Chapter Text
“Do you ever think of us?”
The question hit Louis like a truck.
The way the words quietly slurred from Lestat’s lips, drunk off cheap airplane wine. The tinge of melancholy that coloured the question, the last hope of orange embers about to fade to black one last time. The sound of the jet engine reverberating through his skull, a booming reminder that there was no way to escape the question, trapped in the flying metal tube and - thanks to an airline error - separated from the rest of their party. The fury that rippled through him, because what kind of question was that? Why now, on the plane back from his bachelor party, years after everything?
“What do you mean?” Louis answered his question with a question, avoiding meeting the misty ocean-blue gaze that he could feel burning into him. He probably should have answered no and put the question to bed before it had a chance to take root inside him and fester. Louis grasped at the opportunity to avoid answering for even just a moment longer, to allow Lestat to take the question back and pretend it never happened.
Because the easy answer would have been a lie. Louis thought about them - what they had been - more than was acceptable for someone about to marry a man he had proudly declared was the love of his life.
He thought about those early, easy moments. The way the orange-yellow of the early morning sun that peeked through his college dorm window streaked gold in Lestat’s tousled curls on his pillow.The quiet warmth of bundling together under blankets on the couch, Lestat’s head on his shoulder as his fingers traced circles down the pale expanse of Lestat’s back. The feeling of large hands raking through Louis’s own tight coils as they kissed, mouths languid and hungry in equal measure. The secret, coy smiles they shared from across the room whenever they were with friends; the promise of something to come heating his skin.
His hand found its way over Lestat’s mouth, muffling the moans that escaped him and gently guiding his back flush against Louis’ chest as he drove his hips into him from behind, his lips caressing Lestat’s neck, hot and wet as they moved down the dip in his shoulder.
A cubicle in a club bathroom was not Louis’ first choice place to fuck, but somewhere between his third tequila shot and watching Lestat’s band on stage, he realised he wouldn’t be able to wait. He couldn’t put a finger on what it was exactly, but there was something about the way Lestat prowled across the stage, all hair and smudged, part-sweated off make-up and half-opened shirt that did something to him.
It worked in his favour that Lestat had an almost identical thought when he came off stage, his fingers intertwining with Louis’ as he all but dragged him towards the dark, grimy club bathroom, pulling Louis into the furthest-away cubicle and pouncing on him the moment the door was locked, his lips leaving a glittering trail of make-up across Louis, his light t-shirt and dark jeans as he made his way down.
He could tell Lestat was getting close as he lost his grasp on the English language, descending into the hurried French Louis had come to know. Louis took this as encouragement, increasing the pace of his hips rutting into Lestat, whispering “come for me,” in his ear before finding their place along his neck again
Louis felt Lestat clench around him as he reached his climax, his knees buckling under him as Louis tightened his grip around him, Louis’ pace ragged as he chased his own pleasure. It was the sound of Lestat’s whines at the overstimulation, his cock unrelenting against Lestat’s prostate, that sent Louis over the edge. Burning white light blinding him as his own orgasm shattered through him, leaving him panting for what felt like an age before he could bring himself to pull out of Lestat.
Within seconds, Lestat spun around, lips crashing against’ Louis’ as their bodies pressed against each other in the cramped cubicle. “You’re relentless,” Louis breathed, already feeling Lestat’s cock harden against his own again.
Lestat laughed, looking at Louis for a moment as he started palming his cock. “You bring it out in me,” he laughed, eyes never leaving Louis’ face as his hand closed around his length.
Maybe it was just that his hand was around Louis’ cock, but even amidst the sweaty post-gig haze, in the dark light, Louis still thought Lestat might be the most beautiful man he’d ever seen.
He thought too of their worst moments, the moments that still left a bitter taste in his mouth when they crossed his mind. The twist in his gut when Lestat first introduced him to a girlfriend and the pointed reminder they had only ever been casual when Louis called him out on it the next night. How Lestat had exploded when Louis had introduced him to a boyfriend a few months later, as if he had committed some grand betrayal - as if Lestat hadn’t been the one to do it first. How whenever they were both single - and sometimes, when they weren’t - the other’s bed was still the first one they fell into. A cycle they couldn’t seem to break for years, a pattern that came as easily as breathing, yet one they struggled to put into words. A heartbreak they both relived a hundred times over, the blunt pain of longing lodged deep into their hearts and souls, only softened by time and distance. Thinking about it felt like fingers lazily tracing over a scar, triggering the memory of how it came to be.
”If it’s ‘just casual’ with him, why does it matter that we slept together again?” Lestat asked, rolling over in the bed to face Louis.
“It just matters,” Louis sighed, guilt rippling through him about being in this situation again. He’d actually really liked Jonah, they’d even talked about being exclusive and giving it a real go. But, as things always seemed to go, the moment things started to get serious, Lestat gave him that look and suddenly he was lying naked on the bed. “I swear you do it on purpose sometimes,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
“I do what on purpose?”
Louis sighed again, already feeling the argument brewing. The same argument they always had when this happened about who was actually sabotaging who, and how they’ve always been casual so it’s no big deal. It was exhausting. “Don’t you wanna actually meet someone? For real?” Louis asked as he met Lestat’s gaze, hoping the detour would be enough to delay the impending fight.
