when are u updating i really luv ur story
Hey, I stopped updating on Tumblr but you can continue to read on Wattpad. Uploading on both just really annoyed me and I realised it too slowly haha xx!!
Misplaced Lens Cap

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@janice2535
when are u updating i really luv ur story
Hey, I stopped updating on Tumblr but you can continue to read on Wattpad. Uploading on both just really annoyed me and I realised it too slowly haha xx!!
Sous Le Lion
part IX
part I
part II
part III
part IV
part V
part VI
part VII
part VIII
also on wattpad under @janice2535
pairing: lestat de lioncourt x oc!reader x louis de pointe du lac
summary: wife turned lamb.
warnings: angst, mentions of domestic abuse and rape, mentions of blood, s*x work, death, infidelity, alcohol. (let me know if I forget something!)
word count: 6.260k
disclaimer: OC story!!! english is not my first language, so sorry on that front. and this is my first published piece, thus please have mercy on me. this is also not always accurate to either the chronicles or show. might be shit but at least not ai. thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
"And I never stepped on the cracks 'cause I thought I'd hurt my mother."
________________________________________________________
She hears them before she sees them, her feet hurrying out, worried out of her mind about the first feeding experience this child could have had. She cannot imagine how scared Claudia must have been, how overwhelming it is and Seta regretted not having gone with since she knew how her husband was about these things. Always rushing the process of transformation.
"Is she alright? Does she need comfort?" Seta's bare feet toe over to the yard once more, towards the opening towards the street and she halts in her steps when she sees just how fine Claudia seemed to be. The man playing the trumpet on the other side of the street seems like a silly and ironic backdrop to all of this.
"I'm soooo hungry. I think I'm gon' die. Is that how vampires die? From starvation?"
"You don't want to engorge yourself, ma petite." Lestat tells Claudia with a certain patience that wears thin after one word of defiance. Seta would know, she has been there.
"More tomorrow, okay?" After Louis says those words, Claudia drops onto her knees with a desperate "Please."
Seta blinks when she comes to a stop beside her husband, blinking in disbelief at the opposite of what she had thought she would see. Her head cocks, gaze flickering to the blood on the corner of the girl's lips and her dress that Louis had bought in a haste.
Louis glances at Seta when he notices her presence, a small tight smile on his lips as to say "she did better than we do" and Seta only acknowledges it with a blinkless stare, face blank in wariness. Because she questioned it. Was Claudia a natural? Was she as bad as Lestat? Or was she something entirely different?
"Histrionics." Lestat notes, glancing at his wife in silent understanding, who gives a silent nod of her head in reply. Both were old enough to know these things, to understand the works of a fresh fledgling unable to stop its hunger.
Louis sighs slightly, turning to look at Lestat with exasperation. "Some sleep is what she needs." He says, turning to Seta to ask for silent backup. Setareh does not nod at Louis. Because this sort of hunger could not be sated by sleep.
Lestat quirks a brow at Louis. "Sedation is what she needs."
"She'll settle-."
Just then, Louis interrupted in his sentence, the sound of squelching and pleads from the man across the street are cut short.
The three elders's heads snap to the empty spot where Claudia had stood before and to across the street where Claudia now currently was, killing a man in the middle of the street.
"Claudia!" Lestat scolds, face grimacing in the ungracefulness of her killing, disgusted by the pure hunger and the absence of the play.
"Claudia!" Louis immediately runs over to her, leaving Lestat and Seta standing there as he tries to pry the fourteen year-old off the poor soul. And it is a good thing that Lestat stood there. His wife hands clasp over her mouth when she gasps, eyes squeezing shut at the brutality of it. She was no stranger to a brutal kill, not at all. But she had not expected it in this moment, from this small of a person.
Her body immediately angles towards his, curling into his chest to hide both her face and gaze from the scene. Her fingers curl into his jacket, searching for sanctuary with the very man who was everything but. His one arm loosely wraps around her waist, the other hand resting on her hip when he watches Louis and Claudia with that disgusted curl at his lips and disapproval in his gaze.
She seeks comfort in his arms, he holds her out of habit and instinct. As difficult as things were, as uncategorisable their emotions were for each other, they were still husband and wife. Some things would never change.
"Elle n'a aucune grâce. Je vais devoir lui apprendre." ("She has no grace. I will have to teach her.") Lestat murmurs to his wife who flinches in his arms at the sound of a body falling to ground and it being hoisted over Louis's shoulder. She hears Claudia's and Louis's quick footsteps back, Louis peering around the street to make sure no one saw.
"Shut the gate behind me." Louis tells Lestat when he walks towards the incinerator, his suit ruined by the bleeding-out corpse on his shoulder. Claudia trails after him, her dress just as ruined, blood covering her mouth instead of chocolate. And it is a sick image that Seta cannot bring herself to watch, her body pressing closer to Lestat as if to fuse with him, as to become him and thus not care about such things.
Lestat sighs through his nose and lets his gaze linger on his two newest creations as they waltz past him. He had been told to do something and, brat that he was, did not like to be told what to do. He simply pats Seta's behind once before peeling off her to shut the gate with a loud sound resembling a thunder. His wife flinched but does not move from her spot, shoulders pulled up and tense, eyes covered by her hands and he rolls his own eyes at the fright she still feels after nearly two hundred years of blood and gore.
"Setareh, reprends-toi." ("Setareh, pull yourself together.") Lestat steps up towards her, gaze unflinching on his little angel of his wife trembling under the dim light of their small yard tunnel.
She shakes her head, face still hidden behind her hands. "Je ne peux pas." ("I cannot.") She murmurs with a slight shake to her breathy voice. "Elle est si jeune, c'est dérangeant." ("She is so young, it is disturbing.")
He stays silent for a moment, simply watching her while he tries to push away the thought she always seemed to make him feel every now and then. It was too human, this feeling of guilt and regret, the feelings she always evoked in him with her weak nature of property and distinction between good and bad. He knew he had done something undoable, something so morally wrong that it had made even him stand and think for a moment. He knew he had broken a grave law. And he knew that this could not end well, same as she knew. But he had done it for Louis. And that was enough justification for him.
He lets out a sharp breath when he straightens up, walking over to her with sure steps and grabbing her wrists to pull her hands off her face. Teary eyes look into his, that pouty lip quivering as she tries to hold back her tears with great effort. And for a moment, even his face softens when he holds hers. His grip is tender and yet firm, as if to shake her out of her feelings, his eyes darting between hers with something close as to what he used to have. That silent connection that husband and wife share, the sort of connection only two people who have known each other for so long could have.
"Tu voulais un enfant. Le voici. Une fille." ("You have wanted a child. Here it is. A daughter.") He starts, voice quiet and mingling with the distant sound of bones cracking when Louis and Claudia stuff the body into the incinerator. "Tu as obtenu ce que tu voulais. Elle est ta deuxième chance." ("You got what you wanted now. She is your second chance.")
She sobs at that, a small broken sound while she keeps her gaze on his, silent tears rolling down her cheeks and his thumb when he roughly wipes them away. Because yes, in a way, this was her second chance. A child for a child.
"Mais pas comme ça. Je voulais lui donner une chance. Je voulais que ce soit à nous." ("But not like this. I wanted it to have a chance. I wanted it to be ours.") She whispers with her small voice, hands moving to cover his on her cheeks and for a brief moment, his lips tighten in emotion, brows pulling together when he thinks of what could have been in a past life.
"Elle est à nous maintenant, chérie." ("She is ours now, dear.")
He wipes another tear off her cheek, much gentler now than before and he leans down to press a kiss to those pouty lips of hers. It is soft and tender, the way a lover would kiss to comfort. Because in all his cruelty, he still had his moments when he let himself be her husband instead of her maker and captor.
Her wet lashes flutter, eyes closing when he kiss her in a way he had not kissed her in a long time, without forcing her, without roughness. He kisses her again, and then again, lips gentle and lingering when he feels her kiss him back voluntarily. He is not demanding in this moment, he is giving her what she craves from him. Gentle love, not a firm hand around her throat, not tears induced by him or a tongue prodding in between pressed together lips to get her to open up for him.
He was husband. She was wife.
And when Louis walks back towards them to grab the other body of the police officer that Claudia had killed when they were out, the body lying in a cloth bag beside the couple's feet, he stops in his tracks. Because he too sees husband and wife. And he feels as what he is. The third in their marriage.
"I need the body. To burn." His voice rips them apart, Seta immediately lowering her head even when her back faces Louis. Lestat looks over her head at his lover, then glances down at the body bag at his feet. He gives a one shouldered shrug, and her heart falls when his hands fall of her face, when he simply leans down and hoists the body over his shoulder, leaving her standing in his dust when he walks off towards Claudia and the incinerator.
Louis lingers for a moment, watches her back and her hands as they fall back onto her sides, shoulders lowering nearly dejectedly. He turns and follows Lestat while she can still feel the phantom press of her husbands lips on her, how it reminded her of when they were both human, lying in high grass in the warm sun, in midst of wildflowers and buzzing bees and chirping birds. She can feel the wetness of his tongue drying on her lips, taste him, hear the faint sound of his past laughter when she had stumbled over a french word she was learning. It was a distant sound, but she would always remember it. She would always remember the man she loved, the man she mourned and who's ghost took over her husband every now and then. As it did now.
Perhaps it is this what kept her going these nights, what made her wake in her coffin, and go to church, and pray for forgiveness. These moments were rare and they came when she least expected them, but they came. And she clung to them until she would get to the next moment. And, unfortunate for her poor and battered heart, she would keep waiting and clinging.
Setareh was kneeling beside her coffin, wearing her light pink nightgown, silk tresses cascading down her back and catching the dim light of the bed(coffin)room. She was preparing her coffin for Claudia, fluffing out the pillow for her and placing it on the other end inside the silk enclosure.
"Claudia, do you want a fuzzy blanket or a quilted blanket?" Seta asks the girl who was currently chewing on a coloured candy stick with a weary gaze. She blinks at the other young woman, ignoring the question. "Why does it taste so bad?" She asks her, holding out the candy stick with a small frown on her face, standing there in her own nightgown which Louis had also bought in a quick frenzy as to get at least something for the girl.
"I do not know." She says quietly, shrugging one of her slender shoulders when she looks up at the girl, big eyes blinking back in reply. "I can taste it. I like it."
"Is that why you got them macarons and lollipops lying around everywhere? How can that taste good to you?" She asks with a cock of her head, brows pulling together. Setareh cannot even reply when Lestat enters, dressed in his own silk pyjamas, a hand leisurely dismissing the entire question that Claudia had.
"Setareh is different than us. She can cry human tears, she looks normal, and she can taste and eat. And oh does she eat." He nearly ridicules her, shaming her for her ability of still tasting and taking advantage of it.
"I like sweet things. They give me comfort." She murmurs, small pout on those lips when she turns her attention back to the space she made for Claudia inside her coffin, fluffing up the pillow for the up-tenth time.
Lestat only scoffs, walking towards his own coffin, not acknowledging her statement any further. Because it would mean him acknowledging that she needed comfort, because of him not giving it to her.
"And she can be in the sun, right?"
Both Seta and Lestat halt at that, gazes snapping to the little girl who widens her eyes at the sudden attention and looks of confusion.
"Qoui? Non. Of course not. I would burn. I know, I have tried as we all have." (What? No.") Setareh replies with a shake of her head, sitting back on her hunches, gaze nearly bewildered. Lestat too stands by his coffin with a quirked brow and a look that can only be seen as mocking, as if the thought of even entertaining something so ridiculous was insane.
"But-" Claudia halts in the middle of it, eyes flickering between the married couple. And for a beat, it is dead silent. Louis had entered as well, hovering by the doorway as soon as he heard those words leave Claudia's mouth, question etched into his expression as well.
For a moment, Claudia wants to inquire further, to state what she had seen. But Seta seems clueless, and so do the others. And Claudia, in all her youth and naivety, was not a stupid girl but decided to play stupid. "Oh, well... shame." She shrugs, rounding Louis coffin to step inside Seta's with her dainty feet.
Setareh blinks at her, lips parted dumbfounded. Turning to look over her shoulder at Lestat, the married couple sharing a last look before Seta pushes off the floor and gets into her coffin as well, sitting down in the other end of it. "Bonne nuit." ("Good night.") She murmurs towards Lestat (ever the dutiful wife).
Louis pushes off the doorway as well, his robe fluttering when he walks over to Seta's coffin. "Sleep well." He murmurs to both Claudia and Seta, leaning down to the latter to press a kiss to the top of her head.
If looks could kiss, Lestat would have Louis multiple feet under the ground by now. But when Louis turns to glance at Lestat, the blond haired man smiles coldly, acting unbothered when he steps into his coffin as well, snapping out a "Bonne nuit." ("Good night.") towards the three of them before his coffin lid snaps shut loudly, wood banging against wood.
Now Louis and Seta share a look at the passive aggressiveness before she too lies down, a hand on the lid to pull it shut over her and Claudia. It clicks shut with a silent sound, locking them inside her little sanctuary. The angel pulls her blanket up to her chin, curled up on her side, silence enveloping them after the muffled sound of Louis shuts his coffin lid.
"Your heartbeats' so loud." Claudia whispers after a few beats of silence. "Like a small handed man bangin' on drums...but he's nervous while doin' it." Seta can hear the shrug after her description.
