough to suggest he’d heard him. His head lifted, just slightly. His eyes, glassy and distant, slid toward Louis’s face. And for a moment, Louis felt it again—that uncanny uncertainty in his stare, like he was trying to reconcile Louis with some version of him that didn’t match what he remembered. Or feared he was hallucinating entirely.
Then, slowly—painfully slowly—Lestat nodded.
It wasn’t a word. Not even quite a gesture. But it was a confirmation. A recognition. However faint.
He was with him. In some small way.
And that, Louis realized, had to be enough.
Louis moved without a word, crossing to the wall panel where the light controls glowed faintly. He hesitated for only a moment before pressing his fingers to the dimmer, and the soft amber light began to fade—first to a hush of gold, then to nothing.
Darkness settled over the room like a warm cloth.
The city beyond the windows was a shadowed smear, lights distant and distorted by rain. Inside, there was only the occasional flash of lightning pressing pale, fleeting shapes against the glass, followed by the distant growl of thunder.
Louis turned back toward him.
Lestat hadn’t moved, but something in him had… eased . Not fully. Not trust. But some tiny ripple in his posture had shifted. His shoulders weren’t quite as hunched, his breath no longer caught in his throat. The darkness gave him cover, permission. And still, his arms remained around himself like a brace. Still, he stood like he was afraid to fully be seen.
Louis took a step closer, careful not to startle him.
“You’re soaked,” he said gently, his voice carrying a faint attempt at levity—fragile, but sincere. “I should’ve made you check in under ‘Hurricane Lestat.’”
It wasn’t much of a joke, but it hung there between them like a peace offering. Louis gestured with a tilt of his head toward the bathroom, the door of which stood slightly ajar, light spilling out in a low strip across the floor.
“There’s a shower,” he said. “You should use it. Warm water might help. You… you look like you could use it.”
He meant it kindly, but immediately questioned whether it had sounded too pointed. The state Lestat was in—hair stringy and plastered to his face, the velvet robe heavy with rain and swamp-water—wasn’t something to draw attention to, and yet it clung to him like a second skin. Filth and years and ruin.
Still, the words hung there, gentle, trying not to press.
Lestat’s eyes moved toward the bathroom door but didn’t linger. He didn’t speak. He didn’t nod. But something flickered again—acknowledgment, maybe. Or confusion. Or simply exhaustion too deep to resist a direction.
Louis didn’t push. He waited.
It was the only thing he could give him tonight—space, dimness, a path forward with no demand behind it.
Lestat didn’t move.
He looked at the bathroom the way a prisoner might look at a bright room beyond a cell door—unreachable, unfamiliar, too exposed. His gaze flicked toward the soft rectangle of light spilling from the open door, then quickly away, like he’d caught sight of something he wasn’t meant to see. His arms tightened around himself again. His feet remained planted. It wasn’t defiance. It was fear.
Not of the water. Not of bathing. Of moving.
Of separating .
Louis watched him, and the ache bloomed sharp in his chest, like something driven under the ribs. He could see it clearly now—the hesitance in Lestat’s stance wasn’t about physical exhaustion, though that was there too. It was the unbearable idea of leaving Louis’s line of sight. Of letting Louis leave his .
As though Louis were a dream too fragile to risk disappearing.
And it hit him—suddenly, deeply—how far off the mark all his imaginings had been.
For years, Louis had allowed his mind to wander to Lestat’s whereabouts. Not often at first, but more and more as the decades passed. In moments of weakness. In nights made long by too much silence. He’d pictured him in London, or Rome, or some glittering city drowning in temptation. Thriving. Feeding. Charming strangers in velvet banquettes, siring some reckless young thing just to fill the silence Louis had left behind.
Other times—on crueler days—he’d imagined him failing. Trying to find someone like Louis and failing again and again. Hearing echoes in the wrong voices, seeing the wrong jawlines in candlelight. That version had brought Louis an ugly sort of satisfaction, bitter as it was. He told himself Lestat deserved it. He’d said as much in those tapes, back in San Francisco—every vicious word meant to be found, devoured, hated. Maybe, in the dark of it, he’d wanted to be sought out and challenged for it. Fought for.
But this ?
This husk? This wounded thing in a velvet robe sixty years past repair?
He hadn’t imagined this. Not once.
How many times had he nearly gone looking? How many times had Armand stopped him with a hand to the shoulder, a word in the mind? How many memories had been dulled at their source, smoothed over with gentle compulsion until his longing was buried beneath layers of curated calm?
