Chapter Text
Louis, December 2025
Prudhoe Bay, Alaska
Pulling a puff from his vaporizer, Louis shivers in the God-light of the earth’s magnetosphere. The “wellness” is beginning to wear. Through the plume of not-quite-smoke, Louis can make out the first straining shimmers of the Aurora Borealis; pinks, purples, and glowing greens, like cursed eyes. Or like something else. It is, perhaps, not well to think one’s own eyes cursed.
Louis hears the door he’d slipped out of open, the whistle of arctic wind rushing indoors. A moment later, drawn like moths to the brilliance of the sky-light, the rest of the rehab encroaches on Louis’ silent patch of snow to stare heavenwards. Louis slips his vaporizer in the pocket of his puffy black coat, the hood of which is furred with a fox Louis ate personally.
Calling it a rehabilitation center is a stretch. There are only four patients—pardon, health attracting spirits—paying an exorbitant sum for their determinedly wretched spirits to undergo a pseudoscientific “remagnetization” by the North Pole. Hospital setting or not, this so-called health retreat feels more spiritual than medicinal.
It’s Daniel’s fault that Louis stands here shivering, though perhaps it is Louis’ for illuminating Daniel as to his behavior of late. Louis, of course, made the mistake of inviting Daniel to Dubai and refusing to drink a drop the entire three-night visit, even when Daniel raised eyebrows and asked questions razored with a journalist’s edge. Even when Daniel grew tired of Louis’ excuses and Louis grew tired of being witnessed on empty.
After Daniel left, Louis ate his entire refrigerator. Towards the end of his feasting, Louis’ blood-sticky fingers had unlocked his buzzing phone to a text message from Daniel:
Daniel Molloy 3:26AM: I mean it, Louis. You need help. Your bottom is looking kinda rocky, bud.
Then, after a beat:
Daniel Molloy 3:27AM: I heard it. I swear to God, vampirism has turned me ineloquent and gay.
And finally:
Daniel Molloy 3:27AM: Look, Louis. I know a guy.
Daniel sent the link to Magnetic Fields Wellness Center. Two weeks later, Louis is here in Alaska, bearing witness to the Aurora Borealis and begging to be saved.
Magnetic Fields appears to be Armand’s combination tax break, solution to Daniel’s drug problem, and apology for breaking Louis.
It has become apparent that I killed your daughter, ruining you irrevocably. Please accept my penance in the form of a shuttered hospital I’ve purchased and turned into a micro-rehab serving both human and vampire clientele.
That is why the good Lord, working in tandem with the devilish, has led Louis to be healed in the ice-water; under magnet-bright skies. Louis is so desperate that he’ll give anything a shot, so long as he’s able to keep it down. Louis gazes in awe at the Northern Lights, shoulder to shoulder with his fellow wealthy fools and the people they trust to allegedly rearrange the chaos of their atomic-selves.
Lestat—king of all that is foolish and wealthy—lights a cigarette without looking away from the sky, evidently ignoring the no smoking agreement in the waiver they signed. At least Louis has the shame to sneak off to use his vaporizer.
It is especially irritating given that Lestat’s unexpected presence (in the North Pole of all goddamn places) is the reason Louis finds himself in such desperate need of a smoke.
Two hours ago, Louis had been making small talk with Dr. Miracle, the enigmatic and seemingly unlicensed “Magnetic Healer” of Magnetic Fields Wellness Center. Dr. Miracle was telling Louis about the anti-aging benefits of their infrared sauna when Louis’ heart had stuttered into the comfortable crescendo of their shared rhythm, and Louis had known that Lestat was near. Lestat had arrived shortly thereafter, wearing a floor-length fur over his little black shorts and fishnet top.
Louis’d demanded to know what the hell Lestat was doing here at the frozen tip of the planet. Lestat had snarked that he’d heard the glaciers were melting and thought he’d have a look before things got too warm.
Now, under the teal shock of sky-light, breathing in Lestat’s smoke and fighting off the wild urge to kiss him squarely amidst the magnetic magic, Louis wants a straight answer.
“What are you really doing here, Lestat?”
Lestat tears his eyes away from the light show to look at Louis, a little smile unfurling while he blows the smoke out. It’s very attractive, Louis happens to notice.
“I have received feedback that there is something deeply wrong with me. I am here for the cure.”
