Archive of Our Own

The apartment sat on the fourth floor of a corner building on the Rue des Martyrs in the 9th arrondissement. It was late summer and past midnight and the stagnation was felt everywhere in the city. The air inside the old apartment was stagnant and balmy, redolent with the faded scent of decades of cigarette smoke. The white lace curtains billowed in the wan summer breeze that did nothing to alleviate the pervasive sensation that Louis was trapped inside the airless, oppressive studio.

The cigarette between Louis’ fingers burned at both ends and the neat little column of ash grew in length as he brooded by the open window.

On the radio, Piaf’s voice warbled through the crackle of static, accompanied by the crescendo of strings. The cathedral radio was a weathered, beaten old thing that predated the war and had come with the furnished apartment. Claudia was partial to playing the new wave of French radio, Josephine Baker and Django Reinhardt, and the late night news broadcast, and Louis preferred it that way too.

Louis pushed the rolled-up sleeves of his blue cotton chambray past his forearms. The red bandanna, rolled into a crumpled knot-tie around his neck, mopped the perspiration flushing the nape of his neck. He was uncomfortable all over. Hunger turned his stomach over and a dry and unpleasant film coated his mouth.

There were no pigeons on the balcony, and rarer still for Paris, there were no rats in the building. Claudia surmised that the pigeons had observed how frequently birds went missing from their kit after a feeding, and that their numbers were dwindling. He didn't think it was possible, but they roosted on the alcove of the building just beyond his natural reach and avoided the windowsill. Even the ends of the baguettes that he scattered on the ledge were left to grow stale and dry or to molder after a rain, untouched.

And still he had rejected yet another one of Claudia’s increasingly hostile invitations to join the coven on a hunt.

You drained all the rats in the building, Lou. Her voice had taken on a sharp edge. What’s next, slurping up horseflies? Come with us.

Louis took a long drag of the cigarette before snubbing its remnants on the windowsill and flicking the dead end onto the street below. The smoke curled in his throat and he exhaled slowly, slowly, through pursed lips, imagining that the tight feeling in his throat, like an old elastic band stretched too far, was nothing more than the scratch of a dry cough.

Claudia had not cared that he was not in attendance for the half-year anniversary of My Baby Loves Windows. Her own excitement for the theater was beginning to wilt and give way to impatience, he could tell.

She had been short-tempered that evening, impatiently painting her eyes and mouth round and doll-like, and left her pans of shadows and rouge strewn about the vanity. She had waved him away when he lingered by the door, tripping over excuses. She knew him well enough to know that he could not sit through another performance that week.

He winced and half-smiled his way through the show every other night. For Claudia’s sake, his guilt-ridden conscience reminded him each time he flinched and shrank into his seat.

He found it cheap and vulgar, and a sportscoat had been stained beyond remedy by a deliberate misfire of the syrup-like fake blood. In the crowded auditorium, he was lonelier than ever, surrounded by laughter and bawdy singing along to Claudia’s half-hearted performance, and there was an unconscious and unquestionable nagging at the back of his mind of something that he refused to allow to rise to the surface to be examined.

Some nights she reminded him of Lestat with her sweet singing voice and the visible thrill she felt in front of the audience. She took to the stage like a natural and the audience adored her in the limelight.

Splat!

Baby Lou hit the pavement each night and every night, without fail, the sight of Claudia collapsed on the stage, legs and arms splayed, made the hair on the nape of his neck stand on end.

Splat!

She had no way of knowing how much she reminded him of Paul in her blue dress, tapping her feet and charming the crowd, dancing and falling and dancing and falling, over and over again with every performance.

Splat!

Most nights he watched her from the best seat in the center row, and sat paralyzed with dread. He would sit uneasily in the cramped seat and watch the projections or stare at his hands and try to pretend he did not feel the chilling sensation that he was being watched from every corner of the room. He watched Claudia flout about the stage in her blue dress and shiny shoes and remembered combing her hair into plaits and updos, and the ribbons and the chiffon skirts and sailor dresses she wore as a girl.

Splat!

Claudia fell to her staged death, over and over, each night and he thought of Lestat and his terrible rage, his cruel mouth, his loving embrace. He stewed in the traitorous tenderness he felt toward memories of the decade when she was the daughter they coddled together, and it would come to an end only when he was startled awake by the thunderous round of applause for Baby Lou, which seemed to catch him by surprise again night after night.

He steeled his resolve each night to shove Lestat deep in a box locked away inside somewhere he could not reach. Yet there were days he dreamed of Lestat and woke at night with a longing that consumed him.

Those nights were miserable; he was impatient, on the edge, and on those nights the vampires in the coven avoided him, casting looks over their shoulders as if he was a mad dog roving in their midst. Armand became dour those nights too, as if he could sense what —who— lurked beneath the surface of Louis’ thoughts. He lashed out if he heard even a lick of French, criticized even Santiago, and could not be satisfied by any performance, and if the coven said nothing to Louis aloud, he could read in Santiago’s baleful glares and Celeste and Estelle and Gustave’s down-turned mouths that they blamed him for their maitre’s foul mood.

But the worst nights were the ones when there were brief glimpses of Lestat, moments in passing when he saw a stranger in the crowd with a head full of hair the same hue and luster of Lestat’s, or a deep voice in the faceless hordes at the theater that stirred the familiar tumult of dread and desire in the pit of his belly.

And Louis realized then that in thinking of Lestat and Claudia and the coven, he was in a strange, unnameable state, neither rage nor tears but close to both.

On the radio, the music passed into the quiet talk of the late night news hour, and at a distance, he registered the dull, staccato thud of heels on the wooden floors, as though hearing the footfall through the walls of the apartment complex. The neighbor, he thought, recalling an elderly French widower. He had lost a son in the war and lived alone with an unmarried daughter. Or Claudia.

But the gait was all wrong and the night was still young. Claudia had only left an hour earlier.

And Louis knew, even before he saw him, that he was back. But again, he had never fully left.

Louis watched him in the reflection of the round mirror hanging at eye level by the door. Here he was again, like a shadow in from the street.

Louis closed his eyes, but the sight of Lestat remained behind his eyelids.

Lestat drifted as though floating. The floorboards did not creak beneath his feet. They faced one another in silence as Yves Montand sang on the forgotten radio, until his voice slowly faded into the final, wistful notes.

Louis blinked hard, squeezed his eyes shut so tight that light danced behind his closed eyelids, then stepped away from the window to inspect the photographs hanging on the line distended from one corner of the room to another.

