Work Text:
[9:08 pm, cell phone of Lestat de Lioncourt]
The message appeared on the screen and Lestat had to take a moment to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. He stared at the message.
💖💗💗Saint Louis 💗💗💖 : Are you awake?
Was he awake? Who in their right mind would be asleep, besides toddlers and the geriatric? Lestat quickly unlocked his phone and responded.
It's 9 pm
The little speech bubble came up, indicating that his Louis was typing. Then the next message came.
💖💗💗Saint Louis 💗💗💖 : I know what time it is
Lestat bit his smile, thumbs tapping quickly on his screen. Yes, I am awake my Louis
Lestat stared at his phone, but no speech bubbles came this time. He bit his lip again.
Did you want something? he typed
Several minutes passed before his phone vibrated again.
💖💗💗Saint Louis 💗💗💖 : Are you in that party?
💖💗💗Saint Louis 💗💗💖 : I'm outsid
It had only just turned December, but it was snowing already. Giant white flakes drifting down, making the world look like a giant snow globe, though it hadn’t stuck to the ground yet. And on the path stretching in front of the house, illuminated by the street lamps and moonlight, Louis, wearing a pensive, spaced out expression and much too little.
“Louis, it’s freezing. Where’s your jacket?”
“Huh?” Louis finally looked up. He looked around him, like he was noticing the weather for the first time, even though his teeth were chattering. “Oh.”
Lestat slid off his jacket and wrapped it around the younger boy’s shoulders.
Lestat said, “I see you’ve decided to once again acknowledge my existence."
Louis shrugged, not reacting to the bait. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of Lestat’s jacket, shivering a little. “Needed a study break.”
Louis was a little genius. Only a sophomore, but already a teacher’s favorite. Lestat, by contrast, was a fifth year senior whose transcript was the very epitome of ‘C’s get degrees’. Lestat didn’t know how Louis had room for all of it in his head.
But he didn’t like the bags under Louis’s eyes.
“I don’t know why you tire yourself studying. I’ll provide you everything after our marriage. You won’t have to waste your time with work.”
Louis’s brow crinkled. “Marriage?” Louis shook his head. “You’re thinkin’ way far into the future. I’m just tryna pass my finals.”
“Childish thoughts. Grownups look ahead.”
Louis rolled his eyes and pulled out a cigarette. He raised it to his lips, pushing the pack back into the pocket of his jeans.
Lestat plucked the unlit stick out of his fingers.
“Hey!” Louis protested, shocked “Give that back!”
He tried to grab it, but Lestat successfully held it out of reach.
“Children shouldn’t smoke,” Lestat chided.
Louis growled in warning. “You needa stop callin’ me a child, ‘less that makes you a pedophile.”
“I’m a Louis-phile.”
The awfulness of the line stopped Louis short.
“That’s the corniest thing you ever said.”
Lestat smiled with a devious expression. “I’ll give it back if you give me a kiss.”
Louis shook his head. “I’m not rewarding bad behavior.”
“Bad?” A slow smile stretched Lestat’s mouth. “Call me bad again, mon cœur. It makes me shiver.”
Louis grimaced. “You’re insufferable.”
“Mm. Do go on.”
Louis lunged for his cigarette.
Lestat stepped back, successfully avoiding him, grinning even more mischievously. And Louis tumbled to the ground, getting wet dirt on his second favorite pair of pants. He got to his feet and lunged at Lestat again. Lestat held his cigarette high and out of reach, but he caught Louis around the middle and the momentum toppled them both over, Lestat hitting the ground first and Louis falling on top of him. Lestat was laughing like a kid. And Louis was straddling him and was trying not to laugh back even though he was irritated. He just wanted his damn cigarette.
It happened fast after that, or at least that what it felt like. Felt like no time at all, in the middle of him struggling. A harsh voice yelled “Get up!” and Louis turned around and there were two police officers approaching with guns drawn and pointed at him.
His heart dropped to his stomach.
He felt Lestat sit up behind him.
“What have we done?” he heard Lestat ask, demand really, confusion and affront in his voice, but the police officers weren’t looking at Lestat at all.
“Get up,” the police officer repeated, addressing Louis. His gun was still pointed. Louis remembered vaguely hearing once that you shouldn’t point a gun at anything you weren’t willing to kill. “Hands up where I can see them!”
Louis rose to his feet slowly, raising his hands.