Lestat, after the first Aurora Borealis, inside after the cigarette
He’s been here not three hours and, already, Lestat grows weary of being lied to.
He and Louis had made love sometime within the first hour, drawn to one another like magnets.
Before he was granted the opportunity to touch Louis, Lestat had endured what felt like an eternity of sitting in a chair and listening to mortal speech with no artistic purpose. Lestat’s eyes had glazed over through the human-in-charge’s earnest fabricating about the magnetizing healing powers of the North Pole.
Now, after coming in from the cold of the Northern Lights (A wonder Lestat has never before witnessed in all of his years and travels! Lestat had felt honored to witness such beauty alongside Louis; if only Louis had permitted Lestat’s holding of his hand!) the illustrious Dr. Miracle has resumed her explanation of her “Wellness Center” grift.
Lestat cranes his neck to stare a few chairs away, so grateful to see his real, beautiful Louis; a thousand times more brilliant than the spiteful hallucinations Lestat conjures when he’s feeling particularly low. Louis is here. Dr. Miracle’s dishonesty matters not here on the icy crown of the spinning Earth.
Lestat himself had lied by omission in his explanation of his presence to Louis. Yes, Lestat has been informed of his seismic flaws and has been instructed by many to seek help. Chiefly by Daniel Molloy, a fledgling as pesky as a mosquito in Lestat’s ear, but good enough to inform Lestat of Louis’ presence here. However, Lestat is confident that the cure to his insanity can be found wherever his Louis resides. Any mercuriality Lestat may exhibit around Daniel Molloy is simply the result of being without the love of his eternality.
So, the Arctic. And all its endless ice.
Concerns about his own ability to withstand the boredom of this Wellness Retreat (whatever that means. Are they convalescing now?) aside, Lestat is relieved that Louis is getting assistance for his insanity. While Lestat has always maintained that Louis’ unwillingness to feed is as unusual as it is unhealthy, the situation has clearly twisted with time. Lestat did not have a particularly happy Halloween and his observations during their lovemaking earlier do not inspire Lestat’s confidence in Louis’ recovery from the affliction of self-starvation.
Lestat, two hours prior:
Dr. Miracle nods as Louis excuses himself.
The mortal is still speaking, lying about ice baths and the alleged pull of gravity on the human soul. After spending a distracting few minutes mesmerizing Lestat with the siren’s call of his pretty green eyes, Louis has excused himself from this dull lecture. Lestat certainly hadn’t known that was an option! He looks around the black leather chairs. The other two mortal “patients” remain enchanted by the speech, staring at their coven master in apparent awe.
Lestat excuses himself to follow the beat of their shared heart.
He finds his soul’s other half upstairs, a few doors down a hallway. Lestat can smell Louis’ sex behind the door. He knocks even though his passion is suggesting wildly that he ought to break down the door to expedite his making love to Louis.
Lestat hears the lock slide open and he enters. Louis sits on the edge of the bed, book in his lap. His ankles are crossed and he is stark naked. Lestat’s mouth waters as he charges up to Louis, allowing the door to slam behind him. Louis replaces his bookmark and sets his novel on the bedside table.
Lestat sinks to his knees, impatient to press his forehead and lips into the velvet soft of Louis’s stomach, cover him in kisses there and work his way down. Lestat used to think about it all the time during his age without: the intoxicating swell of Louis hips and thighs beneath the nip of his waist, the feminine give of his belly. Now that he has the opportunity to take a loving bite of such decadence, Lestat has learned to never waste his chance. Lestat kisses Louis’ navel, the flesh there that warms his long-lost wife’s womb. Except—
Of course. Being companion enough for himself means that Louis apparently no longer needs to eat. (Except in splashing bursts that apparently upset him, like on Halloween.) As such, he’s plague-thin and Lestat finds himself kissing the still-beautiful, but decidedly skin-and-bone stretch of Louis’ abdomen. Lestat is undeterred, climbing to kiss the pretty brown of his love’s nipples, the handsome line of his throat. Lestat kisses Louis’ collarbone (too prominent, to be sure, but perfect still, since it belongs to Louis).
Louis’ lips are the same as they always were: more delicious than the Blood and softer than angels. If such a beast existed, surely the angel would be crafted in the image of Lestat’s Saint Louis.