The photographs were taken at the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in April, when the chestnut trees were in blossom throughout the city. He had not taken a photograph since. He continued to wear the Leica around his neck out of habit, yet the Rolleiflex sat collecting dust on the mantel behind piles of newspaper and discarded rolls of film.

There was an unspoken, fragile hope in his chest that the photographs would make an artist of him and reveal something of merit that deserved to be displayed in the gallery. But the photographs proved to be a crushing disappointment.

Louis glared at the only two half-decent photographs hanging side by side on the cord. His gaze flitted back and forth between the two. Neither photograph would sell. Both were under-exposed. On the left, the lens was out of focus. On the right, a decent photograph of a half-eroded gravestone in the maudlin moonlight was distorted by crescent-shaped marks in the margins.

The furious tears sprang to his eyes in earnest then and Louis exhaled slowly through his nose, running his tongue over his teeth, jaw tight. The photographs lack eye and technical skill and subject interest. The simpering voice rattling in his skull sounded like Alois.

He tucked another cigarette between his lips to still his shaking hands and looked over to where Lestat stood, head cocked to the side, examining the photographs strung out on the line from one end of the room to the other. Louis passed a hand through his hair and pulled at the curls at the nape of his neck.

His hands trembled when he raised the lighter to his mouth and it took one, two, three attempts to catch the flickering flame.

Louis saw his face in profile as Lestat glanced over his shoulder, intentionally catching his eye. The shadows in the room gathered at the corner of his mouth, deepening the furrow of the scar on his lip and creating the illusion of a smile. He tapped a photograph with his index finger.

“I like this one very much,” he said sincerely.

The photograph was of fishing boats tethered in the Seine. The river had been very dirty and dark after a late spring rainstorm and the rowboats and bateaux mouches were rocked side to side by the angry, sweeping current. Louis exhaled slowly.

“Tried to sell that one. No buyers.”

“The film was overexposed, perhaps, and yet the shot is good.”

Louis said nothing. Lestat continued, “Do you remember how little good light there was around the river that night? The moon was weak. You are ever thwarted by the affliction of stalking the night.”

His shoes were well-polished. It was an absurd observation, and still Louis could not stop looking at the shine on the toe-box of his wingtips. Lestat was handsome in striped shirtsleeves and gray, double-pleated trousers, but Louis' gaze kept returning to his shiny shoes.

“You are quiet tonight, Louis.”

“I’m busy tonight. I don’t have time for you.”

Louis flicked the cigarette into an ashtray and brushed the residue from his fingertips on his trousers, minding the gap between himself and Lestat in the crowded living room. He kept to the corner by the radio.

In the distance, sirens wailed and automobiles clamored down Boulevard de Clichy. The metro rumbled through Pigalle, connecting to a far stretch of the city. On the street directly below, the hum of conversation at the corner brasserie on the Rue des Martyrs was interrupted by the crash-bang-crash! of chairs toppling and broken glass. Laughter broke out among the crowds on the pavement. Lestat’s laughter joined the fray.

“What a mess. It was the garçon, you know. He can expect to be gone come morning, and without pay to boot.”

Louis listened, and despite his best efforts to ignore Lestat’s presence, he was amused. “And how could you possibly know that?”

“Listen. You will hear the proprietor barking at him now.”

Past the music, past the laughter, past the conversation and the drunken leering and shouting on the busy boulevard, he could in fact hear the angry baritone of a middle-aged man shouting obscenities. It was a voice that called to mind the matching image of a short and heavyset man with a round, red face, flushed with anger and with eyes that bulged unattractively, so enraged that spittle flew from his mouth. One pulse later, and Louis could hear a much younger man’s voice cursing him.

“You heard it, yes?”

Louis ignored him and turned the volume dial on the radio. Drown him out. It had worked on occasion. Horn and trombone blared from the radio, loud enough that he anticipated an angry knock on his door–

It is past midnight? Have you lost your mind, Américain? Dégage!

–and still he could not drown the sound of Lestat’s voice in his ear, soft and intimate, as if he were standing right next to him.

“Again with this silent treatment, mon cœur? More than ever it appears you must be enticed into talking with me. How cruel you can be.”

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

“But I am.”

“You’re not real,” Louis said. He kept his voice low, cool. He was arguing with himself and he knew it. He gestured as though he still held a cigarette between his fingers. “You’re smoke and mirrors in my fucked up head, that’s all.”

Lestat sat in the center of the room on the pink boudoir chair, reclining elegantly. His legs stretched out in front of him, seemingly endless, and his shined shoes rested atop the mismatched velvet ottoman.

He rolled his head lazily to look over at Louis.

“And yet you have been missing me. You have been lonely, mon cher. Why else am I here?”

Louis recoiled.

“I don’t know why you’re here.”

“Oh, Louis.”

Lestat breathed out a laugh. Louis hated the knowing smile on his face.

“You can lie to that theatrical buffoon and you can lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to me, mon cher. Je t'ai manqué, n'est-ce pas?”

“Don't say shit like that. You’re the one who got us into this mess in the first place, always ruining things, keeping secrets, hiding things from us–!”

“You are blue because Claudia leaves you to suffer nights alone and he does not warm your bed," Lestat drawled. "You thought you were lonely before, Louis, with Paul dead and Grace as good as dead, but now you have come to taste the worst of it.”

Louis closed his eyes. The rising dread threatened to turn his empty stomach over.

“Did you come here to torture me? And make me remember all the things I want to forget? ‘Cause that’s all you’re doing right now and I don't need that from you right now.”

Lestat’s hand came to rest gently on Louis’ cheek, redirecting him back, a phantom touch that made him shudder and desperately press his face into Lestat’s broad palm.

“Mais non, pas de tout,” Lestat murmured. “I am here, Louis. I have been missing you terribly. And it is only now that you can begin to understand me at last, mon cher.”

Whatever had been resisting inside him softened and gave way to collapse. There was a dull ache somewhere in the hollow of his chest, where the pounding drum of his heartbeat went unmatched.

“Something like that.”

♫ Ne me dis pas que tu m’adores ♫

♫ Embrasse-moi de temps en temps ♫

Louis looked up sharply and jerked his head in the direction of the music as though pulled on a string.

Josephine Baker’s sultry voice was distorted by the loudspeaker. Louis hurried to lower the volume, restoring the sound to normal. There was something soft and wistful on Lestat’s face when he returned, and his gaze lingered on the radio meaningfully.