Seta pinches her brows softly, unconsciously trying to calm her already calm breathing as if it had any influence on the loud thump of her heart. "I am not nervous. It is always loud. Lestat also says tis too loud." She whispers, curling up more as to not bother Claudia with her feet and give her space.
"I didn't say it's too loud. Just louder. I like it." The girl replies, legs stretching out when given the chance, staring at the top of the coffin in silence and wordlessly taking in the scratches in the wood that she can see even in the dark due to her newly acquired abilities. Claudia liked finding out more about her abilities, liked using them.
"Merci."
A beat.
"Can you teach me French? I wanna know what you and Uncle Les are talkin' about all the time."
Claudia is restless, eager to learn, eager to get to know the young woman who she lies in the coffin with. The young woman who did not know she could withstand the sun.
Seta's breath hitches slightly at what Claudia calls their maker, but she thinks that perhaps Louis told her to call him that, evoking some messed up sense of family. "Of course. I can teach you, tis not hard. I learned it as well when I was older than you are now." She replies with a small nod in the dark, eyes shut since she had no desire to look at the nail scratches on the wood of her coffin.
"You learned it later?" Claudia asks curiously, a constant stream of questions sounding in her loud mind, some of which she planned to ask Setareh.
"Oui. I was seventeen when I learned it. Lestat taught me before we married." She murmurs in reply as she desperately tries to push back the memories of sweet whispers in French, the feel of his fingertips when he traced invisible words on the side of her neck. "Tis the third language I have learned, after Persian and Arabic."
Claudia's brows pull up at that, silently surprised at the knowledge the quiet young woman seemed to have. "I can only speak English."
"You will learn. As have I." She whispers as she lies there curled up and smaller than Claudia, unmoving and unwanting of taking up any space that the young girl might need. "You will have much time to learn many things."
Claudia sighs through her nose at that. As eager as she was to learn new things, the sheer amount of what there was and what could be seemed overwhelming to her. "Just seems like so much." She mumbles, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers while feeling the crushing weight weight down on her of both impatience and fear of impending adolescence.
"Time will pass anyway."
The stars are barely shining when Claudia wakes, thus waking all the other slumbering undead. Seta rises like a mummy, sleepy eyes still shut as she sits there for a few quiet moments, arms crossed and hands resting on her shoulders. Half starved, she needed to sleep longer than the others, needed longer to wake, body slumped from the starvation she put herself through.
Lestat notices immediately, seeing her small figure sit in her coffin when Claudia jumps out and hurries over to the balcony to peer over Royal street at the steady thump of life in human veins. But he does not bother to ask or help. He had tried decade after decade to get her to accept her hunger and what she was, to embrace their nature. But she had declined, over and over again and thus, he would no longer try. He simply waited until she starved herself enough to the point of cracking, knowing that he would be there and feed her himself. He would rip his veins open for her, while also being the one who so often locked her into her coffin and let her starve for weeks. It was either this or that for him. And even he himself never knew what side of him would take over.
Louis had been in the bathroom already, freshening up. Only few nights ago, he would freshen up to go tend to his business at the Azalea, but now, ripped from his clinging hands, the Azalea was gone. And so, a grand part of his past life was gone as well. But he had another focus now. Two, to be exact. Darling Claudia and Saintly Seta.
Seta rises with a huff, hands curled around the sides of her coffin when she stands on buckling knees. Lestat react before she even knows that she was falling, her eyes having been shut this entire time. His hand grasps her wrist harshly, holding her up like a child holds its stuffed plush-toy. Her eyes flutter open, half lidded gaze on her husband when he pulls her up against his chest, carrying her over to the bed that was so rarely used by the three of them. He lies her down on the plush sheets, face holding the same expression as one would have when dealing with throwing away trash; a tedious, everyday chore that must be done.
Claudia enters the bedroom again, bare feet padding over the floor in silent steps as she watches with big eyes, taking in the many faces that the married couple seemed to have. She watches Lestat sit on the edge of the bed, his dark silk pyjamas contrasting the light pink silk his wife wore, eyes half lidded and breaths shallow when she watches her husband seethe his fangs into his wrist and then firmly pressing it against her parted lips.
Seta whimpers faintly, brows pulling together at the sudden action but, hungry as she was, she drinks. Her throat moves, dainty fingers curling around his wrist and hand when she feeds. He had fed not long ago, she could taste the sort of man he had fed from - the hints of something tobacco and rum noticeable in the aftertaste. Her fingers at his hand hold his, his own curling around hers when he watches with a hint of silent satisfaction of her indulging with greedy gulps, their darker gazes locked.
Claudia watches from the corner, lips tightening and brows pulling together at the dynamic and hunger visible between two, at how Setareh seemed to keep herself alive off her husband. Louis joins, walking back into the room. His steps falter at the scene in front of him but he walks towards his closet, gaze lingering on Seta who pulls back from Lestat's wrist after a last swallow. She parts from him, fingers uncurling, lips red with his blood and parted in breathlessness. "Merci." She murmurs when she sits up on the bed, his gaze locked onto the blood her tongue flicks out to lick off. "De rien, chérie." ("You're welcome, dear.")
She looks at him with those big brown eyes, like a deer caught in headlights at the way he looks at her and she scoots away some before getting off the bed altogether as if too flee the suddenly ravenous and questioning look that had flashed in his eyes. He silently bristles at the passive decline of his silent question, watching after her when she whispers past Louis and Claudia to get to her closet and behind her paravent to dress.
Louis quirks a brow at Lestat, trying to bite back the amused smirk on his lips while Claudia's gaze lingers on the paravent, as if trying to peer through it, trying to gauge what the situation was between the three elders.
After another hour and shaking from hunger, Claudia drags Louis off to go take her feeding, hands clasped around his when she pulls him out the front door. "Come on! I'm so hungry!" The girl's face tightens with desperation as pulls at Louis's hand.
"Give me a minute. Goddamn!" His own faces frowns up slightly when he throws her a look, nearly stumbling a step at the sheer force she seems to carry. His only and last goal before leaving was to say his goodbyes to Seta who was walking down the staircase, dressed in light coloured silk and inky silk hair twisted up. She raises her brows slightly at the scene in front of her, reaching the downstairs while he reaches out for her waist, wrapping his own free arm around it and at least pressing a hasty kiss to her cheek. He glances over her shoulder at Lestat who stood at the top of the stairs, watching with a cold smirk on his lips, hiding the feelings of hurt he most certainly carried.
"I'll see y'all later." Louis tells Lestat and Seta, not cowering under the cold stare his lover shot him after another kiss pressed onto Seta's cheek. Louis and Claudia leave the townhouse like a whirlwind, the door flying shut behind them and Seta can hear the fading giggling of Claudia when she drags Louis with her.
The silence feels oppressive when she stares at the shut door, fingers clasped at her front. Lestat's steps down, each step deliberate and threatening as they make the wood creak and groan under him. She flinches ever so slightly at his hands grasping her shoulders behind her, eyes widening as much as she kept her face neutral, the dread and fear were evident in her eyes. It were always the eyes with her.
She lets his hands wander down her straight but stiff back, lets one hand move to the front of her throat and wrap around in a firm grip, the other moving to wipe Louis's kiss off her cheek in a rough, slap-like wipe. She winces slightly, eyes shutting briefly in dreaded anticipation of what he might do when silently wounded like this. The hand around her throat tightens when he tugs her back against his chest and her lips part when she feels some of her breath being constricted. And yet, she does not lift a finger to defy him, she does not dare to speak back to her husband or to lay bare his own sins that are monstrous compared to the innocent and pure kisses shared with Louis. He was her husband. He had claim over his wife. She had nothing.
"Tu bois mon sang et pourtant tu le laisses t'embrasser." ("You drink my blood and yet you let him kiss you.") He murmurs against her neck, inhaling the scent that lingers inside that thundering pulse of hers, her heart pumping wildly like a cornered gazelle. "Est-ce qu'il sent mon sang couler dans tes veines ? Est-ce qu'il aime que tu sentes davantage mon odeur que la tienne?" ("Does he feel my blood running through your veins? Does he like that you smell more like me than you do of yourself?") He continues, fangs grazing her skin and making her squirm in his grasp and whimper, hands shooting up to his around her throat. The worst he could do was rid her of the blood he had given her. It would leave her unconscious and even more weak than before, and both knew it.
He drags his teeth along the side of her neck, lips lingering against one spot before he roughly releases her, as if suddenly having decided against it. She stumbles forward a step, feeling more discarded than anything when he turns to take his coat from the rack. He barely spares her a glance when he speaks, opening the front door to step outside with his usual feline grace. "Claudia a besoin de plus de vêtements et d'autres choses. Je vais aller les lui chercher." ("Claudia needs more clothes and such. I will go get them for her.") He shuts the door loudly behind him, his steps fading away in the usual deliberate stride he always had.
She stands there for a moment, unsure of how to feel since she had been both nearly hurt again and yet pushed her away before it could happen. She never knew what to expect from him, never knew why being discarded sometimes hurt just as much as when he would put his hands on her.
Because, after all, was her husband bite not also touch?
Lestat returns before Louis and Claudia do, much to Seta's dismay, who sat curled up on the chaise with her book in her hands. She looks up when he saunters inside, hanging his jacket up on the rack and placing down a single shopping bag on the floor.
He does not speak nor look at his wife when he strides towards the bar cabinet to pour himself a drink. She blinks at his back before glancing towards the single bag.
"Bonjour... Un seul sac?" ("Hello... only one bag?") She asks slightly stumped. Lestat was not the type to only buy one thing but rather half the store. Both his and her closet were prove of that.
He gives her a glance over his shoulder, smirking at her with a one shouldered shrug, the amber liquid sloshing in the decanter he holds.
"Bien sûr que non." ("Of course not.") He muses dryly, a small scoff escaping him. "Je suis censé porter tous les sacs comme une mule? Le magasins livrera les articles ici." ("Am I supposed to carry all the bags like some mule? The shop will deliver the things here.") He explains to her with a shake of his head, since both knew she knew him better than that.
She gives a nod in reply at his words. Because, of course, the man who had once killed an entire pack of wolves could not be bothered to carry multiple shopping bags. The duality of man.
Both watch each other while he unhurriedly strides to sit on the couch across from her, sipping on the amber liquid inside the crystal glass. He was calm, quiet, a slight tug at the corner of his lips which she had no idea of how to interpret. He crosses a leg over the other, barely blinking when he stares right back into his wife's doe eyes.
And then suddenly, shot like a bullet: "Comment aurais-tu appelé notre enfant s'il n'était pas mort dans ton ventre?" ("What would you have named our child if it had not died in your womb?")
Her face frowns up immediately, a soft look of hurt flashing over it at the question and the way he asks the question, with quiet ridicule. As if he too had not cried over his wrongdoing.
The child that died in her womb the first time he had beat his wife.
Her fingers tighten around her forgotten book, breath hitching at the sheer absurdity and disbelief she felt. "Comment peux-tu être aussi cruel?" ("How can you be so cruel?") She whispers in a small voice, the sound breathy past her pouted lips and hurt gaze.
He lets out a faint huff through his nose, corners of his lips pulling up when he shurg a shoulder, as if talking about the weather than a dead child. "Je ne suis pas cruel. Je suis simplement curieux." ("I am not cruel. I am merely curious.") He replies lightly.
She cannot believe that this is his revenge for how Louis and her are around each other. She cannot believe that he would stoop this low, would have even preferred a striking hand over this.
She looks away from him and down at her book, biting her quivering lower lip when she does not reply to him or the game he was playing.
Just before he could demand an answer, Claudia's giggles interrupt his inquisitive cruelty, the front door opening when a chuckling Louis follows her, shutting the door behind him. His gaze falls upon Lestat and Seta, seeing how the latter does not look up and seems to be slightly distraught.
Claudia skips over towards Seta, crawling onto the chaise to wrap her arms around her shoulders, glancing between Lestat and Louis. Seta wants to get out of the sweet grip, the brutality of the scent of blood clinging to the girl making her stomach churn. But one look at Claudia's big eyes and sweet smile has Seta lying her book to the side and wrapping her own arms around her. She lets the girl cuddle to her side while Louis steps inside, gaze lingering on Lestat in silent question.
"Uncle Les, did you get clothes for me?" Claudia asks Lestat with an eager expression, his own turning uncharacteristically parental.
"Oui, mon petite. The shop will send everything over by tomorrow." He replies calmly before he rises from his seat on the couch, hand lingering on Louis's shoulder when he passes him and walks back towards the bar cabinet once more.
Claudia turns her attention back to Seta, arms tightening around her shoulders from the side nose bumping against the elder's cheek with how much she invaded Seta's space. "Did you get dresses too?"
Seta shakes her head with a small and tender smile, hiding how struck she had been by her husband's cruelty. "Non. I stayed at home." She replies, a hand reaching up to sooth over hair.
"Why didn't you come feed with us? It's boring being at home all the time." She says when she lets go off Seta, small frown on her face when he leans back, feet not even touching the ground as they dangle there.
Louis steps up to sit beside Claudia, hands behind him when he smiles tenderly and warmly at Seta, who returns it weakly but not less genuine. "She likes being at home a little too much." He tells Claudia calmly, gaze flickering between the girls. "But we'll take her out tomorrow, do something as a family. No need to stay in all the time. Right, Lestat?"
