vampchronfic:

1)   Louis-Armand 

“I did what I did for love of you, Louis. I thought—I thought—“

“You thought you could what? Restore her? Make her whole again after her head had been torn from her fragile shoulders? Come now. You must know that I am no longer so easily swayed by your not inconsiderable persuasiveness. Her terror is upon you, though you have tried to paint Lestat as the culprit.”

What a treat! WIPs! ❤

vampchronfic: 

 Louis ran his hands through his hair, cropped short for the evening’s meeting.

“We were, all of us, culpable for what was done to my doomed Claudia.” He said distantly.

Armand stared at him for a moment. “You forgive me, then?”

“Not I. There is no forgiveness for what was done to her innocence, not for Lestat or for myself. Not for you. We learn only to live with what we have done. But I would ask you something since it appears that you must inflict yourself upon me from time to time.”

“I will tell you anything.” Armand said, laying a hand upon Louis’ sleeve. Louis suffered his touch.

“Why such animosity toward Lestat?”

There followed a long silence and then Armand spoke, his words etched with pain and acid.

“He took from me everything that meant anything to me. He did it thoughtlessly. He did it as though it were his very right.”

Again, Louis regarded him with curiosity.

“Thoughtlessly, perhaps, but it was inevitable. He saw it. You should have, too. Did you think to live, ragged and stinking, beneath Les Innocents forever? It is long gone, that reeking pit. You would have had to change eventually. Do you resent him for trying to do for you what you wanted me to do? “

“What are you talking about?” Armand asked.

“Quicken you, I believe you said. Make you alive again. He had already done that, but that was not enough?” Louis said, clearly baffled. “There it was, your coven performing in Paris even as Claudia and I found you. How had he taken anything from you? “

“You don’t understand.” Armand said.

“Was it power? That he refused to follow a set of archaic rules? But why should that mean so much to you even now? You and the others seem obsessed with rules, yet our entire existence goes against every so-called rule we once may have believed in.”

“There are always rules, Louis. Even you know that.”

“Physical ones, perhaps. These are limits rather than rules. Why should we not do as we wish? It is not as though we live communally. Are those vampires that choose to be reclusive and have no interaction at all with others of our kind included in these rules? And who makes them? I recall your rule when your followers condemned Claudia to her fate. Her transgression was kill our own kind, or in her case attempting it. Yet did not the mother of us all kill many of us? Obviously this rule was yours, since she had no such rules in place.”

“Claudia should not have been made one of us.” Armand said with finality. “Even Lestat should have understood that.”

”Ah. I see. Another rule. Marius’ rule, I believe, yet here you are, made just on the outer edge of your childhood. And now there is Benji, older than Claudia but younger than you. How is this a rule?”

“This is all meaningless. I have no animosity toward Lestat, though I often fear for his sanity. I wonder, also, how it is that he can so easily forsake you time after time.”

Louis smiled, the first genuine smile that Armand had really seen. His breath caught.

“I do not feel forsaken.” Louis said. “I am not obliged to explain the nature of my life with Lestat, but I tell you this. You are willfully obtuse when it comes to any mention of Lestat and perhaps it is because you know exactly what I allude to when I speak of him.”

“He has a certain charm and his beauty is undeniable.” Armand said carelessly. “You do not refer to such mundane things, do you Louis? Do you wish to tell me of his soul? His golden glory? Forgive me if I say I have heard this from you before. It was after one of our intimate moments, I believe.” He gazed at Louis with narrowed eyes. “One of those times you insist meant nothing at all.”

2.) Lestat – Brian

When I was a child I watched my mother and brought away from that a mix of emotion. Resentment at how successfully she was able to cut herself off from the monotony of her day to day life by retreating into the world of her books and pity that she lived like a caged bird. The hardest, once I realized it, was the pain it gave me to know that she wanted nothing more than to fly away from all of it, even me. It has occurred to me often enough that in the end she finally did just that.

I watched my brothers. My father. Sometimes it was curiosity, when it came to the men in my family, but more often than not, it was a way to shore up my defenses as I tried to think ahead of anything they might do. I watched the people in the village and they in turn watched all of us when they had the chance. 

When I was mortal it was mostly about defending myself.When I became what I am, the urge to watch became a force unto itself and to this day I watch mortals engaged in all manner of behavior. I still marvel at the sublime heights I have observed as well as the depth of depravity achieved. Human beings can rival any vampire I have ever heard of as far as savage brutality and degradation. None of that has much to do with the subject at hand, but there are times when I do like an introduction to a narrative.

 This evening I was watching Brian, though I hadn’t come to Éclairage with that express purpose—the watching had more to do, at first anyway, with waiting for Louis to join me.  He was taking the edge off his thirst and quite possibly using that as an excuse to engineer the night ahead. If you think he is above all that, you have not been paying attention to the many other things I’ve written.

When Louis and I returned to New Orleans to find that Brian had decided to escape to Grand Lake for a while, Louis expressed a desire to follow along…a surprise of sorts, he said. We both have our appetites and though it may be presumed that I am the insatiable one, make no mistake—Louis surpasses me in this more often than you might think and his own predilection toward  satisfaction takes many surprising turns. He has lately been drawn to the pleasures of mortal blood freely given without fear. Once indulged in, Louis discovered that he had developed a taste for these interludes.

 Brian had emerged onto the upper gallery from the corner bedroom he favored at just about the time I arrived  He was  leaning on the rail, sipping occasionally from the glass he held. His hair was wet, swept back from his brow and he looked very young and vulnerable, barefoot in a pair of soft jeans and an unbuttoned chambray shirt.  I could smell him from when I stood—clean flesh and hair and the laundry soap in his clothes, all released by the heat of his body and borne to me in tantalizing diffusion on the still, humid air. Scent of juniper from the iced gin in his glass and melted wax from the little votives he’d lighted  on the glass table near the door. Above all these scents, I smelled the enticing salt and iron of the blood coursing steadily through him.

3.)Louis/Lestat

Now that some time has passed since the episode, I wonder at my presumption of what was best for him and more than one discussion of this presumption has escalated to spectacular rage for Lestat’s part and cold fury for mine. This was a familiar dynamic , very much a part of how we had learned to work back to trusting one another.

I wonder too what it would have been like to have taken his life from him and given back what he had once given me. Would he have actually been able to wrest his own body back from the wretched Raglan James and affected a transfer? My own blood was not nearly so strong as Lestat’s, something that he repeatedly emphasized in the aforementioned arguments.

“Well, you got something right.” Lestat said, leaning over my shoulder to see what I had written. “Although I don’t think ‘presumptuous’ is strong enough. “Effrontery’, perhaps? Wait—I have it! ‘Sheer brass balls’. Yes.” He kissed the top of my head and turned the office chair around, slithering into my lap. “But just think Louis—you gave up a once in a lifetime chance.”

“Oh? And what chance was that?”

“You could have been the boss of me.”

“Lestat, I am the boss of you.”

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