Lestat’s hands caress his husband, who is perhaps not his husband right this moment, but is nonetheless real beneath the hands Lestat wills not to tremble. Even though they must have made love dozens of times since Louis returned to Lestat’s life in a hurricane that hasn’t stopped raging, Lestat still occasionally struggles to accept that the soft skin beneath his fingers is Louis’; solid with truth and back from the dead.
Lestat sighs a kiss into Louis’ shoulder and readies himself to wedge a hand between the enchanting fullness of Louis’ thighs. Lestat’s stomach drops when his hand fits easily through a gap between Louis’ lovely legs, one that wasn’t there the last time they made love.
Oh, mon chèri. Ou est le reste de toi?/ Where is the rest of you?
Louis freezes.
“Excuse me?” Louis eyebrows shoot up, unimpressed. He puts his hands against Lestat’s chest and pushes away.
Lestat blinks.
“The rest of me?” Louis rolls away to sit on the other edge of the bed, back to Lestat with his arms crossed.
Lestat was alone for too long, conversing with mildew and playing for the ghosts. He struggles to behave when the world, his mind, and his memories were the same for so many years.
“I did not intend to speak that aloud,” Lestat tries truthfully.
Louis frowns at him. “Ain’t nobody forcing you to fuck me. My apologies, Lestat,” Louis’ eyes are hard as jewels, and he does not sound very sorry at all. “If you do not find me suitably curvaceous. Perhaps, I’m no longer heavy enough for your taste.”
Lestat can remember dully beneath his laughter that his volume is too extreme, that maybe he shouldn’t be laughing in the first place. Louis certainly doesn’t look amused.
But it is deeply, comically outlandish to imagine a scenario where Lestat would be uninterested in giving his body to Louis. Heavy (which Louis has never been, and his use of the word to describe himself is the same shade of bizarre as him keeping a weighing scale in his bathroom and evidently crying while he uses it) would be beautiful on Louis. Underfed is beautiful on Louis even though it breaks Lestat’s heart. Attraction is the furthest possible place from the problem.
Louis stands, bends over to retrieve his shirt.
“This is exactly why we’re not together.” Louis points a graceful finger at him. “I sure as hell didn’t come and find you after eighty damn years for you to laugh at me. You are a certified fu—”
“I love everything that you are, Louis. Every shape you could possibly take,” Lestat says quickly. “But I won’t have you in pain.” Lestat sighs. “Oh, the ache of your mistress starvation! Is she not why you are here?”
Louis does not respond, just looks at Lestat and chews on the inside of his cheek.
Of course it is. Lestat, Armand, and Louis himself have all failed at the Sisyphean task that is keeping Louis from going hungry. Now, Dr. Miracle will attempt to shoulder the burden.
This is all irrelevant to their lovemaking. They need to focus.
“We’ve gone off course, mon chér.” Lestat chances the endearment, since Louis is already nude. “And the mistake is all mine. I swear to mind my tongue moving forward. Please, ma belle, may I continue my ravishing of you?”
Louis stares for a beat, that beautiful mind of his whirling like machinery. Another beat and then he nods, surging forward into the age-oldness of Lestat’s kiss.
After Lestat dazzles Louis with a twenty-first century suckjob (Lestat had mastered disengaging his gag reflex for oral sex while human. He has recently been experimenting with switching it back on. Not enough to retch his kill on Louis’ cock, but enough to look attractively tearful as his throat contracts around his darling) and comes at the first stroke of Louis’ lovely hand (another twenty-first-century quirk: Lestat’s ability to cream red for Louis on gratefulness alone), Louis permits Lestat’s wrapping around Louis and pretending like they’re married again.
“I missed you,” Louis tells him, like it’s a secret, whispering into the scar on Lestat’s breast.
“You missed me?” Lestat confirms, astonished to hear Louis speak so plainly.
Louis tilts his head up to meet Lestat’s gaze, an almost-smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Louis picks up Lestat’s hand and guides it to his head, his soft hair in its handsome modern style. Lestat’s fingers wrap around a coil of Louis’ beautiful hair, his fingernails scratching lightly against Louis’ scalp. Louis sighs contentedly and lets his eyes close, pressing a little kiss to Lestat’s chest.
Lestat is only able to enjoy the loving press of Louis against him for a few minutes before his mind grows restless, and starts demanding that he start demanding of Louis. Starting with an answer as to why they must close their eyes and pretend at marriage when remarriage is close enough to kiss, as simple as Louis nodding his beautiful head yes.
