#got a glimpse of the real lestat!

[elrondsscribe]

Imma just say Claudia 🤝 me: SPELLBOUND

[nalyra-dreaming]

I know Louis acknowledges that Dreamstat does whatever Louis wants… but I can’t help but wonder if Dreamstat is not the closest we’ve seen to true Lestat (besides when he spoke to Armand in the 70s). I wonder this because Armand mentions how he didn’t know how often Louis was “talking” to Lestat and therefore wouldn’t know to change those memories to fit the narrative of Lestat he created 

Well... he is an idealization of Lestat, yes.

So what we saw - given that this is what Louis chooses to conjure - is what Louis remembers most fondly (or in the case of ep1, his greatest fear mixed in). I mean, we got two glimpses of the "real" Lestat so far, namely the letter, and the "mind call". Both indicate a deep love for Louis... a love that Louis has been suppressing and which has been suppressed for him, both (at least after SF).

Dreamstat is the representation of longing.

I would say Dreamstat is another facet... a facet that had been missing so far, for reasons.

[sophsun1]

The family shopping trip to purchase a coffin scene has got me dying and kicking my feet it's so funny. Because the minute the funeral director gets suspicious over their reasoning for buying Claudia's coffin (shoutout to Louis saying they wanted to get her used to the thought of going home to god asdfgjk) you can see his internal monologue go "oh for fucks sake, why couldn't you just sell us the damn coffin, you had to make it harder for yourself huh?" 

His murder is bad™️ rhetoric flies straight out the window, he runs to draw the curtain and is like well sucks to be you but if my daughter wants that coffin, that coffin she will have and willingly leaves him to the mercy of his bloodthirsty husband. For all his I want to my keep my humanity, be a different kind of vampire the glimpses where you see he's just as messy as Lestat and Claudia are *delicious*. Him being a completely hypocritical bitch whose fiercely protective of his family but isn't against compromising his 'morals' when it's in his favour is so satisfying. Especially when you take into consideration how this family unit allows him to be mostly free in his love for Lestat and to have the child he never thought he would, adds another deep layer to it.

Because yes, it's easy to say Lestat's toxic, he's mean, uncaring, selfish etc because against Louis it may come off in a more obvious way so far (although Mr Unreliable Narrator.. cough, cough) his real motives are mostly buried under mountains of unsaid trauma and  sometimes he's just a cunt!  But like there's a reason why they're in love with each other, Louis said it himself he was never Lestat's victim, and seeing him unleash his selfish and toxic side is so much fun personally because you get to see why they fit. They're terrible people whose punishment quite frankly should be having to put up with each other for eternity because no one else would.

[nutmeggery]

"So I was part of the crew working on a couple of music videos for The Vampire Lestat, and it was the second worst gig of my career. (The 1# worst cannot be mentioned as the NDA won't expire for another ten years!) No NDA for this one, though. So here you have it: They were all night shoots! We were in a studio. But they were still all night shoots! Who films all their music videos only at night inside a studio?! I know he's got this whole vampire gimmick, but seriously? He's like some kind of mad musician version of a method actor. I do believe he might actually be French, though, because he spoke it a lot. (He could also secretly be Canadian?) He is weird, though, and not because of the French thing. Have you heard he brings a coffin with him wherever he goes? It's true. I glimpsed it inside his trailer. I heard he even brings it into hotel rooms with him. I mean, my dad told me about all the shit rockstars used to do back in the rock n' roll days, as he calls it, but this one's strange even by those standards. You know, I asked some of the other crew members if they'd ever seen him, you know, eat any of the food on set. None of them said they could remember him eating anything. I mean, it's not proof he actually drinks blood, but I had to ask, you know. He said he only drinks blood. At the next shoot, there's supposed to be a 'feeding scene'. This guy is so committed to the bit I am actually scared there will be real human blood. Or worse, he'll actually bite someone with those prosthetic fangs. So yeah if you're ever offered to work on a project attached to The Vampire Lestat (seriously, did Daniel Molloy really sell him the rights to use that character?) be warned, you will be up all night and work until the asscrack of dawn. Pay is good, though."

[desertfangs]

Can I ask 1. (Canon I outright reject), 3. (Obscure headcanon) and 8. (Unpopular opinion about them) for Armand and Daniel?😊

I hope you have a nice end of the year!🥰

Send me character asks. Specify a character or I will default to Daniel.

Thank you! I hope you also have a lovely end of the year and a wonderful start to the new one! (I can't believe it's almost 2024 wtf.)

1. Canon I outright reject

Night Island is still around & it's still owned wholly by Armand and Daniel (though it's definitely been moved under the name of a corporate umbrella by now). Armand is far, far too sentimental to sell something that was so vitally important to him. I think he lies about it in his book for two reasons: 1. He was still wounded and lashing out at Daniel, and he knew saying he'd sold most of the island would hurt him, and 2. After QotD was published, a flood of tourists "looking" for Lestat came to the island (same as we VC fans go to New Orleans and "look" for them... we know they're not real, but...) and Armand did not like that one bit.

I also think the name was changed and it's probably open 24 hours now with a brand spanking new resort hotel circa 1999 or whatever, but it's still theirs and they still call it Night Island. And they still use the Villa regularly, and try to get Lestat and Marius to agree to host some Coven events there, too.

3. Obscure headcanon

I believe Daniel and Armand were together until 1993 or 1994, and were traveling around trying to reconnect and rekindle their relationship when they finally had the fight that split them up "for good" pre-MtD. Granted, I think for Armand it was Daniel leaving him "for good." I think for Daniel it was more "I need to take a break and clear my head, I'm going to take a time out." But they are terrible at communicating, especially when they're fighting, so... we all know how that went.

For a more fun--"fun"-- obscure headcanon, here is the worst thing I think Armand ever did in the name of weird science according to Daniel (tw: animal cruelty): he read about Edison electrocuting that poor elephant and got really interested in how that electrocution worked. So he got a fish bowl and experimented with fish. Then one night, Daniel finds the bathtub full of dead rats with a toaster in it, plugged into the wall. They definitely fought about it, and they definitely moved out of that apartment that night. It might one of the only times Armand truly skeeved him out, worse even than the rats in the microwave. He also didn't take baths for a good six months after.

Okay, sorry sorry, but that has been in my head for a while.

8. Unpopular opinion about them

I'm so bad at these because tbh I never know what "the popular" opinions are.

I guess I will say, I don't think Armand ever regretted turning Daniel and was, in fact, happy with how he turned out. We only get little glimpses into his thoughts on the matter in QotD, but he seems pretty enamored with Daniel as a vampire. For all his fears that Daniel might come to resent him for it, or no longer want/need him, he does seem pleased with the result. (Is this unpopular? I honestly do not know.)

I also don't think Daniel was a mess of a vampire or a bad fledgling. I think he experienced being a newbie vampire with an extreme intensity that made him quicker to laugh or more prone to staring at the patterns in the wallpaper, but I don't think that's particularly abnormal for a new vampire, either. I also think Daniel was especially elated to finally get the Blood - it meant not only would he not die a mortal death, but it was proof positive that Armand truly loved him as he always believed and wanted to spend eternity with him. He was riding a hell of a high, but I don't think he was mad, or out of his head, or a problem fledgling in any way.

I also firmly believe they had some solidly good years together in that time, and even though there were fights and arguments (and Armand's fears that he tried to manifest as self-fulfilling prophecy), they did actually have plenty of fun together until they split.

Again, I have no idea how "unpopular" any of that is.

Thank you again for the ask and happy new year!

[ca-suffit]

I hate that you are right (affectionately ) but there something really ''funny'' happening since they officially presented Nicolas and the actor playing him.I can already see the excitement for Lestat first (on screen) white male interest.

It's not really about Lestat this season but all they do is center everything around him, since the photos of the next episode came out people have already forgotten everything else. It gives me a glimpse of what's going to happen in season 3 and I can already say that I will probably drop the series.The fact that the showrunner says he accepted the series just so he could adapt The Vampire Lestat book is a red flag.Also the more I learn about Anne Rice the more I regret even starting the show.

I should still point out that I don't hate Lestat or Sam I know he's popular,it's just his fans.

I also don't hate Lestat or Sam, but this is the lie that white fandom has to keep pushing to victimize themselves. Ur noticing how often white characters take over the tags, it happens every time. The first Loumand kiss we got (when it was still a bts video) barely existed but a single still of Lestat got posted by everyone for *weeks*. A lot of ppl's engagement with stuff they promise isn't racially motivated and is "the books" rly is about how much whiteness is present. It's prbly gonna be insufferable here after the next episode. There's already constant shitting on Armand with the "it's not racism, it's the books" excuse. Nicki is also a huge asshole, do u think we're gonna hear about that tho lol? It's so easy to discuss all these characters and plots without having to victimize urself. U can tell who is part of white fandom by who can't write anything without paragraphs of a disclosure about how this isn't about race. Everything is about race lol. Maybe if u got comfortable talking about it u'd learn it's easy to do without being racist about it gd?? "Noticing race is the real racism" mfers, Anne Rice made everyone stupid as hell.