And now, here Lestat was. Not vengeful. Not arrogant. Just… lost. Half broken.
Louis took a slow breath. Then another.
He offered a smile—small, careful—and stepped closer.
“If you want,” he said softly, “I could help you wash your hair.”
The offer came out quieter than he intended, the words edged with the tenderness of a memory that still had the power to wound. “Like I used to.”
He saw it, then—how Lestat’s shoulders tensed, not in fear this time, but in stunned disbelief. His eyes widened just slightly, tracking Louis with the look of someone offered salvation without a cost. Like he couldn’t quite comprehend it. Like he didn’t believe he was worthy of the gesture.
Louis’s heart clenched.
He remembered those nights in exacting clarity—Lestat in the tub, chin resting on drawn knees, eyes closed in total, uncharacteristic stillness. Louis behind him, sleeves rolled, fingers in his hair, gently undoing tangles with slow strokes, trailing fingertips down his nape to his shoulders in idle, circling touches. Lestat would hum sometimes. Other times he’d go entirely still, lost in the moment like he didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.
Those had been quiet moments. Rare. Real.
And Louis wanted it again—not just the act, but the certainty. That it had happened. That he wasn’t dreaming it now, wasn’t chasing after shadows Armand had planted or stripped away. That this man had once leaned into his touch and trusted him with that small, unspoken surrender.
He held out his hand.
Lestat stared at it. Then at Louis. His face didn’t change, not much—but something moved behind his eyes. Not quite recognition. Not quite emotion. Just the faintest ripple of disbelief, like the offer was too gentle to be real.
Louis smiled again, softer this time, encouraging.
And slowly—hesitantly—Lestat lifted his hand, as though it might shatter between them.
Their fingers met.
Not a grip. Just contact.
Louis didn’t let go of his hand.
He led him slowly toward the bathroom, their footsteps quiet against the carpet. The light spilling from the doorway had been left on by habit—it was instinct now, living in the modern world, to fill every space with artificial brightness, to leave no corner untouched by LED assurance.
But not tonight.
He reached for the switch just before they crossed the threshold and eased the room into darkness. The bathroom’s silence took on a softer hue in the absence of light, the faint hum of distant plumbing the only sound.
It felt strange, navigating a space like this in shadow—surrounded by sleek marble, brushed steel, underfloor heating—but somehow it felt more honest. Less like a stage.
Lestat hesitated at the entryway. Again.
Louis glanced back and saw his expression, tight with confusion. His eyes were darting around the room, flicking from the wide glass shower stall to the freestanding tub, then to the luminous tiles underfoot, where a low, pleasant warmth radiated through the soles of their feet.
He looked like he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing.
And why would he? Louis realized. This wasn’t the world Lestat had known. He’d probably disappeared long before boutique hotels and rainfall showerheads. Before minimalism had replaced grandeur. Before warmth had been hidden in the floor rather than the fire.
Lestat stood there like a man who’d wandered into a spacecraft, trying to identify the familiar amid the strange.
Louis turned toward the shower, keeping his tone light.
“I got here a couple of nights ago,” he said, not looking at Lestat just yet, giving him time to adjust. “The hotel’s not much, but it’s quiet. Comfortable.”
He unzipped a small leather bag on the sink, pulling out the few grooming products he’d brought with him—modest by some standards, but high-end, delicately scented, elegant in their matte packaging. He carried them to the shower and placed them neatly on the ledge.
“I don’t have anything for your hair,” he continued, glancing toward Lestat from beneath his lashes, “but I don’t think mine will hurt it. Just one time won’t kill it.”
The faintest flicker of humor in his voice was intentional—he didn’t expect a smile, but he hoped it reminded Lestat of something . Of normalcy. Of routine. Of nights where such conversations were casual, even teasing.
“You’ll see,” Louis added, adjusting the water temperature with a practiced hand. “Warm water’s still the best feeling in the world.”
Steam began to rise from the tile, softening the edges of the mirror above the sink. The sound of the water pattering against the shower tile filled the room gently, as if trying not to intrude.
He turned back.
Lestat hadn’t moved.
He was standing just inside the bathroom now, his arms still around himself, eyes locked on his own reflection in the mirror above the sink. His expression was unreadable. Not quite horror. Not quite shame. But something in between—a quiet devastation, the kind that came from finally seeing what time and silence had done to you.
