Chapter Text
“Pardon,” Lestat sighs, walking over to Louis. She’s aching. One of the bones of this corset is bent just enough to dig into her side. It hurts, but she hasn’t found one that gives her the right shape so effortlessly, and the big pads to counterbalance all the other cinchers were somewhere under a mess of fabric samples Madeleine left the last time she’d come over.
“Friend of yours?” Louis juts his chin toward the puny little man that keeps glancing over his shoulder while he walks away from the club. He’d visibly shivered when Lestat was talking to him, hissing a reminder that he’s not allowed within five-hundred feet of the club. He’s probably going to go home and jerk off about it. Lestat might have liked the idea of that, if not for the hyperventilating twenty-year-old in too-heavy forehead contour who had asked her, so, so softly, if she would go talk to him.
Lestat forces her jaw soft, her molars apart. She sniffs once and throws her hair over her shoulder— big pincurls brushed out into soft waves, she’d been up half the night fretting over the position of each bobby pin. “No. Some fucking chaser, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Every chaser in this city is rotted, Louis, absolutely rotted. It's different, we used to be, you know, goddesses to them.”
“Mmm,” Louis says around his cigarette. He’s dewy in the summer heat, but he loves it, doesn’t seem to notice the claustrophobia in the wet air that Lestat feels. Lips pursed around his smoke and his shirt unbuttoned just low enough for dark curls to peek out, Louis looks like something straight out of Tenesee Williams’ wet dreams. “That what I am? Hope I’m not rotten.”
She pauses. Louis has been game, admirably unflinching about every backstage detail he’s learned about drag from her. And she knows he’s got his own history in nightlife, a brief stint as a go-go boy before Claudia came along and forcibly tugged him onto the narrow and not-so-straight. Still. She’s tired already, and running late, and certain her lipstick is feathering. She doesn’t have it in her to give this man, this beautiful, beautiful boy, a history lesson about the kinds of ugly words that get thrown around in her dressing room.
Also, Louis is too sensitive. Too perceptive. He’ll ask follow-up questions about the difference between Lestat’s sisters that take The Girl off every night, and those that don’t. Ask where Lestat falls along that kind of spectrum and what it means.
“No, my Louis.” She plucks the cigarette from his mouth. He rolls his eyes. He hates it when she does this, but he’s still too sweet to speak to her sharply. It’ll come eventually, and when it does, she’ll remind herself of the months she got away with all of it, the improbability of a man finding all of her tolerable, delightful even. “All of this—” She leads his eye with her hand, encouraging him to take it all in: the curls, the high halter neck, the white silk and saffron-colored stones, the lucite heels that she hates but they work so well with this look. “All of this is incidental for you. You don’t wanna fuck me like this.”
His medium-roast cigarettes are too soft for her, almost citrusy. She takes a long drag, trying to satisfy the craving itching at her brain while Louis follows instructions, taking her in.
“Maybe,” he says, finding her eyes with his own. He crosses his arms. He’s unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt. It’s a shame she wasn’t here to do it for him. He likes the way her nails catch on his skin. He’s never told her, but she hears it, the little extra intake of breath. He gives her a bedroom look now, eyes low. Voice lower. “Maybe I didn't know it was an option.”
Tingling between her legs. Her bound cock’s attempt at rousing. This is what he does to her. She ignores it, the way she’s trained herself to ignore most feelings when she’s in drag. Drag is the pinching and pulling, the lines of corsetry digging pink and raw into her skin, the ache in her smallest toe, the vague sense of dis-ease that only disappears when the music starts: all of it blends into the mismatch of her short-term rental womanhood. Layaway, she thinks idly, looking at Louis. One of her favorite English words, an old standby she’d learned in New York. A kind of borrowing to own, the promise that you’ll be good for it eventually, steady payments until your things are actually yours.
She waves the thought, and the last of the smoke from Louis’ weak cigarette, away with a big sweep, and leans in to press a kiss to his mouth. She’d intended it to be a peck, buttoning this conversation, but he pulls her in, opening his pretty, slick mouth against hers. She’s helpless to it. Only a rare few of the men she’s frolicked around with have wanted to be seen out with her like this, even the ones that chased her down specifically because they wanted to feel her fantasy in a literal sense.
Louis, previous to this conversation, hadn’t seemed to care and she’s weak to it. An idle search on the Google hadn’t turned up an exact answer, but she can do the basic math to figure out that Louis’ got just as much money as her, if not more. Even better, he didn’t make his on his back. When he does this, kissing her in public, kissing her in drag like he’s got better things to do than worry about smeared lipstick on his own bottom lip, she feels like all these women swelling up in her — difficult and beloved Margo, indefatigable Victoria, resolute Fanny. She feels like a girl, his girl. But she’s a spry mid-thirty and the mother of a house of transient daughters. Her feelings can be her own, this vulnerability a private pleasure.
Louis is married, after all, even if his husband is half a ghost in this town. This is all borrowed time, waiting around for Armand to come collect his things. And Louis is gay, of course, so gay, in a way that makes her go all over in goosebumps, just thinking about the way he touches her body, both reverent and entitled.
“I wanna fuck you every which way you got,” Louis says, right up against her mouth. His cologne has faded throughout the day, worn down to the base notes: smoke, of course, and sticky-sweet figs. She laughs because her stomach is twisting and she’s lost another five minutes to Louis. He could have all her minutes, he could have everything she’s got, but she knows that’s not the kind of thing you say to the married man that keeps pulling you back to bed, already making love to you with his eyes.
So instead she says, “Of course, darling. Let’s discuss it later?” A rough approximation of the sentence she’s heard him murmur into the phone every other evening. She even smiles her dragged-out version of his genuine-if-placating smile, the one that creeps up across his face whenever he’s wrapping up a call from his real home.
Louis opens his mouth like he wants to say more, but she can hear the song before her intro song and she has to go now, before Feefee has a reason to come looking for her.
…
There are too many girls in the back when the show is over. These new-talent revues they have her host are exhausting. She feels like she’s seen every iteration of drag a twenty-two-year-old can dream up at this point. Yes, you’re very fierce, sweetheart. You’re a sex kitten, a ha-ha comedy queen, ooky spooky, fish for the gods. Yes, your beat is fierce, you’re the first one to ever lip-sync that song quite that way, no one has ever split a split the way you just splat.
Anyway. She doesn’t bother de-dragging backstage. She’s her, oldest still-sensate queen at the club, momager to several, beloved by some — she’s got a permanent spot at the long low table facing the bulb-lit mirror that runs across the wall of the big dressing room. But these heels are tolerable for the walk from backstage to Louis’ car and he’s told her he likes it, watching her wash the riot of colors away to reveal herself. She catches Feefee’s eye and waves a hand at her spot at the vanity, nodding when Feefee looks between it and her, disbelieving and asking for further permission.
Betty catches it, though, and cackles, loud and buzzing off her own performance. There are tips falling out of her bra and her wig cap is rolling up, her sleek dark wig and a brush in her hand. “Mom’s gotta jet, Feef. She’s gotta go give our new dad something he can feel. Are you giving him full puss, Mom? Or just a little kitty-kitty?”
