Work Text:
“It was meant to be a tribute!” Lestat glared at the stack of papers from his lawyer in a sulk. From his chair Louis could see the thick “cease and desist” typeface on the topmost page.
“It would seem in this day and age that imitation is no longer the sincerest form of flattery.” He hid a small smile behind his hand, knowing it was unkind. They were in an extravagant Miami townhouse stuffed to brimming with every technological wonder Lestat had been able to procure; but here was Lestat, tearing his hair over legal documents the same as he had at their first apartments in New Orleans.
Just the same.
“I could do it anyway. She says so here.” Lestat plucked a page from the middle of the stack. “It’s perfectly fair game, ‘popular songs’ they call them. Only it will apparently be ‘deleterious to my professional reputation.’ The nerve of it. She’s calling me tacky!”
“It isn’t as if you can’t wait for them to forget,” Louis said. “Play your songs and leave him to his. Your public will love you better for it.”
“Hang the public!” Lestat snapped, making a grand sweeping gesture.
It was almost four years on since the night before the end of the world. Night Island’s fragile coven had drifted to the four winds, and the house on the Rue Royale stood empty for all Lestat’s grand statements about refurbishment. But the two of them still met here, week on week, and Louis often felt he was no closer to understanding the man with whom he’d spent a third of his life. “Is your rebellious spirit so sated since Akasha’s death that it’s content to rage against the demon of modern copyright law?”
They froze, their pantomime of a thousand cuts thrown off its tracks by Louis’ acknowledgement of the bottomless pit they both walked atop. He waited for Lestat to storm out, prepared for another stretch of weeks or months spent uncertain whether he was meant to wait at the window or get on with the eternity stretched before him.
Instead, Lestat dropped his arm and sat just out of reach beside him. “I only did it so that I could perform it for you.”
“Why?” Sensing another crack between them, Louis hurried to qualify his puzzlement. “Lestat, I’m here in your rooms. You needn’t orchestrate a media tour because you have something to tell me. Or hide behind someone else’s words. I’ve always found yours more than sufficient, when you choose to share them.”
“It’s simple, is it.” Lestat was looking dead ahead. “I’ll open my damnable mouth and tell you all my wicked thoughts, the ones that break lives and inspire decades of vengeful hatred. The barbs that wound you. And no amount of remorse for my temper will make it undone.”
“You’ve been an inspiration in the past.” He couldn’t bring himself to mention Armand, not when the spell that held them now was so fragile.
Lestat’s crooked smile revealed one long canine. “Ah, the dashing vampire Lestat. Slayer of wolves and discoverer of truths. Don’t kill him so soon. It was no small amount of effort to make him so dazzling. So perfect that even you would be fooled into loving him, despite seeing the genuine article. Not all of us can weave our tales perfectly in a single night.”
“Daniel does me too much credit.” If he told it perfectly, it was only for the nights of rehearsal in his mind, the decades spent considering each mistake with a jeweler’s intensity.
“You fail to give yourself enough,” Lestat shot back. “I said so. In the book, you’ll recall.”
His fingers curled against his leg; last time he had unexpectedly taken Lestat’s hand he had flinched, then blustered at Louis for noticing. Instead, he said, “sing it for me, then.”
Lestat pulled a face. “I’d do it no courtesies in an empty room like this. No band? It would be criminal disrespect.”
“I shall mark this as the day your sense of propriety was recovered.” Very, very slowly, he cupped Lestat’s jaw and turned him so that they were face to face. “If you want to continue meeting, we may have to learn to speak to each other. The publishing world won’t survive publishing a new tome every time we argue.”
He felt Lestat sag against his palm, eyes falling closed. “Cruel as always.”
“If you like,” he said. “The legendary Lestat is no great wonder to me. I wanted to know the young actor of Paris.”
Lestat’s slackening shoulders stiffened again. “And if he’s no more?”
“I know a man who once raised the dead. He may be able to help.” Louis pressed a kiss to Lestat’s unlined brow, feeling the smile against his hand. It was, most wondrously, unfamiliar.