His hair was limp and tangled, darkened to almost brown with damp. His face, normally the centerpiece of his vanity, was gaunt, his jaw slightly hollowed. There was a grim trace of old dirt at his collarbone, and bruised undertones beneath the pallor of his skin.
He didn’t seem able to look away from himself.
Louis exhaled softly.
He crossed the room, slow and careful, and stood before him.
Lestat didn’t flinch when Louis reached out. He didn’t draw back. He just stared, and Louis cupped his jaw, cool and sharp beneath his fingers, and lifted his face gently.
“Hey,” he murmured. “We’ll take care of it. It’s okay.”
It wasn’t a promise. Not yet.
But it was something to hold onto.
estat nodded—barely. The smallest dip of his head. His eyes lingered on the fogging mirror, watching himself dissolve slowly into steam. Then, with a fractured breath, he looked down. At the soaked robe clinging to his frame, the damp, limp fabric bunched around his arms and waist. At the shirt underneath, plastered to his chest, ghosting the lines of his ribs.
He opened his mouth—Louis saw it—and then closed it again. Whatever words had been reaching for the air fell back down his throat.
And for the first time in memory, Louis saw something in Lestat’s eyes he never thought he’d see.
Modesty.
Not theatrical self-consciousness. Not the cheeky flirtation that had colored Lestat’s undress in years past—no grand disrobing, no smug, sensual spectacle.
Just… hesitation. Quiet and unsure. A flicker of actual concern at the idea of being seen. By Louis. The man who had known every inch of his body for decades.
It startled Louis—not because Lestat had ever lacked confidence in his beauty, but because it had never occurred to him that time could dull even that . That pride could be stripped away so thoroughly.
He stepped forward a little, kept his voice level. Gentle. Firm.
“You’re in control,” he said. “If you want me to leave, I will. If you want me to stay but not look, I’ll turn away. If you want help—I’ll help. Whatever you need.”
He meant it. He wanted Lestat to feel that he meant it.
Lestat blinked, eyes moving to his face like he had to confirm the words were real.
And then, barely audible over the hush of water behind them, he whispered, “Don’t leave.”
His voice was hoarse, rusted from disuse, but the words were clear.
Louis’s heart twisted.
He smiled again—faint, full of grief and gentleness—and nodded once. “Okay,” he said. “Whatever you want. Whatever you need.”
Still, Lestat didn’t move. No hand toward a button or a sash. Just that frozen stance, arms wrapped around himself like armor. The robe sagged heavily at the collar, its weight too much for how small he seemed beneath it.
So Louis breathed in, deep, and let it out slowly.
Tonight, he had to lead.
Without another word, he reached for his own shirt and pulled it over his head, letting the fabric fall silently to the floor. He saw Lestat’s eyes flick toward him—just for a moment—and he didn’t hide from the gaze. He stepped out of his shoes, unbuttoned his slacks, and let them slip from his hips, folding them with automatic precision before removing the last layer.
He stepped backward toward the shower, the steam curling around his body, softening the angles of him in the dim light. No drama. No seduction. Just presence.
“It’s just us,” Louis said. “It’s okay. I’ll go first, if that helps.”
vHe turned slightly, stepping under the warm stream, the water coursing over his shoulders and chest. He didn’t watch Lestat now—didn’t stare—but he felt him. The silence behind him had changed. There was a shift.
And then: movement.
He turned his head in time to see Lestat undo the robe, slowly, with reverent fingers, as if it might fall apart in his hands. He let it slip from his shoulders and caught it before it hit the floor, folding it with care and placing it on the counter like a fragile heirloom. Then the pants—wet and threadbare, peeled down with deliberate slowness. They joined the robe.
Louis watched, quiet, as Lestat straightened again. His body… it was different.
Not unrecognizable. But changed.
The signs of starvation were clear. His frame, always lean, had thinned to something almost severe. Arms too slender, legs showing the long line of bone beneath pale, taut skin. Even his color was wrong—too grey, too cold. His beauty was still there, haunting and strange as ever, but dulled. Muffled. Like a candle burning low.
He was still wearing a shirt—an old, oversized tank, its hem hanging almost to his thighs. It was too big, slipping off one shoulder, and his hands hovered near the hem like he was unsure of what to do with it.
Louis could see it in his expression—the hesitation wasn’t vanity.
It was insecurity .