She moans and purrs and, egged on by her audience, claws at the air, shaking her pads for more whooping. Lestat rolls her eyes, smiling. Even this many years on it can feel a little ill-fitting, this dressing room and these girls. It still shocks her sometimes, from the dark lonely lands of her childhood, the small life with Nicki, to the absolutely solitary discovery of a new country, to this loud dressing room full of curious, sanguine eyes.
She loves it, though, loves Betty, her brashest daughter. She’ll be Queen Bee when Lestat retreats to dowagerhood. If she doesn’t move on to a bigger, nicer club first. Maybe even a placement on that infernal television show, after a few more years experience. They both know it, the line of succession stretching gold between them. But Betty is a good and faithful servant, handing the spotlight off to Lestat, who tosses the hair over her shoulder.
“A lady never tells,” she starts, redolent in her deepest register. A tiny, dancing queen shivers in the periphery, big moon-y eyes crawling along Lestat’s constructed curves. Too young, even if Lestat’s interest in dykery weren’t at an all-time low. Her interest in most things that weren’t Louis had been flagging for months now, but that leads to her next piece of advice, “And a lady never reveals her next move, either.”
Booing, jeering; she loves it all the same. Betty’s delivered her a rapt audience of half-dragged queens and she loves the role of learned femme fatale, mother but also Mother, in the full flush of her prime rather than a man knocking on the door of forty in four pairs of tights.
“Rich men like it demure,” she sighs, grabbing one of the clacking fans that are always within fingertips’ reach back here. She snaps it open and gently flings herself onto the vanity’s counter, barely avoiding someone’s banana powder with her ass. She extends one leg, pulling the other one to her chest, cou-de-pied, but for sluts. God, she takes it back, these heels hurt. The thin plastic ankle bites into her skin, probably rubbing it a raw red. She tenses a thigh, flutters the fan in front of her mouth and bats her eyes. “And they must earn the full puss.”
Solid advice, she thinks. The girls are wooing again, though that may be the thrill of her accent wrapped around the blunt-edged word, puss, or the thrill of Lestat, painted up Hepburn-elegant (Katherine, not Audrey), giving them a sliver of what her sex life might look like. It doesn’t matter that Lestat is a rich man already. These girls aren’t and twenty years on, she can still remember the grating of hunger, the desperation, the willingness to slice off pieces of her very soul in exchange for a little security. No one told her anyone had to earn her, and so she was always on offer.
Performance over, sage advice distributed, she tosses the fan behind her and gets up, dusting her derrière. Betty is right to some degree, Louis is waiting for her, leaned against his big, responsible car. He’s red meat and the bar is a tank of piranhas. She’s seen the way patrons and queens alike watch him walk through the space. He looks expensive, smells it, orders his drinks like he’s got money. They make sense in this space and she’s been known to wrap a possessive hand around the nape of his neck during a slow hour when they’re sat at the bar. Still, her claim feels tenuous on him, always, and she hasn’t pulled apart his fascination with her enough to be certain that some other girl can’t replicate her allure.
She gives the girls a wave goodnight, wiggling her fingers in the sultry air and taking her last exhale of the powder-and-sweat-and-flowers scent of the dressing room. She takes her leave.
…
Truthfully, she forgets about the conversation entirely. Their irrational, unbelievable connection continues on for another two weeks. Lestat, magnanimous as she is, allows Louis to sit at the bar while she hosts. She can’t imagine doing the same for him, sitting around a gallery or some studio smelling of turpentine and second-hand furniture while Louis makes considering noises at the art and adds up dollars in his head.
But he brightens when she comes on stage, whether she’s emceeing or performing her — messy, still, she needs to get the girls together to properly rehearse — latest tribute to one Ms. Streisand. She’s lipsyncing this performance, drawing the crowd to the handful of props she switches out — a parasol, a faux fur stole, a comically large engagement ring. It’s mildly esoteric, but she trusts this crowd to at least be aware of Funny Girl. One of the younger regulars said something to her about something called “glee,” voice making it clear that she thought Lestat should recognize the reference, but she’d been caught up short in Lestat’s blank stare.
But Louis sits, night after night, sipping glasses of champagne he hates and gin and tonics he finds serviceable, but under-mixed, Lestat, where did you find this bartender. And then he makes pained faces when she explains that, well, she’d owed someone a favor and how much skill does someone really need to uncork a bottle and shake a little canister.
He seems to like it. He flirts back with the older queens that hover around him, never too seriously, and gently redirects the young ones panting at his heels (“Oh, the kids? Some of them are younger than Claudia, cher. I don’t think I was ever so bold”). He’s outside the club every night he spends with her, smoking and never complaining about how long it takes her to dedrag. Tonight, he’s smiling and holding a hand out for her drag bag. His bicep is summer-warm when Lestat wraps his hand around it, resting his fingers on the swell of muscle.
He took the time to properly clean his face tonight, wiping the whole slate clean before filling his eyebrows in a little with a pencil, darkening his lashes just enough to make the eyes pop. He’d killed another little tube of Black Honey last night, but Louis doesn’t hesitate to kiss his unshining mouth just the same.
It’s a regular night, as regular as things get for them, though the bar is flipping blessedly early for an event, has them clearing out for more space to dance, some DJ and a trio of slightly lethargic go-go boys. She’d offered to get them in the event, teased Louis about reclaiming some of his own night-life history and Louis had demurred, pointing out how rarely they get to spend an early evening together.
So, Louis will spend the night, will have breakfast with him and entertain the thought of going to the gym together in the morning. They’ll grab breakfast somewhere and Louis will go home to his husband and Lestat will continue her full, active, and satisfying wait for the next time they see each other.
“It was good tonight,” Louis tells him, shouldering the bag but touching his hip, gently pushing him up against the club’s brick wall. The hot pleasure of feeling owned and arranged doesn’t fade because Lestat isn’t balancing a wig atop his head or having to tense his ankles against rolling. He opens his mouth when Louis kisses him. There are girls filtering out slowly now, most of them gone before Lestat was done swiping witch hazel from chin to cheek. The stragglers get treated to the show; Louis pulls back a little, the swipe of his tongue across Lestat’s more visible.
“God, I bet he puts her through the mattress,” someone — Betty probably, she’s never known shame — says, not bothering to lower her voice.
“I can’t decide if it’s hot,” Feefee says, unmistakable accent twisted in a little confused concern. Also incredibly audible. “Like, he’s hot obviously, look at those hands. But it’s Mom.”
Lestat pulls his mouth away from Louis, snarling at the girls who are walking away at a sedate pace. “Do you mind? Can two adults have a private moment, si vous plait?”
They’re both out of drag, Feefee in her awful Johnny Rotten getup and Betty in what could, generously, be called a tank top and shorts. One is threadbare to the point of translucence and the other cut to all hell, but sure. Who would Lestat be to body-shame one of his daughters if she wishes to run about with her talents splayed to the world? That certainly wasn’t one of the things Gabrielle instilled in him.