It is cold in the room and Lestat rubs his fingers absently against the fur on the wall above Louis’ room’s headboard. When Lestat leans in to kiss Louis, there is a shock of static electricity between the press of their lips. Louis jumps back, eyes bright.
He announces that they have to return to Dr. Miracle lest they remain fucked up forever.
Lestat, after the first Aurora Borealis, inside after the cigarette
Assistance for Louis’ insanity is taking forever, as well as proving near-unbearably tedious. Dr. Miracle is still talking. Her henchmen have arranged the high backed leather chairs in a circle, and Louis won’t even sit beside Lestat, opting instead to sit between Dr. Miracle and a stranger.
Lestat struggles to pay attention, high on the potential of the glorious stretch of evening ahead of him. So many lovely hours to spend in proximity to Louis, so long as Lestat plays his cards right. (He’s done it before.) Even though it’s been dark for hours, it is only six in the evening.
Dark save the excitement of the light show that made a breathtaking backdrop to Lestat’s cigarette. The sky had, for a moment, shone blue again after all these years. If only Lestat could have borne witness to such Earthly magic with Louis’ hand warm inside his own! Instead, Louis had shoved his hands in his pockets and demanded Lestat’s intentions in Alaska. The employee that had taken Lestat’s luggage had said that the Northern Lights are very common this time of year. Lestat endeavors to hold Louis’ hand through every remaining one of them.
“Why don’t you go first?”
Suddenly the entire room is staring at Lestat. Louis seems to be holding back a smile, behind which surely lurks a snicker at the obviousness of Lestat’s lapse in focus.
“I am the Vampire Lestat,” Lestat drawls, confident that he is being asked to introduce himself. “You recognize me from my Rock and Roll Music Superstardom.”
“Wonderful,” Dr. Miracle says serenely. “And which portion of your soul is in greatest need of remagnetization?”
Lestat stares blankly at her, unsure if he is expected to humor her quasi-religious delusions. Perhaps he and Louis should leave to make love again.
“Which of your life’s traumas causes you the greatest amount of pain?” Dr. Miracle asks, tone unfailingly pleasant.
The circle seems to take a sharp breath inwards and for once in his immortality, Lestat doesn’t care for the feeling of eyes upon him.
“Ça ne te regarde pas, putain/ None of your fucking business,” Lestat sputters, somewhat outraged by this mortal’s gall. Louis snorts a small puff of laughter out of his nose.
“Your lawyer wrote on your intake form that your child is deceased.” Dr. Miracle says gently, looking down at her clipboard. “How would you feel about starting there?”
Across the circle, Louis’ face falls, any trace of laughter extinguished.
Intake form? Christine had arranged the details of Lestat’s visit to Alaska. What else did these people have on him?
Lestat gives Dr. Miracle the middle finger. She nods and then smiles at the young woman to Lestat’s left in the circle. Her hair is pale and thirsty-looking, bleached in what Lestat assumes to be an imitation of a blonde golden as his own.
“Sarah?” Dr. Miracle prompts, adjusting her spectacles. They are perfect circles, with an eccentric swoosh of aluminum framing above the left eye which crosses her nose and dips to cradle the right.
“Sarah-Makenzie,” the woman corrects, the flesh-matched makeup on her face creasing with her little frown. She recovers quickly, dazzling the circle with her large straight teeth, so white they almost glow.
“I’m a content creator and spokesmodel for Idahoan Mashed Potatoes.” This mortal’s accent is not quite southern, but Lestat has been speaking English long enough to identify her dialect as distinctly country, the way his French had sounded in Paris so many awful lifetimes ago.
“How did you come into this line of work?” asks Dr. Miracle.
Sarah-Makenzie glances down at the clipboard in Dr. Miracle’s hands. “It doesn’t say?”
“It does,” Dr. Miracle answers, but does not elaborate further.
“Well,” Sarah-Makenzie looks around the circle. Louis is smiling at her and the other mortal’s green eyes are kind. “My family has been in potatoes for generations; my grandfather actually invented the powdered mashed potato. So you could say I was born into it.” Sarah-Makenzie smiles ruefully. “It’s not like I could have ever been anything else.”
“So you are la princesse of the great state of Idaho?” Lestat asks, voice shimmering with mockery.