He remembered how Lestat used to undress like it was performance art, like his body was a thing of worship. And now he looked… ashamed . As though every inch revealed was an indictment.
That was enough.
Louis extended his hand again, the water streaming down his wrist, and said softly, “It’s okay. Come on. I’ll help you with the shirt here.”
Lestat looked at him. Just looked—for a long moment. And then, slowly, his arms dropped, and he nodded.
He crossed the space between them with slow, careful steps, steam curling around his ankles, his posture still guarded but no longer frozen. When he stepped into the shower, the heat wrapped around him like a sigh.
And Louis—gently, wordlessly—reached for him.
The steam wrapped around them like a veil as Lestat stepped into the shower, his fingers still laced with Louis’s. The heat met his skin in a slow, blooming wash, and he tilted his head slightly, letting the cascade of water roll down over his hair, his shoulders. The old tank top clung to him now, plastered tight to his body, translucent in places from the wet. It outlined his thin chest, his ribs, the new sharpness to him that had not been there before.
Louis stood close, hands gentle. He gave Lestat time.
“Let me help with this,” he said quietly, his voice carrying under the soft roar of the water.
Lestat didn’t speak, but his eyes met Louis’s and stayed there. He lifted his arms—slow, deliberate—offering silent permission. And Louis, with the same reverence one might use to unwrap something fragile, reached for the hem of the shirt and pulled it upward.
The fabric resisted a little, wet as it was, but slid free with careful coaxing. Louis’s gaze followed the movement, focused entirely on the task—until the shirt came off.
And then he froze.
The world didn’t stop, not truly—but for Louis, time folded in on itself. His breath caught in his chest. His hands, still holding the dripping shirt, went slack.
Scars.
Everywhere.
Crude, red, wrong .
The largest cut across Lestat’s chest like a lightning strike—angling from just below his collarbone and raking diagonally toward his ribs. It was wide, jagged at the edges, darkened in the center like it had torn through skin and deeper, pink at the edges like it had barely begun to close. It looked fresh , no older than a week. But that couldn’t be. That wasn’t possible.
More lines spidered out across his torso—claw-like gouges on his sides, almost symmetrical, like something—or someone—had gripped him and dug in . Smaller slashes ran along his abdomen, ribs, shoulder. And they weren’t healing. They should have.
Vampires didn’t scar. Louis had been one long enough to know.
Their bodies healed too quickly, even when starved. The worst injuries dissolved into nothing with a little blood and time. To leave a mark like this— deep and lasting —he would have had to be starving for years. And the damage would have to be… surgical. Brutal. To the bone.
Louis couldn’t move at first. Couldn’t think. His gaze was locked on the torn flesh, on the body he had once known better than his own— untouched , unblemished . This? This was something else. This was violence carved into permanence.
A flood of thoughts came all at once—none of them kind. Had someone done this to him? Some enemy, some unknown hunter, some creature worse than they had ever faced? Or had Lestat done it to himself ?
Which was worse?
His hand moved before he could stop it—slowly, trembling. He reached out, fingertips brushing the edge of the long scar on Lestat’s chest. The skin was ridged beneath the water, raised and angry. Louis’s touch was feather-light, like he feared it would hurt, like it would tear open again beneath his hand.
Lestat’s expression didn’t change.
He didn’t flinch. He just looked down at Louis’s hand, then up into his face, eyes clouded not with pain, but confusion. Like he didn’t understand what Louis was seeing. What he was reacting to.
He looked… bewildered .
Louis swallowed hard, his throat dry despite the steam.
He let his hand drift up, cupping Lestat’s cheek, damp curls sticking to the pale skin behind his ear. Lestat leaned into the touch ever so slightly—reflexive, trusting.
Louis’s voice broke as he asked, low and shaking:
“What happened to you, Les? How did you get these scars?”
He didn’t expect an answer. Not yet. But the words hung there like a wound of their own, open and waiting.
At the question— What happened to you, Les? —Lestat stopped.
Everything in him went still.
The warm water cascaded over his back, flattened his hair to his skin, soaked into the scars Louis could not unsee. But Lestat didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. The light in his eyes changed—like something behind them had just… gone dark.
And then he stepped back.
One slow, backward motion. His arms came up and crossed his chest again, his hands gripping his biceps, curling around himself like a man naked in a blizzard. His eyes—wide, stunned—tracked Louis’s face with the slack, stricken look of someone who had just been handed a name he didn’t recognize.