I don't think wanting to adapt TVL is a red flag itself without seeing what's done with it. Obviously, watch to ur comfort level but I'm just saying for my opinion. What they've created so far is not something that paints Lestat in the best light and I'm v doubtful they'd undo all that when they already went there in the first place. I'm waiting to see where they're going with this before I decide what I'm doing. AMC is known for telling stories about fucked up white guys, I don't see them suddenly making Lestat a whole different man once it's his version of himself. The point of all of them is that everyone is flawed and we all think the best of ourselves. How we're seeing Louis, Daniel, and Armand rn is how I also think we'll be seeing Lestat. The show so far isn't picking a side on these things happening, it's showing different angles of ppl and saying it's up to u how to feel about it. White fandom is waiting for him to get a whole character retcon because they're used to Anne Rice telling stories like that but it's doubtful that's what AMC is gonna do. He might grow as a person over time but I don't think they're gonna show up on day 1 and say "so S1 and S2 were a lie" in any serious way. That would be rly offensive to the audience and pointless to the plot as well. "It was alllll a dream" kind of shit.

[pynkhues]

With casting the US at least, it's pretty common for major roles in a show to go out via breakdowns (these don't look like breakdowns, but they're similar) as though it's open casting when really they're making an offer to a specific actor. So that by itself doesn't suggest to me that these aren't real, but I have no idea if they're real otherwise.

Yeah it does seem like Rolin was envisioning someone less traditionally beautiful for Lestat! Fascinating. I wonder why, if it was him thinking that made a more interesting physical complement to Louis? Just the feeling that someone more unusual looking would be compelling? So it makes sense that his perfect reaction to Sam was NO WAY MR. PRETTYFACE. And he realized that Sam is a delightful freak lol. But also, while Sam's beauty is the classic Disney prince thing in a lot of ways, he IS unusual looking too -- his features aren't just your bog standard super handsome guy, they're more striking than that. We've talked about him being a mix of masculine and feminine in some ways, and that's part of it.

Sorry, that first sentence should read "when casting IN the US" (I got a glimpse as I sent it and I think I left out the "in")

Yeah, interesting! It makes sense that casting would look a little different as the nature of our TV production schedules are pretty different and it's a much smaller industry, to say nothing of the fact that Australian productions usually cast very close to the wire as you don't really know if you've been greenlit until the last possible minute.

I'd be soooo interested to hear if Rolin had anyone in his head when he was thinking about casting both Louis and Lestat, especially since he's clearly had pretty strong ideas about other roles. He often makes it sound like he went in pretty open-minded, but - - yeah. Clearly he wasn't thinking of someone with Sam's face, haha. I agree though, I think one of the things that makes Sam good looking is that he actually has pretty unconventional features to him. Guys who have that more pretty Disney prince look can often come across as a bit sexless, but that's not really an issue for Sam, at least not Sam as Lestat, haha.

[nelegance]

Chapter 5: Share

I stood in my room after Lestat left. I felt strange. Like I was suddenly overtaken by sadness. He made me happy. I think. Now he was gone and I was back to being invisible And silent. Not for long though.

Things changed quickly. The next day after meeting Lestat, I was given a new room. A real room. It was basic but clean and most importantly, had no fumes. I ran to the window right away. I hadn’t had a window since I arrived. It was raining outside. People ran across the muddy lane from this way and that. Some held newspapers over their heads to protect themselves; like the worse thing was a few raindrops on their hats.

It was a dull day. Cleaning rooms, preparing them for another round of business transactions. The usual. I was excited that I would get to help the new songstress put on her various costumes throughout the night though. They were so pretty. Simple dresses but with so many things that sparkled under the dim light. But at the last moment, I was told I wasn’t needed and that I could go off to bed. And I did that. I crawled into my bed and stared up at the yellowed ceiling. I knew why I suddenly wasn’t needed. I unknowingly ratted out Gwen. If that one moment, that one stupid moment in time with Lestat had ruined everything, it was time to move on. Yes, I wasn’t getting paid but I was getting tips. Now the tips disappeared. Along with the one bright moment in my life. I curled up on my side and cried. I was frustrated and didn’t know what to do next. I quickly snapped out of my self loathing though when a knock came at the door. Lestat leaned in without me giving him permission to enter. (As usual.)

He scanned the room with those icy blue eyes and then landed upon me.

“Why are you crying?”

I sat up and shook my head, “No reason. Can I help you, sir?”

Lestat stuck out his hand, “Come with me. Loui—Mr. Point du Lac would like to speak with you.”

I could hear the squeak of the taps turning off and could catch a glimpse of Lestat’s naked back in the vanity mirror.

“I thought you were going out!?” I shouted from the bed. 

No response. I should have known better than to shout. Lestat never responded to being shouted or screamed at.

I rolled off the bed and entered the bathroom. It was fancy once upon a time. Gold trimmings, a clawfoot tub, warm yellow wallpaper. Now the wallpaper was peeling, the gold was flaking and scratching off to reveal brass, and the tub had chips. The once shiny marble flooring now too showed its age. 

“Get in with me,” Lestat demanded as he took off his pants.

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Yeah but why? It’s not really a two person kind of bathtub especially when one person is rather tall. I don’t think I’ll fit. What if we flood the floor? That wouldn’t be good. This is an old house and the floor is already in a terrible state.”

Lestat looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes, “pour l'amour du ciel.”

I did love bothering him. A lot.

“I’m getting in…” I chuckled and stepped into the tub.

Lestat got in and put his legs around me so I was face him and he was facing me. He stared at me for a second too long. 

“You’re breaking up with me. You found someone who has better blood and less of a mouth.” I rattled off as tears started welling in my eyes. “I whine too much, don’t I?”

“What? No. No, not at all,” Lestat reached out and ran his finger over my bottom lip. “I like your mouth. I like it very, very much. But yes, you whine far too much. I am used to it though.”

“What then? Why are you looking at me funny?”

Lestat sighed dramatically, “I was just thinking about how bad of a decision I’m making.”

“Hmm?”

“Louis and I have decided that if you wanted to come to the club, you could,” It almost seemed to hurt Lestat to say that.

I gasped and clapped, splashing him in the process.

Lestat pointed his finger at me, “But! But there are going to be rules, okay? I would really like to take you home alive and well afterwards.”

“Absolutely. I’ll behave. You won’t regret it!”

“Oh I very much doubt that.”

“On the topic of things you might change your mind over…”

Lestat ran his wet hand through his hair and tried to lean back in the bathtub as much as he could.

“What now?” He asked, rather harshly.

I bent forward and found my way up his body until I got to his chest. I rested my cheek there, hearing nothing and feeling only the warmth of the water. He draped his hand over my hip.

“Do you think you could call me something other than your donor?”

“I already do. You’re Madeline.”

“But you always introduce me as ‘this is Madeline, my donor’.”

“If this is you asking me to call you ‘my companion’ again, my answer is still no.”

“Because of Louis?”

There was a moment of silence. I had strayed into dangerous territory and instantly regretted it.

“Because you are human and, while I do love you dearly, we share nothing together but blood and sex.” Lestat finally answered. 

And he was right. We shared a house and fucked and that was it really. When he went out, he went out alone. When I went out, I went out alone. We didn’t sit and share funny stories about our lives. We didn’t have any hobbies in common. When he was bored, he would force me to play chess or listen to him read from the most boring books…and yet, my heart was his. Sometimes he would sit across the dining room table from me and watch me eat. He said he liked the glow of my face as I ate food that he couldn’t remember the taste of. Or he would barge his way into the bathroom while I was bathing and wash my hair for me. When I was ill with a fever years ago, he loudly paced the floor because he didn’t know what to do and was convinced he had made me ill when he bit me the night before. I woke up to three different, scared, doctors and two dozen roses scattered around the bedroom. He loved me. But I had to share that love with someone else. Louis.

[licncourt]

I've only read the first trilogy a decade ago and while swimming around book fandom for the last couple of months i've come accross different opinions regarding Lestat post QotD. I've also heard that AR massacred his character in Tale of the Body Thief.

How would you describe Lestat's character arc post QotD? Is there even a character arc? Does he finally get to mature a bit and work on his issues? Does it happen off page? Did he get lobotomized like Louis and Armand?

God this is such a hard question, especially when it comes to a character arc because yes, there is technically a discernable arc for Lestat, but the problem is that it was entirely unintentional and the opposite of was AR seemed to be going for.

The first book after QotD is the best example of this I think. It starts off really strong with Lestat struggling to cope with the effects of Akasha's abduction and the changes to his body, as well as a bittersweet but well-written look into what his relationship with Louis is like at this point in time.

Unfortunately it goes completely off the rails after that. It's hard to say that Lestat is wildly OOC because he's really not. Most of what happens feels pretty authentic to someone with Lestat’s personality dealing with trauma through the lifestyle and moral lens of vampirism. He's manic and self-destructive and vacillating wildly between lashing out at loved ones and total emotional dependency.

The issue becomes some of the plot events themselves and how they're handled. This books is pretty notorious because it really ruins the growth Lestat has experienced up to this point, most pressingly by making him a rapist in both a human and vampire sense.