It's hard to pay attention to Betty or Feefee when Louis is insatiable tonight, though, hand playing with the paper-bag hem of Lestat’s shorts — stiff canvass today, a sort’ve androgynous plum color he’s been drawn to lately — and tucking his head against Lestat’s neck to murmur, at least quieter than his terrible chosen children, “Hush. Let me take you home.”
Lestat shivers, goosebumped in the swampy summer air. Louis’ found his way into Lestat’s shirt, fingertips dragging restlessly against the jut of Lestat’s hipbone. It's hard, even months on now, to say if Louis’ always had this streak of exhibitionist in him, or if it's something Lestat unlocked by pulling his cock out there on a lovingly landscaped side street of his neighborhood. And he can’t say which would be more satisfying — knowing that he’s inured something in Louis, a mark that’ll be there long after Louis has tired and cast him away — or if it's more delicious to know that they fit together this way as well, pleasure heightened by the chance to show one another off.
These are his kids though, her incomplete set. Betty’s watching with hungry, curious eyes but Veronica’s been gone for nearly the entire month and Lestat hasn’t any interest in enabling or addressing Betty’s oedipal-electral complex.
Feefee, her beloved runt, has on a face like she’d like to sink into the cracked concrete of the sidewalk. Lestat gently pushes Louis’ creeping hand away and clears her throat, standing from the amorous slouch Louis coaxed her into.
“Goodnight, girls,” Lestat says firmly. “We’ll see you this weekend. Rehearsals.”
Feefee nods, clearly ready to turn on the low heel of her combat boot and head home. But Betty isn’t moving and Feefee is glancing at her, the ridge where her brows would be furrowed.
“But Mom,” Betty whines, finding the breathy Marilyn Monroe-as-countertenor register Lestat’s watched her use on countless boys in and out of drag. She might be talking to Lestat, but her eyes are roving over Louis. Irritation pulls Lestat’s eyes narrow, his mouth tight. “What if it’s time for us to get to know our new stepdad? You’ve been bringing him around for weeks and hardly even let us get a look in.”
“And you will not.” Sharp. Too sharp maybe, Betty flinches and Feefee takes a full step back. Louis’s hand stops its maddening trail across his hip. Lestat tries again, softer: “We have reservations and Louis is a busy man. Tired. Some other time. Perhaps.”
“Ok, maman.” Feefee tugs on Betty’s arm, in the direction of her car. Betty doesn’t say anything, letting herself be pulled along, her eyes flickering between Lestat and Louis.
“We have reservations?” Louis asks, having recovered from whatever surprise Lestat’s tone might have inspired in him.
“Surprise,” Lestat tries, rifling through her mental account of places that might stay open later on a balmy Sunday evening. Louis’ thrall interrupted, ache and hunger and poison-apple jealousy all shove to center stage. “A drink? Siphon?”
Louis nods. He is searching Lestat’s face for something and he feels too close to it, too close to seeing the white of Lestat’s knuckles, the way his mind spins at night while Louis is sleeping, trying to divine the day and time when Louis will decide that Lestat, in all his beauty and terror, has overstayed his welcome.
“Yeah. You wanna drop this stuff and walk over?” He’s touching Lestat again, a hand resting sweetly against the side of his neck, meat of his palm just pressing on Lestat’s Adam’s apple.
…
The streets are mildly busy with people not quite like them, people in their thirties and forties looking for the last taste of the night, drunk on the last dregs of summer and the ever-present threat of their little cubicles. Louis grabs his hand, weaving them both around a couple that’s chosen the middle of the sidewalk for their goodbye kisses. Lestat hadn’t seen him look up the directions for Siphon and when Louis catches his curious look he shrugs. “Armand wanted to swing by one of the businesses nearby and I was already in the car. He’s been saying this neighborhood was on the upswing.”
Lestat looks across the facades of the street, noting the familiar shop names and the new ones, the gray boxes spelling out their names in skinny, pointed gentrification font. He’s gotten messages, in person and electronic, about meetings among some of the older owners on the block. He’s not sure what he, or anyone else, is meant to do, though. There will always be a number high enough for someone to sell.
“Well,” Lestat sighs, suddenly very tired, all of his energy given to holding Louis’ fingers laced between his own and the extravagant comfort of a flat, cork sole. “Give him an extra suck for me, would you? I enjoy my bar and the people in it very much.”
Louis makes that face he thinks Lestat doesn’t recognize, the one when he’s forcing away his schoolboy jerk-off fantasies of having both of them at the same time. It’s unclear why Louis thinks this desire is so secret. Lestat found Armand about as interesting as a well-sealed and painted plank the one time they met, attractive in the way hotel paintings are attractive; sexless; inert. But he’d do nearly anything for Louis. And he’s intrigued by the slip-ups Louis has sometimes: the way he’ll grip Lestat’s hair too tight, the moments when he seems caught up short by Lestat’s refusal to bend immediately to his whim. He is different, with Armand, and Lestat’s desire to know all of Louis is boundless and starving. Also, he respects a voracious bottom and Armand, from the little Louis has shared, seems both unyielding and devouring in this sense.
A gay couple passes them wearing, Christ, matching polos. One of them, the imminently balding one, gives a second glance, the brief wave of suspicion then realization Lestat is familiar with. He doesn’t paint with a particularly heavy brush, comparatively, and people recognize him much quicker than other queens. This one takes the extra five seconds to glance at their clasped hands and raise a conspiratorial eyebrow. Lestat ignores him. Southern overfamiliarity is revolting even now. All the honey, darling, sweetheart, carrying on while they try to sink their claws into every scrap of information you might let slip, waving around the Bibles they all carry in their hearts, even the ones weakly claiming atheism.
He’s got some sense that there’s consternation in the channels of gossip that slip out into the queer networks the queens are part of, though most of his own friendships are born and die at the doorway of the bar. It would seem that nearly everyone that ever thinks of her when wigless is aware of Louis and aware that he is married. He couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone beyond the acute angle of himself, Louis, and Armand could possibly care, but he supposes American Christian values come for everyone in the end.
“Do you?” Louis asks, blithely unaware of the judgement being passed upon them by their fellow invert-in-arms. “I mean, you seemed pretty done with it tonight. Or at least done with your girls.”
Lestat grunts and tugs Louis into Siphon, following another couple, a man this time and a woman trailing a perfume sweet, but too resinous for the summer. They’re seated with the enthusiasm and cordiality of a staff tasked with developing a new base of clients for their indistinguishable bar. It's fine. The place is clearly a repurposed double shotgun house and they’re led through tight, noisy rooms outfitted with long tables and benches and out into a large backyard lined with rows and rows of pale, criss-crossing string lights. They’re given a small round table near the middle of the big backyard. Louis’ skin is bright and smooth in the pale golden light, smile lines bracketing his soft mouth.
Louis’ smile was unnerving at first, how easily he reached for it. Months into their dalliance, Lestat is not quite certain, but he’s watched Louis employ it to disarm people, to make them feel comforted, trusting him. He's dangerous because of this smile, Lestat knows that much. It’s nearly effortless to feel that Louis is in your corner, wanting you to win.