He looked at Louis like he had done something unthinkable.
Louis couldn’t make sense of it. Couldn’t understand the recoil, the disbelief.
He had expected sorrow, maybe guilt. He’d been prepared for some bitter confession, or a story that would change him. What he wasn’t prepared for—what he couldn’t have prepared for—was this look.
As if Lestat was the one who had been betrayed.
“Lestat,” Louis said, reaching out again, voice quiet with worry. His hand moved through the steam toward the slope of Lestat’s shoulder—but before he could touch him, Lestat pulled back another step, his spine pressing into the cool tile wall. The water streamed between them now, a veil, separating their bodies like they belonged to different worlds.
Louis’s hand hovered in the space between them, stilled mid-motion.
He took a breath. It shuddered on the way out.
The look on Lestat’s face was devastation, but not the kind Louis knew. Not grief. Not even shame. It was bewilderment —as if he were watching something slip through his fingers that had never made sense to begin with.
“Lestat…” Louis said again, voice almost cracking. “When did you get those, huh?”
He tried to soften it. “It’s okay. I just—I just need to know.”
But Lestat said nothing. He just stared. His mouth was slightly open, lips parted like he was trying to form a sound but couldn’t. His brows had drawn together in confusion so deep it bordered on fear.
Louis stepped forward. Not into the water—just closer.
“Please, Les,” he whispered. “I just want to help.”
Lestat’s eyes flicked across his face, desperate, scanning him like he was trying to find something—some crack, some cruelty, some hidden meaning in his voice.
And then, after a long, aching silence, Lestat spoke.
His voice was fractured, halting. Not just hoarse but shaken , like the words themselves hurt.
“Louis… what… What are you…”
He looked down at himself—at the scars Louis had touched like they were raw—and then back up, more confused than ever.
“Louis,” he breathed, barely audible through the water, “they’ve always been there.”
The words landed like a blow.
Louis blinked. His breath caught.
“No…” he said without meaning to. A whisper. A denial.
But Lestat just stared back, his eyes wide and guileless, his face open in a way Louis had almost forgotten it could be. Not defensive. Not manipulative. Just… lost.
Louis blinked.
Time didn’t stop, but it bent. Warped. The steam in the bathroom thickened like fog in his lungs, like something was pressing on the walls of his chest.
He took a step back.
His heart began to pound—not just in surprise, but in a kind of slow, rising panic. His vision blurred slightly at the edges, the sound of the water suddenly too loud, too steady. The echo of it against the tile felt like a second pulse in his ears.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No—no, that’s not—”
He took another step back, stumbling slightly as his heel hit the lip of the shower. His hand reached out for the wall to steady himself. His fingers felt cold despite the heat.
His brain was scanning—racing—dragging him through memory after memory, image after image, him and Lestat , naked in candlelight, in lamplight, in darkness. Baths. Beds. Moments of stillness and lust and everything in between.
And never —not once—had there been scars.
Had there?
His throat was closing, his breath tightening, something cold moving through the base of his spine like a trickle of ice.
It couldn’t be. He would have remembered . He knew Lestat’s body. He had known it with reverence, with obsession. Every inch. He had drawn it in his mind over and over again. There had never been—
“They’ve always been there.”
His hands gripped the edge of the counter now, knuckles white, steam curling around him like smoke from a fire he hadn’t noticed until it was too late.
And then—
A voice in his head.
Not Lestat’s.
Daniel’s.
Crisp, dry, cruel in the way that only someone who had once begged and been denied could be:
“Was it raining, Louis?”
Louis’s breath hitched. His spine straightened like he’d been struck.
The words came back with terrible clarity, laced with mockery and provocation. A question meant to unravel him.
“Was it raining, Louis?”
He saw the tape recorder. He saw San Francisco. He saw Dubai. He saw himself in 1973, a man of sharp suits and sharper silences, spilling hate in Daniel’s ears like blood in the street. He saw himself a couple of days ago, minimalistic clothes, feet submerged in rocks, trying to seduce Daniel with a tale of love and loss.
And he saw Armand , standing behind it all, quiet and still, a sculptor with a chisel.
He pressed a hand to his mouth. He felt suddenly unmoored, like the floor was tilting.
Lestat was still in the shower, watching him, arms curled around his torso, water running down the faded wounds of a body that had been marked long before Louis ever thought to remember it clean.