If this had been played as a reaction to his own assault and a fucked up attempt at taking power back and "embracing" evil to cope, MAYBE this could've been spun into at least some kind of existential horror narrative about cycles of abuse and becoming the evil that you hate, but the tone, the context, and AR's real-life opinions on these issues make it clear that this is just the author's idea of "what men are like" (it literally says that in the book).

This is really the first step in Lestat transitioning from what he is in the trilogy into a messed up male power fantasy for Anne Rice that lacks any kind of self awareness, nuance, irony, or character consistency. From this point on, this macho character completely eclipses the Lestat we knew before as AR turns him into something unrecognizable.

This progresses across the rest of the books (with very brief glimpses of the "real" Lestat that are just enough to add insult to injury). If she had written him as putting on macho playboy persona as an act to deal with his own fear and trauma and vulnerability, it might’ve worked (although it still would've gone on too long). Instead, this is completely unironic, a full change of character with no explanation given as AR started to project her own ideals onto an established character.

By the end of the series, he's clearly happier, but it feels hollow because he's also not himself. He's magically not traumatized anymore, he's a prince who's the perfect masculine ideal and everyone fawns over him as a god. It feels like some desperate fantasy TVL Lestat would have had instead of reality.

He's definitely more mature and suddenly able to commit to Louis and make "good" choices, but we never see how he got there or what changed. There's no healing process shown and no reason for any of the changes. It's jarring and confusing and you're happy for him, but unsatisfied. Sure, things are better for him, but his character is far less interesting and a lot more unlikable so you can hardly be excited for the good stuff.

So basically AR turned Lestat into accidental existential horror over the course of two decades and then popped him out the other side as an alpha male with an eight pack and a crown.

[ipadhannibal]

Myyy iwtv episode 1 thoughts:

- Immediately interesting that it starts in the present day. Usually I hate that but for this it's not as in your face about it so instead it felt more like a familiar time period to come back to after the flashbacks.

- THE SET DESIGN AND CLOTHING!!!! Awesome. And I love how people actually have accents and don't just act like 21st century General Americans.

- The time period was really interesting to see and how Louis moved through it. It was really effective in showing that in the intro to his character - his motivations and struggles are immediately introduced and reinforced by all of his actions and his reactions to/from others.

- On that note, Louis' character alone made me invested.. all of these points of his character are introduced by running into each other, and I got a good idea of him without it feeling too in your face about things. Same with the other characters too - it feels like we're glimpsing their lives, not like theyre trying to sell us a plot.

- Louis and Lestat's relationship felt elevated because they leaned into actually portraying the time period. Especially in the scene with Lily, Lestat's seduction of Louis feels not only dangerous because of what we know of him being a vampire but also because he shows such a threat to Louis' wellbeing and ability to provide for his family. And Lestat is rich, white, charming, powerful, etc, who has many other potential options if he decides he's bored of Louis. The more fantastical and realistic elements of his threat work together really well.

- On that note, the emotional beats played really well. Paul's suicide was portrayed more realistically than I expected - and the reactions of his family felt real too, but were fairly brief and avoided fetishizing it.

- Louis' monologue in the church... I got chills lol. How everything is crumbling around him and all his hard work to build a false (but profitable) life is fading, and he's even losing his family... and the only one there for him is the one who caused most of this trouble anyways.. but he's the first one to ever really see Louis and it makes death seem like the better option bc at least then he can be free.

- Especially the end scene with all the talk about seeing and being seen, the episode reminded me of hannibal, if it had a bigger budget and more cohesive writing (said with love ❤️). I usually dislike new stuff but this seems really well written and passionate to me. So needless to say I'm immediately hooked lol.

[nalyra-dreaming]

My ask got deleted before I could send so i'm not sure if you received it.

What do you think about the fanon transmasc Louis? I started reading fics and a lot of them have him pregnant or he is given female pronouns by fans on social medias, i'v been seeing a lot of fanarts with him as a woman recently.

I don't see the other male characters feminized like that. I know it's just a fanon but it seems popularized,it must come from somewhere? did I miss something?

I could understand a more gender fluid Lestat now since the new trailer but Louis has never appears to me as feminine.

I'm not saying he's hypermasculine either Louis is handsome with soft features but still masculine.

I hope i'm not being insensitive so please just delete if it's a problematic subject.I didn't even know about transmasculinity before and had to Google.

I have theorized maybe it's because Anne Rice saw Louis as herself.

(yeah this is a bit of a touchy subject, I guess^^)

That last part definitely plays into it. Louis is Anne‘s (mourning) self-insert. Later on though… that was Lestat(!)

I personally don’t subscribe to Louis being overly feminine. Louis is a gay man in the show, he is no woman. He and Lestat are not a heterosexual couple. There’s no man or woman in their relationship, no matter the meta level comments of the show.

I know of this fandom‘s focus on this, but I personally think it is because the view (of some) on Louis is quite skewed. He is the victim to many (only), no agency whatsoever, and it bleeds into other preconceptions. (Btw the only “real Louis“ - apart from glimpses - we saw was at the end of s8…)

Which is a disservice to his character, imho, and I hope it changes through the upcoming seasons.

General fandom‘s calling male characters “she“ or “babygirl“ or whatever is something else though^^. And not limited to them at all.

Also, and apart from my comments above: Fanfiction is the place to explore facets, or fantasies. If people want to write transmasc Louis or mpreg etc, then please, by all means, go ahead. Have fun.

Just tag it, please^^

[iwtvdramacd18]

i would love to hear your thoughts on this if and when you feel like sharing!! i put out those thoughts after e2 had aired and we've learned so much more about louis since!

OK so first of all this has been in my drafts forever I apologize:

I didn't even notice that was an older post my bad! But that stuff especially about a runs in the family type situation and the very deep intense fear that comes with seeing a family member with severe mental illness and also lacking the ability to fully understand.

I won't get into too many details but I will say that my analysis and reading of Louis' character is very much shaped by the fact that I have been in a lot of mental states/situations like his (its one of the reasons he's such an important character to me). My family has a lot of severe mental illness running through it, including one of my closest relatives who had schizophrenia. And while Paul doesn't have an explicitly stated diagnosis we do know he experiences hallucinations, as did my relative. Now growing up I didn't really understand the extent of the severity of mental illness, even while I had experienced symptoms myself all my life, which was really scary... I lacked a healthy recognition of severe mental illness, as I think it's very obvious in media especially with regards to psychosis it's horribly demonized. Just look at the way people throw around terms like "psychotic". Recognizing similarities between what I was experiencing and what my relative was experiencing not only scared me but also made me feel very shameful.

And that visceral fear of seeing a family member struggle with severe mental illness I think you really hit on the head, I think it does manifest in Louis in not only trying to rationalize/ separate himself from it but also a lot of shame regarding it. I think there is something to say about being the oldest (as I am), realizing you're very mentally ill further down the line, and a fear of having influenced your younger siblings. As far as we know Louis does not experience hallucinations, at least not like Paul, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that he has experienced psychosis (I believe it was yani? who has mentioned the small glimpse we got of the real version of Lestat's "death" with Louis attacking Claudia).

I'd expect that despite Claudia not being biologically Louis' daughter he'd also have those fears pop up again regarding a sort of "infection" of mental illness. One scene that REALLY stands out is his near attempt in episode 6 where he mentions the only reason he didn't carry through was because he didn't want to "ruin" Claudia's departure the way Paul's death "ruined" Grace's marriage night. Which is absolutely heart-rending to me. We know Louis languishes in a lot of shame and guilt and I think his mental illness is a huge one he keeps skirting around.

[theblackphoenixwritings]

-Messy notes, messy desk

Daniel stopped at the threshold of the large, white, inlaid door that led to Marius's bedroom. From within it came a strange noise of crumpled papers, and things being moved, and thrown. Marius was not there. He had left, with Lestat, to visit a coven in Canada. And so only one other person could generate that chaos of testy noise, or generate chaos regardless. Daniel entered with a sigh, and was stunned at the condition of Marius's beautiful polished wooden desk, and its surroundings. There were papers crumpled under and on top of the desk, a quantity that seemed industrial to Daniel's supernatural eyes. Marius's handsome, coated tomes of Latin prose were on the floor scattered here and there, the bust of Augustus was dangerously poised on the corner of the desk, the pictures Daniel had taken and framed for Marius, which he proudly kept on display, had been placed on the floor on top of other tomes, other half-written papers.

The pens had been spread out and scattered all over the surface of the desk, and the worst thing, which almost bleached Daniel more, was seeing the draft laws, ready to be transcribed, on which Marius had been working incessantly for three weeks, scattered here and there, on the desk, while small, furious hands, scrolled through those papers, clutching them with all too much conviction. When fiery, crucified eyes rested on him, Daniel arched an eyebrow: " You really screwed up, no doubt about it. What exactly is the need behind this butchery Armand?" asked Daniel, bringing his hands to the back pockets of his jeans. Armand stared at him, his eyes two slits from hell, " It's none of your business…" but Daniel knew Armand and the slight blush on his cheeks did not escape him. Daniel tilted his head to the side, noticing Armand's graffiti-stained hands. On the table in front of him a sketchpad was open and Daniel clearly glimpsed Marius' physiognomy.