“We used to know how to cut up the rug, didn’t we, mon cher?”

It was a phrase Lestat confused without fail and Louis rarely corrected. It was a sweet thing he harbored like a secret, a mastery of the idiomatic language that occasionally passed over Lestat’s head.

Louis smiled reluctantly. “You could be light on your feet sometimes.”

Lestat notched his chin down and looked up at him in a way that made his eyes very large and very round. He blinked slowly, deliberately. Louis could not remember his eyes being so blue. His long eyelashes brushed against his cheek.

“You did not like to dance with me then.”

“I was angry at you. There’s a difference.”

“And are you no longer angry?”

A throb of guilt, desire. “Of course I’m still angry.”

Louis watched him. They listened to Josephine Baker croon without saying another word. His gaze never wavered from Lestat’s face.

♫ Ne laisse pas mourir nos rêves♫

♫ De temps en temps rappelle-toi♫

The details were wrong, he thought at length. His hair. His hair was wrong.

His hair fell in loose, golden waves falling just below his shoulder. Louis studied him but could not recall if his hair had been lighter, shorter– details that he had not committed to memory in the decades they spent together that confounded him now. Louis strained to recall. His hair appeared to him to be the color of spun gold, thin and wavy, curling at his jaw, and then it was the color of wheat, sitting at his shoulder, and then–

He could not remember.

The details were beginning to fade around the edges like a well-thumbed photograph, distorted by the passage of time, which would only continue to expand. It was nine years now, soon it would be ten, and then fifteen, and one decade after another would come to pass. He would soon forget what he thought he could never forget, the way he had long forgotten the sound of his papa’s voice before he had been reduced to the wheezing and coughing, and the name of the runaway dog from his childhood, found crushed on the street weeks later, skinny and starved, and all the painful, insignificant details of his half-remembered life before Paul’s death.

Already the details were being lost in memory. It should have been a source of comfort that he was beginning to forget, but it was not, and that confused him.

When the music ended and the late night radio broadcast gave way to static and then silence, Louis turned off the radio and approached the record player that stood lonely in the corner.

His first purchase in Paris had been the Leica, and the second purchase a gramophone that sat unused in the corner of the room, collecting dust beside a pile of unread novels purchased for pocket change from the bouquinistes on the Quai des Grands Augustins. Among the collection of records were many favorites, brought over and left behind by the American soldiers who had come and gone in the city: Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Billie Holiday.

A thick layer of dust covered the casing and the collection of vinyl records alike. Until now, he could not bring himself to listen to the nostalgic sound of a country drawl or American blues.

He sifted through the records slowly. Motes of dust floated in the air and caught the light of the single incandescent bulb hanging from the ceiling. Lestat’s wingtips appeared in the corner of his vision.

“Play that record we like so much, Louis,” he murmured.

His mouth was pressed to Louis’ ear. The desire that spiked in him coursed through his veins and hit him with all the brunt force of a baseball bat to the skull, age fourteen, when Paul, age eight, swung hard and let the bat go flying out of his hands.

Lights exploded behind his closed eyelids then and now. Louis wavered and swayed in place, bracing himself against the record player. The earth was once more liquid beneath his feet.

When the blood no longer rushed in his ears, he selected a vinyl record: Billie Holiday with Eddie Heywood and His Orchestra. He stroked his fingers over the cover, brushing aside the film of dust, and laid the record down gently, like a baby.

–unlike Benny, left to screech on the floor like a wild, unloved thing, a nephew who would be a man now, the same age Paul was when he saw the birds for the last time.

Louis shook his head hard. The shame did not dissipate. But when the first notes of piano played low and sweet, he could almost forget the airless, claustrophobic room and imagine he was once again in the courtyard of the Azalea, sucking in the sweet scent of wisteria and summer rain in the air, before two wars, before one decade of anger and resentment, before before before–

“Come here, mon amour.”

Lestat extended his hand and Louis could not say no. Louis stepped into the circle of his arms and found his place pressed chest to chest against Lestat. Nothing could have felt more natural than his hand in Lestat’s or Lestat’s broad hand around his waist.

Lestat’s hand swept from his side to the small of his back, drawing him close and holding him steady. His ear pressed against Lestat’s chest, where his beating heart would be. Louis closed his eyes and imagined he could hear their hearts beating in sync.

♫ I’ll be seeing you ♫

♫ In all the old familiar places ♫

♫ That this heart of mine embraces ♫

Lestat hummed under his breath and the sound caught in Louis’ chest. It occurred to him then for the very first time that if Lestat were dead, as Roget seemed to believe, he would never have heard of Edith Piaf or Django Reinhardt or Josephine Baker.

He would have adored Josephine Baker, Louis thought, and was crushed by a wave of terrible grief.

“How I adore this song. Miss Holiday, une chanteuse très enchanteresse. The silver lining to emerge from those dark years, n’est-ce pas, mon cher?”

“You don’t know this song. You can’t know this song. You ain’t ever heard it. You said that earlier 'bout Jo Baker too, but there’s no way you would’ve heard about her either.”

“I know your thoughts, mon cher. They are also my thoughts.”

Louis traced his fingers along the contours of Lestat’s firm back. It remained as he remembered. And, suddenly, he strangely felt terribly shy, as though it was the first time he had ever been held in Lestat’s arms.

“Did you really like that photograph? The one with the boats?”

“Certainement, mon cœur. Mais pourquoi?”

“I got the eye—” He spat the word like an insult. “I know what’s good. I know what sells. But what I’m taking— these photographs—” An ugly laugh caught in his throat. “It’s not working, none of it.”

A thoughtfulness appeared on his face, a softening around the eyes. “The years will soon pass with nothing to show for them. You are documenting your very existence by the grace of ever-evolving technology, if nothing else.

“Is it not enough to hold in your hands the indisputable proof that you once stood here on your two feet, gazing upon this with your very own eyes?” Lestat murmured. “If it is not enough, it ought to be. Already your memory fails you, mon cher. Do not lose what else you may love.”

There was a pause in between the tracks on the record, and in the space of that time Louis registered that it had gone completely quiet on the street below. It was well into the night and the crowds had dispersed back into their homes and beds, or into the beds of strangers. He was acutely aware that he was alone, completely alone in the apartment, alone in the city. It felt safe to confess a stray memory that had floated in the back of his mind, haunting him for months.

“The night we watched Nosferatu back in '22,” he started. “We all laughed and laughed and would've gotten ourselves kicked outta the theater if it wasn’t for your mind games. We thought it was silly then, and it was, but Claudia left that theater thinking it was the best thing humans had ever made. She wanted to be in one, said she wanted to be in the moving pictures.”