“You wouldn’t understand.” Lestat slides the menu over to Louis. “It’s not the same, parenting in the wild. Your Claudia, you had, you know. Staff, probably.” Louis makes a face at this, which fine, Lestat will follow up later, but he’s got a point to make. “It’s not even a feature of drag, you know, I’ve met plenty of queens who have lovely, lovely daughters. They’re respectful, you know, none of this poaching and plotting. It was only a swipe of claws, Louis. A reminder of who is top bitch. She’s sharpening her own teeth and I have to be prepared to keep her in line.”
Louis, who has taken the duration of her speech to rifle around his pockets and pluck two cigarettes from a pack — a half empty pack of Lestat’s previously missing, the thief — and lights them both. He hands Lestat one, who takes it with a grateful sigh.
“Claudia,” Louis begins, and his mouth flattens into an annoyed little line when the server — a young Black girl with dark-pink braids pulled into a high pony that swings nearly down to her calves, how delightful — interrupts. Louis barely glanced at the menu, but he orders a bottle to split, making considering noises while she explains their prix fixe snack offerings, clears any concerns about allergies and confirming that yes, really, he does want that particular bottle of red. He charms both of them, Lestat and this girl, with a wry smile, a limp-wristed flap of his hand, and then she’s gone.
“Has anyone ever told you you order food like Dionysus himself, Louis?” Lestat watches for the slight pinking, the pleased slit of Louis’ eyes. It’s stunning, unbelievable, the way such a beautiful man can be undone with the barest of compliments. Lestat stretches out his leg, pressing the round knot of his foot bone into the open socket of Louis’ ankle. “The food and wine should already be here for you, it’s true. Your every desire already laid out, prepared for your taking. I am worried we'll need more though, you know how stingy these little places are. Snacks could mean anything. You were saying about sweet Claudia?”
Louis is deciding something. The pause between them is too long. The server comes back, somehow more eager and young than the first time she’d stopped at their table. She sets a caddy between them — still new, the chrome curves of it still buffed bright— and explains the different condiments: the house-made banana ketchup, the habanero-and-pink-salt salsa, the black garlic sesame aioli. She’s nearly breathless by the end of her rundown, swearing that each sauce has been designed to pair perfectly with the snacks they’ll receive and enhance the bottle of wine she’ll bring out in a “jiffy.”
They should have gone somewhere else, perhaps. A drink would be nice, though a Spanish red might be too warm for a late summer day when the heat hasn’t even broken with nightfall yet. The food feels overwrought, a gustatorial plea for audience participation Lestat hasn’t signed up for. Still, he finds himself leaning forward, trying to take up more of the thoughtful look Louis is giving him, the developing photo of his life on the other side of Lestat’s doors.
“Claudia had some issues growing up,” Louis says finally. Lestat’s laugh is sharp and soft, gusting out from behind his molars. What could her issues have been? Daddy got her fourteen Barbies instead of fifteen? She’d only made friends with a few eventual duchesses, never a real princess?
Madeleine talks sometimes about how strange she is, Claudia, her little love. How she drinks like a fish. How she goes away in her head sometimes. Lestat heard the stunned and slavering update secondhand, days after Madeleine slid her fist into a stranger named Claudia, watching her pin sparkling fabric to a girl in the middle of the dressing room. How is he supposed to square that with an icing-and-diamonds poppet walking around with Louis’ credit card and good name?
And Louis again, “She had some, ah. She acts out, actually. Mostly with Armand but I see it. It’s not the same, you know. With an adult, someone choosing to be there. But. I want you to know we haven’t had it that easy. She had some real bad stuff happen when she was fourteen.”
Ah.
Well.
Lestat’s understanding is that what Louis does for work is primarily a matter of convincing other people to see the value he sees in a piece of art. He’s a worldmaker of a sort, able to install his understanding of the world into someone else’s mind with his words. There aren’t many things Lestat could imagine would reduce Louis down to this sort of vagary, a half-mumbled explanation that he doesn’t want to go into detail, that Claudia’s story is her own. As if avoiding the words will protect her. As if Louis hasn’t laid his own daughter out on the table between them as a shield and an offering.
It's not as if Louis knows exactly how familiar Lestat is with “some bad things” happening.
Hands, pale and soft as always, creep down the breadth of his shoulders, down his arms, to hold his wrists lightly. Claudia; fourteen and a girl. A child. He’d spared Lestat that at least. Eighteen and a boy, a perfect boy, a flawless specimen. But not a child. He and Nicki needed to eat for two long years before Magnus offered a way for Lestat to keep them alive. But never as a child. Not with his old man, anyway.
“Let me fuck you,” Lestat says, cutting him off. Louis’ mouth shuts softly, an expensive hinge. Lestat has missed something, something important. It’s on Louis’ face, disappointment, brief as midnight and then smoothed over. They’re brought two prawns each, resting on delicate china, bright-red and still headed. Their server offers a surprisingly detailed narrative about the bugs that washes past his bare ankles, so much salt water. That’s all it is ultimately, the food, this moment, the taut-snapped cord between them and Lestat’s fingers on the scissors. It’s all salt water.
Louis is feeling something, fighting to clear it off his face, away from his shoulders, pushing it down and down and down. He manages, and it’s admirable, when the girl is gone and he turns his head, watching Lestat through lowered eyelashes.
“It would be better for me. Betty wants you, in case that context wasn’t clear. But you want me to have you, yes?” He keeps talking. It’s easier to toss the carved-out flesh of himself when it's his fingers slippery with blood. “In the wig, I think. We haven’t done that before, have we?”
He’s only recently lost count of the times he’s drawn his body down Louis’ and held that beautiful, swelling cock in his mouth. Each of those early fucks were committed to memory; the when and where of each thumbed into a rosary. But men like to be diminished a little. Gives them room to grow.
“Yeah,” Louis says, having beaten back whatever demon of honest emotion threatened to emerge from him. Americans. “Sweetheart. You know, Betty’s beautiful, sure, but I’m not—”
Lestat hisses displeasure, prawn clattering back to the plate. Louis glances past him, looking to see if anyone is watching them. Louis is more expressive than many Lestat has met, but he keeps such a tight hold of himself. It’s all in the eyes, the set of his shoulders, the tremble of his fingers. He owes this to Louis, the escape, the chance to leave behind a marriage, a profession and a world that requires he hold himself so still.
“Not tonight.” The Girl comes in unbidden, she needs more air, so much air to keep the voice right, to keep the fantasy afloat. She retrieves the prawn, holds Louis’ eye while she dismantles, twisting off the head. Louis watches her tip the head against her lips, sucking the meat out. The body looked dry on the plate, but yellow-orange oil is slipping down her fingers and wrist and her lips tingle with whatever spices they’ve secreted away in the stiff little exoskeleton. She tosses the prawn head onto her plate, reaching for the rest of the body. Louis is transfixed, his desire draped across her shoulders, dark and fine as her favorite feathers. “I’ll need the day to prepare.”