Armand stared at the pad for only a moment before covering it with the papers in his hand, " So you were drawing and then it happened to be in your hand, the laws, which Marius worked on, and for which he could only devote a little time to the two of us, and you got jealous… of Marius's laws…" Daniel stared at Armand whose mouth had become a thin line. They burst out laughing together at the same time. When he recomposed himself, however, Armand became strangely serious again, almost melancholy. Daniel sat down in front of him and took the pad from under the papers with which Armand had covered him. He stared at the delicate contours of Marius' visage, the big eyes, the fleshy mouth, the firm nose, and the expression of love and calm that he always had. The most handsome man in the world. " How are you Armand? I know the weeks leading up to these have been hectic for us, they have been beautiful and shining weeks, Marius always near, always present, making you feel safe, loved, valued and protected. Almost unreal isn't it? And yet, that's how it is, and when he's gone the demons come back to haunt us." Armand nodded slowly, " He asked me to take care of you, Daniel, he said take care of Daniel and let him take care of you while I'm gone. And look at us, me you and his love to keep us together." Daniel nodded and smiled, " You know when Gregory told him, what you told Lestat, in those days when we thought we lost him forever, he defended you. I don't know why Gregory brought up that old story…" Daniel looked thoughtful, while Armand looked troubled, " I wasn't myself. I thought I only had Lestat left and no one else, I thought you hated me, I knew it, Louis gone and Marius … my Marius gone … dead … I just wanted the dark Daniel. I had him for so little and I became what I am for him, I embraced death for him, then they tore me away from him, and I embraced another death, different, cold and cruel, then I embraced another where fear and despair forced my pride, and then he was gone, and I really wanted death, real death, because if I could ever get him back in immortality, at least in real death, maybe, who knows, I could finally be reunited with him. But they prevented me, and I went crazy. And now instead, I have to thank them because they have given him back to me along with a new hope, a future."

Armand looked startled, then, and stared at Daniel, who got up and sat on the edge of the desk, taking Armand in his arms, " Do you know what Marius said to Gregory?" and Armand's eyes grew bigger, " He told him, if someone has taken my place in Armand's heart, the fault is mine. Mine is the penalty to pay, mine is the duty to give me back to him and take back my place. There is nothing I would not do for it, and whatever you may say to me, Gregory, will not change my newfound devotion or my ever-present love for him. We were cruel to each other, I see now, much of that was the chains of fear that gripped both of us. If Armand really said this, he will not receive accusations from me but only more love. More respect, more dedication, more understanding, and whatever love he has for Lestat, even if it's in the past, he'll only get respect from me." I was there, Daniel said, next to Marius, when it happened. I know and he also knows that there is no greater love than yours for him, even if at times it was stronger love for someone else, and how could he blame you for that? Or because you felt a different, though no less profound, love for others?" Daniel was then, compelled to stop and caress Armand's face to wipe away the tears that were streaking his face and that showed no sign of stopping. Daniel held Armand close to him, those tears were the river he was washing away, the last remnants of a fear that would give way to love and nothing else.

[desertfangs]

Vamptember Day 4 - "Forgiveness"

Prompt: "Forgiveness" | Armand/Daniel | 973 Words

On Night Island, while the vampires are all there post-Akasha, Daniel and Armand have a brief conversation about eternity and forgiveness.

____

Armand watched Jesse tell Louis about the ghost she’d seen for a third time, and Daniel watched Armand, trying not to laugh inappropriately at the way the light from the fireplace clung to his hair, his rings, his skin. 

Louis was riveted by the story, and Jesse seemed happy enough to tell it again. Clearly the experience had had a huge effect on her and she patiently answered his questions about the ghost, the diary, all of it. The others drifted away, having heard it twice before over the past few nights. Armand finally got up and left the room, too. Louis and Jesse hardly noticed. Daniel waited a moment and then followed Armand through the villa, and then out back. 

There was a massive stone fountain, spewing water from the mouths of carved mermaids whose eyes seemed to follow Daniel. It made him laugh. Armand was sitting on a bench near the fountain that over looked the ocean down below. 

“Don’t want to be regaled with more tales of vampire ghosts?” Daniel asked, still watching the mermaids warily as though they might come to life and attack him. 

“Ghosts aren’t real.” 

Daniel scoffed. “How can you know that? We’re real.” He loved that he could say ‘we’ now to refer to vampires, that he was one of them. “Why couldn’t ghosts be?” 

“The dead don’t come back, Daniel,” Armand said firmly.

Daniel tore his gaze away from the fountain. And then a thought occurred to him. He felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner.

“Must be weird, huh?” Daniel sat on the bench next to him, draping his arm around Armand’s shoulders. 

Armand looked at him. Swept some of Daniel’s hair off his forehead. “What are you talking about?” 

“All this. Having all these people here together. You have hundreds of years of history with so many of the people here, right? It’s like the most fucked up family reunion ever.” 

Armand smiled at him. “I confess it’s a little strange.” 

“And yet you hold no animosity toward any of them. You were thrilled to see them all again. It seems everyone’s forgiven each other all of their transgressions.” 

Armand shrugged. “What good is animosity to our kind? Those were lifetimes ago and what’s done is done.” 

Daniel considered, dropping his arm from Armand’s shoulders. He thought of his interview with Louis a mere decade before, and even that felt like another lifetime. He’d been another person then, hadn’t he? The optimistic, intrepid reporter with his cassette recorder, interviewing people in his off hours, sometimes two or three a night, in search of a story or set of stories that might make his career and offer him some glimpse into the meaning of it all. 

Somewhere in a storage unit in San Francisco was a box full of cassettes with those stories, along with the recorder itself and so much other detritus that had made up the life of that Daniel, a life he barely remembered, full of people he hadn’t spoken to in ten years, whose names and faces he wouldn’t even recognize now. Who would he be in a hundred years? Five hundred? 

“But is it really as you told Louis all those years ago? That you live in eras and then leave them behind?” Daniel asked. 

“In some ways. Perhaps I didn’t explain it well then and his recount was not entirely accurate,” Armand said. He pressed his fingers lightly to Daniel’s cheek. “But if you wish to survive the centuries, you’ll need to find things to anchor you.”

“And I’m that for you.” It wasn’t a question. They’d had that conversation years before and it had come up several times, Daniel sometimes throwing it in his face when Armand refused to turn him. 

Armand kissed him lightly on the lips. 

“But surely some things never end!” Daniel said. “That’s the beauty of being immortal. Eternity means always having chances to reconnect, to come back together. Louis and Lestat are proof of that.” 

Armand tilted his head slightly, studying Daniel’s face. He could no longer read Daniel’s thoughts but perhaps he could sense the distress in him at the thought that maybe in fifty or sixty years Armand would have no need of him anymore. 

“No one knows what the future holds, beloved,” Armand said. “But yes, I suppose eternity does offer opportunities for forgiveness.” He smiled faintly, seeming to like that idea. 

And surely that truth was playing out even now, as Louis desperately questioned Jesse about Claudia’s ghost without an ounce of ire directed at Armand, who had been at least partially responsible for her death.  

Daniel relaxed slightly. Took Armand’s hand and squeezed it. He’d so desperately wanted eternity but he couldn’t fathom it without Armand. He had no delusions that they’d be side by side for unbroken millennia, but he would always need him, would always love him. And wasn’t that how it should be? He thought of Marius and Armand, now reunited, and the love between them was plain enough to see. 

“You shouldn’t be so pensive about a future that hasn’t come to pass,” Armand said, though Daniel could sense some sadness in him, too. 

He knew that Armand still believed he would resent him for this gift one day. Daniel didn’t know how to disabuse him of that notion. It was absurd! Even the grass at their feet danced for him now! How could he resent it! It would never happen. 

Restlessness struck Daniel like a bolt of lightning. He kissed Armand on the cheek and stood, pulling Armand up with him. “Let’s go to Miami. Just the two of us.”

Armand didn’t argue. He let Daniel lead him by the hand down the path around the Villa, where they were unlikely to encounter the others, and down to the docks. 

-----

Crossed posted to AO3 on my vamptember doc over there.

I am utterly obsessed with all the conversations and moments that must have happened on Night Island in the days following Akasha. Would read a whole book about just that time, tbh.

[microcosmonaut]

while rereading iwtv, I got the impression that louis and lestat never really had a romantic relationship ( not denying the atrattion they had for each other), like in the first years they didn't like each other, they didn't even talk?!

but after their confrontation, they had their first real talk and like oh no lestat is actually a reasonable guy (like lestat talked of his feelings for 5 minutes and then had to do the most barbaric shit to compensate), at this time louis compared their dynamic as slave and a master (really funny coming from plantation owner boy)

but by the time Claudia was making her murderous plans, the way louis talked about their relationship changed, now they were accomplices, but she didn't saw that way meaning even if claudia saw them as her parents, they were not a couple in her eyes. louis also doesn't talk much of lestat in this, maybe because the whole " if I held something too close I would no bring it up", the only moment he says something about lestat in this part is about the musician who lestat was infatuated and some little glimpses of how they learned to act around each other, their realashionship was changing and unclear, but certanly becaming better

and so, claudia happened in like

probably it was not ar’s inttention, but I started reading the “lies” in iwtv more like Louis telling by what he had for certanty, lestat was certanly a dick in the beggining and even if he was becoming somewhat a better companion, it was not certain

so lestat affirming in tvl that he had came back as his lover after his flop years is reassuring something that louis wanted to be true at that time

in summary loustat is hella of a slow burn

[gulfportofficial]

Gp Gp gp 

I wasn’t going to pre-share this on tumblr bc it really should be in context but it’s just taking me so fucking long to finish this and I want GP readers to know what’s up.  Anyway, tw for rape trauma; gulfport scene 

He slid his fingers under my pajama bottoms, against my skin. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “So very beautiful. I love you, you know.”

