devilsfool:

Send me a number and I’ll write you a drabble about my muse’s past. 
3. (childhood) A harsh lesson is learned.

The slap came suddenly, without warning, flat across his cheeks. He felt the blood rush to his face before the stinging pain, which shot through his skin, heightened by the humiliation which accompanied it. 

“Never again, do you hear?”

Though many years down the line this action would become as regular as saying “Good morning,” this time it was fresh; shocking and frightening. 

The tears came too fast, adding to his embarrassment, as the hiccuped assent slipped past his lips.

It had been innocent enough: he’d been playing in a dirt in the patches of grass outside the chateau, pushing rocks about with sticks, when another boy had come up over the hill and approached him. 

They began to play together without much preamble, as children were wont to do, the other boy taking up a stick as well and the two of them creating a game out of the sticks and rocks. The boy was nice: shaggy, light brown hair, freckles, not well dressed but then, neither was Lestat. They laughed as they played, arguing amicably as they sat, side by side, in the dirt. 

It was Lestat who grasped the other boy’s hand, and the boy held his back as they continued to babble back and forth, toes dusty in the dirt, shoulders pressed close, each child enjoying the other’s company. 

But it was the other boy who turned his head and pressed his lips to Lestat’s, pulling back almost as suddenly as he’d done it. 

Lestat had paused, as bemused as a child might be capable of, before kissing the other boy back. 

The boy smiled as Lestat pulled away. “It’s what the grown-ups do, you know. When they want to make babies.” 

Lestat laughed sweetly. “Do you want to make babies?” 

“My sister says it feels good, to kiss boys. To make babies.” 

Lestat had nodded, sagely. It did feel good, the kissing. “Then we should do it again, don’t you think?” 

And they did. 

But too soon, Lestat heard a cry from behind him, and was swept up into the arms of his nurse. He was far too big to be held, of course, but she was in a fury, dragging him up towards the chateau as she cursed and chastised, quickly swatting at the other boy until he ran away.

Inside, presented to his father, the slap was administered. He was called a disappointment. He was sent to his room without supper. 

It was then he understood: kisses may feel good, but that didn’t make them right.