“Here in the US, we actually have something called democracy,” Sarah-Makenzie snaps. “None of your kings and queens or whatever you’ve got where you’re from.”
Louis appears to be trying to contain a chuckle. Sarah-Makenzie is not yet finished.
“But I’m sure I seem like a princess to you,” she says, eyes alight with something that interests Lestat for the first time since noticing her. “Your shoes tell me that we’re in different tax brackets.” She looks down at Lestat’s Doctor Martens, raising her eyebrows.
Louis does laugh at this, unsuccessfully trying to cover it with a decidedly un-vampiric cough.
Lestat opens his mouth, but is interrupted by Dr. Miracle.
“Would you say that is your greatest wound: predestined to potatoes and unable to explore life beyond the family business?”
Sarah-Makenzie tilts her head in consideration. “I guess so.” She frowns. “Well, my brother died when we were kids and it…” She looks around the circle, seemingly startled by her own vulnerability. “It fucked me up and it fucked my parents up. And my fucked up parents fucked me up some more.”
When one of Lestat’s brothers perished in boyhood, Gabrielle wouldn’t speak to any of them for weeks. Lestat remembers taking his turn digging the grave; his mother’s silence when he came to her weeping with dirt on his hands. Lestat does not care to revisit such a memory.
“Psh,” Lestat dismisses. “We are supposed to pity your brother for becoming food for the worms? I have a dead brother,” Lestat says loudly. He gestures at Louis. “He has a dead brother.” Lestat remembers his other brothers, the roll of their heads along the cobblestones. “Actually, I have six dead brothers,” he corrects. “It is extraordinarily common. People die every night.” Lestat gestures to the other mortal. “He probably has a dead brother. Well, do you?”
“Erm,” the mortal answers in a British accent.
Sarah-Makenzie grimaces at Dr. Miracle, who is observing quietly with her fingers steeped together. When it becomes clear that Dr. Miracle isn’t going to say anything, Sarah-Makenzie wheels on Lestat.
“What the fuck is your problem?” she demands.
Lestat hesitates. He is not actually sure why he is so angry. Because her brother died?
“It’s giving lonely and miserable,” Sarah-Makenzie announces to the group.
Lestat stands. He will not be spoken to this way by a mortal child! Someone needs to discipline her for her insolence before he drains her dry!
“Lestat,” Louis says quietly and makes the sort of eye-contact that indicates he will be displeased if Lestat eats Sarah-Makenzie during Healing Session One.
Sarah-Makenzie, doesn’t seem to be aware that she is any danger whatsoever. Clearly still sore about her brother, she spits:
“Haven’t heard much about this dead girl's mom! Sort of seems like she’s not in the picture and you’re all alone!”
At this, Lestat feels his head whip towards Louis, his hair swinging with the motion. Louis looks pointedly away. Lestat opens his mouth, fangs extended.
“Let’s move on,” Dr. Miracle interrupts cleanly, clearing her throat and looking pointedly at the next mortal in the circle.
There is a slightly awkward pause. Lestat wills his fangs back in.
“Hi,” the mortal says. “I’m Harry,” he introduces with a handsome dimpled smile. The effect is casual; charming. The mouthful-of-marbles English accent sounds practiced, even perfected.
“So you’re really him?” Sarah-Makenzie demands of the mortal. “You’re actually Harry Styles?”
“Erm,” Harry Styles says. “I am. But I promise that I’m like… a normal person,” he rumbles. Lestat remembers vaguely that this man might, like himself, be a celebrity. An actor perhaps? Sarah-Makenzie is not unaffected by this Harry Styles. She leans back in her seat, content to warm herself in the flicker of his fame.
Harry Styles looks across the circle at Lestat, then at Dr. Miracle. He takes a deep breath.
“Right. Erm. I reckon, in the interest of, er, healing for everyone present,” Harry Styles begins without saying anything. “Lestat and I should be transparent. Regarding our,” he takes a final glance at Lestat. “Sexual history.”
Sarah-Makenzie visibly flinches at the decibel of Lestat’s laughter, but how is he supposed to contain himself? Sexual history! Why would this mortal fabricate this? Is it money he’s after? Lestat wonders. Is this Harry Styles a… a… What is the modern phrase for this sort of behavior? Gold digger, Lestat’s memory supplies.