“Don’t tell me, show me!”

He kissed me again, messy and deep, and rolled me on top of him. His hands felt me all over, excitedly, under my shirt, over my ass again. He both fondled and held tight and there was something so very sweet about that, that he hid himself beneath me, as if he were sheltering, nesting. He buried his nose in my collarbone and inhaled. I gripped his body back and ran my hands along it.

He wriggled down and pulled my pants down with him, kissing and caressing me as he did, then easing my thighs apart to nestle his face between them. I giggled and he spread my legs a little wider. He kissed there. He sunk his teeth into the very top of my thigh.

It hurt. It hurt a lot and I gasped and felt my skin prickle and come alive and I waited for the delight of it to take me over. But it didn’t. Instead it burned so much that it was if my spirit pulled back from it and I jolted out of myself and sailed away.

It was such a shock that my stomach lurched up into my mouth. With it came the memory of human acid burning there, when I’d had a real body, and fear came too. It was dark all around me and a smell rose and smothered me and I caught glimpses of tattered gold hair.

I whimpered. “Louis,” I said. My heart beat hard. I thought it was my heart. “Louis?”

“Hmm?” he said.

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Can what?”

“I don’t think I can have sex, I don’t want to have sex. Please stop.”

When I said it aloud I was sure I’d throw up in earnest and I had to turn my face to the side in case I did. How could I have done something so stupid? I’d said that when I could have endured it. It would have been momentary! And he’d insist on knowing and I didn’t want anyone to know!

I couldn’t even resolve my face. I wasn’t inside it. I couldn’t make it sit spitefully to protect myself, I didn’t know how it read to him. His movements seemed small and unconcerned and painfully out of step with my apocalypse. He smiled somehow and he shifted himself out from between my legs and wiped his mouth and after a moment he leaned up and kissed my cheek. I could feel my thigh hemorrhaging open and pulling me down with it and I knew I would bleed to death now, bleed to human death as I had already done, but this time I would wake up even more monstrous than before, and he kissed my cheek!

I could hear myself making a sound. I tried to stop. I had to be healing, surely. I had to be.  

“Too tired after all?” Louis said, in a normal, impossible voice. He lay down next to me and pulled the covers up.

My voice sounded stupid. “You’re not mad?”

“No?”

“Well, I mean, I… I mean, I started things.”

Louis frowned. “I did too, but it doesn’t matter.”

“You really don’t mind?”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “What’s the matter? Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine, I’m…”

He was making his concerned face. The one I knew so well, with his brows together and his lips in a neat little line. Predictable. I tried to anchor myself to the familiarity of that face, my annoyance with that face, to tell myself that it was really him, only Louis, and that I knew how to deal with him. But then he reached out and stroked my hair back from my face and the touch was so gentle that I felt it like a blow. “I want to throw up,” I blurted.

Louis blinked. “Oh,��� he said. “I’m sorry?”

“I want to yell at you,” I said desperately. “I’m not yelling at you!”

“Thank you?”

“I’m going to… I don’t know that I can… Louis!”

“It’s alright,” he was saying. “It’s alright. Can you tell me what’s happening?”

He absolutely was angry with me. I wanted to shove him away from me and slice him open and tell him how dare he feel anything about me at all. His eyes blazed but he spoke so gently. So gently! It made me furious! It felt like a trap. Like he was trying to worm his way into me.

“I didn’t want to say that but I didn’t know what else to do and now it feels bad!” I said, uselessly, desperately. My voice was so high.

“Didn’t want to say to stop?” Louis said.

“Yes!” I said, and now my voice was even worse. It was ragged and too loud and I prayed my mother wasn’t awake or nearby enough to hear it.

“But it’s alright,” he said. “I don’t mind at all if you want to stop, everything’s alright.”

He wouldn’t trap me with that either. I’d tear his face off before any trap snapped shut, see if I didn’t. The muscles in my hand were ready to do it. They would do it! He’d be sorry! “I didn’t have a good reason!” I yelled. “I just! I got in my head and… listen, it’s fine now, it’s fine, you can start again.”

“No, I…”

“Do it!” I said. “Stop looking at me! Do it!”

“Lestat,” Louis said. He swallowed. His eyes seemed to shimmer for a second or two. Then he blinked. “Lestat, I don’t want to do that and I’m not going to.”

“Then don’t be mad!”

“I’m not… Lestat, you are allowed… you wanted to stop.”

“And I said you could start it again, just get down there!”

“No, I don’t…”

“Stop being angry with me, then! I said you could do it!”

“I’m not angry at all, or if I am it’s only that…”

“Don’t make me wait for it! Whatever punishment you have for me just hurt me now! Otherwise get down and do it!”

He moved his body up. Suddenly. One fluid motion and then he was covering me. I bucked against it and I would have pushed him off, but he cleared his throat and it made him wheeze and that forced a whining sound out of my own throat because paradoxically as much as I wanted to kill him I also didn’t want him to suffer any hurt at all. It stopped me as surely as if my back had been broken in place, and I couldn’t speak.

“Mon petit Monsieur,” Louis said. The closest he’d ever gotten to a pet name. “I’m so very sorry. If I’m… I’m very… of course I’m not angry with you.”

I felt myself choking again. His eyes were red-rimmed for some reason, like he was trying not to cry. I felt the smell of that blood in my throat, the real promise of real violence, but he was speaking still and I had to listen. It hurt to do so. “Louis!” I said.

“Please, please understand,” he said. “You have done nothing wrong. I am not angry with you, not at all.”

“But how are you…” I said but I didn’t know what I was asking. “Louis! How are you…”

“I’m…” Louis said. “Oh mon petit, come here.”

For a moment the impulse to break him open at the throat overwhelmed me. But then he moved his hands up to my hair and I buried my face against his body and he folded himself around me all the way. I dug my fingernails into his skin, but he didn’t seem to notice. I couldn’t even be angry now. All I could do was press my face into his naked chest like an animal.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, from somewhere out in the world where I couldn’t see him. “Mon dieu, I’m so sorry. I’m…”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said.

“Nothing’s wrong now, and you have done nothing wrong. I’m… oh, I’m…”

“It’s alright, Louis,” I said. “You didn’t do anything either.”

“No,” he said. “No it isn’t that at all, I’m...”

“Louis,” I said. I tried to say it firmly but I couldn’t make it sound firm and it didn’t stop him.

“Lestat,” Louis said. “Please. You do not have to do this if you don’t want to. I’m so sorry you don’t seem to know that.”

“I know it, Louis!” I said, and as panicked and plaintive as my voice was, it could have been so much worse and I have no idea how I managed to restrain it. My mind raced in utter desperation and the speed of it had made me violently sick again. My voice seemed to say all of that, though it was also hard to say anything. “I just got confused. Don’t go on about it.”

“Mon petit monsieur,” Louis said, “please, it’s perfectly alright.

I didn’t know what to say to that. “Don’t call me that,” I said.

“You don’t like it?”

I love it with all my heart. “No, I hate it.”

“Then I won’t say it. But please, I must... you don’t owe that to me, or to anyone, and I’m so…”

I wrenched myself up out of his arms. I looked him dead in the eyes. “You don’t have to do any of this,” I said. “It’s fine.”

Louis gave me a skeptical look. I glared at him. It should have destabilized him but it didn’t. He just put his hands to the side of my face and sighed.

I let him have his hands there and I tolerated the sigh, as difficult as that was – they were concessions, concessions to the greater goal – but I wouldn’t have him doubt me. “It’s fine, Louis,” I said. “Stop fussing.”

“It is not fine at all.”

“It’s fine! I just… I tripped myself up. I did it because I’m an idiot. There’s no more to it than that.”

“And it has nothing to do with what we discussed yesterday, or with the fact that your mother is here?”

That hit me in the chest like a cannon. I don’t know how I didn’t gag. Perhaps I did. I jerked away from his hands at any rate. I sat up. “Shut up!” I said. “It’s got nothing to do with anything.”

Louis frowned again. “I’m not going to press it now,” he said. “I’m not equipped for that. We figured that out, I think. I’ve got the subtlety of dynamite on this matter, and I apologize.”

“But you do have an opinion.”

“Yes.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh in his face or punch him in it. Both options felt equally hysterical. “Suppose you just tell me your opinion, Louis.”

“You know what it is.”

“Say it,” I demanded. “Say whatever stupid thing it is you think.”

Louis cleared his throat. Then he cleared it again. His hands had followed my body when I’d moved, but he’d taken them away now to cough into them. How insulting.