“Thursday,” Louis offers, so eager for someone claiming a passive kind of interest mere weeks ago. Wanting her all kinds of ways was different than wanting her.
“Thursday.” She nods, sweeping her head down just to bat her eyes at him. Empathy for Claudia and Betty and all the underserved daughters escapes her. Motherhood is ill-fitting. But she can be the hot little piece on the side, the Thursday-night excitement that keeps Daddy coming home late from the office. She can offer him that.
…
The week drags. Lestat goes to the bar on the day it’s closed to pretend to listen to the inventory and sign checks. Tuesday and Wednesday are a blur. Betty is appropriately cowed, hits her cues for her show with Veronica fiercely and doesn’t even complain about bringing Lestat’s keyboard out. Lestat performs an under-baked but particularly amorous rendition of an old Portishead song, finds herself kneeling on the stage, hips aching with wanting. Just one reason, any reason at all to be a woman. She makes Feefee collect her tips, meager from an audience too young to appreciate what they’re witnessing.
Antoinette calls and she doesn’t answer.
And then it’s Thursday afternoon, a rare day off. He stands in the drag room, swiping a careful hand across the underthings — the neutral slips, the plain flesh-colored cinchers, and then the explosion of lace and color; aubergine, cyan, gold, and baby pink. He’d met with each of the fleet of women that keep his body together yesterday morning, still feels rubbed shiny and new with a fresh wax and a new set — nails painted a sweet ombre that makes him think of heavy ripe peaches, dripping flesh between his teeth. They’re smooth, stoneless in case Louis decides to be a little adventurous with his hole.
Lestat huffs, turning away from the garments. He walks around the room, lighting a few candles, tugging a scarf off a lamp to replace it with one patterned with cardinals, lowering the blinds until the space is pulsing deep pink and warm. He stands in the middle of the room, breathes.
The showgirl is never far from his fingertips. She’s always eager to return to the surface to give Lestat a break. She’s charm, all seduction and thrill, a tease and a taunt. She’s nice to look at but not enough to feel. And Lestat — he, she, all of them — want to give Louis something to feel, something he can’t walk away from. This is the trick, of course. There’s not a showgirl or sex kitten or the man himself who can fool a lover into staying forever. The makeup smears, the rhinestones fall off, the shoe hurts, and then there is just her, another blonde to throw on the pile.
Forever is too long anyway. Forever is the other side of the veil he sends men through.
Lestat hums, does a twirl for the movement of it, looks back at the rack of clothes. Talks to his little listening machine, asks Alexa to play something stirring.
She murmurs her obedience back to him and the room is filled, Reich’s violins, again and again in an unbroken circle. There are nicer things mixed in here.
She tugs a piece with potential, a deep-magenta bodysuit, fitted with burnished pewter rings and sliders. Anya had slid the straps down off her shoulders, showed her how to press her tits together to look bigger than they were, and then pushed their mouths together, lipstick waxy, mouths hot and open.
Another matching set and memory, lavender camisole and silk tap pants cut to fit her unpadded hips, cupped in Sasha’s hands, thumbs tucked into the waistband. An emerald green hobble skirt made of thick elastic bandages, heavy gold buckles swinging from the suspenders, Candy shoving it up her body to swallow her cock in the smallest room backstage. Candy, appropriately sweet, called Lestat baby and left a scribbled note in Lestat’s drag bag with her name and number on one side and her doctors’ information on the other.
After Anya there was Madison. After her, a trio of girls with lost names that taste like time and vodka sodas made with the finest rail liquor. Antoinette, here and there, the closest thing to consistency before Louis. She can’t help but laugh to herself, the only homegrown pussy she’s ever eaten, attached to Antoine.
Near the end of this rack hang beautiful new half-cups in icy-blue, one in the modest C cup of her preferred chest plate, another in an A that holds her without embellishment, just in case. She’d given Feefee a list of her measurements and credit card information and nearly purred when Feefee turned up weeks later with a package of boyshorts and thongs, a set made to hold her cock bound close and a set to hold her untucked and wrapped in lace. The whole haul hangs next to the twinned bras, all of it more pretty than striking, no memories attached. She fingers the scalloped hem of the shorts, slipping her hand through the leg to examine the transparency.
Would a babydoll be overkill? She’s never worn something so light for Louis to see. She imagines his long fingers tangled in a few layers of diaphanous fabric and want stripes through her. Yes. A babydoll, yes.
She wanders from the drag room to her bedroom, cursing when she stubs her toe on the small pile of books she’s been meaning to move for months now. The violins are falling slightly out of time with each other, a little frantic, propulsive. She passes through the everyday closet on her way to the bathroom. She keeps Lestat, the man, here. Less color in here, though certainly not none. Always so serious, so heavy in here — wools and canvas, who is really finding joy in pinstripe, the stodgy heft of midweight dark-wash denim?
A small, hissing voice that reminds her that Louis is gay, that he probably finds plenty of pleasure in the trappings of manhood, that she is the diversion, the untried path he’s venturing down. That’s fine. It’s good to hold the truth, let it burn the palm of her hand. It’s true that this is a lark for Louis. Its true that this might be upsetting for him, might remind him that for whatever he likes about Lestat — the beautiful blonde boy, the cock that fills him up just right, the caesura in the regular rhythms of his day — is attached to this little internal oddity, the thing about him that Gabrielle and his father and his brothers all saw and hated in him and refused to name.
She starts the shower, avoids looking in the mirror. The makeup could be a quick job, a light beat. It’ll be ruined by the end of the night anyway, if things go to plan. She’ll use the runny mascara.
…
Louis comes through her unlocked door with a rush of wet summer air and the plinking of rain. He’s only a little damp, clearly missing most of the late afternoon storm. She guesses he’s come from work; the pleats of his dark slacks are crisp, and they break beautifully over his loafers. One of those embroidered bomber jackets he favors tossed over his forearm. She’s about to tease him for dressing up just to see little ol’ her when she catches the detail on his shirt, narrowing her eyes. The shirt is greige, barely a color at all, but she can see the dark imprint of his nipples and when he comes closer it reveals itself to be made of small loops, netting or possibly mesh.
She’d arranged herself for his arrival, chaste babydoll arranged high around her thighs, contrasting the rosé pink of the couch. She’s opted for her own hair, brushed into manageable waves and her usual face painted with a light hand. She’s not offering the Lestat that finds the stage welcoming every night, though that version of her is still in the practiced press of her fingers against the thin skin of her kneecap, the way she waits until he’s looking back at her fully to toss her hair away from her shoulder, just so he can see the straps of her bra through the clinging shoulder of her dress.
“Well hello, miss.” His voice is all 1920s charm, like he’d take his hat and press it to his chest for her. The little creases at the sides of his eyes turn up with his smile and she forgets her plan for a moment, words caught up in the surge of warmth down the center of her chest. She clears her throat, plucking at the hem of her dress with her nails and shakes her head a little.
“Louis.” Air across the tongue, always, but ground it in the chest, a purring hellcat wrapped in cupcake colors. She’s a confection, a soufflé that requires a careful touch. A lady. “I missed you.”