All three of them look over to the man of the house, who had been in the middle of pouring himself another brandy. He meets their gazes, and for a moment, as those three pairs of eyes look over at him in silent question, he feels an odd sense of responsibility for each of them.
Because yes, they were family now. And he was the one who had brought them all together.
Only, if it was to his fortune or misfortune, he did not know yet.
He only knew he probably deserved the latter.
The next evening, her fingers curled into Louis's suit, his lips hover near her own and yet he does not kiss her, even when their bodies are pressed together. She voices her breathy worries, confides in him about the paranoia that a parent would have for a child whenever it set foot outside.
"Stop worrying so much. She's fine. Everything's fine." Louis's voice is a reassuring cadence in the midst of her loud mind, her gaze flickering up the staircase as she waits for Lestat and Claudia walk down and join them.
"But what if-"
"Stop. My God, stop. Listen to me," Louis chuckles faintly, cupping Seta's sweet and worried face, making her look at him. "We gon' be fine. We're gonna go out, we're gonna dance, listen to music you like, we're gonna have fun. She's gonna have fun. Ain't nothin' gon' happen, alright?"
She looks at him with those unsure eyes of hers before nodding reluctantly. He did not take her worry as offence, nor did he get annoyed by it. He can only image what staying inside so much could do to a person, knows how she got into her head and worried, especially now that they had Claudia to worry about. Sweet, impulsive Claudia.
As they speak of the little girl, her hurried steps fly down the staircase, coat clutched in her hands before she throws her arms around Seta's waist, hopping in place. "Are we goin' now? Can we go now? Please?" She asks impatiently, big eyes looking up at Seta as if she had any say in anything in this house.
She only nods her head, fingers uncurling from Louis's suit when her hands smooth over the curly and pulled back hair. Before both her or Louis could reply, Lestat walks down the stairs, tone as unbothered as usual.
"Claudia, stop clinging to your mother like an octopus." He chastises when he strides past them and towards the front door. While Claudia untangles from Seta and follows after Lestat who steps outside, Seta stands there as if shell-shocked.
The word 'mother' rings through her head, gaze fixed on the backs of Lestat and Claudia. Had this become decided now by her husband? Has this been alright with Claudia? Was Seta herself even alright with it? She cannot move nor speak while processing.
A mother.
Was she a mother now?
Was she mother to a child she had not given birth to, a child she had condemned to hell the second she had not defied her husband when turning her?
Was it the right thing to be called her mother?
Louis snaps her out of the trance, knowing how much it must have caught her off-guard. The same way when Claudia had first called him 'daddy Lou'. They were parents now, in a sick sense, parents to a child they had cursed. His arm wraps around her waist, pressing a lingering kiss to her cheek in silent support before tugging her along to leave with the others.
A quartet now, they were as much family as people like them could be. Bound by one maker, the same blood thrumming through their veins.
Uncle Les.
Daddy Lou.
Maman Seta.
Sous Le Lion
part VIII
part I
part II
part III
part IV
part V
part VI
part VII
also on wattpad under @janice2535
pairing: lestat de lioncourt x oc!reader x louis de pointe du lac
summary: wife turned lamb.
warnings: angst, mentions of domestic abuse and rape, mentions of blood, s*x work, death, infidelity, alcohol. (let me know if I forget something!)
word count: 3.369k
disclaimer: OC story!!! english is not my first language, so sorry on that front. and this is my first published piece, thus please have mercy on me. this is also not always accurate to either the chronicles or show. might be shit but at least not ai. thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
"Oh darling, how could we end up like this? Oh baby, let me reminisce."
________________________________________________________________
1781 - Provins, France
Hooves stomp over the dirt ground like thunder, announcing his presence to the woman of the house. She had already hurried to the window to peer below at his nearing figure on the brown mare he rode. She had waited patiently for him over the past few days while he was in Paris, working at the theatre he so loved. Even when Paris was close by to Provins, she never pressured him or questioned him about why he had to stay for days instead of returning home. She trusted him when he said that he needed to rise early and stay late, it would be easier for him. Thus, every three to four days, she waited for him. Once or twice did he bring his friend Nicholas (Nicky, he liked to call him when she was not around), but other than Lestat and the one servant and gardener that came by twice a week, the angel was left alone in the old De Lioncourt estate.
It had been a run down place when they had first arrived, bought off again by her own father (with every last penny he had) since Lestat's family had lost it in poverty. But her father, a hard working and honest man, had bought it back as a wedding present, told them that a couple should live their own lives, in their own homes. Her father would be there for her whenever she would need him, always and forever.
She had made the place a home, kept it as clean as she could. Warm. Intimate. Loving.
Her bare feet hurry down the wooden staircase, a girlishly excited smile on her lips when dark strands bounce with her quick steps, the hem of her dress trailing along the floor. She hears the sound of the hooves come to a halt, hurries over to the front door and opening it. Just when he dismounts, his bride stands there in the doorway, dressed in white and light fabrics, dipped into a heavenly gold by the noon sun.
An angel.
And he smiles. Because how could he not? He was in love. Madly so.
"Tu es enfin là!" ("You are finally here!") She giggles delighted when she runs over to him, bare feet barely touching the ground before she jumps into his arms. "J'ai attendu toute la matinée." ("I have waited all morning.") She murmurs into his shoulder, feet dangling over the ground when he keeps her up in his arms.
He lets out a delighted sound, eyes closing when he holds his wife in his arms. Lestat De Lioncourt loved his wife. He had loved her the moment he had set eyes on her when she had departed from the ship at Le Havre and he still loved her here in front of his home.
"Je suis là maintenant, mon bel ange." ("I am here now, my beautiful angel.") He murmurs back, voice quiet due to content. "Tu m'as manqué." ("I have missed you.") He carefully sets her down onto her delicate feet, hands moving to frame her delicate face and watch that delicately smitten and shy smile on her face when her brown eyes sparkle at his warm blue ones.
"Vraiment?" ("Really?") She asks in her soft and airy voice, the sound mingling with the breeze that rustles the leaves of trees and hedges, with the sound of birds chirping quieter now that lovers reunite.
He smiles at her, a small and tender thing, eyes warm with love and fond exasperation and a tut leaves him in gentle chastise. "Bien sûr que oui, petite fleur." ("Of course I did, little flower.") He murmurs, pressing a light kiss to her forehead. She giggles softly at that, biting that plush lower lip of hers when her fingers curl into his jacket. Because she was still human (not yet cursed by the restraint that blood made her have), as healthy as a young woman her age could be. And just as hungry as well (not yet cursed by the want for blood). But still, she had a shy nature, never one to speak her mind directly. And he did not need her to.
With a swift movement, he picked the little angel up into his arms, supporting her featherlike weight with his arms under her knees and back. Her breath hitches but her slender arms wrap around his neck in instinct. When she places a nearly chaste kiss to his cheek (even though they had lain together many times already), he crosses the threshold into their home, shutting the door with his foot. "Tu vas bien depuis mon départ? Je déteste te savoir seule à la maison." ("Have you been alright in my absence? I hate for you to be alone at home.")
She smiles touched at his words, taking them to heart because she knew he meant them (the irony would follow a century later) and then shakes her head. "Je vais bien. Tu m'as juste manqué." ("I have been alright. I have only missed you.") She replies in that soft tone of hers while he carries her up the stairs and to the master bedroom.
Anticipation thrums through her veins when he lies her down gently onto the sheets, a hand coming up to tenderly brush her cheek when he hovers over her. He had never laid a hand on her yet, always treated her like the fragile thing that she was. He was not a cruel man, but he would be a cruel creature.
His lips meet hers, gentle and unhurried, nearly devotional, because he knew he had an angel under him.
He knew how sacred she was.
(He still does.)
When he parts to rid himself off the garments on his chest, her lying there with flushed cheeks and inky hair sprawled out under her head like a dark halo, his heart squeezes. Her gaze briefly flickers to a spot at his collarbone, a faint bruise like thing that could go undetected fast. But as quiet as she was, she was observant. Worry fills her instantly, her fingers coming up to the spot with a whisper of a touch. "Tu t'es fait mal? ("Did you hurt yourself?")
He halts in the middle of unlacing his breeches, following her gaze to the bruise. His gaze falters slightly, as if he had not seen it yet himself and both shame and guilt overcome him in a disgusting wave. But he simply meets her gaze once more, lying to the angel while he continues to unlace his breeches. "Juste un petit incident au travail." ("Only a small mishap at work.") He reassures her with a kind tone, smiling at her as one would at a child that was not yet allowed to be faced with the harsh realities of the world.
Her soft eyes blink up at him, wispy lashes batting before she smiles softly and nods in understanding. Because of courseshe trusted him. Of course the thought had not even crossed her mind. She would never think of him that way. Even not while he thought of two nights ago, Nicholas' lips on his skin, teeth nipping at his collarbone. He pushed the thought away when he leaned over her, pressing a kiss to her collarbone in some sort of sick apology.
"Lestat..." She whispers it, breath slightly hitching when his hands trail under the hem of her dress, unhurriedly pushing it up soft and milky thighs.
He only makes a distracted sound, absentminded as he presses kisses onto her fair skin. "Hm?"
"Je pense que je suis enceinte." ("I think I am with child.")
His kisses stop and both his hands and his brain stop working for a good minute. Silence stretches on and she was starting to think that he would be unhappy about it, even when it is a given to be with child at some point in the marriage. Just when panic starts to flood her and wants to emerge, Lestat leans himself up on his palms beside her head, peering down at her with slightly wider eyes and parted lips. And for a moment, she thinks he is the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, with those warm blue eyes, the faint flush on his cheeks and the tied back hair that became a bit disheveled from the ride. He looked like an angel.
"Vraiment?" ("Really?") He sits back on his hunches now, hands on her parted knees when he glances down at her covered stomach which was still flat. "Êtes-vous certain?" ("Are you certain?") He breaths it out, in disbelief. It had been the last thing he was thinking about nowadays. But he thinks it a good thing, both an heir and blessing since it would come from her. And nothing that comes from her could ever not be good and pure.
She nods, a timid and unsure smile on her lips as she lies there, fingers curled into the sheets beside her. "Êtes-vous heureux?" ("Are you happy?") She asks him quietly, taking a subtle breath as to steel herself.
He lets out a small breath of laughter, a grin forming on his face before he leans down again, cupping her face and showering it in kisses. Her giggles fill the estate, trying to squirm away from under him when he does not relent. "Bien sûr que oui." ("Of course I am.") He murmurs against her cheek. "Je ne pourrais pas être plus heureuse. C'est une bénédiction." ("I could not be happier. This is a blessing.")
His hand places over her stomach, glowing eyes meeting hers in anticipation. "Un fils." ("A son.")
She smiles at him, a shaky thing of emotion while letting out a breath of own disbelief through her nose.
"Ou une fille." ("Or a daughter.")
1917 - New Orleans, USA
Her small feet stomped over the floor as she hurried towards the courtyard garden, a small bubble of peace they had there, bouncing around in all a child's delight. Seta trails after both husband and love, watching the young girl look around her new home, rambling on in disbelief.
"So this is my new house?" She asks when they enter the garden, face tinged in awe of owning such a nice place, to call this nice place home. And the people in it.
"It is if you want it to be." Louis replies as he follows her out, the picture of ease in spite of having been pleading on his knees not long ago.
"This my fountain? That's my-" Claudia halts when she sees the incinerator across the yard, a steel box of brutalism in midst of something so idlic as a garden yard. "What is that?" She asks dumbfounded, tilting her head at the box before turning towards the three undead behind her.
Lestat sits down on the same bench Seta liked to sit on many a nights, reading her books or mourning the death of an animal by her hands.
"The incinerator, where we burn-"
"We'll get to that soon enough." Louis interrupts Lestat with a slight look over his shoulder. Seta nearly grimaces at it, standing rigid on the one step, hands clasped in front of her, her fingers toying while watching the consequence of the broken law talk and live.
"Where did you find me? At my old house?" Claudia tilts her head at Louis, gaze growing less wonder like and more inquisitive. It was clear that she was a curious young thing, wanting answers to her questions and Seta truly admired the confidence the young girl seemed to have when asking her questions and strutting around. One that Seta herself lacked to have in the presence of her husband.
"I heard your cry for help." Louis glances at Lestat once more, then at Seta who keeps quiet, gaze flickering between Louis and Claudia. "We... can hear people's thoughts."
"What?" Claudia nearly giggles in ridicule. Because reading minds is a silly fantasy no? Much like dying and then waking again.
"It's true." Lestat affirms from behind Louis, gaze fixed on his newest child, his youngest.
"Prove it. What am I thinking now?" Claudia asks, narrowing her eyes at Lestat with a certain attitude that made Seta's fingers stop toying.
"Well, I can't. I'm your maker."
Louis looks at her, his gaze carrying a certain smugness that one has when knowing they hold the answer. "You're wondering if your nails with stay like that forever. And the answer is yes." It was his time to shine, in a way. It is silent for a beat before Louis speaks again, only now it is a rumble in both Seta's and Claudia's minds.
While Louis explains and Claudia giggles about Lestat's inability to do what Louis was doing, Seta's gaze flickers over to her husband. Her husband, who the worst thing one could do to him, was to leave him out.
"But I'm not human anymore, am I? But why she look different? She look human." Claudia then says without moving her lips, gaze moving over to the dead silent and still Seta. Seta herself snaps her gaze away from her husband to look at the newest addition.
