For the VC Secret Santa,  gifting to: anaryawe

This fic contains: Smut, things about clothes and vanity, L & L talking, trauma/recovery, present day L & L, bloodplay, blood in hair, hair porn, bdsm, hands & touching, good shoes,

The gift is from narcissae

He is sitting in the armchair, the fire is playing with his hair and skin, casting a warm glow that colors him almost human, and then he turns towards the door and I know that he is not, will never be human, has never been that, not even in his mortal days.

His lips curve pleasantly, he extends pale graceful hands to me, beckons me closer and I move, despite myself until I am at his side. My knees hit the thick carpet at his feet soundlessly. There is nothing for me but this – to be at his side.

He reaches almost absent-mindedly for me, running his fingers through my hair. He has a huge gaudy ring on his pinky finger, some kind of large violet stone casting off a gleam eerily like his eye. He doesn’t look at me as he pets me. I rest my head against his thigh. The leather of his pants is soft against my cheek. I close my eyes. I can stay like this forever, by his side. I hate him, but I cannot imagine staying in another place.

He cradles the side of my face. He is cold, so much colder than even I am. How long since he last took blood, I wonder. How long since he last thought of it. He is invincible now. Even hunger can’t touch him.

I kiss his fingertips. I kiss his knuckles. I take his hand in mine, and touch that hard cold skin.

“I hate you, you hopeless, graceless brute,” I say to him, hollow. I don’t mean it, of course. I take his fingers between my lips one by one. I remove the ring from his finger with my teeth and spit out distastefully on the rug by the gleaming leather of his shoes. The small scratches my fangs have left heal almost instantly. He runs that same hand through his hair, pushing it away from his face, staining the flawless locks of molten gold. He peers at me sightlessly.

“Oh… it is you,” he says as though he has seen me for the first time.

That’s how he is now. I cannot know his mind. I cannot know where he is.

Does he dream of the dark queen’s embrace, still? Is his mind soaring with her, instead of here with me?

I cannot know his heart anymore. All I can do is love him, hopelessly, blindly and against my better sense of judgment.

He tilts my chin up and leans down to press his lips against mine. I expect him to deepen the kiss but he doesn’t.

“I’m hungry,” he whispers. His lashes almost touch mine.

“Take what you need.” I don’t say it though. I just bare my neck for him.

His smile is feral, as he bares his teeth.

He slumps on his knees beside me, pulls me against his chest as he did once, when I was still mortal and he still loved me, and his lips press against my neck and then he bites down and all I can do is grip his shoulders.

This used to be foreplay for us, or so it might have been called. Him bitting me, playfully, letting out blood, making me taste myself on his lips. He could drive me to the edge with a bite, have me screaming for him to stop just with his teeth against my skin.

Now I know he won’t stop if I scream. I fear that he is mad. I fear that i have lost him.

He drinks his fill and kisses me again, while I rest boneless against his chest.

“Make love to me,” I say. Some nights that’s all the prompting he needs to hoist me to the nearest flat surface and take me over and over again until I can’t form words. I am his.

He picks me up effortlessly, carries me to the bedroom.

“You are beautiful,” he murmurs to me. This and other such endearments. I let myself bask in his words, because it’s all I have of him.

His rage, his passion, his love and hate… I miss them now that he is silent and mad.

He is neither to me. To me he is still Lestat, beautiful and perfect and I love him, i do.

The wound on my neck has matted the ends of my hair with blood, and it stains the pillows as he lays me down.

“You will say if you want me to stop, will you not, my love?”

I nod. He undoes his tie, a garish thing, if I am asked, but I am not. The fashions of the twenty first century elude me. He ties my wrists to the bedpost. I can tear away if I wish, but I don’t. I just need him.

He gives me what I need.

I keep it at the back of my head, the word I need to so much as whisper if I want him to stop. I don’t, but I could…

Claudia.

Claudia, Claudia, Claudiaclaudiaclaudia

c l a u d i a

He’s never made me say it before. I’ve never had to. He is too afraid, I think, of my speaking her name, of my invoking her somehow, her the innocent that he trapped while trying to trap me as well.

His kisses burn like fires across my chest. His hands, beautiful, beautiful hands, grip my hipbones so hard that I feel the bones grinding, hear them almost crushing.

He kisses my thigh and then looks up at me from beneath a curtain of thick golden curls, his eyes drowning in a beautiful violet flame. He is grinning up at me lustfully, pale teeth gleaming between his beautiful too-wide lips. I want to kiss him senseless. I want his mouth on me.

I spread my legs and he needs no invitation. He digs his nails in my hips as he rims me. He knows exactly what to do to make me let out the most humiliating of sounds. This is amusing to him, he says, to see me come undone so easily. To see me need him so much.

I hate him – I hate him –

I cry out his name, arching my back. He straddles me, licking my blood from his fingers with a condescending little smile. He offers me his other hand to clean.

I take his fingers one by one between my lips as I had done earlier. My blood tastes tired. I wonder if he can tell. Of course he can.

I taste of exhaustion and need.

He looms over me, reaching for the bedside table.

How odd this century is… The smallest things make all the difference – the bottle of clear liquid in his hand for example. He pours some on his palm and smears it over his cock.

He waits for me to nod before plunging in.

This time when I call his name it’s a chocked off whisper, because it’s all I can manage when he is so close to me, so close and I drown in him all the time, he could crush me, with his strong hands and his devil mouth and all those things growing in him now that she is gone and he is left, all that desperation all that –

he sinks his teeth in my neck again with a feral growl, as his thrusts gain speed. He won’t drain me. He would never drain me. I trust him completely.

My vision blurs as I feel him spilling inside me. i arch up against him.

His mouth is dripping with my blood as he swallows my cries of pleasure.

I am powerless against his side.

He unties my wrists, brings a wet cloth to clean the blood from my neck and thighs.

“I’ll change the sheets,” he offers helpfully, shamelessly.

I give him a look that I hope he understands. He ignores it completely in favor of brushing my hair slowly, until it’s shiny and perfect against the pillow.

“I want to paint you like this,” he murmurs, and his eyes are full of… something. Something. I wish he would look at me like this always so that I may hate him less often. I wish he would never look at me like that so that I may hate him always.

He breaks it of course, like he breaks all things as he sweeps his hand over the bedside table for the sleek shiny something-phone and orders me not to move before snapping several pictures.

“I wish I could paint,” he adds, almost cheerfully, “But this will have to do.”

I scoff at him.

I hate him. His unrefinement. His posturing. I hate the curve of those wide lips as he smiles down at me, so pleased with himself that he has annoyed me. He is a child, sometimes.

He lays beside me, his face propped on his hand. There is still blood on his mouth and hair. He didn’t clean himself up, just me.

“I love you Louis. I wouldn’t bear to lose you.”

I don’t say anything. I hate him. There is nothing for me but this – to be at his side, forever.