She’s more surprised than embarrassed that it’s true. Three days between them, the longest they’ve gone walking around the same city and not seeing each other. There were texts, of course, voice messages and the pictures Louis likes so much, reminders of how the thought of him gets her hard. But it’s not the same as his skin under hers. And now that the thought is out of her mouth, the distance between them aches — him at the door, her on the couch. She gets up to approach, making sure to sway her steps, letting him take in the motion of her. They’re of a height, eye to eye like this, her barefoot and him still fully dressed. His eyebrow is raised, smile softened into an amused little twist of his mouth. He watches her take his jacket and hang it up, lets her crowd him against the door. Neither of them have said a word and still she feels like she’s being humored, like this is a joke to Louis, her control of the situation a flight of fancy.
She grabs his hands, placing them on her hips and watches his face as his fingers map out the shape of her waistband. One hand goes wandering and she grabs it, puts it where she wants.
“Are you not gonna say it back, mon cher?” she asks, dipping her head to nose at his neck where he still faintly smells of the last traces of cologne: cedar and citrus today. She skims her nails across the collar of his shirt, nails catching just lightly at the thin skin over his adam’s apple. A step forward and Louis is crowded against the door, her thigh between his. His breath is steady, inhale a little quick. She smiles and lets him feel that too. “Too busy to think of me?”
“Nah, no.” He buzzes under her mouth. His hands are moving again. She allows it this time, lets him pull her in closer, pressing their bodies together while he sweeps around the curve of her neat waist, her reward for years of cinching. The pause at the waistband of her bra is infinitesimal, but she still feels it. He recovers quickly, travelling up and across her back, hugging her. “Told you when I was thinking ‘bout you.”
She wraps a hand lightly around his throat, tilting his head to kiss him. His mouth is open to meet hers, tongue already curling out. He tastes minty, like the gum she keeps in her purse, and smoke, just barely, a cigarette hours ago. The ridges of his molars are familiar and he lets himself be kissed, holds himself open for her to pillage. She tightens the hand on his throat, only a curious little squeeze and he groans into her mouth. She pulls back, just far enough to see both of his eyes. He meets her look, doesn’t blink when she slides her hand higher. She’s not interested in cutting off his air, but in angling his head back against the door until he has to choose between breath or ceding space to her. He goes, and she gasps, so softly when his eyes flutter closed.
“Oh.” He swallows under her hand and stretches his neck, turning to offer her more.
He’s told her in varying detail about the formal aspects of his sexual arrangement with Armand. He’d responded to her little games of power early in their knowing each other with the kind of casual control that would have her running from a man any less interesting. She can see that it’s in his nature, inborn just as much as it’s been nurtured and rewarded by the world. Up until now, she’d expected to kiss the stress away from him, play the doting mistress that distracts him from the constant vigilance he opts to wear. She would milk it from him with her fingers and her mouth, let him ease into the warm waters of her.
But she believes Louis is offering her something different.
She slips her free hand under his shirt, spreading her hand against his shivering stomach. His skin is smooth, the smattering of curly hair soft. She knuckles his navel just to watch him smile, then tugs at his belt buckle.
“What do you want, Louis?”
His eyes are sharp and bright when he opens them and finds her face. She undoes his pants and reaches, wrapping a hand around him over his underwear. His cock is heavy in her hand, soft but firming up. She tilts her head, waiting for an answer.
“Whatever you want to give me, I s’pose.” He relaxes further into her grip, letting his hands fall to his side. “You’re running the show, darlin’.”
“Ah,” she says, barely voicing the syllable. The apartment is quiet around them, the only real sounds are the rain and the sounds of their breathing. “I’m running the show. And what if my show means you lean over the couch and let me lick your hole for a few hours, Louis? Will you keep your hands to yourself?”
Louis shrugs, but his cock is still in her hand and she can feel his interest growing, “If that’s what you want.”
She laughs just to watch him work to maintain supplication. He wants so badly to fight back, her Louis. But he’s decided to give her this and he’s had months now to learn who she is.
“And if I want to get this glorious cock hard and wet for me and then go out for dinner?”
What if I decided I don’t want this anymore, an old part of her whispers inside. Will you stop when I say no?
He hums, pleased, when she squeezes him gently, his hips moving against her hand. “Seems like a bit of a missed opportunity but. It’s your show, Lestat. Whatever you want.”
She hmphs and takes a step back, tugging him toward the couch by the loose waistband of his pants. He follows, stumbling and laughing a little.
“This was not the plan,” she grumbles, throwing herself onto the couch, “On your knees, please. Thank you. You were to be the seducee, tresor. What’s coming over you?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he settles between her spread legs, taking the initiative to trace his hands along her quads, up and up until his hands are under her dress, slipping a thumb between the elastic of her boyshorts and her skin. He says it simply, “You look pretty. Soft.”
She throws her head back to laugh and to distract him from the burning tips of her ears. Louis is bold without instruction and slips both hands into her underwear, stretching them horribly and bracketing her cock. Their positions are reversed now, him leaning forward to suck a mean bruise into the side of her neck. She cries out for it, pushing into the sting of his mouth. Her hands fly to his shoulders and he hums encouragement. She wants to fill her mouth with him, she wants to put him face down on her rug and fuck into him so slowly he begs for more, she wants to fit her entire fist in him, she wants to keep him in her bed for a month.
There were men, of course. Before Louis. Alongside the queens she took to bed. Rough hands on her finely made things, men who wanted her in the shadowy alleyways near the club, men who tugged on her wigs, who smeared her makeup. Late-night decisions. Plenty of functionally nameless good-time boys, distractions from her sore feet, her bitchy children, her empty, empty bed. None of them have felt the way Louis feels, touching her so surely. How strange, to find such a lovely thing so terrifying.
Louis pulls a hand out of her underwear and reaches up to cup her through her dress and bra, squeezing until she gasps, her hips jerking forward. He sits back on his heels, eyes still bright and creasing with laughter.
“You’re not very good at running the show, Lestat,” he teases, thumb finding the rise of her nipple through thin layers of fabric. “I’ve heard so much about how you keep your girls in line.”
She’s wet. She can feel the fabric of her panties, tugging damp where they rest against the tip of her cock. The showgirl would know what to do, how to pull the reins back into her hands. The shiny pleather-clad dominatrix, even the long-buried hustler, would know how to twist her body just so, get Louis on his back. Instead, she has become the girl she was with Anya and Madison and Candy. Pretty, Louis said, so easily. There are only friendly phantoms in the room with them and he thinks she’s pretty.
“C’mere.” She tugs his head down, artlessly pressing her cock up toward his face. Louis goes laughing, pressing his nose against her and inhaling deeply. He opens his mouth against her, grazing his teeth so lightly across her shaft and tonguing at the spreading spot of wet where she’s leaking. She takes her hands off of him to tug her dress off, and he makes grumbling appreciative noises, reaching up to splay his hands across her ribs, rubbing up the band of her bra and down to the scalloped hem of her underwear. They stay suspended for a moment, Louis tracing the shape of her with his mouth and her breath catching on soft, needful moans.