Seta's gaze softens when it meets Claudia's and she replies in Louis's and Claudia's heads. Her voice is quieter, nearly a whisper, as if she did not want to impose in their minds, to not occupy the only space that one had to themselves. The only space that Seta had to herself, one that her husband could not occupy. "We do not know. We have no answers to it. But I am like you." Turned too young, too innocent.
When Lestat notes the silent conversation, he bristles. It was one thing to leave him out of something, worse to include his wife instead of him.
"I can see where this is going." Lestat replies when he takes his envious look of his wife and shifts over to stand behind Claudia in his quick and undetectable speed.
Claudia gasps delighted. "How'd you do that?" She asks excited, whipped around to face him.
"Well, you'll do it too, in time, my little milkweed." Lestat tilts his head at her, his tone deceivingly tender and soft in a way that makes Seta glance down at the yard ground. "I'll teach you, just like I thought both Louis here. And my wife, who did not take to my teachings, to her misfortune." He looks over at her, a silent mock in his cold gaze and her lips turn into an unconscious pout at that, still standing silent. More statute than anything. His gaze snaps back to Claudia, warning and stern, like a father. "But not if we're going to have family secrets."
"We're a family?"
Claudia seems touched by it, her tone softer and quieter now that the words had been uttered. And her look of hope and yearning breaks Seta's heart, because no, they were not a family. At least not a functional or happy one. And she hated that Claudia would have hope that this could be something good, something lasting.
"Yeah." Louis agrees, hands placing on Claudia's shoulders from behind, gazing at Lestat as if to sooth his unspoken fear of being left out. "But with no secrets."
"Une famille?" ("A family?")
Her small voice finally sounds, the words spoken almost fearfully when glassy eyes look past Louis and the girl, at her husband. It felt like some sick joke, like a try to play family, play pretend, knowing this would be doomed. They (Lestat) had created something that should not have been, the girl doomed from the start and Seta was afraid of how much she would come to love Claudia, only to know this could never end well.
"Oui. Une famille." ("Yes. A family.") Lestat replies calmly as ever and she feels a strong desire to smack his angelic face, quivering lips tightening.
Louis looks over at her, too caught up in his little bubble of hope. It was not like she did not understand. She understood the want, the need to grasp onto something worthwhile, something good, innocent and untouched of cruelty and doom. Something like Claudia. But she did not want Claudia to become anyone's anything. She wanted Claudia to be Claudia. She wanted her to live her undead life for herself, not for the three fucked up individuals standing with her in the yard.
"We should go get her to feed before dawn." Louis, too, is quieter now. Subdued by the emotions of desperation he tries to hold back in that gaze of his when he looks at Seta, standing by the steps like some sentient angel.
The idea of Claudia, someone so young and innocent, having too kill and feed made Seta sick to her stomach, brows pulling together when she shakes her head. She could not participate, she would not watch. Not when she herself could barely kill.
"Je ne participerai pas." She says with a shake of her head, oddly stern and determined even in her quiet tone. Lestat inhales through his nose, chin lifting when he gazes at his wife across the yard. A cold smirk forms on his lips, striding past Claudia and Louis to leave the yard.
"C'est une bonne idée. Tu ne feras que gâcher l'ambiance avec ta culpabilité." ("Good idea. You would only ruin the mood with your guilt.") He brushes past her, making her stumble back a step, gaze on the ground when she stays silent. Her husband had spoken. She was not wanted anyway. Perhaps it was better that way.
"What're they sayin'?" Claudia asks Louis who already shoos her to follow Lestat. Claudia's big-eyed gaze lingers on Seta, smiling sweetly at the young woman. Seta does not look at Claudia. She could not.
When Claudia trails after Lestat, Louis comes to a stop beside Seta, gently wrapping his hand around hers in silent support and love. It felt oddly erotic, nearly as bad as the kiss they had shared. Her gaze flickers up to his, glassy brown eyes gazing into striking green ones.
"You'll be alright here?" He inquires quietly, fingerpads tracing invisible lines over her palm beside her body. She nods and redirects her glassy gaze back to the now empty yard, a wordless gesture. As wordless as her not moving her fingers against his. She did not hold or squeeze his hand, did not look at him, did not even speak to him. She understood him, the guilt he felt to have gone onto his knees and beg Lestat, who he knew would do anything for Louis. Perhaps it was partly why she was so dejected and cold in this moment, jealous of Louis knowing his power over Lestat. But another part of her was furious of both men. Louis for having brought Claudia here in the first place, an innocent dragged into the walls of hell. And Lestat for having turned the innocent into an accomplice of their curse.
Louis exhales quietly through his nose, his own gaze flickers over the profile of her porcelain skinned face, the pouted lips and distant look in her eyes. He knows he fucked up, he knows he cannot undo what has been done (worse, he does not want to) and he knows she has every right to be disappointed with him. And yet, he presses a gentle kiss onto her soft cheek, lingering there before adding another kiss (because he could not sate himself with only one) before his hand slips out of her open palmed one. "We won't be long." He says before he departs, following Lestat's and Claudia's footsteps.
The angel stands there moments after they have gone, fingers twitching as if feeling the phantom ghost of Louis's fingers. She wants to scream, wants to wail about the innocent soul that had been condemned by her cunt of a maker, by her brute of a husband, by her abuser and murderer and lover and captor.
But she does not move for several moments, gaze lifting up into the skies to watch the halfness of the moon, a plate half-filled, a heart halved, each piece held in tight fists of the men she loved.
I love your writing style
Aww that's so sweet <3 Thank you so much! I get so self-conscious about it😮💨
Sous Le Lion
part VII
part I
part II
part III
part IV
part V
part VI
pairing: lestat de lioncourt x oc!reader x louis de pointe du lac
summary: wife turned lamb.
warnings: angst, mentions of domestic abuse and rape, mentions of blood, s*x work, death, infidelity, alcohol. (let me know if I forget something!)
word count: 3.960k
disclaimer: OC story!!! english is not my first language, so sorry on that front. and this is my first published piece, thus please have mercy on me. this is also not always accurate to either the chronicles or show. might be shit but at least not ai. thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
She waits, anxiously so. Her knee bounces up and down in nerves, the wood inside the blazing fireplace cracks and acts as the only sound inside the silent townhouse.
Tis the next night and Louis and Lestat had gone to confront Tom Anderson and Alderman Fenwick, as Louis said he would. She was fearful for Louis, feared that what he cared about would be taken from him only because of the colour of his skin. Something he could not change, in the same way she could not change being a woman underneath her husband. It was simply the way things are. Unchangeable.
She flinches when the front door swings open, quicks steps entering and beelining to the cabinet Lestat keeps the alcohol in. The front door shuts with a loud bang and for a moment she thinks it is Lestat who had entered. But when she rises off the couch and looks towards the sound of commotion, she sees only Louis. Her face falls. She knew what such anger could mean.
Silence envelopes them for a moment when he drinks and she stands like a statute, staring at his back as if he would bare his true self and let his anger out on her any moment now. But he does not. Instead, after setting down the glass of bourbon, his shoulders slump dejectedly.
“They set me up. Anderson and Fenwick. Anderson knew this day would come when he sold it to me, I heard his thoughts. Fenwick said he’d buy it back for a much lower fuckin’ price, told me to take my business somewhere where it ain’t gon’ be the same.”
A beat of silence when she tries to not cry on his behalf and rather stares at his suit clad back. “And what did you do?” She asks quietly, nearly a whisper. And for a moment she dreads his answer as if she had already smelled the uproar from afar.
“I hung up a sign at the Azalea.”
A beat.
“What sort of a sign?”
Another beat.
“Colored Only sign. No Whites Allowed.”
Her eyes fall shut, a breath past her lips. Chaos. She has to sit, holding onto the armrest of the couch with both her hands.
“Don’t matter anyway. They gon’ take it from me.” He says solemnly, finally turning to face her sitting and close-eyed form on the couch and his heart squeezes when he thinks of having put her in this state of worry.
He steps up to her as if he was walking up to a coffin, hands in small fists of unsureness. Her eyes open when she hears him nearing, follow him stepping up to her (oblivious to how he had his suit jacket buttoned as to hide the bullet holes in the fabric) and quietly getting onto his knees by her legs. And for a long moment of silence, they simply look at each other and she watches the red tears of blood well in his eyes. And she embraces him.
With her arms around his shoulders while he kneels at his altar, he cries. Silently, angrily, frustrated at the world and it’s prejudice and law. His shoulders shake gently in quiet sobs into her chest, arms wrapped around her lower back.
“I did somethin’ worse than that, Seta.” He murmurs into her dress as if afraid of her disappointment. She grimaces slightly as she keeps her temple against his forehead, one hand stroking over his head like a mother would for her child. She steels herself, does not inquire for a good minute before she asks: “Quoi?” (”What?”)
“I killed Fenwick. Hung him up on display for the entire town to see.”
She pulls back from her embrace, hands on his shoulders when she looks at him with something that can only be named as fear. She has been there. One mistake and the town would come with fire and pitchforks, condemning the devils to hell. She thinks her heart stops beating entirely for a moment, air suddenly to hard to breathe. He sits up some on his knees, shaking his head at her rising panic and his hands move to take hers into his and clasp them.
“I know it was wrong, I know. I just-… I-”
“What have you done?” She asks in a small voice, sounding nearly accusing and downright disturbed at the fact that her Louis, her Saint Louis, would do something so disgustingly cruel and extravagant that it screams Lestat. It made him unrecognisable to her.
He startles at the look in her eyes, one that she has never given him before. And he hates himself for having done this thing out of anger and hate. He should have gone to her first as a sinner would go to church, he should have gone to her.
She rises to gain distance between them, hands moving to clasp over her stomach when she feels the nausea overcome her, slightly grimacing and her discomfort is visible to the man who rises off his knees.
“Où est Lestat?” (”Where is Lestat?”) In a panic, she always clings to her husband. The first thought in her head, the first thing in her mind, the bane of her existence and the very essence of her life. Her husband, who would think for her. Who would know what to do, or not to do, or tell her to lie down and stop bothering him.
“With that Antoinette.” He says, his face hardening at his own declaration. Her gaze shoots to him as if he was the one who has betrayed her. He had been with this woman much more than with another and, for a brief moment, she feels the urge to wrap her hands around her own throat and choke herself to death at the mere thought of a fourth in their marriage.
Her gaze casts downwards and she sobs her small sound of despair, eyes fluttering shut when she simply stands like a wounded lamb. His heart breaks into a thousand pieces at her soft cries and he does not hesitate to step up to her and embrace her to his chest as she has done a few moments earlier. She weeps into his chest, clinging to him even when he was half the reason she was crying but who was there besides him? Had he not been good to her this entire time? Has this one bad deed undone all the good he embodied to her?
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You know I am, right?” His words are quiet murmurs against her skin, intimate as if spoke to a lover. His hands move to her face, holding it as if it were a precious diamond and he plants a gentle kiss onto her cheek when she sniffles. One, then another, then another at the corner of her mouth and then?
Then lips meet with a silent gasp.
Her fingers curl into his suit, her lips part for his as if it were habit and if two people could inhale each other, they would have done so by now. Heads tilt, her own hands move to cradle face while his slides to the nape of her neck, his arm wrapping around her small waist to keep her against him. And sin screams in every pulsing hot vein of hers.
They are as insatiable as blood drinkers can be, open-mouthed and desperate when they cling to each other, their breaths mingling with the sound of infidelity.
How long had it been for her since a man has touched her with this much devotion? With this gentle firmness. It had been decades since the man she married had kissed her like this, ages since she has felt not desired but loved for her soul and her soul only.
Was this not sin? Was her marriage not her holiest commandment? Was she not the one who kept herself sinless as to not be tempted? Was she not property of her husband?
Was her heart not breaking for her husband?
She rips off him like someone would rip a piece of paper in two.
Her gaze is utter devastation, hands clasped over her mouth in shock of her own actions. She feels dirty. And for a brief moment she wonders how her husband can do this night after night and live with himself. But this was not about him right now. This was her. This was her, the adulterer, the blasphemer, the whore. She cries, childlike sobs muffled behind her palms when she gazes at him with a shattered heart.
His hands reach out for her, even when he did not know what he would have done if she would have let him touch her. She evades his grasp as if stung, feet hurrying towards the front door. Her coat is snatched off the rack, leaving it swaying side to side and when she shuts the front door behind her? It bangs. Loud and thunderous. And perhaps both realise just how much of Lestat has rubbed off on them.
She sits inside the church for hours and hours. Her fingers feel cramped from pushing the beads of her tasbih along on its string, her eyes burn from the salt of her tears and her neck aches from how she keeps it craned up at the cross over the altar. She sits in the very first pew, small in her husband’s coat (she had accidentally grasped his from the rack instead of hers) and she keeps it on, lets it envelope her. Because, even after many strikes of his hands and many broken hearts, his scent was her comfort. His scent was home. He was home and she had tarnished it. She sobs quietly, throat raw from them and her cramped fingers itch to claw out her eyes and face.
Sin is a heavy cloak. And guilt is it’s sister, Setareh’s familiar companion. Only had guilt never clung to her as it has now. Like a dark and looming shadow of shame, and she knows that when she returns home to her husband, disaster would occur. It kept her in church for even longer. She uses the time to think. She tries to figure out when it had come so far, when she should have stepped back, when she should have said ‘no’ to Louis. But it was too late now. His dried saliva burns on her lips like a brand mark, one that only her husband had put there before.