The panic bloomed sharp and fast in Louis’s chest.
He could feel it in his ribs—tight, suffocating. His heart was thundering now, too fast, too loud. Not from fear of Lestat, but from something more destabilizing: the creeping, sickening realization that something fundamental was wrong inside his head.
Armand’s voice whispered through the cracks.
“I couldn’t prevent it.”
That calm, poised tone—always so measured, always so gentle, like velvet over razors. Louis could hear it clearly, over and over, echoing like a mantra through the shaking frame of his mind.
“I couldn’t prevent it.”
The same look in his eyes every time Louis asked why —that placid, unreadable face split between apology and inevitability. Armand hadn’t needed to scream to destroy him. He’d only ever needed patience.
“Was it raining, Louis?”
Daniel again. That same mocking tone. Sharp and clinical, as if he were dissecting a lie under glass.
“Was it raining?”
Louis let out a sound—not quite a sob, not quite a gasp. A cracked thing, torn from his throat.
He turned back toward the shower.
Lestat hadn’t moved. He was still standing there beneath the soft drizzle of water, arms curled protectively around his body, looking at Louis with a mixture of confusion and unease. Like he wanted to help but wasn’t sure why help was needed. His brow was furrowed, his mouth parted slightly as if he wanted to say something and didn’t know what shape the words should take.
Louis choked on another breath.
He shut his eyes hard, like he could press the truth out of the dark if he just tried hard enough . He reached backward, toward memory, clawing through decades of silence and misdirection. He tried to picture Lestat— the real Lestat , not the one preserved like porcelain in his mind. Not the version Armand had curated, or the one Louis had sculpted out of grief and rage.
He tried to see .
You would have noticed, he told himself. You would have asked. You would have remembered.
But the image came slowly, rising through the fog.
Their first night.
Lestat in that dark, candlelit room in Rue Royale. Louis kissing Miss Lily, tasting perfume and sweat, turning to find Lestat sitting there—shirt open, eyes sharp, watching.
He remembered the way Lestat had looked at him. The heat in it. The danger. The invitation.
And he remembered—
He remembered .
The shirt falling open. Pale skin. Lines across his chest, raised and uneven. Not fresh. Not bleeding. But there.
There had been scars .
Louis's breath caught.
He remembered thinking they were strange, at first. Out of place on a man like Lestat, who wore beauty like armor. But they hadn’t repulsed him. They had made him more beautiful. Singular. Like there had never been another body like his in the world. Those marks were part of his landscape. And Louis had loved that body, every inch of it.
They had been there.
They had always been there.
And he hadn’t remembered.
A fresh wave of nausea washed over him.
How could you forget something like that? How could you let someone take that from you?
His knees buckled slightly, hand clutching the counter again for support, the air thick and hot and suddenly hard to breathe.
The shower stopped.
Louis barely registered the sound until Lestat was beside him—wet and uncertain, hair clinging to his face, his hand reaching out to steady him.
“Louis,” he said, voice tight with worry, still rough from disuse. “What’s happening?”
His hand touched Louis’s shoulder gently, grounding. Louis could feel the tremor in it. Lestat’s concern was real, but there was fear there too—not for himself, but for the storm unraveling behind Louis’s eyes.
Louis turned toward him.
And this time, he really looked .
Not through the lens of memory, or grief, or fear. He looked at him —his wet skin, the faint tremble in his muscles, the scars that no longer startled but belonged to him. Not signs of weakness. Not fresh. Not new. Just… Lestat .
He closed his eyes again, fighting for something solid to hold on to.
And there it was.
That first night, again—Lestat’s jaw clenched, his gaze smoldering, the way he had looked at Louis with wild, unreadable hunger. The curve of his throat. The long, elegant line of his neck.
And the scars.
Not flaws. Not mysteries.
Him.
They had always been part of him. Louis just hadn’t been allowed to remember.
A sob caught in his throat, smaller now, but real. He opened his eyes and looked at Lestat like he was seeing him right for the first time in years.
And he whispered, hoarse and reverent:
“It was always you.”
Lestat’s brow furrowed, his eyes wide in a way that didn’t suit him, didn’t used to suit him. Fear was never something Lestat wore easily. But now it was plain, trembling behind the confusion.
“Louis,” he said, voice thin, “I don’t understand… you’re frightening me.”
The words landed with quiet finality.
Louis froze.