“Do you have any weapons?” the police officer demanded.
“N-no,” Louis stuttered, from cold and fear.
“What is happening?” Louis could feel, or maybe hear, Lestat getting up too. He could hear the anger in Lestat’s voice now.
“Are you alright?” the other police officer asked Lestat.
Louis lost his breath as Lestat stepped in front of him, shielding him completely from the guns. The light from the lamps outside the house shone golden in his yellow hair.
It seemed to Louis in that moment, through the haze of fear and disbelief that this was even happening, that Lestat was impossibly tall. His shoulders impossibly broad.
“I’m fine,” Lestat said coldly. “I’d be better if you stopped pointing guns at us.”
“We need to make sure he doesn’t have weapons.”
“He already said he didn’t.” Lestat’s tone was impatient.
“Please step out of the way, sir.”
“I’m not moving until you put your guns away.”
“Lestat,” Louis whispered.
“Sir, you are being noncompliant. This is for your safety.”
“Safety? I was perfectly safe before you got here.”
“This is your last warning,” said the officer.
“Or what?” Lestat demanded.
“Lestat!” Louis hissed.
While the first officer and Lestat had been in their confrontational exchange, the second police officer had been squinting at Lestat. Then his eyes widened in recognition. He lowered his gun slightly.
“You’re that actor,” the second officer said in disbelief.
The first officer didn’t lower his gun. “There was a report of a burglary.”
“So?”
“We need to search him.”
“He hasn’t done anything. He’s been with me.”
“We have to take him in.” The first officer was getting even more irritated.
“You’re not taking him anywhere. He has done nothing wrong. I will sue your department. I will get you fired.”
“We have to take him in,” repeated the first officer a second time. He sounded completely fed up. He was walking closer. “Move or I’ll shoot.”
“Shoot,” Lestat dared. “See where that gets you.”
Louis’s mouth dropped open. He could not believe the words coming out of Lestat’s mouth. Was he insane?
The first and second officer exchanged a silent glance. They lowered their guns together. Louis felt a spike of relief.
But it was a tactic. Because then Lestat moved like he said he would, and the second officer grabbed Louis roughly and pulled him away as the first officer shoved Lestat back.
**
Louis wrapped his arms around himself, shivering slightly. The police station was warm but the cell wasn’t. They’d finger-printed him, searched his name in a database. They’d taken his phone and his cigarettes. They’d taken Lestat’s jacket. They’d questioned him about where he’d been that evening, why he’d been where they found him. He kept his mouth shut. They put him in the cell.
Louis didn’t know how long he was in the cell. They’d taken his watch too. And none of the employees would answer his questions.
Finally one of the guards opened the door and jerked his head for Louis to come out. Louis got to his feet shakily.
His family was waiting out front. Both his siblings rushed forward when they saw him.
“What happened?” Paul demanded, voice high.
Paul was almost eighteen, a high school senior, but he still thought Louis was the best thing in the world. Louis’s heart clenched at the fear in Paul’s face. In Grace’s too.
“Nothing,” Louis muttered. He felt more than saw his Mama .
“Nothing?” said his little sister. “You ain’t ever been arrested before.”
She sounded shaken.
“Came close a few times,” Louis said, and he pulled her close. He held his other arm out to Paul, and held his younger siblings close.
“’Came close’ isn’t the same as it happening. What happened?”
“Nothing happened. Can we go outside?” He didn’t want to be in the station anymore. He wanted to forget this whole night even happened. And he looked up finally to face his Mama, and his stomach jolted when he saw Lestat standing behind her.
He met Lestat’s eyes, and his stomach swirled. He felt emotions he didn’t know what to do with. That he couldn’t identify.
Paul took his hand, like he wasn’t seventeen, and Grace took his other.
Outside the police station, but before his Mama could say anything, the glass doors slid open again.
“Louis.” Lestat’s voice sounded worried and rushed. Lestat draped his jacket over Louis’s shoulders again. The police officers must have given it to him.
“And who are you?” his Mama asked Lestat coldly.
“Lestat,” Lestat introduced himself, holding out his hand. “De Lioncourt. I go to the same university as Louis. I take it you’re Louis’s mother?”
Mama ignored his hand. She turned her attention back to Louis.
“Just what were you doing that you got arrested?”
“Nothing, Mama,” Louis said, though he already knew she wouldn’t believe him.