Louis makes no motion to pull her out, her cock is pressed firmly against her body and him licking the length of it, long strokes of his tongue that are driving rational thought out in favor of electric sparks of sensation. The fabric of her panties is rougher the wetter it gets, and she knows she’s going to be overstimulated, skin rubbed into irritation, but it still takes effort to curl a hand in Louis’ hair, murmuring that he should stop.
“Bedroom,” she says, nudging her knee into Louis’ side. “I want to come inside of you, Louis.”
He stands, extending a hand out to her and she looks up at him. The early evening sunshine has turned into watery, colorless light, shining behind Louis. She thinks of the saints. Normally, she would flinch away, saints marching in her mind alongside the memories of harsh-handed nuns and the other banal children in her school. She can never tell him, but to her Louis is the real thing, something supernatural. Unbelievable. The Saint of the Unexpected, a reprieve from the uninterrupted mundanity of her fabulous, colorful, and horrifically boring life before him. She is struck with the desire to murmur a quick prayer of gratitude to the women that bore her to this place with the long lines of their bodies.
She grabs his hand, allows him to escort her to the bedroom.
…
Louis stretches dark and lovely and nude against her sheets. He’s watching her move around the room, lighting candles, the flame catching on the warm gold of his skin, the light sheen of his sweat. The smile is back, the crinkle of eye. She pushes her hair behind her ear, striking a little pose just to make him laugh. He does, so she strikes another, extending a long leg behind herself. He wolf-whistles and she shimmies closer, crawling onto the bed and over him. He reaches for her, tugging until she’s resting her body on him, giving him all of her weight. He holds her face, fingers certain on her jaw and kisses her deeply. She opens for him, letting him search her mouth the way she’d searched his earlier. He doesn’t go deep, licking across her once, twice, before sucking her bottom lip into his mouth. She moans and he’s rubbing her again, big sweeps of his arms. He shifts until she’s laying in the cradle of his hips. Their cocks don’t quite line up, but he still grinds into the crease of her hip joint, leaking little noises from the deep in his chest.
“So good, Les,” Louis says into her mouth. “You’re so good, so lovely. Want you inside me.”
He’s moving like it, she recognizes the particular rock to his hip, like he’s already trying to work her inside of him, the jostle of his knees at her side. She reaches for one of her personas, a coquettish smile, the ability to play the teasing game he’s offering out to her. He keeps plucking at tender strings of her, slipping steps from beneath her feet. She wants to impose her will on him, make him make good on the submission he’s gestured at. But she wants to give him everything more, wants to never be found wanting, anything for another beautiful word sighed between his lips.
Louis has pulled away to give her a concerned look now. She’s paused too long. No matter, she’ll reach for the lube, have him spread his thighs, dip his fingers inside himself. It's cute that he still insists on prepping himself, convinced she’ll shred him even though he’s seen her stuffed full of herself to the third knuckle.
He’s quick with himself, impatient. She still feels like she barely made it inside of Louis the first time he’d let her on his back. He’d been so tight, barely stretched, begging for her. Later, over cigarettes on the patio, he’d told her, unblushing, that he liked the little burn and stretch. Can you think of a better reminder of your body? He’d asked her, and then laughed over her answer.
She’d suspected then what she knows now: when he leaves, he will leave ruination in the shape of her.
She kisses him again before she climbs back off the bed to grab her lube and wiggle out of the boyshorts. She’s reaching for her bra when Louis says, “No. Leave it on.”
She gives him a conspiratorial smile, shimmying her chest a bit and tossing her hair for the hell of it. “Ah. So it is working for you? The full puss?”
Louis laughs and grabs at the air, motioning her back to him. “I wouldn’t use that word.” He’s moving around so she can crawl back between his legs, resting on her haunches. “Ever. I wouldn’t use that word ever, unless you make me. Or it’s the name of one of your shows, maybe. You look beautiful like this, darlin’. You always do on stage but this—”
He levers himself up onto an elbow and reaches out, sliding an icy blue strap off her shoulder. Scooting closer, he holds her ribs and noses her tit, tongue out to trace lace down to the pink of her nipple. Her nipples aren’t particularly sensitive, mostly producing a scattershot sort’ve tingling, but the sight of Louis, head bowed to take her into his mouth, has her gasping, fingers loose on the cap of the lube. Louis flicks a glance up to her face before closing his eyes, opening his mouth wider to swirl his tongue around the tight bunch of flesh. One of them whimpers and she squeezes her eyes closed. She’s leaking again, head of her cock leaving wet kisses against the skin of Louis’ chest, the dark curls there.
“Louis—” She groans, cutting herself off. “Louis, I need.”
“Yeah, doll,” Louis huffs, pulling away from her tit with one last kiss. “Yeah, c’mon, come up here.”
He nudges until she’s resting against the pale wood of her headboard, arranging her like assorted flowers, all pinks and light blues: peonies, delphinium, beloved hyacinth. She makes herself useful, squeezing lube on his fingers and staring up at his face while he slides them into himself, hovering over her on his knees. They pop a little when he shifts around but she adds his very expensive personal trainers to the litany of thanks running in the background of her thoughts.
Of course, Louis’ trainers are his husband’s trainers and Lestat has to bite her lip to keep from speaking. Louis is too self-contained, too meticulous in his separation of Lestat from his marital affairs, to speak directly to what his Armand might be failing to provide. And still, to her Louis wears his need the way he wears his wealth: unspoken and evident. She’s had hundreds of lovers, fucked men across the world, and she’s not wanted to fill any of them the way she wants to be pulled into Louis’ body.
Satisfied with his own prep, he comes closer, straddling her and reaching to grab her cock. She knows now that he will become quiet in this moment, all his focus drawn down to the blessed stretch of his asshole around the blushed pink head of her cock. So many times they’ve done this and she still holds her breath to better hear the intake of his, the careful ushering inside the clutching heat and the groaned exhale when he is fully seated and they are one again.
Louis, failed in his submission, sets the pace, moving in her lap while she clutches at his sides. He leans forward and she catches him, tucking her head into his neck and grabbing the skin there, rolling it between her teeth. She milks sounds out of him this way, worrying the skin too high on his neck. He’s not loud enough for her liking, still too in his head. Grabbing his ass with both hands, she spreads him open and rubs at the edges of his hole, where she’s splitting him open. Louis grunts, hips jerking, solemnity broken with a curse.
“Better,” she laughs against his neck, and shifts him higher on his knees so she can fuck up into him. Dam broken, he’s groaning now, grinding out “yes” and “darling” and “right there” between clenched teeth. He’s reaching, half bracing and half groping her tit, his weight collapsed down onto her. Lestat forces herself to notice the press of his bony shoulder into hers instead of the way he squeezes her cock, the climbing octave of his punched-out grunt every time she fucks back in. She won’t last, if she focuses on her pleasure, or the unceasing stroke of his thumb across the thin lace and mesh of her bra.