“Louis,” I said.

“No, I…”

“Louis,” I said, and my tone, I hope, conveyed how exactly how little I wished to fuck around.

It did, evidently. He met my eyes, and his expression was not, I thought, altogether kind. “There is…” Louis said. “You must know this. There is a relationship between your assumption of desert on certain traumatic issues, and your desire to have people love you by any means necessary. And it is culminating in... in this behavior.”

“What traumatic issues?” I said, furiously, but we both knew I knew exactly what he meant. The fury was more desperate ritual than it was actual accusation, but I hoped it would protect me anyway. I drew it around myself like a magic cloak. I suspect Louis observed that, because he spared me and didn’t answer my question. At least not directly.

Still, what he did say was almost worse. “You must listen to me,” he said, reaching out his hand again. I slapped it away but he went on. “Please. Please listen. You do not need to… there is no requirement for you to have sex you do not wish to have.”

“I know that!”

“You don’t know it,” he said. “You are demonstrating that you don’t. And you must know… that I don’t… surely if nothing else, everything that’s past must make you understand. I’ve loved you even when I couldn’t stand you. You are so dear to me, don’t you understand that?”

“Oh sure,” I said, my chest heaving against the bile. “You know, you don’t always have to mention that you couldn’t stand me.”

Louis ignored that. “You don’t have to do anything to secure this. You don’t have to favor me.”

“I’m not favoring you!” I said. “I like fucking! I don’t know what happened just then!”

“Yes,” he said. “You do.”

“Shut up, Louis!” I said. My intestines would crawl out from between my teeth if he didn’t stop. “I know all of that! I just confused myself. It’s not important like you’re making it. Shut up.”

“I am sorry,” Louis said.

“Stop being sorry!” I said. “It’s my own fault!”

“How could that possibly be?”

“Because I shouldn’t have said anything,” I snapped.

Louis’ face collapsed. “And I wouldn’t have known,” he said, and just like that I wanted to weep.

It’s actually strange to me, upon reflection, that I didn’t. I suppose it was too great a feeling for mere tears. Tears would have required some clarity or some human feeling and I had none. My chest had filled with one impossible sob but I could not and did not release it. Maybe, I thought, he might actually not have known.

“I can’t tolerate that,” Louis said. “I don’t want that. Please. I must tell you that… please know that my love for you is not conditional upon… that you are not required to… you don’t deserve to have to... I know you think you… please…”

He had nothing to say. He’d already run himself aground. How typical of him. How feeble and uninteresting and pointlessly intellectual. My mouth was sour and I wanted to leave, but some part of me was compelled to stay and make the point. “No,” I said. “I would have wanted to again soon enough.”

Louis frowned again. He wrinkled his nose up. He opened his mouth but then he shut it again.

“I would have,” I insisted.

“That’s… well…” Louis said. “Ah. That, I think, is a problem.”

“That’s not a problem!”

“Shh,” Louis said. “Shh, it’s alright.”

“Stop trying to make me calm down, Louis! I’m perfectly calm! It’s not a problem! I know my own mind and I’m telling you, it’s fine!”

Louis took another pause. He seemed to gather himself. “If that is how you feel,” he said, “then we’ll stop and start again when you do wish to. There’s no reason you must… play through…”

Did he play golf? For some reason that question was stupidly pressing and I wanted to ask it. I think he does sometimes actually. But it wasn’t relevant here. “Why are you trying to make this some big and stupid deal, Louis!” I said. “I just got a little in my own head! I shouldn’t have said anything. I regret saying anything! Because now you’re making it into an event and it just isn’t one!”

“Is there perhaps a little truth in what I’ve said?” Louis asked me, in the softest voice I’d ever heard. It twisted my guts into knots again just to hear it and I turned my face away.

“No,” I said.

Louis’ tone didn’t change. “Will you please consider,” he said, “just consider, that’s all I’m asking, that some of your instincts on this matter are a little wrong?”

“No!” I said, furiously. “I absolutely will not. Because they are not.”

“But don’t you…”

“Shut up, Louis!” I snapped. “You’re so full of bullshit. If you’re weak and stupid enough to beg for love you cannot be fussy about the way people give it to you!”

Louis looked straight at me, but he didn’t need to. The moment I said it I knew what a fucking idiot I’d been. What an absolute buffoon. With that one pathetic statement, I’d managed to say something so imbecilic and so revealing that he’d won against me with in this patronizing, aggravating, nauseating argument without even having to do it himself. I bit down on my lip, hard, and tried to roll away. Even my own blood made me feel sick.

Louis wouldn’t let me get away. He caught me by my waist and turned me back around until I was facing him. I fought him every inch of the way. My hands were in fists and I had opened my mouth to bite him like an animal, but I didn’t. Because then I was facing him and his expression arrested me. He didn’t look like somebody who had won. He didn’t even look like someone who disapproved of me for being this much of an idiot, though I was one and he might reasonably have disapproved. “Lestat,” he said, his eyes huge and bright and imploring, “Lestat. Please let me tell you this. You did not deserve it. You never could have.”

The sob in my chest was still stuck there. Aching and with no noise and I did not weep. I thought it would choke me not to weep. And then all I could think of were the worst of his implications.

“Louis,” I said. “Louis is this… yesterday were you… was this… did you cry because you didn’t want to and you didn’t know how to make it stop?”

Louis looked surprised. “Excuse me?”

“Louis, was it?”

He smiled, in a strange, incredulous way. “No, that was much worse,” he said, dryly. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s think about you at the moment.”

He said it like he was joking. I think he did it to comfort me. But it didn’t sit right with me. It wasn’t the time to joke. “Louis, please,” I said.

“That’s not relevant now.”

“It is! Because if it wasn’t that then what was it?”

“It’s not necessary to explain.”

“Please try. Please. I have to know. I can’t… I can’t bear it, Louis. Please.”

“Well, perhaps it’s similar.”

“Oh darling!” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“Shh,” Louis said. “Be calm.” He brushed my hair back again and I let him. He stroked my face and I let him do that as well. How strange it was to have him pet me like this, how strong it made him seem. I couldn’t have bitten him now if I’d wanted to, I was that spellbound, and how afraid and how safe that made me feel.

And how panicked that combination made me. “Louis!” I said.

“Shh, it doesn’t matter.”

“Louis, please…”

“Look,” he said. “Do you really want to know about that? Is that what you really want to talk about now? Wouldn’t you rather just try to rest?”

“No.”

“It’s morning.”

“Louis,” I said. “No.”

He thinned his lips, but I kept staring at him. I might have even made my own eyes wider, sweeter, on purpose. In fact I think I did do that because it made him frown in that particular way he does when he is annoyed by me but too sympathetic to say it. I didn’t relent though. I kept at it until finally, he said., “would it really ease your mind to hear about it?”

“Yes.”

“Alright,” he said. He sighed.

“And?”

Louis moved and shuffled down so he was lying beside me. Even this momentary absence hurt me and I reached out my hand for his. Thankfully he took it. He held it over his heart and I shuffled down too. “Alright,” he said. “Look.”

I looked. I waited.

“I am sympathetic to this concept of… reciprocal desert, I suppose,” Louis said.

“Louis,” I said. “You are correct that it is morning. And that I’m very tired. Please pontificate less and explain more.”

He gave a desperate little snort at that. It was painfully adorable and I felt a stab of real affection at it. It was the first thing I’d felt in some time that wasn’t fear or nausea and I clung to it. I squeezed his hand. “I’m listening, chéri.”

Louis closed his eyes. He took a breath through his nose before he opened them again. “Look,” he said, once again. “I’m not sure you understand how… little sustained sexual experience I had before you and I became acquainted… how little sustained experience I had with sex I even enjoyed.”

That both surprised me and didn’t. It wasn’t news, but it also wasn’t true enough for him to say in this candid situation. When I’d met him he’d been depraved. “What about all your sex workers?”

“My what?”

“Your whores, Louis. It’s the term people use now. It’s polite.”

Louis appeared to take that in. “Look,” he said, “the fact that I enjoyed… enjoyed… liked, ah… that I… I enjoyed… ahem… Jesus fucking Christ, I beg your pardon. I…”

I waited for as long as I could, but it seemed that he wasn’t going to make it. “Louis?” I prompted.

“… that I enjoyed the, ah, culmination.”

“Oh, you liked getting off. You liked when you came. Sure.”

“Yes,” Louis said, sharply. He flushed, but then he pushed it back and forced himself onward. “Yes. Obviously. I had a human body, as base as it was. But the fact that I liked… that aspect of… ah… look. It did not negate that I could seldom bring myself to be… present… during the act itself. And there were some… brief exceptions in my youth but as I had aged that had become… increasingly difficult.”

“Then why keep doing it at all?” I said, probably stupidly. “Why didn’t you just jerk off?”

It was stupidly. Louis looked at me in exactly the way I deserved for speaking so stupidly. But he went on. “Because I didn’t… look. It isn’t that I didn’t want to… have… look.”

“I’m looking, Louis,” I said. And please, dear God, won’t you finally tell me what I’m supposed to be looking at.