Claudia was still young then, he remembered. Sixteen years old in the body of a fourteen year old. The full reality of her transformation had not yet sunk in. The indifference of youth, Lestat had called it.

“That first night in the theater, with the coven, the shows were strange and the tricks were cheap and it made me sick, that thing they did with that girl at the end. But you should’ve seen Claudia. Mouth all open, smiling real wide. First time I’d seen her smile since Mardi Gras. That’s almost eight years without a smile on that girl’s face.”

Lestat remained quiet.

Louis’ voice faltered. “And she loved it. Not so much anymore, now that she’s up on the stage doing that. But the people love her, and she’s good on that stage ‘cause she’s a real good liar too, just like you, and she can be mean, real mean, just like you. She doesn’t think it, but I know it. Filth makes filth. I'm the shape you made me and she is too.”

The room slipped away from him then. He was enveloped by Lestat, breathing in that familiar scent of violet water that perfumed his hair and skin that he had missed so terribly, and his heart thudded hard and heavy in his chest, one lonely drum without a match.

Louis eyed his mouth, remembering it well. Full, well-shaped, cruel and taunting and wickedly funny and loving beyond reason. Slowly, he raised a hand to Lestat’s face and held his face in his hand, tracing the line of his jaw with his thumb. He loved Lestat’s mouth. He always had.

Louis kissed him. And though Louis was cold, had not fed and was clammy with a cold fever, Lestat felt warm underneath his hands, present and nearly tangible and there. Louis held his warm face in his hands and kissed him with an escalating desperation and hunger that frightened him, caressing the sides of his face with his fingers and kissing the scar on the side of his mouth. He drank in Lestat’s pleased gasp before kissing his mouth again and again.

Heat fanned across his face and the desire pulsed through his veins, molten hot. Lestat pressed a kiss to the side of his mouth and nosed along his jaw, fixing gentle, worshipful kisses in the wake of mouth, trailing kisses from Louis’ temple to the corner of his mouth, over and over. Louis’ hands moved of their own accord, reaching for Lestat’s hair, needing to tangle his fingers into his shining hair, which gleamed golden in the incandescent light.

“Louis, Louis,” Lestat breathed into his mouth. “My Louis, mon cher, mon coeur. Allez, Dis-moi que tu me désires. Dis-moi encore que tu as besoin de moi.”

Louis nodded desperately and kissed his mouth hard enough to bruise. There was nothing but the feeling of Lestat: the touch, his scent, the sound of his growling breaths and their lips parting and coming together desperately. The thrum of desire reverberated throughout his body and the longing to hear Lestat’s heartbeat and to feel it in his own chest one more time was unbearable.

Louis panted into Lestat’s mouth and pulled him closer, delirious and aroused, blurring fantasy and reality. Lestat was not there, not really, and still Louis felt him, touched him, pressed his clothed erection against Lestat’s thigh and moaned deep in his throat.

Louis yanked him back, drawing him in by the buckle of his belt, and retreated until the backs of his knees touched the mattress and he tumbled onto it in a tangle of limbs and unmade sheets. He craved the weight of Lestat on him, the solid press of his body bearing down on him, firm and heavy above him. He untucked his shirt as Lestat’s hands dipped into the front of his trousers. He had never undone the fastenings of his trousers or kicked them off so quickly. Louis’ cock was harder than it had been in years. His shorts were tented uncomfortably and Louis nearly cried out when Lestat pressed the heel of his palm to the outline of his cock, stroking him through his cotton shorts with the talented fingers of the musician he once was.

“Surely you miss it,” Lestat murmured, and his voice pitched deeper. “The way it once was. My arms around you. Your legs around me. I used to take such good care of you, mon doux. You loved my hands, my mouth, my embrace...”

“Please, Les.”

The word ripped itself from his throat, mangled and desperate.

Louis reached for him, scrabbling fingers pulling at his long, beautiful hair, and he wished he could bite him, wished he could turn them over to touch Lestat’s chest and lick down his muscled abdomen to take his cock into his mouth.

“Blood of my blood, my heart’s own blood,” Lestat whispered. “Pleasure yourself for me.”

He made quick work of removing his shorts and casting them aside, and when he wrapped a hand around himself, already throbbing and dripping wet with precome, he moaned piteously. He leaked all over his own fingers, making his strokes sloppy, and it was as if he was touching himself for the first time all over again. He rutted against his own palm until–

“Ah, ah.”

–Louis’ hand stopped immediately.

Lestat reached over and stroked him with long pulls, twisting his hand around the tip, and Louis bit his hand to stifle the noises he made. A thin trickle of blood pooled in his palm and spilled between his teeth, weak and acerbic, and he remembered the taste of Lestat’s blood, rich and lush as life itself, in his mouth when they kissed furiously, biting and sucking. He craved it more than anything he could remember wanting anything in his mortal life.

“Is it good, Louis? Tell me, mon cher. Have I lost my touch?”

Louis jerked his hand in short, frantic strokes along the underside of his cock, rubbing his thumb right against the frenulum, making incoherent sounds that sounded like broken sobs to his own ears.

Lestat kissed his neck, pressing his mouth to the tender spot just above his pulse, grazing the points of his fangs.

"Mon trésor, mon cher bebe, mon coeur, l’amour de ma vie," he murmured, over and over. “Make a mess on me.”

Louis spilled with a cry, jerking in Lestat’s hold. Lestat’s hand remained on his cock, stroking over him until it ached and every last drop of come spilled onto his fingers.

Louis buried his nose in Lestat’s tawny blond curls and inhaled the scent of his hair, coming down from the high. He clung to Lestat, rattling stuttered breaths into his shoulder. Lestat’s hand remained wrapped around him and he did not move for a long time, laying there with his nose against Louis’ jaw.

Lestat stroked his fingers over the dark curls trailing up from his spent cock. His hand continued over Louis’ abdomen and the softness there, up between the hollows of his ribs, rising and falling, before settling at the center of his chest, where his heart thudded heavy and slow.

Louis only moved once, to dress himself again, carefully doing up the buttons of his shirt and tucking the hem into the waistband of his trousers, in case Claudia returned earlier than anticipated. Shame washed over him as he thought of her, and a terrible feeling of guilt followed in its wake, ringing bells of alarm in his ears that he was wrong, he was sick.