“This mortal is mistaken,” Lestat assures Louis’ raised eyebrows. “There is no history between us.” Lestat is telling the truth! The man is only a little bit handsome. Certainly not handsome enough for Lestat to bed him and let him survive.
Harry Styles looks thoroughly put out. “Don’t think I am mistaken, mate. Pretty sure that was you, blowing me in the men’s after the Brit Awards.” He pauses. “Before you were asked to leave.”
Now that… That does sound like something Lestat would do. But why doesn’t he remember?
“You were pretty pissed,” Harry Styles recounts to the group. “I was going to find your handler, tell her you weren’t making any sense, but then you gave me this… document, so I… I let you blow me in the men’s.” He looks around the circle. “I swear, he was throwing himself at me. And well,” he motions at Lestat with his hand. “He is… Y’know. Quite fit.”
“What kind of document?” Louis asks from his leather seat. Lestat shrinks in shame.
“Its title was, erm.” Harry Styles looks at Dr. Miracle. “Sorry if this is inappropriate, but its title was No Loads Refused and it explained that he gives his full consent to any and all sexual activities that may occur while he’s under the influence of drugs.”
In that case, Lestat definitely blew Harry Styles in the men’s after the Brit Awards. The document is the truth, the brainchild of Lestat and executed by Christine. Lestat doesn’t even remember going to England. Perhaps Louis is right. Maybe he should slow down on the stimulants.
“I have no memory of this occurring,” Lestat maintains.
“You said that my eyes were green like your wife’s and you kept calling me Sherry. She’s your wife, is she?” asks Harry Styles. Lestat does not look at Louis. “You really don’t remember?”
Again, Lestat shakes his head. This is humiliating. They must press on.
“In that case,” Harry Styles continues, tone serious. “I, erm. I owe you an apology, Lestat. I didn’t mean to take adv—”
“Please,” Lestat interrupts, out of patience. “You couldn’t rape me if you tried, mortal.”
“Right.” Says Harry Styles.
“Right.” Snaps Lestat.
“So you’re gay?” Sarah-Makenzie asks Harry Styles.
“More than incidentally,” Harry Styles winks and Lestat feels a glimmer of recognition for the attraction he must have felt the night he’d begged to suck him.
Dr. Miracle reminds:
“And which of your soul-wounds would benefit most from the healing powers of the Aurora?”
“Well,” Harry Styles mumbles. “What did you lot write down?”
“The trauma and tragedies of child-stardom and fame.”
Harry Styles nods, chewing his lip. “Yeah. That just about covers it.”
Dr. Miracle looks gently at Louis. “Last, but certainly not least,” She smiles.
For the first time in the stupidity of this “healing circle,” Lestat feels genuinely compelled to pay attention.
“My name is Louis,” Lestat’s husband admits, posture prim; feminine and feline. “And I intend to spend my time here improving my emotional state.”
Behind her glasses, Dr. Miracle watches Louis with understanding brown eyes. Louis looks at her, then away. He does not say anything further.
“Your file contains a previous diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa with medical risk factors.”
Louis closes his eyes. Lestat has no idea what sort of nervousness this Dr. Miracle has diagnosed Louis with, but it seems to have greatly insulted him.
“What exactly are your qualifications, Madame?” Lestat feels the snarl rise up with his anger. How dare she belittle the very one Lestat cherishes most! “I feel the need to remind you to be judicious with your assignments of afflictedness.” He sniffs, hoping Louis feels adequately defended.
Dr. Miracle patiently explains anorexia to Lestat.
Lestat frowns with understanding. While it won’t win him any points with Louis, he fears he has to agree with Dr. Miracle.
“Je vois/ I see,” says Lestat. “Louis does shoulder this burden. I wish that he did not.”
“Jesus. How do you guys know each other?” Sarah-Makenzie asks Louis, incredulous. She turns to Lestat. “Did you fuck him too?”
The laugh bubbles freely from Lestat, wild as the charge that lit up the sky. “Perhaps one-hundred thousand times. Yes, child. I do believe I fucked him.”
Louis, right now
“I’m sorry,” interjects Dr. Miracle, who is not (Louis checked) a medical doctor. “Are you two together?”
“Yes,” Lestat answers, tone automatic.
“No!” Louis corrects; the mistake eight decades old!
“We are open,” Lestat tells her, lying.