He cleared his throat again. “When I fell in love with you,” he said (and I loved hearing him say that, because no matter the circumstances I always will), “when I decided to follow you as I did, you were so new to me, you were like nothing I’d ever felt. I told myself that it was entirely because you were my first vampire. That you were spellbinding to me only because of that. I knew that this was not true, but it is what I told myself.”

“But what do you mean?” I said. “I mean, thank you, because… well, I mean, just thank you, it’s nice to know that I’m actually somehow unique to you instead of just, you know… your symbolic supernatural end, but I mean… that doesn’t seem to warrant all of this anxiety, it’s just nice to know but…”

“Alright,” Louis said, again, cutting me off. “Some of the reason I decided to go with you, that what I felt for you was so remarkable to me is that…”

“I’m delightful.”

“You are but...”

“But what? I’m delightful.”

“You are,” Louis said. “You are also another man.”

It was not something I had expected him to say. I hadn’t known what to expect, certainly, but this absolutely wasn’t it and I found I had to calibrate myself to hear it properly. To do so felt like threading myself through time, as if my body were in multiple places at once, and it was already so difficult to stay inside it. Because it hadn’t even occurred to me, but it felt so uniquely strange and so very deliberate that it had not.

I doubted he could hear any of that when I spoke, however. “You didn’t like women you mean? Is that what you mean or are you still talking about that choir boy thing where you’re not allowed to like any of it?”

“I’ll never know,” Louis said. “Was it about the people I did it with or only about myself? Original sin or very specific? I don’t know. I’ll never know. The man I was no longer exists.”

“Well then why does it matter?” I said. “I’m not trying to be hard, I just don’t… I want to understand.”

“Because this intimacy I have with you now,” Louis said, “it makes it difficult to read things against how they used to be. Particularly… some sexual things.”

“What?” I said.

I knew I was out of sync with myself but this did seem genuinely confusing. Louis frowned again. He flushed again too, but that just seemed to make him angry with himself. He looked down, away from me, and he bit his lip. “When you would… when you’d push me. And dominate. And demand. When it would be a part of a fight or part of some despairing series of events. When it hurt me. I think it gave me permission. To do something I had always wanted to do.”

“You mean…” I said. “You mean you’re allowed because you’re not wanting to, you’re letting me.”

“Yes,” Louis said, looking up. “That’s what I mean.”

I sucked in a breath. Part of me knew how wrong it was of me to press my advantage like this, to use his sympathy to draw these confessions out of him, but another part knew I’d never hear this any other way. As painfully and embarrassingly candid as he’d been in the therapist’s office, this, I knew, was too personal even for that. This was about him, not us. And I’d known, I wanted to say. I’d known I’d played this part in your self-flagellation all along, but never known how to ask it.

“But isn’t this just…” I said. “Aren’t you just arguing that you asked for what I did to you? Because I don’t agree with that, I don’t think that’s right, the logic doesn’t hold. If I “didn’t deserve it” then you didn’t either and I’m not going to accept that you did. There aren’t different rules.”

“No,” Louis said. “I’m parsing something quite complicated here, and it is not the same. I have made conditions. There are certain things I will not permit you to do. Certain ways you are not to speak to me, impositions, including sexual impositions, that I will not let you make. That problem of mine, it does not… it does not permit all else.”

That was enormous. It was patently unfair that he said it in this moment because it was so enormous and I was already so weak. But it was also necessary that he said it, because it was true. I swallowed hard but I did not let myself react. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I know.”

“I will not accept things as they used to be,” Louis said. “I was about to say that I cannot, but that is not the truth, and that is the crux of what I am saying here. The truth is that I will not. I have learned, I think, to consider that I might value the fact that I do not want to. But I also hesitate because I fear it’s… Bartleby the Scrivener in a very particular setting. Because if I’d prefer not to, I’m not sure I can prefer anything. Does that make sense to you?”

I was too tired to figure out what that meant, or which part of this I was most upset by. All of it, certainly, but also by each part of it individually at the same time. My heart clenched and unclenched around each particular and it made it hard to look at him. But I made myself do that anyway. Because it didn’t matter how I felt. What did matter was finally hearing what he had to say, because this would be the only chance I would get to hear it.

And I loved him, of course. I know you think that I don’t, but I do, and I loved him then, more than I ever had, loved him in the marrow of my bones, and if it hurt him then it hurt me too, and I wanted to know. “No, Louis,” I said. “It’s good to have wants. They don’t automatically lead you to complete existential failure.”

“However,” Louis said.

“However what?”

“However,” he said, “There were elements of that dynamic that I suspect… produced… something I… possibly enjoyed. Sexually speaking.”

I held my tongue. That was difficult to do, since I had two equally weighted thoughts, and one was a delighted “really!” and the other was “no fucking shit, Sherlock” in a sarcastic manner. Neither would have been appropriate.

Louis went on. “I don’t like the relationship it was part of. And that’s not a criticism of you, or not only of you. But… but.”

“I understand,” I said. “I’m with you.”

“Are you? Do you?”

“Perhaps not, but I’m following the line you’re drawing. Can you… do you mean you want me to… what do you mean?”

“I mean I’m not sure I know how to do it without the penance built in,” Louis said. “I’m not sure I know how to enjoy sex at all without some elaborate punishing construction I’ve built myself to make it acceptable. Some Kafka’s penal colony of my own making. And so part of me sincerely wonders if, by insisting upon this different relationship – and I do insist – I haven’t spoiled sex for myself forever.”

“Louis,” I said. “That’s absolutely fucking certifiable.”

“Is it?”

“How is it that I am the crazy one if you’re the one who thinks these things?”

“Well, you’re not…”

“That’s absurd. You’re insane.”

“Are you sure?” Louis said. “Are you really sure that the concepts are not mutually unintelligible?”

“No, I’m not letting you do this,” I said, before I caught myself. “I hear it. Shut up. I’m not letting you make some intellectual mess of an argument you think I’m too stupid to understand. Well, I do understand, and it’s your argument that is stupid, not me.”

“I don’t think that…”

“You’re absolutely fucking filthy, you depraved slutty idiot. You’re the horniest person I’ve ever met. Nobody and nothing on this earth could have stopped you from liking sex. These past few months should have proven that. You’re just a little bit anxious about it at the moment, and that’s absolutely alright, but I assure you it will just be temporary.”

“I beg your pardon,” Louis said. He was clearly affronted, and I knew I’d gone too far, but I wasn’t about to let him derail things.

“Nobody is punishing you!” I said. “There aren’t all these traps you imagine! It’s alright to like sex. It’s alright to like sex with a man! You’re allowed to… you’re allowed to be alive and to like to fuck and it doesn’t excuse anything! You haven’t done anything wrong, Louis!”

Louis stared at me. “You put it so… you’re so certain.”

I knew what he meant. I knew how much he wanted to say something arch about having told me so. But I wouldn’t talk about that now. I wouldn’t! “Don’t you dare get bogged down in if we’re allowed to be alive as we are,” I said. “I am too tired and I love you too much to entertain that. You are allowed, because I say so.”

“I wish it were that easy,” Louis said.

“It is that easy,” I said. “I love you with the whole of my ugly little heart, Louis. And so you are right to be on this Earth, if only for my happiness.”

“Yes, but then that begs the question of whether you… whether any of us…”

“Shut up,” I said. “If you’re going to argue that I am not right to be here, I will weep. I am too fragile for that this morning, so don’t... If you’re going to make me discuss… if you’re going to make me… if you’re going to bring up… if you do love me at all, then please grant me the kindness of saying that you’re at least glad I’m alive.”

He held more firmly on my hand against his chest. “You will never know how glad,” he said. “But that…”

“Then shut up,” I said. “I’m almost already crying. Shut up.”

I meant it. I’d fought so hard not to cry all evening, but it felt so close to me now that I even felt myself sniffling, like a sad little child. It is possible that a tear or two did fall, actually, but I certainly didn’t acknowledge them. Even then I refused to let myself be that pathetic.

But “please don’t,” Louis said, so tenderly. He had let go of my hand, but both of his were upon my face again, softly. He kissed my cheek, high up on the bone, like he’d done to the girl at the bar. “Please don’t cry, monsieur,” he was saying. “Everything is alright.”

“Then don’t do this,” I insisted. “Just… we are here, Louis. We’re here, and I want to be here with you, and I want you to want to be too.”

“I do want to be here. Very much.”

“Good then,” I said. “That’s enough. Please let it be enough.”

He didn’t answer that. He did stoke me though. Softly, feather light. I still felt like crying. I shut my eyes, though I found I had to open them again to implore him.

“We can do better,” I said. “We can do those things when we want to do them, we can talk about them and manage it like adults. I’ll fuck you exactly like you want me to and if it’s awkward for a while then, well, it will just be a little awkward for a while. We can tolerate that, can’t we? We have the language.”

Let’s do it now, I almost said. But thankfully, I didn’t.

“I don’t…” Louis said. “I don’t find that easy. Discussing such… fleshy concerns. As you know. It’s not my forte, I’d say if I were you.”

What a way to say it. “I know, chéri,” I said. “I know you don’t. But some things are worth doing, even if they are hard. Haven’t you said that? Aren’t you saying that to me?”