And still, when he looked over his shoulder at Lestat, sitting patiently on the edge of the mattress, stroking his fingers idly over the flower-patterned coverlet, the alarm bells quieted and the tension in his chest disappeared.

Afterward, he reached for the pack of Gauloise cigarettes on the bureau and lit one slowly, watching Lestat, eyes glued to his face. Lestat licked his lips, mouth shiny and kissed red in the eye of Louis’ mind, and raised his own cigarette to his lips.

Together they laid side by side and watched the blue plumes of smoke curl to the ceiling and the orange tips of cigarettes and each other. Lestat’s hand traced idle patterns through the fabric of Louis’ shirt, and when Louis’ cigarette burned to the tip, he lit another.

Louis stared at him for what felt like hours, committing his face to memory, and did not know when he drifted off with the sight of Lestat behind his eyes.

“Louis?”

A soft, repetitive scratch tugged at the edges of his consciousness. Louis opened his eyes to see Armand looming over the record player, resetting the track. Billie Holiday crooned into the room and Louis lurched upright.

“No, turn that off.”

The record stopped.

“You were asleep.”

Armand sounded amused. He appeared well-sated. There was a flood of color in the apples of his cheeks and he was in high spirits; his footsteps were lighter than usual somehow and he appeared oblivious to the disarray in the room.

“Yeah, guess I must have dozed off or somethin’.” Louis nudged Armand’s hip with his foot. “How'd you get in?”

“You left the door ajar. Then I saw your face and I could not help but wonder what you were dreaming.”

“That’s good to know. How long have you been watching?”

“Are there not enough hours in the day for you to sleep?”

Louis kissed Armand’s mouth and felt the smile that formed against his lips. Armand still tasted of fresh blood. It stirred the dull ache of hunger in the pit of his stomach and he licked his lips.

“You ain’t answer my question, I ain’t gonna answer yours. How was the hunt?”

“Good. Very good, in fact. Although the troupe did wonder yet again about your absence.”

There was a cautious question behind the light tone and the small, neutral smile on Armand’s face that set off a deep-seated instinct for suspicion. Louis sucked on his teeth and pulled a smile that felt cool and unnatural.

“Don’t see how it’s any of their business what I get up to when I’m away.”

“Is it any of my business?”

“Could be, but it’s dull as ditchwater. I got nothing to say.”

Louis stood and smoothed the creases from his trousers. The sheets were tangled with sweat and he suspected with no small amount of embarrassment that his come had dried somewhere on the bedspread. He smoothed a hand over the sheets and left them upturned to conceal the mess underneath.

A flicker of something crossed Armand’s expression before it disappeared, replaced by an unreadable smile. “And the photography?”

“I might be done with the photography for now.” He casually swept the room with his gaze, searching. He found nothing, and pretended that the ache in his chest was imagined. “Might try my hand at something else instead. Paint, maybe, or collecting art. Selling it too. Bet there’re plenty of new up-and-comers out here ain’t worth a damn right now, but maybe in a few years or a decade or two and they could turn a profit.”

Armand broke the veneer of polite disinterest by raising his eyebrows.

“A decade or two,” he repeated. “I was not aware you had intentions to remain in Paris for so long.”

“What, you ready to run me out?”

Armand did not laugh. Louis could almost despise him for the anticipation written across his face. He only shrugged.

“Claudia’s here and she finally seems happy. Found everything she was searching for here.” Even with that stupid fuckin’ show, he thought viciously. A near-imperceptible flinch let him know that Armand had heard it. “We were wandering around for so many years that I’m not exactly racing to hit the road again either.”

The anticipation on Armand’s face dimmed and something like disappointment settled in its place. He carefully adopted a blank stare into the corner of the room and he withdrew a cigarette case from his shirt pocket. Louis watched him select a cigarette and raise it with a mechanical stiffness to his lips.

“And,” he added, softening his voice. “You’re here. Don’t think that doesn’t mean something to me.”

Even as Louis said the words, played the part, flashed a smile at Armand that didn’t match how cold he felt inside, the uncertainty prickled under his skin and something like panic rose like bile in his throat. He swallowed it down and stood and circled Armand, plucking the lit cigarette from his fingers and raising it to his own mouth.

“So,” Louis started. He gestured and lifted his eyebrows. “How was she tonight?”

“The audience loves your Claudia,” Armand dismissed. His voice remained flat. “Though I personally find her performance to be lacking as of late. She drags her feet and does not so much flap her wings as she does flail them. I suppose her performance is acceptable to the untrained eye.”

“That bad, huh?” Uncaringly, Louis shrugged. “She’s been doing that number for months now. It gets old.”

“There is no excuse for her delivery of a poor performance.”

“Old.”

“She lets down the audience, and worse yet the coven, with her lackluster stage presence.”

“Old. Dull.”

“It is our most successful act,” Armand said very matter-of-factly. “As our most successful act, she will be expected to play this role until a new one is assigned to her.”

Louis smiled. He looked Armand over. “And exactly how long will that take?”

“Sam is in charge of writing scripts. But she cannot expect him to write her into ever–”

Louis kissed him. Armand’s recriminations gave way to a silent gasp and his mouth was small and gentle against Louis’ mouth, shockingly shy each time.

“You look good today,” Louis murmured, dropping his voice into a deeper octave. He splayed his fingers over the double-breasted lapel of Armand’s pinstriped jacket and thumbed the button at the center of his sternum. “Why’d you come picking a fight?”

Armand's laughter was soft and silky. “As do you, always.”

“Look good or pick a fight?”

“Both, I’m afraid.”

Louis offered him the cigarette and watched him through the smoke.

“Where is Claudia?”

“Still hunting, I’m sure. She was late to the hunt. She had tasks to finish at the theater.”

“Are y’all ever gonna stop hazing her?”

“Naturally, when a newcomer approaches our coven seeking to join our ranks.”

Louis pulled a face. “Come on, don’t start that now. What, I’m supposed to join so I can lick Santiago’s boots and scrape chewing gum off the seats? I’ll pass.”

“You won’t have to lick–”

“I ain’t joining,” Louis interrupted, placing a finger on Armand’s lip. “You already knew that. You come all this way to get rejected again, or what?”

“Not at all.”

“Then what?”

Armand’s exasperated breath brushed his fingertip. “I wanted to see you.”

Louis breathed out a laugh and licked his lips, drawing attention to his open mouth. Armand’s eyes followed the movement of his tongue. His eyes remained on his mouth. Louis briefly considered kissing him.

“Well, I’m done talking ‘bout the coven tonight.”