“We are casual,” Louis explains to the circle.
“Yes!” Lestat laughs without humor. “It is very modern, you see: he keeps the keys to my immortal soul and I fuck other people while he ensures there is an ocean between us at all times.” Lestat pauses, runs his tongue over his teeth. “Except during his beautiful, punishing visits to my bedroom.”
“Maybe I should stop visiting,” Louis wonders aloud, knowing his tone will rile Les up.
Lestat smiles grimly, nodding in acknowledgment of Louis’ wounding him.
Lestat turns to Dr. Miracle, “When is supper? My dear friend with benefits looks nearly consumptive. You do help with all that, oui?”
A bell rings out. Dr. Miracle smiles warmly.
“Let us transition to The Dining Place.”
************
The dining room is tasteful with wide windows. An expensive view of the sky; the tundra trees and shining Arctic Ocean. Close inspection with his vampire eyes reveals the same UV technology that outfits Louis’ windows in Dubai. Armand did a passable job remodeling the corner of the hospital that Magnetic Fields occupies, even if the decor is somewhat uninspired (and Armand’s occupation of the hospital decidedly unethical). Still, the view is a real sight: so many brilliant stars refracted double by the lapping water.
Lestat is pulling faces at him across the table: frowning dramatically at the art on the wall. Louis cracks a smile. Armand’s taste can occasionally skirt dangerously toward simultaneously sterile and pedestrian; hotel lobbyish. Lestat looks pleased to have captured Louis’ attention and stokes the flames further by looking around the table and raising his eyebrows with a smirk. Warmth floods Louis’ chest as he remembers the married feeling of doing this together. Of turning to his man with a smile that means these people are insane. Amen for you, who are unquestionably crazy, but unquestionably mine. Louis winks at Lestat, the smile biting at his mouth's corners again.
An employee brings Louis an opaque insulated carafe that smells like blood. Lestat receives the same. Dr. Miracle, Sarah-Makenzie, and the precious little pop star Louis has been privately calling “Harry Homewrecker” are given some sort of grain-based salad. The two employees take a seat at the table with their own salads. They have the same brown eyes, the same long shiny hair.
“Meet Joan and John Nageak,” Dr. Miracle introduces. “Joan worked as a nurse here before the hospital closed and her brother John is an excellent cook. Please open your minds to these wonderful souls and submit to their expertise in your healing journey.”
The twins smile at the guests. John waves hello with his fork.
“Eat,” Dr. Miracle commands.
Louis stares at the carafe. It seems enormous, perhaps four whole bags’ worth. The blood smells too good to be animal.
Lestat picks up his own bottle. He gives Louis a pointed look, urging him to pour himself a glass. It’s clear that Lestat is struggling against his nature, expected to pour his own glass but not Louis’. He must have surmised that it would be the wrong choice to rise from the table, cross the dining room, and pour Louis’ glass they way he would while they were married. Louis stares at his own empty glass. All he has to do is pour himself a glass of blood and drink it, in front of all of these strangers.
The mortals are eating, but no one is making conversation. Louis raises his eyebrows at Lestat, hoping they can make faces at each other all night and no one will even remember about the gallon of human blood Louis is expected to drink in public. If he could, Louis would rub his foot against Lestat’s, let their legs play under the table. Louis feels a flash of regret for his choice to sit away from Lestat, but he’d had to. Louis’ self-control weakens the closer they get.
Sarah-Makenzie eyes Lestat’s bottle as she chews. His hands are so big that the bottle almost looks normal-sized rather than the excessively large portion that it actually is.
“Let me guess,” she angles her chin towards Louis. “He can’t stomach anything but Ensure. Which, by the way, my sorority sister at Idaho State overdid it with the vegan-keto-gluten-free thing and ended up in the hospital. So I get it. It’s hard for us girls.” She smiles kindly at Louis. “And gays.” She turns to Lestat. “And you’re, what? Guzzling chocolate chalk in solidarity out of some fucked-up idea you have about love?”
“I do not understand this Idahoan English,” Lestat scoffs at Sarah-Makenzie. “I have already explained that I am a vampire. We drink death as the living eat...” He gestures at her plate. “Quinoa,” Lestat says, his pronunciation impossibly French. He pours himself a glass, holding the redness up to the starlight. “Santé,” Lestat toasts, making eye-contact with Louis as he drinks.