While she sits there, she comes to one conclusion only. One that makes her want to bury herself alive under multiple feet of damp earth. Because no matter how she felt for Louis, no matter how much kinder, gentler, loving he was… she would always choose Lestat. She would always choose him. Without a doubt. Is a home not a home because the wallpaper chips or curls? Is a cup not a cup because it has a crack in it? Is a husband not a husband because he does not know how to love? Is she not human because she is vampire? Is she not sinner because she is angel?
Is her husband’s bite not also touch?
Her walk home is as if she were walking a wake, gaze cast downwards, her heels a slow and steady click against the pavement. Her lashes are heavy with the shed tears, nose stuffy and mind veiled with a thick conscious. Perhaps it is the reason for why she does not smell that part of New Orleans is ablaze. Her gaze cast downwards, she does not see the orange hue in the night sky, she does not smell the smoke of fire due to her stuffy nose and her mind tunes out any sort of sirens, since they were much quieter than the screams of guilt inside her head.
The front door opens with a nearly gothic creak, her husband’s coat hanging heavy on her shoulders, hands swallowed up by the sleeves when she shuts the door with a gentle click. She was ready for punishment, any sort of reaction of any sort of person. She thought she deserved it. If Lestat would nail her shut in her coffin and starve her for days (perhaps weeks) as he has done one before, she would let him. She would not even scream.
The house was unusually quiet for this time of night, when usually the undead would have gathered by now for their soon slumber. Yet, the drawing room was vacant, the fire long died out. Her own gaze was even vacant.
With silent steps, she start to ascend the staircase. No step creaks when she steps on them. She is a ghost, weightless and yet heavy with sin.
Just when on the last step above, she stills for a long beat. Muffled cries, pleads and sobs. Her gaze locks onto the shut door of their bedroom and for a moment her fingers curls into the sleeves of her husband’s coat. It was Louis. She could hear it clear as day.
“Please, I’ll do anything. I’ll be anything.”
Panic floods her. Not for her, but for him.
Had Lestat truly taken it this far? Had he really put his hands on Saint Louis?
As if pushed by someone, her feet hurry towards the door. it whooshes open, a gust of wind and the own wind gets knocked out of her lungs at the scene playing out before her.
Louis kneels in front of Lestat as if begging, as if he had suddenly become his altar. He is sobbing, pleading and for a moment she thinks (hopes) the man is pleading for her. But no, her gaze follows Lestat’s . And in spite of having cried so much that any person would have no fluids left inside them, her eyes well up once more.
A child.
The scent of burned flesh mingles with the scent of their home, the whimpers and wheezes make her stomach churn and her teary and wide eyes snap to her husband who was already looking at her with a glassy gaze of his. It is a silent conversation. One that only two souls that have spent so many lifetimes together can speak and understand.
Louis’s stance speaks for itself, she can smell guilt and desperation from miles away because it is her very own scent. Silent tears roll down her flushed cheeks and she shakes her head quickly when she regards her husband. A silent plead for him to not do it.
He looks as solemn as a man could, a look she had not seen in a long time and it breaks her heart.
Her brows pinch, mouth open in quick shallow breaths. She steps closer to him but it seems as if it had been all that he needed. He steps away from Louis and towards the child and she can only sob her gasp.
To turn a child, to give it eternal life when it was not yet mature, when it would be trapped in its undeveloped body for all eternity while its mind would age… It was blasphemy of the most disturbing kind. It was the most unnatural thing to do, even for vampires.
She steps up to Lestat, ignoring the soft cries of her love on the ground. Her hands cling onto his arm, gaze pleading and her sobs quiet. She does not need to speak, he knows what she thinks of this because it is what he thinks. But he loved Louis. He would give this to Louis, even if he would loath himself even more after this.
He pushes her off him, the fabrics of their clothes shuffling slightly when she stumbles back two small steps. She can only watch when her husband kneels, hands clasped over her mouth when she watches him drink from the child.
When she watches him break the most important of laws.
She glances at Louis who crawls over to her like a wounded animal with his head bowed and his shoulders slumped, while their maker turns the child. His arms wrap around her legs, pressing himself against her as his anchor as if pleading for her forgiveness.
She does not react to him, lets him cling to her like a disobedient dog while she watches with disdain when a child dies in their house.
Claudia.
Their light, their redemption.
A daughter.
Claudia had been born that night, ‘a formidable fledgling’ Lestat would call her a few decades later.
Setareh sits quietly on a chair, with clumped lashes and an expression that can only be named as fury. She watches when Louis sits by the edge of the bed, talking quietly to the young girl, explaining, telling her to rest in the coffin before she would wake the following night.
Lestat walks towards his wife, quiet and casual steps and only his wife would recognise the look in his eyes. He regretted it, yet he did not speak it. A hypocritical bastard.
When their gazes meet her jaw clenches, lips in her pout and before he can fully step up to her, she rises from her seat and exits the bedroom. Louis briefly looks over his shoulder when the wife storms out and the husband follows her as if he were hunting. The door of the bedroom slams shut, leaving Louis and Claudia alone.
Sobs well up in her once more, not out of shock or sadness, but pure and unbridled anger. She whips around when they stand in the hallway, practically glaring at him and of course her husband does not like the look of it, his own expression hardening. Just when he is about to speak, a finger already pointed at her, she smacks it away.
Now, he is the one in shock, looking at his smacked-away hand before he regards the seething angel once more. His lips are parted and he is not sure whether to be surprised or (perhaphs even) scared by her sudden display of defiance. But he knows which option he will choose and it will be neither of the two.
“Comment as-tu pu faire ça? Une enfant! Lestat, c'est une enfant! Tu l'as condamnée.” (”How could you do this? A child! Lestat, she is a child! You have condemned her.”) Louis and Claudia can both hear the rise of her chocked up voice, the shake of unfamiliarity in it when she yells at her husband.
Of course her husband yells right back.
“C'est ma décision! Avez-vous oublié qui je suis? Qui êtes-vous pour me parler ainsi?” (”It is my decision! Have you forgotten who I am? Who are you to raise your voice at me?”) His voice resembles a roar, the house practically shaking when he grasps his wife by her delicate throat, a firm hand wrapped around it making her wince and be pulled closer to him. But her anger, for once in these nearly two hundred years, is as grand as his.
“Je suis ta femme! Et elle est une enfant! Elle vivra dans ce corps d'enfant pour l'éternité tandis que son esprit vieillira, et tu lui as fait ça pour quoi? Pour Louis? Il ne reste pas ici pour toi et tu le sais!” (”I am your wife! And she is a child! She will live in this child body for all eternity while her mind ages and you've done this to her for what? For Louis? He does not stay here for you and you know it!”)
A slap.
Her body hits the piano beside her, hands holding onto it for balance. Her cheek burns, the skin tender already and her mouth agape in a breathless gasp. She is not surprised of course, he had struck her more times than she can count, but it still hurts. Her glare finds his, a look he had never gotten from her before after he had struck her. He was only ever met with her submitting, backing off like a wounded animal but perhaps the animal was fed up with being wounded at all.
Just before he can reach out for her again, Louis storms out of the bedroom and places himself between husband and wife like a brick wall.
“Don’t you fucking touch her, you hear me?” He snaps at Lestat, a glare of his own directed at him. Meanwhile, the first few rays of sunlight start to peak into the home, the window above the piano allowing it to hit the surface of it slowly, another ray added by the second.
“What is she talking about, hm?” Lestat asks Louis, teeth bared like he was ready to bite her jugular out. His gaze flickers over Louis’ shoulder, looking at Seta with murder in his eyes, his chest moving with each ragged and furious breath.
Louis’ own chest moves up and down with his breaths, heart pumping fast in his chest and for a moment he does not know whether to speak it or not.
“I won’t leave you now. I told you that.” His voice is quieter now, confessional. And his gaze? Well, it tugs at Lestat’s heart. “But… But I love her. I love her and I love you and I know this shit is so fuckin’ messed up, especially with her,” he glances at the ajar bedroom door, the girl who had gotten up from the bed and stepped closer to the commotion to listen. “But I think, no, I know, we can make this work. You just- you just gotta let it. Ain’t no one leavin’, ain’t no one plottin’ anything. We love you. We love each other. We can… We can be a family now, Lestat.”
Both Lestat and Setareh look at Louis with disbelief and confusion on their faces, a twin-like expression after all these decades spent together. It is silent for a long moment, the married couple gazes at each other, then back at Louis as if taking it in.
It was against Lestat’s nature to share, especially his wife. And his first impulse is to roar. But something flickers inside him, something clicks as if his love for Louis was trying to believe him that things would work out, that this was alright to allow. As if this unnatural trinity could truly work out. His gaze finds Setareh’s again, anger turning into helplessness. Because what was he supposed to do now besides trust that his wife would stick by his side long after Louis would leave one day?
A long moment of silence passes when the little girl watches with one eye through the ajar door, watches the three undead in silent decision making. She looks at Seta’s struck cheek, the flush of it. Her gaze glides down her coat covered arm and landing on her hands that are mostly enveloped by the long sleeves, her fingers clinging to the piano. She watches how the light of the sun from the window above lies on the piano's surface, the light itching closer to Seta’s fingers… until it hits them.
Not one of the elders seems to notice when the sun touches skin that it had not touched in nearly two centuries. And no one notices when the skin does not burn.
“You do not lie with her. You do not kiss her if I do not allow you,” Lestat speaks, quiet, final, his words of allowance carrying silent threat when he speaks to Louis. “You will not touch her without me knowing. You will remember that she is my wife, that I have made you both. That you two would not exist if it were not for me, you would not have met if it were not for me.”
“You may love her. But you will not pretend she is yours.”
LESTAT & CLAUDIA Interview with the Vampire (2022–)
whatever
Dogma (1999) dir. Kevin Smith
Sous Le Lion
part VI
part I
part II
part III
part IV
part V
pairing: lestat de lioncourt x oc!reader x louis de pointe du lac
summary: wife turned lamb.
warnings: angst, mentions of domestic abuse and rape, mentions of blood, s*x work, death, infidelity, alcohol. (let me know if I forget something!)
word count: 5.104k
disclaimer: OC story!!! english is not my first language, so sorry on that front. and this is my first published piece, thus please have mercy on me. this is also not always accurate to either the chronicles or show. might be shit but at least not ai. thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
Laughter. How it bubbles out from her, a sound sweeter than any honey or sugar, pretty head thrown back in amused delight.
She sits across him at the nice café, people around them a mix of colours. White, black and others, no segregation or discrimination. Not in this one part of New Orleans, the ones that were slightly more... openminded. Thus, she sat there with Louis. A change of scenery, to get her out the house and church, to let her experience away from her husbands will. Her own will.
They had gone out more frequently lately. Let it be him walking her to church or picking her up, revisiting the bookstore, going to cafés or for simple walks by the river to talk. Their connection was blossoming, two people spending more and more time together not because felt like they needed to but simply because they craved to. And oh, how they craved.
Lestat had been out and about more nowadays, a woman, a singer, who had caught his eye a bit longer than the others before her. Louis and Seta could not care less. When Lestat would return home smelling of cheap perfume and sweat, Louis and Seta would sit inside their coffins, leaned over the edges, talking with sparkling eyes, murmuring half hearted greetings at their shared love.
Oh how they talked. All they did was talk, to learn more about the other, learn to love, to accept, to understand. And if there had been a lingering touch from the other, something that could and would be brushed off as an accidental graze of a hand or such? Then neither would pay much mind to it.
The air in the café was light and yet thick with the heat of the usual New Orleans weather and the amount of people in the half open place. It was packed, even during the late evening hour, tables with whites, blacks, people of any colour subverting the laws of one Jim Crow. Jim Crow did not matter here. This was no mans land. And she loved it.
She fans herself with the elegant fan taken out of her purse, laughing at Louis's easy and smooth words, at the photo-camera device in his hand that he has been getting into lately. Her skin glows from the heat, silk dress clinging to her soft curve as her eyes glimmer at Louis in the warm light of their surroundings. Jazz played among the chatter of people, among the bustling waiters and the iced tea she had ordered sweats, creating a ring on the dark wooden table.
"Non, Louis, do not take a picture of him. At least ask him before you do it." She giggles, leaning forward slightly to gently swat his photo-camera down. She leans back again when he holds it out of her grasp and grins at her with ease and charm and she cannot possibly be mad at his silliness.
The man Louis was targeting with his lens was a tall, different looking man. He had large ears, large hands, a giant really. One of the performers of the fair that travelled through this part of the country. Louis had already promised to take her there later.
"Why not?" He laughs, shoulders shaking when he evades the napkin that comes flying at his head by her hand. She tilts her head at him, that sweet smile on those sweetly smiling lips and he wonders how Lestat could ever put his hands on something as precious.
"Because it is rude. Perhaps he does not want a photograph to be taken of him." She argues for the man, the fan causing some strands of her open hair to flutter. She wore it down today, despite of the heat. Long, dark silk hanging there, glowing in the warm lights surrounding them, some strands clinging to her neck from the heat, and he loved it. It made her look free and less perfect, taking pressure of him for some sort of reason.