For all that he found confusing about Armand, Louis liked him. He liked his soft, cultured voice, his eyes, his lips. Armand had a way of looking at him, terrifying for the way his gaze sawed him in half. He saw through Louis' pretensions and still chose to indulge him.

It appeared, for a moment, that Armand would reach out and touch him. The desire to be touched, a fleeting sense of anticipation, excited him.

But Armand only looked at him with that same desire written across his face, pupils blown wide, his face lovely and blank and wanting. Armand remained a mystery to him, all these months later.

Louis’ gaze flitted over Armand’s shoulder to the clock sitting on the mantel. The hands read 02:54 and already he could hear the sound of birdsong through the open window.

“Louis–”

“It’s an hour to curfew for you,” he started. He read the surprise on Armand’s face and softened his voice, adding, “I ain’t fed yet either. I can walk you to the theater. Then I’ll take a walk in the park and see what’s left.”

Louis reached for the navy blue blouse-jacket draped over the back of the divan and pushed one arm through the sleeve. Out of habit, he carried the Leica over his neck. The familiar weight of the camera against his sternum grounded him.

Armand had not moved. Louis raised his eyebrows.

“Feed from me instead.”

When Armand talked, his mouth remained small, lips barely parting and shaping to form around each word. It was a detached, clinical observation. Louis watched his mouth and callously wondered if his mouth ever opened any wider or if his mouth remained the same small o if he shouted or raged or wept.

“Drink from me,” Armand repeated, searching for his gaze, as though Louis had not understood him. Louis continued to stare at his mouth. “The park will be empty. If you are out feeding past curfew —yes, even you— the coven’s trust in you will continue to break. We are already under enough pressure to remain in the coven’s good graces as it is. Drink from me.”

Louis unwound the camera strap from around his neck and carefully set the Leica on the coffee table. He said nothing, only looked at Armand as he shrugged off his jacket, and, after a moment’s thought, carefully unwound the bandanna from around his throat, and watched as Armand’s eyes went wide and glassy. Armand took off his coat and let it fall in a heap to the floor.

“You sure?” he asked, even as his mouth became crowded with fangs. His teeth dully ached and pulsated with the need to bite and the pit of hunger he had brushed aside the entire night became impossible to ignore.

Armand sat down in the center of the mattress where Lestat had been not even two hours earlier. Louis felt a twinge of short-lived guilt and embarrassment. He lowered himself beside Armand and placed a hand on his thigh, smoothing his palm over the lean muscle that jerked under his palm.

“Maître.”

Armand tilted his head back, providing a smooth expanse for Louis to sink his teeth into the long column of his slender throat. Louis licked his lips and pressed his mouth to his neck, pressing a perfunctory kiss to Armand’s neck, before biting down hard.

Blood flooded into his mouth and beneath him, Armand breathed a moan that Louis felt more than heard. As though he were petting a small animal, he stroked his fingers against Armand’s knee, before curling his hand around his thigh and bracing himself. He continued feeding and swam in the color red as he drank, like seeing and feeling the warmth of the summer sun behind closed eyelids.

Louis’ mind wandered as he drank in thirsty, selfish gulps and he wondered, briefly, who Armand had drained. In another life, he had known Lestat’s tastes and preferences and knew that he loved nothing more than a supple youth at the prime of his life. Pale images floated through Louis’ mind: a young woman with golden-blond hair, tawny as a lion; a young and belligerent student, out far too late and missing in attendance at the Sorbonne the following morning; an old man at the end of his life and too frail to protest when Armand descended upon him.

Feeding did not stir the same feelings of revulsion and loathing that it once did. The blood lulled him into a state of drowsy contentment, until he was nuzzling Armand’s neck more than he was feeding. Armand continued to breathe unevenly, as though being drained had been exerting, and Louis all but purred into his skin, rubbing his cheek into Armand’s neck. His nose brushed against the coarse black curls that had fallen loose from their gel-slicked hold and framed his face.

The exhaustion of the long night caught up to him then. Louis closed his eyes, hanging his head into the crook of Armand’s shoulder, and breathed in the scent of his skin.

His presence was all wrong, a quiet voice nagged at the back of his mind, and still the feeling of something real and solid underneath him was enough.

Louis bit his lower lip to catch every trace of blood, then wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingertips. The scratch of his nails on his lip tugged at a distant memory. You have some squirrel on your–

“Had your fill?” Armand breathed. His eyes were still closed, mouth slack.

Armand cupped his face in the palm of his hand and drew him for a kiss. Louis stiffened, then relaxed, kissing him languidly. He carded his fingers through Armand’s curls, scratching his nails against his scalp, and felt Armand shudder against him.

Excitement sparked underneath his skin when Armand pulled him in closer by the waist, his large hand with its long, elegant fingers spanning the small of Louis’ back and rucking up his shirt to touch the warmed skin underneath.

Yes, he thought, and held Armand’s face in his hands. Just as abruptly as Armand kissed him and held him, he stopped, breathing heavily and averting his gaze.

“Forgive my boldness, maître,” he murmured. “I forget myself.”

A throb of irritation cut through Louis’ desire. But Armand sat in front of him looking up at him with that wide, vulnerable stare that begged him do something, and Louis swallowed down his annoyance and held Armand’s face in his hands. He pressed his thumb into the fast, irregular pulse of his jugular, circling the tender spot with the point of his fingernail.

“Take your clothes off.”

His pulse jumped under Louis’ thumb.

“Yes, maître.”

Louis observed him coolly as he slowly undid the buttons of his shirt. With each button he exposed more and more of his lithe, brown torso and his cheeks flushed deep with delicious color.

There was something strange and tender about him in the way that he hesitated over the last button before removing it from his shoulders, leaving himself bared underneath the warm yellow light.

Louis pressed his hand flat against Armand’s lower stomach, palm brushing against the sparse black hairs below his navel, and rubbed circles into the sensitive skin just below the waistband of his pleated trousers. Armand’s hands trembled as he pulled his leather belt through the loops of his trousers and undid the fastenings. The trousers fell around his hips and he pushed them down past his knees, stepping out of them. Louis watched unaffected and stepped to the side table, reaching for a cigarette. He pressed it between his lips and lit it, before returning to the edge of the mattress. It creaked beneath his weight and Armand followed him with his gaze, looking equal parts discomfited and aroused.

Louis exhaled slowly, squaring an ankle over one knee. His mouth tasted like ashes.

“Come here.”