Sarah-Makenzie laughs. “Alrighty then. Ensure with some Red Dye 40 to commit to the bit!”
“He takes the vampire thing rather seriously,” Harry… Styles (Perhaps Louis is being unfair; he has several lifetimes on this mortal, and the sex was surely the fault of Lestat’s whorishness) tells Sarah-Makenzie.
Louis stares at his still-unopened thermos and feels himself frown. He wonders if this is the sort of container Daniel Molloy would keep his coffee in while he was still alive, driving the California freeways with a full pot of hot black coffee.
“Oui,” Lestat tells the table. “Just as you people take your insignificant human lives quite seriously.”
Harry Styles blinks. Lestat continues, raising a dark-polished index claw.
“You are, however, correct, mademoiselle, in one of your impertinent declarations. I do love Louis dearly and deeply. A love,” Lestat’s eyes darken, “which you will never again call fucked-up. Not if you value your human life.”
There’s a conversational lull, the scrape of forks against plates. Dr. Miracle is watching Louis, wise over her spectacles. She nods at his untouched blood.
“Sure, Les,” Louis says, unsure where he is going with this except that he would like everyone to please look away from the supper he can’t bring himself to swallow. “I’ve heard all about it,” Louis tells the group. “He keeps sending me letters written in his own blood.”
“Ha!” Lestat barks, mouth curling into a somewhat crazed smile. “So you are receiving them.” Lestat looks at his audience for sympathy. “I’ve yet to receive a response in kind.”
The mortals dine in silence again, uncomfortable. Maybe bringing up the letters was unfair, especially since Louis… didn’t dislike them. He’d saved them! He’d even allowed himself to press his tongue against one for the briefest of moments and savor the ghost of Lestat’s taste beneath a century of memory. Louis hadn’t told Lestat about it.
Lestat stands. “Perhaps you didn’t have blood enough to spare the ink to reply.” He strides over to Louis’ place at the lacquered wood table and glares at him, hands on his hips.
Louis glares back and his stomach swoops with the intensity of Lestat’s gaze. The urge to kiss Lestat taunts from deep in Louis’ belly. He nods.
Lestat pours Louis a glass of blood, hands it to him. The mortals look on, curious creatures.
The whole room is watching him now, waiting on Louis to take a sip. The blood’s warmth is palpable through the glass, warming the top of Louis’ hand where he grips the delicate stem. These are fine glasses, Louis notices. Ideal for a full-bodied blood.
“From whom is this sourced?” Louis asks without putting his glass down.
“All nutrition is provided by our generous benefactor,” Dr. Miracle replies breezily. Armand’s farm then. “John can forward the donor’s details to your email if you’d like.”
“I would.” Louis nods at the male twin. Louis shines a beautiful, professional smile John’s way. It seems prudent to get on his good side if Louis is to maintain any control over what he eats while here.
A deep laugh that isn’t Lestat’s rings out. “You reckon they’re actually drinking blood, then?” Harry Styles asks Sarah-Makenzie.
“I am drinking blood,” Lestat corrects, refilling his own glass. “Louis is letting his go cold.”
Louis grips the glass in hand tighter. He breathes in and out.
Louis takes a long sip, then sets his glass on the table. He grins, triumphant for the first time since Lestat blew in like a blizzard. There’s blood on his teeth.
The smile Lestat shines back is breathtaking, the sort of snow-bright that makes Louis want to order everyone out so he can let Lestat have him against the window, against all those stars. Louis takes another sip.
“That’s it, chéri,” Lestat praises, using the same tone he takes while Louis is sucking him. In front of all these people!
“Mange ton souper que je puisse te baiser entre les cuisses à nouveau/ Eat your supper so I can fuck between your thighs again.”
Louis throws the glass. It shatters against the wall of windows, red splattering the stars behind Lestat’s head.
Dr. Miracle lets out a sparkling peal of laugher, the madness of which gives Lestat a run for his money.
“John, be a darling and fill another glass for Louis, then bring the cleaning cart for Lestat.“ She smiles widely in Lestat's direction. “Domestic therapy can be extraordinarily restorative. Do challenge yourself to be mindful while you mop.”
The face Les makes is priceless; affronted with his fangs out. She turns to Louis, eyes kind.
“Tell me,” Dr. Miracle compels. “How did that make you feel?”