Lestat’s head tilted. He was dancing around something, Louis could tell - his usually overly expressive face flickering from dark and unfocused to bright and amused in a split second. “Maybe eventually, but I have my whole life to do that,” he began, a smirk crossing his face as he paused. “Or maybe I’m quite happy with our arrangement, who’s to say?”
“I’m serious, Lestat,” Louis told him, doing everything in his power not to roll his eyes. “I don’t wanna be fucking my roommate forever.”
Louis thought this was a perfectly normal wish. It incensed something in Lestat, who had thrown the duvet off himself and jumped out of the bed before Louis had a chance to ask what was wrong. “Fine,” he snapped, picking up his clothes as he stormed off. “I’m not stopping you.”
“You know what I mean,” Lestat sighed, and Louis could almost hear him rolling his eyes without looking at him. This was another part of their pattern, wasn’t it? One of them asking a hard question, the other carefully stepping around it like a crack in the pavement. Never wanting to give an answer that sounded like they cared too much, as if they really had been just friends all these years. Everything else was just noise, a longing for any warm body to ward off the loneliness rather than for one another. It was just easier that way, Louis had always justified. He was sure Lestat had some point, too.
Louis thought again of the years they had spent apart, lives and careers branching away from each other. The distance was good, Louis had thought. They no longer had each other to fall back on, no longer close enough to get in each other’s way. The first breath when he landed in New York had felt like bringing his head above the water for the first time in years. He could never bring himself to ask, but he would bet that Lestat had felt the same when he returned to Paris, too.
New York had been the making of him. He’d worked hard, somehow holding down a shitty bar job while interning and studying for his masters degree, and those first couple of years had worn him to the bone. It was inevitable some things would fall to the wayside, like a social life or texting back your friend/former years-long situationship who was now an ocean away. It wasn’t like Lestat was all that great at responding either. It all became worth it when he rose from a gallery intern to a curatorial assistant and to a fully-fledged curator in little over six years, preening at every comment about how quickly he had climbed the ladder at every event it was mentioned.
It was at one of those events that he first met Armand, back when he was still a curatorial assistant. An off-Broadway theatre director with warm amber eyes and a face that deserved to be framed on a gallery wall. Everything had come so easily, just like those early days with him. Except this time, there was none of the mess that came with being so young. No games. Everything was good - the conversation, the sex, the time spent together, it was everything Louis had wanted. He saw the rest of his life in front of him, even if there was no heat from the fire like there had been before. He’d been burned enough to know not to reach out for it. And now, seven years and two galleries later, their wedding was only weeks away.
”And this is our new Musical Director, fresh from Paris,” was the introduction Armand had given Lestat, though Louis had barely been able to focus since he first spotted the familiar head of blond hair walking alongside his partner. It felt like some kind of cosmic joke that, after close to a decade, just as Louis was finally achieving everything he’d been working towards, he would be here. Working with Armand, no less. He hoped nobody could hear the way his heart was beating like a hummingbird’s wings as he schooled his face into something less panicked and more polite.
“Lestat de Lioncourt,” he and Armand said at the same time, prompting a raised eyebrow from Armand.
“We were roommates in college,” Louis told him. It was reductive, but it felt like the safest way to explain how he knew Armand’s new MD. How could he even begin to explain the hurricane that had been his and Lestat’s relationship to his partner of five years, the man he could see spending the rest of his life with?
Louis' eyes met Lestat’s, violet pupils as vibrant as he remembered, and he saw the quick flash of surprise that crossed them at being described as just his former roommate. The years had been kind to him, gold waves longer than they had been all those years ago, the creases that had formed around his eyes made him look distinguished. “It’s good to see you, Lestat,” Louis smiled and offered out his hand to shake.
His heart stayed at the same hummingbird pace as Lestat smiled back and shook his hand, regarding Louis with the same fond look that had been burned into his brain in his youth. “It’s good to see you too, Louis,” he replied, the heat Louis had forgotten he had missed pooling in his stomach.
Louis finally let himself look at Lestat, cerulean irises nearly swallowed entirely by his pupils, wine-drunk and glassy, the threat of tears spilling over sparkling in his eyes. Two years they had been back in each other’s lives and not a single incident of their past selves returning, until now. They really had been just friends this time, and it had felt good for them to have reached this place that had seemed impossible ten years ago.
He tried not to think of the softness in Lestat’s eyes every time he looked over to him, or the way any time they got close to talking about their past, they danced around the specifics, avoiding the cracks in the pavement like they had back then. Louis pushed the way the fire he had told himself he hadn’t needed had returned at some point in the last two years. How its return had made him question certain things with Armand, only to shake it out of his mind and remind himself that he loved Armand, and that’s what mattered. He didn’t need to burn to feel alive.
“No, I don’t,” Louis lied, finally responding to Lestat’s question. He was happy with Armand; he couldn’t fall back into this pattern with Lestat after all this time. Not when it would explode everything he had built.
He saw a flicker of something he didn’t want to acknowledge in Lestat’s eyes before he managed to force his face into a smile, laughing as if it had all been a joke to begin with. “Good,” Lestat’s grin widened, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. They looked greyer than Louis had ever seen. “Just wanted to make sure before the big day.”
“Asshole,” Louis rolled his eyes, playing along with the lighthearted facade. He could tell Lestat was lying, once again dancing over the cracks, like they always did.
It was easier this way. Because if he could tell Lestat was lying, Lestat could probably tell he was, too.