Armand approached him with his hands clasped in front of him, his bare legs crossed modestly. Louis looked up at him from his place on the bed and placed his hands on Armand’s hips, caressing the juts of his pelvis and squeezing, digging the pads of his fingers into the sides of his thighs.

Louis sat level with his groin and was equally amused and aroused to observe that already Armand was half-hard in his shorts.

“You’re excited,” he said, playing at casual. “What did you think was gonna happen when you came to see me, Arun?”

Armand’s mouth fell open before he closed it with a click of his jaw. He twitched in his shorts.

“I was under no illusions, maître.”

Louis breathed out a laugh.

“Nothing at all. No fantasies?”

Vulnerability flickered across Armand’s face, but he said nothing. If there was something lurking beneath the surface, Louis found he couldn’t bring himself to care enough to dig in search of it.

He pulled Armand in by the hips and pressed his hand to the smooth, flat planes of his stomach. His skin was warm beneath his palm and he knew that his own touch would be equally warm after feeding. Louis met his gaze as he snuck his hand past the waistband of his shorts and watched his eyes flutter shut when he wrapped his hand around his half-hard cock. It plumped in his hand and Louis stroked the velvet length of it, watching Armand’s face.

From the very beginning, he had been mesmerized by Armand’s beauty, at once so fresh and vital and transcendent, something out of place and out of time. He was beautifully expressive. His eyebrows drew together and his jaw clenched, setting off the tick in the hinge of his jaw. His mouth tightened and the faint cleft of his chin deepened.

Louis pulled Armand’s shorts down just enough to see the length of his cock, flushed deep and pleasingly shaped, curving to his belly. The tip was wet with precome and a fat, enticing drop glistened at the slit. Louis spit in his hand and closed his hand over the head, forming a fist, and twisted, slow and wet. The noise was obscene. A pained moan erupted from the center of Armand’s chest, and Louis breathed out a laugh.

“Feel good?”

It was how Lestat liked it too. And suddenly his hands were not his own, and Armand was not Armand, and Louis was hit so blindingly fast by the memory of working his hand over Lestat’s slim cock, of using his mouth and listening to his moans and the incessant French babble that poured from his mouth, and kissing him quiet with the taste of blood and come shared between them.

Louis moaned. Armand shuddered and his hands tensed close to Louis’ face, as if he had reached out and stopped halfway, and Louis realized his grip had tightened, pushing more pain than pleasure.

Still, Armand pulsed in his hand and if it was possible, he was harder than before. He loosened his grip and made up for it with longer pulls of his hand, stroking the length of him, his left hand coming up to idly pet the tops of Armand’s thighs.

Armand’s hips twitched forward and he clenched his hands at his sides and Louis thought, with a surge of irritation, For God’s sake, touch me. He took Armand’s hand into his own and guided it to the side of his neck, encouraging him to touch and squeeze and grab. Armand held him with a touch so light, it was fragile, delicate. His hands were elegant, with long, slim fingers and the smooth skin of unscarred and unworked hands.

Louis found himself thinking of Lestat’s large hands, heavy and all-encompassing.

“Please, Louis,” Armand stuttered. “Please take your pleasure with me, maître.”

He was close, Louis could tell. The muscles in his abdomen tensed and rippled underneath his brown skin and a whole-body shudder seemed to course through him.

Louis pulled him in by the jut of his chin and pressed their lips together. Soft. Chaste. Until Louis dug the points of his nails into the meat of Armand’s thighs and he moaned desperately into his mouth and Louis licked into his mouth and swallowed his cry, holding him cuffed by the nape of the neck.

His hand moved faster on Armand’s cock. The spit had long since dried but precome dribbled from the tip and slicked his hand. Armand was doubled over him in a way that could not be comfortable, yet his moans gave way to cries.

Louis, Louis, Louis.

He went over the edge. He spilled warm and wet into Louis’ palm with juddering little spasms of his hips, the relief and pleasure evident in the way his face crumpled into an expression of near-agony.

Come dripped between Louis’ fingers. He realized then that he did not know what to do with it, and continued stroking Armand through his climax with lazy, measured strokes from base to tip. Slowly, he softened and Louis released him, passively wiping his hand on an old newspaper sitting on the side table.

Armand continued to stand without moving. Louis looked over his shoulder at him. He appeared lost, with a look on his face that made him seem terribly young. Louis tilted his head.

“Something wrong?”

“Do you not want me to touch you tonight, maître?”

Louis looked at his hands.

“It’s late,” he finally said.

Armand’s chest collapsed as though the breath escaped from his lungs, and his mouth fell into a small o. He recovered quickly, pulling his lips into a small, drawn smile, and nodded. “I will get dressed and take my leave.”

Louis stopped him with a hand on his chest. He was suddenly impatient, resentful that Armand’s presence kept him from locking himself into his coffin.

“Listen. This was enough for me,” he lied. “Taking care of you like that. I can take care of myself.”

Armand said nothing and began to dress. The guilt sank in as he watched him slowly button his shirt, one after another. When he was fully dressed, Louis pulled his face in his hands. Armand’s eyes scanned his face. Searching for what, he couldn’t be sure, and it troubled him that he was uncertain whether he hoped that it was there or not.

He kissed Armand.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

No grand gestures, no grand declaration. As easy as blessing a sneeze. Louis put on his most convincing smile. “I’ll be at the theater tomorrow.”

Armand smiled then. It almost reached his eyes. “I look forward to seeing you.”

04:02. 04:04. 04:08. 04:28.

From the edge of the bed, Louis watched the hands of the clock on the wall mark the minutes passing by. The longer he remained seated, the deeper the exhaustion sank into his bones. He felt weighed down, as though lead weights were tied around his ankles and pulling him down into the floorboards.

With each passing minute, a terrible dread built in the pit of his stomach. The blues were giving way to the mean reds. He was afraid suddenly, and he didn’t know what he was afraid of. It was the same terror he felt in the theater, when he walked by the Seine, in the quiet halls of the Louvre where Armand took him often. It was a sense of dread that seemed to follow him everywhere he went. There was no outrunning it. It had been quieted during the war, when exhaustion and the sound of bombs falling overhead quieted the angry buzzing in his skull. But when the skies were quiet, the buzzing returned. The grand and terrible thing threatened to open the earth beneath his feet and pull him under once more.

More and more often now he felt the despair beginning to claw its way through his throat, threatening to spill over his lashes or stop in his throat. By day he slept and dreamed of frightening things, and woke up trembling, unable to remember the nightmare, except that in his dream the maws of the earth opened and consumed him whole.