“He really did nothing,” Lestat jumped in. “Those idiotic cops harassed us for no reason.”
Mama narrowed her eyes at Lestat. Louis could tell Mama didn’t believe him either. And she looked at Lestat’s jacket, too big on Louis’s shoulders, and her eyes moved between them, and to Lestat’s painted nails, and long hair, and how close he was standing to Louis, and her mouth pursed.
His Mama looked at him. “It’s a school night.”
She could have meant any number of things by that, logical and not. That Louis should be studying, or sleeping. That he’d gone and woken his siblings when they had to go to class the next day. That there was a possibility that the local newspaper would print about how the du Point du Lac boy had been arrested on a Wednesday evening, and that people would ask her about this at Church, and he was shameful to have as a son. She probably meant some version of all of it.
“I know, Mama.” Louis’s voice was small.
“And what, exactly, were you doing?”
And Louis’s mouth dried. He knew Mama wasn’t just asking about the arrest anymore. He knew she was asking about Lestat’s nails.
“Lestat’s my friend, Mama,” he said quietly, before Lestat could say something stupid.
“How old are you?” Now Mama addressed Lestat.
Lestat was surprised by the question. “I am twenty-four, madam.”
“You are twenty-four,” Mama repeated. “And you were out with my son, late, on a school night, and got him arrested.”
“He didn’t do nothin’, Mama,” Louis stressed. He wanted to cry. It hadn’t even been that late. It was late now. But it’s not like that was his fault.
Lestat said something then, that he would in a little while explain to Louis why he had said it, and after days had passed and Louis was in a more charitable mind set he could see how it might make sense in the mind of someone with no sense at all, which is what Lestat could be. But when Lestat said it, in the moment, Louis couldn’t have told you with a gun to his head what had possessed Lestat. All he could think, for the second time that night, was that Lestat was completely insane and was going to get him killed.
“Madam, I assure you that I have serious intentions when it comes to Saint Louis.”
Louis’s heart stopped.
“I have no desire to get him in trouble,” Lestat continued earnestly, seemingly completely unaware of what he was doing. What he had just done. “I love him with all my heart. I fully intend to marry him, the moment he says yes.”
“He’s joking,” Louis said weakly. He was having trouble breathing. “He’s got jokes.”
Lestat looked at him, frowning. “I am not joking.”
His Mama looked at them, and looked at them, and turned around and left.
“Is your mother always so cold?” Lestat asked him, as his Mama and siblings got in the waiting car, their driver at the wheel, Grace and Paul giving him sad worried looks.
Louis whirled on Lestat.
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” he yelled, forgetting for a moment that they were still outside the police station. Then he lowered his voice to a hiss.
Lestat looked confused, and angry at being yelled at. “What?”
“Why did you say that to my Mama!”
“I wanted your mother to know that my intentions for you are not frivolous. What is wrong with that?”
Louis’s head hurt. “What’s wrong with that is my Mama is devout Catholic and thinks I’m going to hell ‘cuz I got this ear piercing! And now you gon’ on and told her I like you?”
“You do like me.”
“Are you listening? That’s not the point!” Louis's chest rose and fell fast. “I’m not out to them, okay? I never told them I was gay. And now you just outed me in the worst way possible. And that’s not even counting that they think you got me arrested!”
Lestat’s brow furrowed. “How can I make it better?”
“You can’t!” Louis snapped, which was an automatic dig because he was so angry. He scrubbed at his face. “Can you just chill for once? You go overboard with, like, everything!”
Then Louis’s breath caught. Lestat’s expression was cooler than he’d ever seen it, at least directed at him. When he spoke, his voice was low and dangerous.
“You ignore me for a month, then ask to see me out of nowhere. You berate me and order me around with no regard. I have let you treat me however you please, Saint Louis. I do not regret it, but you are not in charge of me.”
Louis felt blind hot rage. “So what? You’re in charge of me?”
Lestat frowned. “That is not what I said—”
“That’s what you meant. The second I actually want a little bit of control you throw your dick around.”
“Louis—”
“Fuck you.”
**
Louis was in the dorm room of his dorm suite. He was studying for his exam next Tuesday. Louis’s pencil hovered over his practice exam, but the words were escaping his mind even as he was looking at them. His binders and text books overstuffed the shelves connected to his desk, leering down at him, reminders of all he still had to do. But also, what he had already accomplished.