"Fine, fine. Not him then. But I gotta take a photograph of something, or I would've brought it for nothin'." A beat passes as he looks at her, tenderly so before he sits up some. "Lower the fan a bit." He then suddenly rumbles, already looking down at the device and she cannot help but have her breath hitch, smile falling off in confusion.
"Quoi? Moi?" ("What? Me?") She asks him stunned, long lashed blinking at him when he simply nods and replies with a simple: "Yeah, you. Come on now."
She breaths for a moment, watching him fiddle with his little device for a bit before she reluctantly lowers her fan a bit, unconsciously exposing part of her décolletage, skin glowing from the thin layer of sweat. She feels more shy than anything now. Of course she was used to people looking from time to time, but she had never been so openly the object of someones art, never been wanted to be eternalised through something lasting as a photograph. Lestat and her had a few paintings of them from a hundred years ago, but even then it was not to capture her, but more the institutional part of her life. Her marriage. To encapsulate the married couple because they were a married couple. No more, no less.
And now?
Now, Louis only wanted to capture her.
A click rips her out of her thoughtless thoughts and she moves now, no longer still. She glances at his device and then back at him. "And?" She asks curiously, perhaps slightly alarmed and he smiles at her, placing his device into its case.
"You'll see when I develop it." He answers almost teasingly now, a slight tug at the corners of her lips and, again, she cannot be mad at him. She smiles too, settling back into her seat properly.
When they later rise from their seats after he pays, she stops in her steps, eyes widened in childlike wonder.
"Oh, mon dieu! What a beautiful cake!" ("Oh, my God!") Her hands clasp her own face, stunned, brows pulling together in awe as she watches the pink glazed, round cake sitting behind the polished glass, shinning in all its glory. It was adorned with white and gold details, a cake meant for the softest princess of them all.
"Eat a piece if you want." He suggest as he watches from over her shoulder, slightly leaned closer to look at it himself, his presence and scent swarming her. He cannot help the slight smile on his lips when she looks nearly devastated at his suggestion.
"But then I will ruin it for wanting one piece. It is not fair to ruin this. Someone put so much effort into it, Louis."
"Then I'll buy you the whole cake, take it home. Eat as much as you want or just look at it to appreciate or whatever." He shrugs as he stands straight once more, hand already disappearing into his pocket to fish out cash. But she is faster, hand on his wrist to keep him from it. It is a gentle and yet firm touch, her skin hot against his. The heat from the city, nothing else.
"Non. I do not want it. Leave it here, s'il te plaît." She insists with a small shake of her head, fingers falling off Louis's wrist and back to her clasped purse in her other hand. Her eyes are big, nearly begging and hoping that he will not buy it just to spite her like her husband would.
His gaze softens some, head cocking at the sweet look on his face and he nods relenting. There are no words spoken then, only an arm offered for the dame to lead her out through the crowd and into the next one at the carnival fair.
She lights up like a light in no time, taking in every ruckus surrounding them, hands clinging to his arm and her purse. She is babbling by now, a stream of words because he lets her, because it interests him. Her husband would have told her to shut it not long ago, not interested nor having the patience to entertain her even if it took so little.
But nevertheless, he was not here now. Louis was.
And he was more than glad to fill in.
He tugs her along to one of the attractions, through the tight fit of the mass of people around, towards a woman bending herself over like a piece of paper, and beside him Seta lets out a small gasp of wonder. She claps her sweet (ungloved) hands and before he knows it, she lets go off his arm. Before he can protest in any way, place it back there as to keep her close in this mess of humans, her hand suddenly slips into his and now tugs him along.
He blindly follows her, his own gaze fixed on her fair skin against his dark, at the feel of her hand in his. He tries to imprint it, silently curses his photo-camera for not being able to eternalise the weight of her hand in his, the feel of her skin, the heat of it. He wants to shun himself for the mere thoughts of it. And yet... and yet he lets himself be pulled along. Towards a man spitting fire, having her cheer out an excited "Allez!" between her sweet giggles and smiles. She then pulls him along woman inside a tank of water, fishtail instead of legs, smiling and waving at the audience. And then, she pulls him towards the house of mirrors.
She patiently waits as he pays the small fee for their entrance, hand out of his and both hands behind her back like a sweet and patient child. She murmurs a small "Merci." before walking ahead into the dimmly lit inside.
It is a confusion place, mirrors everywhere and she sees herself tenfold. She walks ahead, hands in front of her, sweet and quiet while the noises from outside suddenly fade out, muffled and away. She is caged in, eyes darting around for the next walkable path and when she looks over her shoulder to look at Louis, he is not there. Her smile vanishes immediately and she stops in her tracks, turning fully now to glance around but all she sees is herself from all sorts of angles.
"Louis? Où es-tu?" ("Where are you?") Her voice sounds damp, nearly small and unsure as she turns once more to look into the other direction. She hears no reply at first, brows pulling together and a sense of panic bubbling up in her chest at the mere thought of not having him around, of not finding the way out even when she knows they are feeble and stupid fears. And yet, she has them.
"I'm here." He tells her, and it feels like a breath against her neck, sounds close enough to be one. But when she turns, he is not there. She is huffing and puffing by now, walking through the maze once more. It is quiet inside, the muffled sounds even drowned out by now and she hates how alone and played with she feels in that moment. "Louis, ce n'est pas drôle. Je veux partir. Come out at once, s'il te plaît." ("Louis, this is not funny. I want to leave.") She speaks again, pout on her plush lips as she thuds against one of the mirrors at a dead end. Her shoulders slump at the lack of response and the fact that she is still trapped inside. She turns, walking another path once more. "Louis, je veux vraiment-" ("Louis, I really want-")
She is cut off by her own small scream, a soft sound really and yet her hands move to shield herself in reflex. But he means no harm when he suddenly crowds her, letting out a playful growl when he leans his face down towards her neck in a joking act of sinking his fangs into her, hands resting on her waist. Just then, when she swats his chest does he back off, chuckling at his own little prank, but it quickly fades when he sees how small and distraught she looks, and he realises how that must have startled her and simply not been amusing to her. It had not been a goodhearted joke when Lestat did this to her many a times, fangs in her neck, limp body in his arms.
Louis expression softens, hands moving to cradle her sweet and pouty face instead. "Hey, I'm sorry. I'm just goofin' around, you know that. I'm sorry, Seta." He murmurs gently, pads of his thumbs caressing the highs of her cheekbones as she looks at him with those big eyes.
She simply nods in reply, hands lingering on his chest. She cannot be angry with him, not when she knows he only meant to have some fun, scare her as a prank. It was not his fault she was such a frightened little thing. "Je sais. I am sorry. I do not understand any fun." ("I know.")
He sighs through his nose at that, eyes flickering between her warm ones and he shakes his head. "You do know fun. This just the wrong kind of fun for you. It's alright. No harm done, right?" He is tender with her, cradling her face with the utmost care and devotion and her heart melts as she looks up at him with those soft eyes and pouty lips. Of course no harm was done. He would never harm her. He would rather cut off each of his hands before they would ever hurt her. Both knew it. Which is what frightened both of them as they stand there in silence, gazing at each other in the place of mirrors and reflections. All they can see is the other, even when they were not looking at the mirrors.
They cannot help it.
They cannot help to lean in, tips of their noses brushing, breaths mingling.
He cannot help but to glance down at those shiny, parted lips.
She cannot help the flutter of her lashes when she does the same with him.
The friends, of the young man who fully walks into one of the mirrors, cannot help themselves burst into laughter.
It snaps them out of it, both pulling off each other as if they were on fire.
The following half hour is a dead silent one. They exit the house of mirrors, walk out the crowd at the carnival fair and walk home, the click of their shoes on the path deafening.
She feels tainted. The most sinful sinner of them all. Her nails dig into her sides as she holds herself when they enter their home. They do not even look at each other when she wordlessly hurries up the stairs and he stays down below to give both him and her space.
When she changes and freshens up, despite the early hour, she is already entombed into her coffin. She lies with her own thoughts of shame and guilt, sure of the fact that God will strike her down for her moment of sin with Louis while her husband was currently between the legs of another. She cries silent tears, hand muffling her small sobs, nails clawing at the inside of the coffin lid in shallow scratches of anger directed at herself.
She was alone at home soon enough. Louis had left within the first five minutes after they had arrived, left to check on his business at the Azalea, even when there was nothing to check on, mind a mess that needed to be pushed through a door and said door nailed shut.
She falls asleep fast from simple hunger and the exhaustion that tears and sorrow bring. Her sleep is not a nice one but it is deep. She does not hear Louis coming back home, upstairs towards his own coffin and she does not feel his lingering gaze on her shut coffin. She also does not hear her whore of a husband return home, nor does she smell the scent of woman's arousal lingering on his skin like a taint. She sleeps and only feels her guilt and shame.
She wakes later than both men, sleepy and cuddled into one of her robes, bare feet padding down the staircase. Both Louis and Lestat were out already. Louis would not walk her to church tonight and Lestat... well, he was out as always, unknowing of his own wife thinking herself a whore from the deepest and darkest pits of hell.
And when she walks into the drawing room and sees the pink, glossy glazed cake sitting on the coffee table like either an offering or apology (perhaps both)... then it might mean everything to her.
Louis leans against the bar inside his precious and bustling Azalea, holding between two fingers the developed photograph of an angel he had captured. All sweet and timid smile, big brown eyes and a glow around her similar to a halo. A vision. And his heart clenches. He stands straight as if suddenly catching himself, eyes looking anywhere but the photograph while he carefully stuffs it into the inner pocket of his jacket. Sin wafts through the air of his establishment. Sin and hidden plots against the Creole man, unbeknownst to him.
Thomas Anderson sits in the far corner of the room, as sated as a mortal can be, with a full stomach, empty balls, liquor in one hand and a cigar in the other. He had plans that would spite Louis, make his life as a black man much harder than it already was. But who to know? Louis's mind seemed to be somewhere else entirely lately, even the working girls noticed it. Perhaps Louis was not the unorthodox businessman Thomas Anderson had thought him to be. Shame.
While Louis tends to his business and Lestat to his newest conquest Antoinette, Setareh de Lioncourt sits on the second row pew in church, the between of her fingers still sticky with cake she had eaten in a way that would put her husband to shame.
Her lips are still sweet with sugar and yet she tastes only the bitterness of guilt.
How could she have let it come this far? How could Louis let it come this far? Had he not been a homosexual man, someone she never had to worry would see her in that primal way all the men did? It troubled her deeply and her heart felt like it was in her throat at all times, shame bubbling in her lungs like acid. She would rather tell her husband as to be punished as she thought she should have been. But, oh God, she was scared. Never had that been an issue. Never had Lestat thought of her to lust after another, nor had she ever. It had always been a non-issue. And the worst?
She could not predict how her husband would react.
The holy man watches her sit there like a statue for an entire two hours longer than she usually does. It wonders him how she can sit so still, so devoted with her gaze on the crossed prophet. Had the angel sinned? Had the angel a guilt so deep and heavy, that she dreaded to leave the only thing that felt clean to her? He could not ask her, for she had already left the place of worship with the wind that was howling outside.
When she returns to her home, the front door shutting out the whistle of the nearly stormy weather, she senses immediately the oppressing air inside. She would rather be blown away by the wind than be here now.
Her quiet steps lead her to the drawing room, eyes already fixed on her fallen angel sitting by the fireplace.
She tries to keep her face neutral, blank even. And yet her warm eyes are a telltale sign of her internal dread and shame. Her gloves are on her hands still, as if she was hiding the invisible mark Louis's hand left in hers last night. She gulps when she comes to a halt a step into the drawing room. Her husband simply looks at her, expression much more controlled than hers. And yet, his gaze too gave him away. Suspicion.
"Bonjour. Long time no see." He greets her casually, a hand on the armrest raising lazily so as he shoots her an easy smile which does not even reach his eye. She stands there like a stiff little doe, blinking at him with dark lashes and he cannot help but wonder what it was this time. He silently beckons her closer with his finger, head tilting done slightly and he looks downright predatory like this, ready to pounce if she would slip even the slightest bit.
She wordlessly does as he says, stepping closer but not close enough to be even within arms reach. She lowers her purse onto the side table, looking at it rather than him.
"Dieu ne t'a-t-il pas répondu, ou pourquoi as-tu l'air si bouleversée, ma chère épouse?" ("Did god not answer you or why do you look so struck, my dear wife?") He asks her with a slight pull up of his shoulders, tilting his head at his silent and nearly pouting wife.
Her gaze finds his again, all quiet and soft when she answers, gloved hands clasped in front of her. "Je suppose que j'ai juste faim." ("I suppose I am only hungry.") She murmurs in reply. The fire cracks loudly, as if detecting her lie and ratting her out to her husband.
He smirks. "Ah. Faim." ("Hunger.")
She does not reply to it. What is she supposed to reply? If she would talk more, she would lie more and she could not sin more than she already had. When a knock at the front door sounds, she counts her blessings for the interruption. Lestat's smirk vanishes at once, looking past his lovely wife before lifting off the chair in an feline way, walking past her with all his unbothered high and might. She hears the door opening, the voice of a man and the crinkle of paper.
The front door shutting rattles the entire house like an earthquake.
And yet he walks back into the drawing room with the usual swagger and grace in his steps, reading over the paper in his hand when he comes to a stop right in front of her. She glances at the piece of paper in his hand, brows pulling together slightly when she hears the faint huff through his nose, a sound of displeasure.