They stay suspended in this glorious loop until Louis starts mumbling. She thinks it’s nonsense at first, the kind of bitten-off sentences that pulse from Louis’ mouth without his permission when he’s getting fucked. But nonsense dissolves into Louis talking, telling her between gasps, “Pretty. You’re so pretty, baby. Do you know? Do you know you’re mine?”
It’s cheating; it’s dirty, horrendous chicanery, and he tops it off by digging his hands in her carefully brushed waves and holding her gaze with his, a mockery of their encounter at her front door. Her hips jerk, pleasure a lightning strike across her sacrum and his eyelids flutter but he holds fast, waiting for her answer.
“Do you?” he asks again, shoving his hand in her bra to grab her tit. He’s close, she can feel it in his shuddering abdomen, the ways his knees are squeezing her sides. “Are you, beautiful? Are you mine?”
She kisses him instead of answering. There’s no trusting what she might say with Louis’s hole clenching around her. He’s so warm and slick inside and he’s moving purely for himself now, rising on his knees and fucking himself with her body, mouth open for her to plunder, consuming her. She wraps an arm loosely around his sweaty middle, twines her other arm between them to wrap her hand around his cock. She doesn’t move much, just holds firmly and lets him fuck into the circle of her fingers. It’s all Louis needs, his breath coming faster and resolving into low grunts until finally he goes perfectly still except for fine tremors running through his body, his come spilling between them.
“You got about thirty seconds in there,” he tells her, stomach still shuddering. Louis taken care of, there is a growl growing in the back of her teeth, her own orgasm close and refusing to be ignored any further.
She rocks Louis back, tipping him out of her lap. He does easily, limbs softening. He’s soft and wet for her, doesn’t complain beyond a quick intake of breath when she slips back in and a softly murmured, “Gentle, gentle,” which is a lie because he arches his back when she slides back in and his whimper is loud but he squirms down against her when she eases in and out of him.
She fucks faster and harder until his whimpers turn into high keening noises slipping from between his clenched teeth and his ankles are digging into her back like he’s trying to pull her in even deeper. After, she will be minorly embarrassed about the noises she’s making, the frenzied grunting, and the French. She can’t keep the words down. It’s a dangerous bet she’s making, that Louis is too gone to translate, “Si vide. Tu ne voudrais pas qu'il prenne soin de toi?” and he must be, because he’s nodding along, telling her to keep going, to come in him and when she does — a surprised gasp and a moan high in her throat, womanly — he laughs and rides the waves of her body.
…
Louis’ hair is damp, loose curls drying tight to his scalp. He doesn’t react when Lestat reaches out to swirl a nail around one particularly fat, dark coil. He’s got her second-favorite ashtray — jade, faux-kintsugi, the curved edges making it decidedly vulval — resting on the furred concave of his chest and he’s smoking her cigarettes without much complaint.
“I’d nearly stopped,” he likes to remind her, as if she’s holding him down and blowing her smoke directly into his face. She’s started looking at his diet cigarettes whenever she goes to the corner store to pick up a new pack, but then she starts imagining his face coming upon them on her coffee table. The optics are troubling, the implication that she’s thinking of him when they aren’t speaking (all the time) and that she wants him comfortable in her home (to spend the night, or a week, or forever).
His skin is damp, too, and pimpled over with goosebumps even though she’s wrapped him in one of her robes, the red silk embossed with pink orchids that’s tea-length on her and a little longer on him. She hands him back his phone and gets up to turn the a/c down. She nudges the stack of books a little more left of the door and sways her hips a little, just in case he’s still watching. The shower had been good, the first cigarette after sex even better, but she is still here, hard to put down even with contour wiped away and lace traded for soft cotton.
“I’m not getting you this,” Louis calls to her down the hall. She rolls her eyes and pushes at the buttons to make the air blow less cold. The app, she needs to download the godforsaken app on her phone. She’ll do it, right after she finds out why Louis is bellowing about starving her.
“I can buy my own meal,” Lestat says, when she’s back in the bedroom and under her duvet, “You can tell me if you’re having financial troubles, Louis. You know anyone can come onstage on amateur night. I can make space for another daughter, you know. I’m full of maternal instinct. It flows from me like milk.”
“Ha.” He hands her the phone again, “We’ve ordered from this place three times and you’ve made me trade you three times. ‘Oh Louis, my mouth, it’s burning. I’m being poisoned, Louis.’ I don’t even like pad kaprow. You don’t even have to get it spicy.”
Lestat takes the phone, widening and rolling her eyes to be sure he can see it. She adds an extra rice and edits her initial order, tapping the buttons to request it be made extra spicy.
Louis ashes his cigarette. “Would you wanna meet Claudia some time? Get dinner, maybe?”
Her fingers twitch across the silvery threads of the dark duvet. Louis appears in her mind’s eye, limned in the 21st-century entrepreneurial light of the wine bar, their conversation days ago. Louis isn’t offering her Madeleine’s minxy young belle. Louis is offering a former fourteen-year-old who had some real bad stuff happen without the knowledge of the violent sorority she and Lestat share. And would she be obligated to tell Louis of her old man, Magnus, who now sits on the edge of the bed, papery limbs so close to Louis? He isn’t real, of course, which makes his appearance more humiliating, twenty years gone now and she has no trouble remembering the yellow of his nails, the sad sag of skin around his neck.
“Yer’right,” Louis says, running his words together in that way that confounded her when she first moved here. She’d been so slim for her American debut, a beautiful, perfect boy. Her pockets were fat and Nicki had carved out the best parts of her, the remaining things Magnus had not taken with him to his grave. What had she told Louis about that time? Two months in New York before relocating here? Two months of finding boys to scoop out her insides and toss them on the floor at her feet. Two months of bitter cold, a whole city cold as the rooms Magnus kept her — kept him in. All that money and he couldn’t get warm.
“I know that ain’t — that’s not what this is.” Louis is speaking to himself really, Lestat is watching Magnus, the way he gets up and moves through the room. After, he’d leave money on the dresser. It was a little performance, he’d wired Lestat money all the time. More than once, Lestat had to intercept couriers at the door, secret envelopes fat with francs past Nicki’s distracted, frustrated gaze. The dresser and the cash were all set dressing for Magnus, playing pretend that Lestat made demands and he met them. What is this anyway, between him and Louis? What is the difference between Louis and those boys with their silver spoons, Lestat’s own viscera pink and red between their teeth? Has Louis ever known a thing he can’t lay claim on with his hands and his mouth and his money? Very well then. Being an owned thing must be like riding a bike, hop on and don’t flinch when the ground comes rushing up at you. Louis will leave but hopefully on his own two feet. Body bags are so drab; she can’t imagine Louis wrapped in black and polyester. Nicki’s had been so rough in her grip.
He can’t imagine himself, three times a widow.
“Maybe not quite now,” Lestat breathes, fighting to bring himself back, tether himself to this bed, to Louis’ long legs, his warm skin. He reaches out again, slipping his hand between the pillow and the back of Louis’ neck. “But soon. I’d like to meet her soon.”