“I wish I didn’t feel this way. It’s hypocritical of me, really, to let my own shame restrict what I communicate and what I do not, when I say what I say to you about yours.”

“Yes, well. It’s always easier to dictate than to do.”

He winced. “I am sorry,” he said, and he looked like he meant it. But I wasn’t going to let that be the end of it that.

“Why are you still ashamed?” I said. It felt so strange to ask him that. A bedtime confessional, mirrored throughout time. Lovers like us and like I had been, stretching back centuries asking the same questions. “Is it all because it’s lust or because it’s your vampire life? Or is it because… is all of this also because we’re both men?”

“I think some of it is,” Louis said. “I know what you’re going to say about that, that it’s a stupid, mortal hang-up that I shouldn’t have, and you’re right of course, but there it is just the same. A stupid human anxiety that I have always felt and that somehow still dominates my un-life.”

“You don’t really believe you’ll go to Hell for it,” I said. “Not you.”

“I never think anything so specific. This… sense of punishment is far more global than that. The sense of having made disorder in the world. Of being at odds with it. Of being so fundamentally incorrect that I have brought all of this upon myself. I don’t know.”

“Oh Louis,” I said. I moved up on my pillow so I could kiss him. He did let me. There was an edge of reluctance to it, or of despair perhaps. But he did let me.

“Oh Louis,” I said, again, stroking his cheek with my thumb. “Oh my love. You make everything so dramatic and symbolic when sometimes it’s just small and sad.”

He pressed his lips together in a resigned way. “Perhaps that’s so.”

It was polite of him not to point out my hypocrisy. Though it’s also possible he was too caught up in himself to notice it. “We’re still consumers,” I said, following him there. “And you’re still a Catholic.”

“I am not. You are, I’m not.”

“You absolutely are,” I said. “Don’t be stupid. You know you are. Don’t you know that?”

Louis didn’t answer me. He seemed far away, contemplative. But then he turned his face back to me, set his sparkling eyes upon me, and for some strange reason, I held my breath. “In San Francisco, I did try,” he said. “It was the writing, and the music, and that it was entirely new to me, but also it was… I wanted to go where I could love men. Where it would not be entirely out of place to do so. A lot of things were beautiful there, and I was so past caring about any of it. It was easy to be convinced. I tried to let myself be convinced. And sometimes I succeeded.”

“I know that,” I said. “You met Daniel in a bar. It was 1976, Louis. You talked to him in a bar in the fashionable part of San Francisco in 1976. Do you think I don’t know what kind of bar it was? That I don’t know what you went there to do?”

“I went there to kill someone,” he said. “To murder someone in order to sustain my own cowardly life.”

“That’s not all,” I said. “And you know it isn’t and you just admitted it too. You went there to kiss boys. And you think it’s the same thing, but it isn’t. Because it’s alright to kiss boys, Louis. God doesn’t think like you think about it. That’s a mistake. We were taught something that is not true.”

“Perhaps,” Louis said. And he looked strange and embarrassed, but then he smiled. He looked at me and he smiled. “You’re not afraid of anything, are you?”

His gaze was one of admiration, and ordinarily I would have liked it. Ordinarily when he looked at me that way, awed and trusting like that, I felt pleased with myself and pleased about the world. But it seemed wrong now. It seemed not truthful.

“You think I never…” I said. “I made up my mind not to care, don’t you see? I wasn’t going to let something so stupid as people’s opinions stop me if I was in love. It’s not because I never… of course I was afraid.”

I’d expected that confession to have more impact than it did. It made a lot of impact upon me to say.  But Louis spoke as if he hadn’t heard me. “It’s just that you always seemed fearless. As if you were daring people to try something. As if you thought it would be funny if they did.”

“People died for it, Louis,” I said. “Even in Paris. Let alone in the country.”

“Of course I know that, but…”

“And my father… said… he told me… when I…”

I couldn’t finish that. But it seemed I didn’t have to. I suppose Louis had heard me at last, because he curled his hand into mine and squeezed it. I squeezed back. His fingers felt warm to me, and I didn’t know why they did. His eyes were so wide when he looked at me. Quietly. Waiting. I felt the need to be soft with him, and I felt, again, the need to tell the truth.

“So I understand you,” I said. “I’ll admit that I do. I’m not going to say what you think I’m going to say this time. Not anymore. I’ll admit it instead.”

Louis kissed me this time. He moved forward to do it and I held my breath again, it was that sweet. “It’s you,” he said. “You. You were not fearless, but instead very brave.”

“No, I was just in love. There was nothing brave about it. It wasn’t a choice to be in love.”

“Of course there was something brave about it,” Louis said. “Isn’t that what we’re doing here together, discovering just that? Doesn’t everything we’ve talked about tonight tell you? To love another person, to commit to loving them truly and honestly is an act of such bravery, just because to be in love is to accept that you not only want to be alive, but that you have designs on how you want to live?”

“You really think so, don’t you?” I said. It made me grin. No doubt incredulously, though I would have tried to temper that, just a little. Nobody else could have made it that dramatic, but that wasn’t his fault. “You really think it’s brave just to be in love.”

“Yes,” he said, seriously.

“You really think that?”

“You’re brave to be here with me,” he said.

“Oh, stop.”

“You’ve been brave all your life,” he said. “And I want to be brave as well.”

My grin fell right off me. That declaration had pierced my heart and I couldn’t be anything but serious. I must have stared at him. I must have gazed in utter wonder. I could never love somebody as much as this, I thought. Nobody could ever be so gentle and so earnest or sway me so fundamentally as he did without even trying to. Certainly, nobody else could have made me admit any of these soft and vulnerable things. Nobody else could have made me want to admit them.  

“But you’re already brave, mon cher,” I said. “Everything you’ve told me is brave. I’m more proud of you than you’ll ever know. And I want to fuck you like you want to be fucked. I don’t want you to regret any of this, what you’ve said to me.”

“Well,” he said, and he then grinned himself, suddenly, and it startled me. I’d forgotten he could do that. I’d forgotten his face could even move. “Perhaps we can negotiate.”

“Negotiate what, Louis? I told you what I’d do.”

“Because you like it as well, don’t you?” he said. “Being put in your place, during sex.”

I felt like I could blush. My heart felt hot enough to make me. It’s even possible I was blushing, though perhaps not very likely. I certainly spoke like the sort of person who blushed, however. “Louis!” I said. “Louis!”

“Oh, isn’t it true?”

“No,” I said.

“Not true at all?”

“Shut up!”

“What a sweet little discovery that was,” he said. “What a sweet little thing you are.”

“Just you shut up right now.”

He smiled so indulgently. “As you wish.”

I scowled, but I didn’t really mean it. “Well maybe you make me feel like I could be sweet,” I said. “Like maybe I’m not all over evil after all.”

“And you make me feel that I could be interested for all eternity,” he said. “Even if nothing else was interesting, I could always be discovering more about you. You can change, you know. I once thought you couldn’t, but you can.”

I didn’t even have the wherewithal to be embarrassed at him saying that. Obviously, telling you about it now I am so embarrassed by it I have earnestly considered not telling you, and the fact that I am telling you has begun to make me wish I still had the capacity to make earnest suicide attempts with the possibility of success. But I wasn’t embarrassed then, not at all. This is all so saccharine and I so very soft that it seems that it could barely have happened. And it did happen. Worse was about to happen. But somehow, in that time I was not ashamed of anything. I just stared at him, stunned and in love until he kissed me.

I kissed him back. We pressed our bodies together and entangled each other in our arms and kissed and kissed and kissed. I gasped from it. When we broke apart, his face was pink and warm and his arms were still around me and I wanted to stay there forever. I felt as if I had already half bled into him, but I wasn’t afraid. It made me honest in a way that hurt. “Louis,” I said. “I do like it but it… it makes me…”

“I know,” Louis said. “I know.”

“I didn’t even say what it was!”

“You’re so…” Louis said. “You’re just so… I want to be… more careful with you.”

“You’re careful already.”

“No,” Louis said. “Listen to me. I will. I will be careful with you. You’re so dear to me.”

I couldn’t say anything to that. I think my face must have done something dramatic, because Louis smiled at me sympathetically and touched me and told me it was alright. “Be calm,” he said. “It’s alright.”

“I know it is,” I said. Snapped, really. But he didn’t react to that.

“It was brave of you to stop,” he said. “I know it was hard for you. I’m glad you did.”

Oh, but I had no chance coming out of this alive. My heart had cracked and the liquid of it lit my chest up from the inside and my eyes welled and I had to blink my tears away again. “Louis…”

“I know,” he said.

“No, but Louis…”

“I do know, monsieur.”

“Your petit monsieur.”

“Mon petit monsieur.”

I buried into him. I pushed my nose into the crook of his shoulder. “Is it really brave just to be in love?”

Louis seemed to hold all of his breath inside his body for a moment. “Yes it is,” he said when he let it out. His arms were around me, strong.

“Are we really in love then?” I asked him.

“Yes,” Louis said. “We are really very much in love.”

So you can say what you will about our thoughts and prayers. Don’t you see it? Don’t you understand? Between us, we earnestly believed we could clean up the gulf.