"He will not be happy about this." He says with feigned sound of sadness, something so him that she learned to distinct it from genuine pity and sarcasm. He stands a breath away from her, chest nearly touching hers as to crowd her space, remind him of who even owns the very air around her. He turns the paper in his hand at her silent questioning look, showing her the contents.
She feels genuine pity at that, face falling, hands unclasping.
"Ouoi? Pourqoui?" ("What? Why?") She breaths out genuinely devastated, hands reaching up to grasp the paper, but he snatches it away quickly as if she was some child trying to touch its parent's documents.
"C'était inévitable. Je lui ai dit." ("It was inevitable. I have told him.") He shrugs, letting the paper fall onto the side table where her purse sat on. His steps lead him back to the armchair, plopping into it with his usual grace and carelessness and she wonders what the hell is wrong with him. She glances at the paper once more, reading the words of 'temporary closure'. Her heart broke for Louis. Just when she was about to open her mouth to protest (a rare occurrence) on Louis's behalf, the man himself enters.
She looks over her shoulder at him and piercing green meets honeyed brown. It is a fleeting look of unspoken softness before she redirects her gaze to her husband, curious and slightly weary on how he plans to handle this situation. And when he announces it the way he does (with a smirk on his face), she wants to throttle her husband.
"You have post, cher Louis. Seems as if the Azalea must close."
Louis soft gaze disappears in an instance and turns into a troubled one. His gaze follows hers, seeing the paper on the side table and with quick steps he walks over to it and snatches it off, eyes skimming over the words. She can barely look at the anger and frustration on his face, how his jaw tenses and clenches, how the paper crinkles in his hands.
"Fuck. Fuck Anderson. Fuck Fenwick!" His voice raises, paper a ball in his fist and she flinches at the sound of his agitated voice. And within the same second he notices it, he quiets down, the pinch between his brows fading. He looks at her for a moment, exhaling deeply through his nose, while internally scolding himself, before he looks back at his lover.
"We gotta go to 'em. Talk to 'em about this shit," He tells Lestat with slightly raised brows, gaze determined and definite. "And wipe that fucking smile off your face. You think this is funny? They take this from me, I ain't gon' have nothin' left."
Her wide eyes jump between Louis and Lestat, and she feels ready for impact. If it had been her to talk to Lestat like that, he would have her on her hands and knees like a dog. She stands silent and stiff, looking between them like a tennis match. And Lestat? His smile vanishes but he stays seated, calm.
"Of course you will. You have me, you have a life with m-"
"You took my life!" He suddenly snaps with a scowl, fist colliding onto the side table, her purse on it rattling. She flinches again, but this time he does not notice, too wrapped up in his anger over the Azalea and Lestat. "I got nothing. I lost everything. I lost my brother. I lost my family. About to lose the last fucking thing I care about." He tosses the balled up piece of paper at Lestat's sitting form and she can see the exact moment the switch inside him flips.
He stands within the same second, face to face with Louis in a show of speed and silent intimidation, anger, rage. And still, he does not touch the hard breathing, seething Louis. Instead, his hand snaps out to his wife, fisting her hair in a fit of anger that she had zero fault in.
She cries out in pain, head tilted back when her hands snap to his arm in instinct. Louis's face falls, head snapping towards Lestat who practically howls her against him.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Louis thunders at Lestat while the wind howls and and roars alongside them. A storm brews, even if there was no rain yet.
"Mind your own business!" He snaps back out at Louis, not even sparing him a glance and of course Louis does not mind his business. Not when he knows that he is responsible for anger than Lestat lets out on his angel of a wife instead of Louis. And Seta? She lets it happen because she still thinks that it is what she deserves, a sense of sick karma for something she had not even done. Lips had not touched, lines were merely grazed. But saintly Seta would always repent, even when it was not her sin to repent. She feels the rough pull at her hair, the firm hand wrapped around her throat. She knew he was not angry with her, knew he only used her as a punching bag as he often times did. And when Louis pushes at Lestat, she feels an odd sense of calm, no matter the pain.
Someone was stepping up to defend her, protect her. And she had not felt safe in a very long time.
"Don't fucking touch her, you hear me?!" He places himself between husband and wife like a brick wall, shielding her like a knight of olden times. "You do this shit and I'm outta here, and I'll take her the fuck with me."
Lestat's head tilts at his lover with an slight amused and surprised sound, thinking he has heard wrong. Because why would Louis ever leave Lestat and most importantly: where the hell did he think he had a right to take Lestat's property with?
He cannot help but laugh. A thunderous, head-thrown-back sort of laugh. And both Seta and Louis watch with weariness and something close to disgust.
Here they were, like some sort of sick alliance that Lestat himself had put together without the intent of even having them be able to stand each other. And he thinks for a short moment, as he delights himself in his amusement. He thinks of how much less he had seen her around nowanights, how she seemed to glow lately, how much her and Louis seem to chat and smile at each other. And his laughter quickly quiets down, the look on his face dangerous and even close to something murderous. Seta gulps behind Louis.
"My wife? You want to leave me and take my wife? My god given property. Have you been hit over the head, Louis?" He asks him in a light tone, hands palms up beside him in almost comedic question but this was anything but funny. This was Lestat's madness.
"You can't keep treating her like this. Times are different now. She got her own voice and she's her own person, not some property or trophy or a fucking punching bag for you to use. You gotta stop this." Louis persists once more, shaking his head at Lestat in a scolding fashion, as if he had to explain something to a child. Perhaps this was something needing explanation after decades and centuries of whatever it was they had. Times did change. But they had not.
Lestat blinks at him, a slow and unhurried blink as if he was still considering how to act upon this sudden change of pace. There were three in this marriage now. And it was obvious. "How sweet." He notes calmly, gaze flickering over to Seta behind Louis. "Je suis dèsolè, cheri." ("I am sorry, my dear.") He says it with unhidden contempt, everyone gathered knowing that he was in fact not sorry. Perhaps he was not sorry for the anger he would have let out on her, but more for the fact that he let Louis and her get this close.
Because for the first time in his nearly two hundred years of life, Lestat de Lioncourt felt threatened by another man.
His own man.
Sous Le Lion
part V
part I
part II
part III
part IV
pairing: lestat de lioncourt x oc!reader x louis de pointe du lac
summary: wife turned lamb.
warnings: angst, mentions of domestic abuse and rape, mentions of blood, s*x work, death, infidelity, alcohol. (let me know if I forget something!)
word count: 4,885k
disclaimer: OC story!!! english is not my first language, so sorry on that front. and this is my first published piece, thus please have mercy on me. this is also not always accurate to either the chronicles or show. might be shit but at least not ai. thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
When a vampire feeds only from animals, and even sparingly so, the body gradually turns not only fatigued or starved, but downright consuming. It feeds on every bit on blood left in the system, even on its own flooding through the veins. With a dazed mind and a sluggish body, a vampire thus reaches the lowest of its potential. It is downright mortal. Human.
So when Setareh de Lioncourt enters the New Orleans townhouse home with her husband, her mind gives out and her knees buckle. She sees nothing but a dark void for a moment, mind fuzzy and body no longer in her control when it gives out.
A vampire at his fullest potential, Lestat de Lioncourt reacts immediately before his bride can topple onto expensive wooden floors. He holds her light body on one arm, shutting the front door with his other hand. He gazes upon the angel in his arm and it so reminds him of the night he had cursed her. Limp body in middle of transition, weak and frail and utterly her with a bleeding neck.
It was no different now. Fluttering lashes, eyes half closed and arms limp by her sides. With a slight huff through his nose, he picks her up into his arms, carrying her over to lie on the chaise. He is familiar with this procedure. Knows how she gets when she starves herself, her mind too fogged up with guilt and penance to even let herself stay alive. She rather tether on the edge than to give into her demonically unnatural hunger.
He lowers himself onto his knees beside her and for a moment, he just stares. His gaze glides over the high cheekbones that glow in the dim light of their shared home, over the exposed neck and faint pulse when her head had lolled to the side. She looks pale now, half dead. Especially after the rouse of emotions earlier, which had sucked the last of her energy.
And with no one around but him and his demons, Lestat regards his wife gently. His fingers ghost over her cheek as if he had never laid a sharp hand onto her, his gaze soft and tender, nearly devoted as he had been before he had died. “Je ne te permets pas de mourir. Pourquoi fais-tu cela malgré tout, chérie?” (”I do not allow you to die. why do you do this nonetheless, dear?”)
Her eyes move behind her eyelids, soft lips in her usual small pout as she lies there and she looks like she is sleeping and dreaming of some life far better than this one. His whisper of a voice does not rouse her, her body too close to the edge of utter starvation. She does not notice a thing. Not even how he takes off his suit jacket and carelessly drops it onto the Persian carpet under his knees, nor the unbuttoning of his sleeve and how his fangs burrow into his wrist.
What she does notice is life flooding back into her like the strong current of a river. His blood, mixed with the blood of now dead mortals, flowing through her like the essence of life. Her husband keeps her alive, feeds her, in more ways than one. He is her provider, always and forever.
Dazed chocolate slowly open with fluttering lashes, staring up the ceiling when her breathing grows deeper once more. He hears the steady thump of her heart growing louder, albeit still drowned out by the roar of his own. It echos through her mind, the sound of his heart like a thunderous drum, one that fills her with trepidation as much as nostalgia. It was the drum of live to her. Careful hands come up to his wrist, keeping it against plush lips when her tired gaze finds his in the silence of the moment. She is near to gulping it down, drinking what she should be drinking, the note of human blood distinct and it fills her with strength once more.
His hand soothes over dark silk on the top of her head as she drinks, their gazes unwavering on the other. It is a calming thing he does while feeding her, a part Louis had not seen with the two of them. Lestat caring for her. It was a rare occurrence but it was one.
“N'a-t-il pas le goût du soleil lui-même?” (”Does it not taste like the sun itself?”) He murmurs in a quiet voice, not breaking the intimacy of the moment. Because it was an intimate moment. One vampire feeding from the other was not even close to the intimacy of lying with one another. It was indescribable and frankly, something that was holy to them. Which is why he did it with both her and Louis. And no matter how much she lets him do, no matter how much authority Lestat has over her and how uncaring he is with whatever he does, this was something he had yet to tell her… if he could ever. He knew that this would truly kill her, as much as it would kill him. It would be worse than the cheating, the striking hand or the autonomy he took from her every now and then. If she would find out that he shared his essence of life with Louis, it would truly start something irreversible.
She looks at him with half lidded eyes. Her husband who looked as beautiful as some sort of fallen angel, all seduction and sultriness now. And yet, and yet, she saw the glimmer of the young man she once knew. Lestat. Les. Her hands move off his wrist when he gently pulls it back. His thumb carefully wipes off the one drop of blood off the corner of her lip before pushing it past parted lips. She sucks the bit off almost absentmindedly, eyes on his focused ones, on his own parted lips. When his hand withdraws, it rests loosely around her throat and she feels the wetness of his thumb, of her saliva, on the skin over her thumping pulse.
It is quiet in their shared home for a long few moments, because what are those moments to a vampire? A mere blink.
“Tu me détestes vraiment?” (”Do you truly hate me?”) She inquires softly, using his brief tenderness to be tender with him. His expression softens faintly at her sweet and yet heartbreaking question. He understood why she would think it, did not give her reason to think differently. But how to understand or even phrase what he felt?
“Tu es la vie même pour moi. Si tu cesses d'exister, j'en ferai autant.” (”You are life itself to me. If you cease to exist, so shall I.”)
It is no lie and both know it. He speaks it quietly and yet with utter conviction. How could he live without someone he had been with every night of his immortal life? Nearly two hundred years of them, no matter how cruel most nights had been. They were life and death to the other, tragically so. And it would never change. There was no life without her for Lestat de Lioncourt.
Her almost sleepy eyes soften at his words, something sad flickering over her face at the sweetness of his words while he chose to be so terrible to her so many other times. She pleads to any Gods above that he will cease to be the monster and become her husband again, so that the flickers of him she sees every now and then will become her normal once more.
“Et Louis?” (”And Louis?”) She does not know why she asks, why she threatens this rare tender moment but she must. It is a persistent question in her mind, something that fills her with anxiety if not answered and put to rest.
“J'adore Louis. Mais il n'est pas toute ma vie, seulement une partie.” (”I love Louis. But he is not life, only part of it.”) At his soft answer, at the tender knuckles brushing over her now once more flushed cheek, she feels bad for Louis. No matter if he had disrupted her home life, no matter if he was the third in their marriage now. She felt bad for him because Lestat would get over it if something would happen to Louis, even if it would take decades (perhaps even a century) of grieving him. But if Setareh would die? Lestat de Lioncourt would tear the world apart and then walk off the edge, into black oblivion, in hopes of being reunited with her once more.
Then, as if broken out of a spell, he rises off the carpet and adjusts his sleeve. Her eyes follow him as she lies motionless on the chaise, dark hair sprawled out under her head.
“You must go out and feed maintant.” He tells her, evading her gaze with his raised chin after grabbing his suit jacket off the floor. She wonders why he speaks in English once more and then right after wonders why she bothers to wonder. Louis enters the townhouse right after Lestat draped the expensive fabric over the back of the armchair beside him.