But his mind was occupied with thoughts of the non-scholastic variety. Of painted nails and blond hair and a sinful, rose mouth.
There was a knock on his open doorframe. Lily, his roommate and best friend besides his siblings, popped her head in. Her hair was half undone, the other part still in braids, and she held a comb in one hand.
“Louis, that guy’s here.”
Speak of the Devil.
“What did you say his name was again?”
Louis set down his pencil. “Lestat.”
Lestat was standing outside the door of his suite, waiting in the hallway that stretched long and straight to the left and to the right. Louis could see him through the peep hole. He looked tired, and he was holding an expensive looking bouquet of flowers. Nicer than it needed to be.
“I came to apologize,” Lestat said when Louis opened the door.
Louis crossed his arms over his chest. “For what?”
Lestat blinked. He looked like he hadn’t even considered that question. “For whatever it is you’re angry with me for.”
Louis scoffed. He started to close the door.
“Wait—” Lestat stopped it with his foot, face desperate. “I don’t think I’m in charge of you, Louis. I was frustrated yesterday. I’ve never had an interaction like that with the police before. I was scared and angry. I did not expect to meet your family. And when I tried to smooth things over you said I only made it worse.”
Louis’s jaw set. “You did make it worse.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything I did.”
Louis felt anger at the bullshit apology. He was pretty sure Lestat still didn’t even understand what he did. Didn’t understand that he’d almost gotten killed, either, taunting the police like that. But then Louis remembered how Lestat stepped in front of him from the very beginning, shielding him from the police officers. How determined Lestat had looked.
Maybe Lestat had gone about it the wrong way. Maybe Lestat didn’t know when to shut his mouth. But he’d still put his body between Louis and two loaded guns.
Maybe he did almost get him killed. But that was after maybe saving his life.
Louis was angry and scared still. He was going to have nightmares about last night for a long time, and he was never gonna hear the end of this from his Mama, whenever his Mama decided to start speaking to him again. But Lestat wasn’t his enemy. Not on either of these.
Louis softened. He stepped back and opened the door all the way. “Fine, come in.”
Relief washed over Lestat’s face.
Louis showed Lestat where to kick off his shoes, and he led him through the living room and down the hallway of his suite to his bedroom. Lily was gone, probably in her room. He closed the door behind them and looked to see Lestat standing in the middle of his small dorm room still holding the oversized bouquet of flowers and looking around curiously.
It was weird to see Lestat in his room. It wasn’t a bad room, but he definitely felt silly with his twin bed and the standard issue university furniture, pictures of his family pasted clumsily onto the walls, after having seen where Lestat lived off campus. Lestat seemed bigger than all this.
Lestat was looking at him.
Louis looked down.
“What?” Lestat asked quietly.
“You make me nervous,” Louis muttered. He hadn’t planned on confessing that, but it came out all the same.
“Nervous?” Lestat frowned and took a step forward. “Nervous how?”
“I don’t know. Give me that.”
He took the bouquet from Lestat’s hands and set it on his desk, pushing his practice test and notes to the side to make room for it. He took a breath then squared his shoulders and turned around to look Lestat in the eye. “Even if you don’t think you’re in charge, it still feels like you are. You’re older. You got all this money. You’re white.”
Lestat’s brow pinched. “I can change none of those things.”
“But you can’t act like it doesn’t matter, either,” Louis said. His frustration was coming back. “Like it doesn’t exist. What you said last night was bullshit, about me not being in charge. I know I’m not in charge. You have so much—so much fucking power over me already, without you acting like you own me.”
Lestat’s voice came soft. “I am sorry, Louis.”
And now that he had started, the words were tumbling out of Louis, all his frustrations, all the tumultuous thoughts that had been roiling around his head. “Look how the police treated you versus how they treated me! A-a-and you keep talking about our future, but you n-never even ask me what I want! I’m only nineteen, Lestat! I don’t know if I want to get married! A-and you always steam roll all over me! You can’t do that. I don’t—I don’t know what I’m doing! I’ve never even kissed a guy before. And this thing between us, it’s so big. I don’t even know what to call it. I’m scared. That’s why I didn’t text you for a month.”
He sagged, embarrassment and insecurity suddenly sapping his energy. He’d said way too much. But, apparently he wasn’t done. He blinked hard, and crossed his arms over himself.
“I don’t have any experience,” he mumbled. “I feel way in over my head.”