It was worse than the blues, worse even, maybe, than what Paul had. Grace had had the baby blues, and his Mamaw was as mean as sin. There was something wrong with him, he knew. How could there not be?

04:44.

He pushed himself to his feet and began to undress. First the shirt, one arm at a time, then his trousers, one leg at a time. The only sound in the room was the rustle of his clothing as he folded it carefully and set it aside on the bedside table, atop a pile of Le Monde and the detritus of their lives: crumpled francs and a jumble of loose zinc and aluminum coins; stolen rings and earrings; the tube of lipstick Claudia used to paint her mouth red and shiny.

The room did not feel his own. Every so often the feeling sank in that he was in the room of a stranger. The walls were foreign, papered in an ugly, discolored floral print he would never have chosen. The curtains were threadbare and patched over twice and thrice over. There was only so much he could conceal with framed paintings and photographs placed strategically over the cracks in the wall.

Sometimes he saw the room as it was. It was a small, cramped space full of mismatched furniture. Every day he felt he was shrinking, and still he and Claudia found themselves bumping into corners and each other. Their tight living quarters shrank and her exasperation with him grew day by day.

04:52.

The sun would soon rise. Summer nights were warm and short. The city would go on to slumber until late morning.

Louis stripped the bed of its decorative pillows and lifted the bed to reveal the converted space beneath the mattress. It was a narrow, comfortable area, lined with cushions collected from flea markets to form a nest illuminated by a single, small lamp tucked carefully into the corner.

He knelt into the makeshift coffin and settled against the coverlet and cushions that smelled faintly of mothballs and the chypre of his own cologne. He sank into the cushions until it felt he had reached the lowest possible depths of the earth. He crossed his hands over his chest, center over the dull thud behind his ribs. Only then did the world seem to finally stop spinning around him.

When the bells of Saint-Jean marked the hour, Claudia’s footsteps finally echoed in the stairwell. She arrived dragging her feet through the door and slammed it closed. The irritation radiated off her in waves.

Louis caught traces of her thoughts fluttering through like bits of paper in the wind.

...left me to drain the last....always giving me the last bits of blood now…jealous bitch, Eglee…

She was left to sleep hungry. Her heeled shoes clattered by the entrance as she kicked them off.

“You still awake, Louis? I’m back.”

Her presence was a sudden storm of activity around the quiet apartment. She pushed the pull-away bed into the wall hard enough to disturb the paintings hanging on the walls. A loosely-taped photograph drifted to the floor. Wooden clothing hangers rattled around in the closet as Claudia undressed and put away her costume, replacing the blue dress with a faded pink dressing gown. She removed the stage makeup from her face with cold cream and the scent reached Louis’ nose, familiar and comforting.

At length, he asked, “Was it a good night?”

She threw open the lid of her coffin with a noisy creak and Louis pictured her settling into the faded damask lining and remembered the extravagant child's coffin of her youth. Her coffin was plain in the way that even all the best things were in Paris after the war, but it was made for a woman. That had been enough for her to be happy.

“Yeah.” Her voice was sharp. “You?”

“Sure.”

A beat of silence. Louis looked up at the paneled ceiling, tracing the water stains with his gaze.

“The pictures turn out any good?”

“I don’t think I’ll be selling ‘em any time soon.”

“You know,” she started, and Louis felt the tension seize in his chest. “You should get out the apartment more. Leave, go out, take pictures. You haven’t done that in a while.”

Louis remained quiet. When he said nothing, Claudia exhaled sharply.

“You know, I wish that just for once you could be a little more excited now that we finally found everything we were lookin' for. Not just all the human stuff you were excited about before. The coven.”

“I am,” Louis said. His voice sounded hollow to his own ears. “Of course I am, Claudia.”

"Really? 'Cause it sure doesn't seem like it.We finally found what we were looking for. Seven years of wandering, and we finally find it, and we’re here, in fucking Paris of all places! And a whole year later you’re stuck in here all night, wishing you were back in New Orleans. Wishing you were still stuck with him.”

She spat the word like a curse.

“Claudia, that’s not—” A hysterical laugh bubbled in Louis’ throat. “That is not true.”

“Ain’t it? Don’t lie. Tell me Louis, what were you doin’ here tonight? Staying in and sulking? Crying over your pictures instead of, I don’t know, making the most outta what we found? Have you even tried making friends with the coven? Besides Armand? Or do you gotta sleep with someone just so you can be civil to 'em?”

Louis’ temper flared. “You’re mad at me for stayin’ in when I asked you if you cared if I went to the theater tonight? I asked you, Claudia, and you had no problem with it before. I seen your show a hundred times by now. So what's the problem?”

“I’m going out, Claudia,” she mimicked. “Taking pictures, exploring the city tonight, Claudia. Hey, just a question Lou– what happened to all that philosophizing and exploring you were excited about when we got here? It's like as soon as I finally found something that makes me happy, now I gotta worry about you again?”

Louis recoiled as though she had struck him.

“You can't even pretend to be happy for me, sitting there grimacing in the theater like I can't see you from the stage, Louis!”

His hurt was palpable. A heavy silence settled into the space between them.

"You always told me I just had to try more. Try harder, Claudia, do better, Claudia. Well, now it's your turn to try harder, Lou. Promise me you'll come to the theater tomorrow. Bring a damn book if you have to."

She started to close the coffin over her head, then paused.

“Oh, and keep your head on tight,” she said. The anger had disappeared from her voice and only exhaustion remained in its place. “I don’t wanna pick up on what you’ve been up to or who you've been with tonight.”

"Claudia—"

"I don't wanna talk about it anymore, Lou. Just do that, please, and promise you'll be there tomorrow. I'm getting real tired of answering questions about you and everyone always wondering why you're avoiding us all the time."

When she turned off the lamp on her bedside table and closed the coffin over her head, he was left alone in the dark of the room.

Louis stared at the ceiling without moving until the first sliver of pale morning sunshine filtered through the gaps in the curtains, casting long stretches of yellow-hued light across the length of the room. He finally pulled the cover shut over his head.

He would close his eyes to dream before waking, and repeating it all over again. It came flooding back to him then: Lestat’s voice rumbling under his cheek each night when he slept cradled in Lestat’s arms in their shared coffin, face pressed into his chest. He could not name the emotion the recollection stirred inside him. A word for it did not seem to exist.

The room that had felt so cramped before now felt empty, stretching out infinitely beyond his reach.