The pressure in his chest held steady—tight but no longer consuming. He didn’t fall apart again. He just stood there, breathing carefully, trying to steady himself as the truth settled over him in thick, suffocating folds. His hand moved without thought, rising to Lestat’s face, cupping his cheek. Cool, wet skin under his palm. Still beautiful. Still here.
He’d come into the room to comfort Lestat. To coax him back to life.
And somehow— somehow —he’d ended up the one being steadied.
A bitter thought twisted low in his mind: Had that happened before? How many times had he collapsed and been held, consoled? How much had he forgotten? How much had been taken ?
But Lestat’s eyes—searching, hurt, still so present —pulled him back to the moment. Louis shut his eyes and let out a trembling breath. A single tear of blood tracked down his cheek, slow and hot.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, voice rough with the weight of it. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s just…”
He paused, pressed his forehead briefly against Lestat’s, his thumb brushing the edge of his cheekbone.
“There are things,” he whispered, “things I don’t remember. Or maybe I remember them wrong. I don’t know how much of it was me , or…”
His jaw tightened.
“Or him , messing with my head.”
Lestat didn’t need him to say the name. His lips parted around a sharp, exhaled breath.
“ Armand ,” he said, soft but scalding.
Louis nodded. Once. Slow. The word sat between them like ash.
His hand dropped gently from Lestat’s face and moved back to his chest, to the raised scar that cut a brutal diagonal across his skin. He traced it with the barest touch, reverent and horrified at once.
“I didn’t remember them,” he murmured. “I don’t know how, but… I didn’t remember.”
He felt Lestat’s breath catch—so subtle, but real. A tiny stutter under his palm.
It hit him then, truly hit him: how much this must have cost Lestat. To stand bare before him. To trust him with this ugliness, this history pressed into his skin. And Louis hadn’t recognized it. Had looked at him like a stranger.
Decades, they had spent together. Intimate, entangled. How could he have missed this? How could he have forgotten?
He looked up into Lestat’s face again, steadier now, but aching.
“How did this happen, Lestat?” he asked softly. No panic this time. No horror. Just… sorrow. “Did we ever talk about it? You must’ve been human. Someone did this to you. What did this to you?”
Lestat’s expression didn’t change at first. His eyes fluttered shut. His throat moved—one hard swallow. His lips parted, and for a second Louis thought he might refuse to answer, might vanish back into that closed-off quiet he used to live inside when he didn’t want to be known.
But then—
One word. A name.
“Magnus.”
It came out barely above a whisper.
And everything clicked.
The blood. The tower. The locked room. The bodies. The ones that looked like him. The silence. The refusal.
Magnus.
Of course.
Louis’s breath left him in a quiet, anguished exhale.
He didn’t push. Didn’t speak. There was nothing else to ask—not now.
Because that name had always meant one thing.
Please don’t ask me. I can’t talk about this.
So he didn’t.
He just reached out again, and pulled Lestat gently into his arms.
Louis held him close.
Lestat’s skin was damp against his, their bodies cold now with steam fading from the air. Louis pressed small kisses into his wet hair—one after another, barely touches. Like a benediction. Like an apology he couldn’t stop giving.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against golden curls. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Over and over. A breath between each one. As if it could undo something. As if penance could be measured in touch alone.
And Lestat—he didn’t pull away.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood in Louis’s arms, letting himself be held, letting the weight of the moment settle into his bones.
But after a while, he shifted—just slightly—and looked up at Louis, his gaze steadier than it had been all night. Not free of confusion. Not healed. But present .
And in a voice barely more than breath, he said, “It’s not your fault, Saint Louis. Memory is a difficult thing.”
The words struck something deep inside Louis, ringing familiar.
“Memory is a monster.”
His own voice, echoed from a different room, a different life.
The truth of it now felt heavier than it ever had.
They stood there for a moment more, still close, still silent. Louis's hand rested gently at the back of Lestat’s neck, thumb stroking slowly at the edge of his damp hairline. Lestat’s forehead leaned lightly against his shoulder. Not clinging—just… resting.
Eventually, Louis pulled back just enough to look at him again. He let a small breath escape, a hint of wry humor in it, not enough to pierce the quiet, only to warm it.
“How about that shower now?” he asked softly. “Let me wash your hair.”
He didn’t wait for a response. Just took Lestat’s hand again, and led him back under the still-warm water.
And this time, when Louis reached for him, Lestat closed his eyes and leaned in.