There was silence. Louis couldn’t look up. He was scared of Lestat’s expression. What if he looked cold again? And he was on the verge of tears, but he refused to start crying. He wasn’t a baby.
Moments passed, and then moments, and then Lestat’s voice was soft.
“I am an idiot.”
Louis looked up. Lestat’s face was etched with remorse.
“I did not know you were feeling those things, Louis,” Lestat continued heavily. “But I should have. I should have thought more.” He took a breath. “I will give you the control from now on.” In French, he added, “Everything you want. I will take your lead.”
Lestat really was clueless. “It’s not that simple.”
“Then what shall we do, Louis? Tell me.”
We.
Lestat’s body language was so open. He looked like he wanted to reach forward but was stopping himself. Ever since they had met, Lestat had enveloped Louis into his world, and inserted himself into Louis’s, as if was the most natural thing in the world. It was always we, us, our.
It made something bloom warm in Louis’s stomach, and stutter in his chest.
Louis shrugged. He didn’t know what they should do.
They lapsed into silence. Lestat sat down at his desk, and Louis leaned against his bed, and they looked at each other. And the warmth in Louis’s belly turned hot and shifted down and made him uncomfortable. He looked away, and shifted on his feet.
“Are you serious about wanting to marry me?” He asked the question to the ground.
“Yes,” Lestat said. There was no hesitation in his voice.
And Lestat was insane, Louis thought. They barely knew each other. They were so different in so many ways. How could Lestat be so focused on marrying him?
But maybe Louis was a little insane too.
“I don’t want to not work,” Louis said. “That sounds dull as hell. Not to mention I want to make my own money. I have to take care of my family.”
Lestat nodded. “Fine, d’accord.”
Louis hesitated. There was something helse that had been nawing at him.
“Are you frustrated?”
Lestat’s eyebrows drew down. “With you?”
Louis shifted again, crossing his arms again. His face was warm. “About…we haven’t kissed….”
“No, I am not frustrated,” Lestat said.
“I worry about that,” Louis mumbled. He wasn’t even just talking to Lestat anymore. He hugged himself. He felt distant from his body. "I’m just…I’m not ready..."
“Louis,” Lestat said, and he said his name in the special way he always did, like he was savoring it on his tongue. “We will take all the time you need. I am not frustrated.” Then Lestat gave a wry smile. “We don’t even have to kiss on the alter if you don’t want to. We’ll spend our wedding night playing games. Our consummation will be monopoly.” His tone was teasing.
He was ridiculous.
“Can you stay the night?” Louis asked. He didn’t want Lestat to leave. “I know my bed’s real small.”
“Oui, of course,” Lestat agreed readily.
The next morning, when Louis woke up, Lestat was still there. Louis had been half afraid he would leave. But there he was, sprawled under Louis as much as you could in a twin sized bed, sleeping deep as a baby. Blond hair splayed like a halo on Louis’s pillow, and the sunlight streaming through his window painting it gold only added to the effect.
It was strange, how Lestat looked like an angel but acted like the Devil half the time.
Louis’s eyes dropped to Lestat’s mouth.
Louis had been in denial about his own sexuality for a long time. As long as he could remember. He didn’t want to reckon with the fact that something so fundamental about him automatically made him a disappointment to his Mama, and a sinner to God. But when he met Lestat, all that went out the window. He couldn’t even pretend he wasn’t attracted to Lestat. Attraction was an understatement. And for all he pushed back against Lestat’s incessant talk about their future, he wanted it too.
His charade was over, but he’d been wearing the mask for so long he felt terrified without it.
So he looked at Lestat’s mouth, and looked at it. And his heart hammered in his chest and pulsed in his ears. Before he could lose his nerve, he ducked his head and pressed a light kiss to Lestat’s lips.
They were soft, and warm.
Huge feelings came over him. He’d never imagined he could feel this way about someone, man or woman. So safe. It was a little painful. But he didn’t want it to be painful, because it was good. He could feel it deep inside. Lestat was good. Lestat felt like home. The kind of home he never had with his Mama.
Tears came.
He tried to keep his hiccupping breath to a minimum. He didn’t want to wake Lestat, for him to see him crying like a baby over nothing. That would be too embarrassing. He wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve before they could fall off his chin, careful not to jostle Lestat in the process.
He hoped he’d have the courage to kiss him for real soon.