Louis’s gaze meets her and he basically smells the blood of his maker, sees her lying there so tiredly and he immediately goes into panic, brows pilling together when his gaze shifts to Lestat accusingly.
“You said you won’t touch her!” He exclaims, stepping towards Lestat with quick steps.
“I didn’t touch my wife, cher Louis. I fed her. She fainted because she was starving herself. Again.” He explains calmly (not without a half roll of his eyes) when he leans against the armchair, one hand on the back of it when he addresses Louis with a quirk of his brow.
Louis quickly changes up, throwing her a look as to say ‘is it true?’ And she nods, slowly lifting herself up to sit on the chaise rather than to lie like a rag doll. She still feels dizzy and slightly dazed, but it is her mind that is that way. Her body has strength to it again.
“She refuses to feed as you know her to do.” Lestat continues when pushing off the armchair to go grab a drink from the bar cabinet. “A fish that doesn’t swim. A bird refusing to fly. My darling wife refusing to drink human blood.” He smiles unamused over his shoulder at her, the corners of his lips turning downward within the same second before he shifts his attention back to pouring himself a drink. He swirls the amber liquid in the crystal glass, walking back over to his wife and lover with leisurely, feline steps.
Lestat silently holds the glass out for her and she is briefly taken aback by his gesture (even when she to drink or feel intoxicated in any way), but she accepts. Her fingers graze his when she takes it into her own hand and he seems pleased at both her and himself for doing this small thing for her. “To stop the shaking of your hands, mon soleil.” (”My sun.”) He murmurs almost intimately when he watches her sip on it, nose scrunching up some in distaste. But he had silently ordered her to drink. So drink she would.
Louis watches it happen, gaze flickering between her obeying self and then towards Lestat who’s gaze suddenly seemed very possessive and intrigued, downright yearning. It stumped Louis, to see Lestat so intent and focused on his wife, who he most times waved off. Perhaps it had been the act of blood sharing, of providing her with life once more. It evoked feelings that were slightly more tender than usual. Her own gaze is sweet like a doe when she looks up through her lashes at Lestat, silently sipping and ignoring the burn in her throat like she often does with the burn in her heart.
And Louis knows that some nights? Husband and wife are to be left alone.
It is much later- well, early in the morning- when Lestat and Seta entomb themselves in his coffin. The inside is her own little sanctuary, thus not his place. He did not like the fuzzy blanket in it, the smell of her that would surround him and make him long for past gentle love. And Seta? As much as it was her sanctuary, she really did not want him to see the claw marks on the inside of the lid, the evidence of her pain and torment when starving or heartbroken.
Thus, on this rare occasion, they lie inside his coffin, her small and delicate frame pressed against his and he lets her, even envelopes her like a husband should. It is one of those scarce times when husband and wife want to be left alone, with each other and each other only. Perhaps it was habit or familiarity that gave them comfort instead of love, but it was comfort, and it was what both needed after the intimate act of sharing blood. Her breathing is calm and quiet against his silk clad chest, her noir hair like silk under his palm when he strokes over her head like a mother does with her child.
She had fallen asleep quick, both because of keeping herself off human blood (his blood had not been enough of course) and because she was simply a sleepy little thing. She’d rather live in her dreams than in this world and he knew it. He just did not understand it. To him, dreams were nothing, unpleasant things really. Perhaps he was jealous of her ability to dream so frequently, so nicely. Her dreams never hurt her. And he hated it.
His striking eyes snap to the side of his coffin in the dark, hearing the faint sound of Louis retreating into his own coffin now as well. The sun would be up the horizon soon, glowing in their absence and he feels a pang of guilt for having Louis alone in his coffin. But it fades quickly. He thinks to himself that he has no reason to feel guilty. He was their maker. He could do what he want. After all, who would punish him? God? The devil? He ceased to believe in either. The real evil walked this earth and Lestat de Lioncourt was part of that evil, in his own opinion at least. Never in his wife’s opinion. To her, Lestat was simply lost. No matter how many bruises, pulled hair strands or the burn between her thighs… her husband simply needed to embrace God again, to repent and show rue. He would find the light he had lost again.
Come dusk, Lestat is awoken by warm, faint feather touches only an angel could give. He feels it along his cheek, down the curve of his jaw and the side of his neck. His head lols to the side slightly, lips against the top of her head and he lets out an oh so human sigh of sleep against her hair. Her fingers stop tracing, hand resting on the dark silk he is dressed in. Brown eyes glance up in the dark, tender and filled with hope and lingering youth.
“Bonne nuit.” (”Good night.”) She whispers in greeting and it evokes memories of the past once more. Sweet-nothing greetings and tender kisses exchanged, rolling around sheets and giggles.
He lets out a faint hum of acknowledgement, not bothering to speak in that quiet moment. He would let her and himself have this fleeting deja-vu, let them bask in his softness before it would vanish into thin air once more. They linger inside the coffin for a while. Louis hears it all from his own coffin, the whispers, her amused and breathy exhales at her husband’s low murmurs. They are making plans, revelling in the truce Lestat had allowed them, wanting to enjoy it however long he would let it last.
It is why the three of them are out and about within the next hour. Lestat and her happily trot in front of Louis, who almost sulks as he trails after them and smokes his bitter cigarette. He is not jealous of them, does not long for attention of either, but he simply feels for her.
He loves that sweet smile on her lips, her sweet giggles and her sweet arms around Lestat’s one, how she clings to her husband and listens avidly as he speaks to her in French.
He hates how he knows that it is only temporary, how quickly that sweet smile, those sweet giggles will fade. How she will rather throw herself off him and flinch at his mere touch than cling to him as a loving wife does.
Nevertheless, he walks with them to some courtyard club that is somewhat more civilised than other places (because Lestat’s wife does not belong in filthy places) and the music approved by Lestat. She likes to dance and she did not get to do any of it last night. So he would let her have it tonight. He would dance with her, twirl her around and dip her low and be a husband. And tomorrow? He would do the same with someone else.
And Louis’s fucking heart broke just thinking about it.
As soon as they enter, the jazz vibrates through the air in its very own frequency and she cannot help the content albeit small sigh of hers when she sees the performers, the dancers, the ease of the place. It was so unlike her and yet so much to her liking.
“On peut déjà aller danser?” (”Can we already go dance?”) She spins around to face him properly, eyes wide with excitement and impatience. She looks like some child asking for their parent’s approval. And Lestat gave it with a sultry tug at the corner of his lips and a murmurs “Bien sur, chéri.” (”Of course, darling.”) He tugs at her hand, larger one clasping hers with the usual firmness, pulling her along to the dance floor, not without looking over his shoulder at his lover. “Do get a table for us, Louis.”
Louis blows (huffs) out smoke from the last of his cigarette, gaze lingering on the retreating couple before walking over to one of the smaller tables. As soon as he sits, his hand digs into his inner suit jacket pocket, pulling out his silver case and immediately lighting another cigarette. The Creole man watches the undead dance among the living, watches him twirl her around and he feels like plunging the burning cigarette into each of his eyes. He hated the feeling of the inevitable, hated to know how the glow in her eyes would soon diminish and tears take its place. But he tries to enjoy the moment. God, does he try.
He focuses on the sound of the music, people’s whooping and laughing. And yet, it feels as if all he hears is her laughter, her sweet sounds of delight when she is being dipped down low and then pulled back up. He watches her, watches the light watch over her and he thinks he is in the presence of something godly.
What he does not focus on is the cigarette burning in his hand, the ash lingering against the cigarette as it keeps burning, before the ash drops onto his lap and onto his trousers. He quietly curses to himself, hand wiping over the spot and only smearing the ash all over the dark red fabric. He sighs, stubbing out the cigarette into the glass ashtray. When a waiter passes, Louis orders for the three of them (no alcohol for her, to keep the peace). The drinks are brought just in time when the song melts into another one, and husband and wife return with smiles on their faces. Louis is already dipping his finger into his bourbon, using it to clean off the ash stain on his trousers.
“What happened?” She asks him slightly stumped, sitting down beside him and glancing down at his wiping finger. He looks over at her and simply gives a slight shake of his head and a small tut.
“Ash from the cigarette.”
He need not say more, her handkerchief is already pulled out, silk replacing his finger in gentle motions. He lets her do, gaze lingering at her sweet and focused face when she gets rid of the stain and the lingering dampness of the scotch. He feels her touch on his thigh, how warm she is and for a split second, his gaze flies over to Lestat across from them, who sits leaned back with no worry in the world, sipping the red wine Louis had ordered for him. And when their gazes meet? Lestat looks subtly amused, quirking a brow at his lover when he catches the slight hitch of breath.
“Bien.” (”Good.”) She leans back into her seat, looking at her handiwork with a proud glimmer, happy to help like the little do-gooder she was. “D’accord?” (”Alright?”) Her big eyes find Louis’s, seeking approval as she was trained to do by her maker.
Louis quickly adverts his gaze from Lestat, glances at her and then again quickly adverts his gaze to his bourbon, as if he does not want to be caught staring at either of them with a gaze he does not trust to be subtle.
“Yeah… merci.” He clear his throat, his Adams apple bopping, sitting up in the chair and he lets his gaze wander over to the dancing crowd. Everywhere but either of them. He felt odd all of the sudden and he blamed the fact that he was hungry for blood, instead of her lingering touch on him, how she took care of him, how she smelled.
Lestat, mercifully (and oddly) so, does not say nor acknowledge anything anymore. He simply follows Louis’s gaze towards the dance floor, sips his wine and stays uncharacteristically quiet. She blames it on him probably being hungry and moody, does not think much more of it and sips her fruity juice drink. She did not like it. It was too sweet to her liking but she would not say a thing. Louis had ordered it for her, thought about what she might like or not like. He went through the tiniest bit of trouble for her and that tasted better than anything else in the world.
“Lestat, irons-nous danser à nouveau?” (”Lestat, will we go dance again?”) There is that excited and yet sweet sound of her hopeful voice once more, too sweet drink placed to the side when she shifts onto the edge of her seat. She was halfway ready to get up in no time, making use of her husband’s good spirits. But Lestat? He simply raises a finger at her, a silent gesture of ‘not yet, my child’, his gaze still lingering on the crowd. Her shoulders slump faintly when she shifts to sit back properly on the chair, reluctantly obeying to his words. Because his word was law. At least it was to her.
Lestat and her dance not one more time, not two nor three, but entire four times and Louis himself feels like he is being twirled around by now. He had fed in the meantime. Some poor bastard who went to take a piss in the other alley, also too drunk to probably remember the one who attacked him that night, slurring his words at Louis. Of course, the man’s buzz immediately made it self known to Louis, the lover now having trouble with each step he took. He runs a hand over his face, one arm around Seta’s shoulder when she walks home with him (more like walking him home). Lestat had stayed behind in the late night to also go feed, much more selectively and dramatically than Louis of course, and thus ordered his wife to go home with his lover.
Seta, the angel, supports Louis all over the cobblestone paths, opening the front door and letting him lean against the wall. Just when she lets go off him, shutting the door with one gloved hand, he grasps the wrist of her other. The door falls shut with a finite click and her gaze snaps over to his in silent curiosity.
His green eyes are not even looking at her face but rather at the silk gloved hand, his other hand tracing over the fabric before slowly tugging it loose at each of her five fingers. Her lips part in unsureness but she lets him do. She lets him tug the silk off her delicate hand, let him awe at how it slips off like water and lands on the ground like a heavy feather.
He seems nearly hypnotised when he lets the pad of his index finger trace one of the lines on her palm with reverent softness. Her brows pull together slightly, wondering what he was getting at and about just how drunk he was. He traces along the line in the middle, looking at it with so much focus as if it held the answer to every secret in the world.
“Louis-”
“You’re like an angel.” His slow gazes finds hers in silent bewilderment, hand still in his. “You’re… I look at you and I’m around you and I feel like I’m in the presence of something greater, of something… I can’t even explain.” He huffs out a dryly amused breath, head thudding back against the wall he leans against. His eyes flutter shut and they stay shut, brows pulled together. “You’re so holy, Seta.”
She blinks at him, unsure of how or even what to respond. She stays silent for a moment, lets him hold her hand before she simply takes a small step closer to him, her other hand moving to clasp his at her wrist. “I am only a person, Louis.” She replies with a unsure smile, shrugging one of those slender shoulders.
Louis’s head shakes against the wall, eyes fluttering open to let his gaze shift down to her. Green meets brown and all is thrown out the window. He lets go off her hand, pushing off the wall only to lean back against her, into her. His arms wrap around her small waist, face in his neck with low inhibition due to the intoxication and he holds her to him tightly, desperately so.
She stiffens at first. It had been a long time since she had been hugged, nonetheless like this. And yet? Within a beat, she returns it. Her own arms wrap around him, one around his shoulders, the other at his back and for a while, they hold each other.
It is such a mundane and human act, an act for friends and lovers, and both realise just how much they had needed this simple thing. How much they had longed to be held with intensity and love. They breathe each other in like lovers, eyes shut, clinging to the other like a lifeline and if Lestat had been here, he would have ripped them apart and demanded an explanation. But he was not there. It was his fault. Lover and wife were not meant to hate each other in this house. In this house, they loved each other. They found solace and peace with each other. And despite Lestat’s past words of ‘it will pass’, she decided to not give believe to his words for once. Not when it was like this. Not when it felt like this.
Whatever it was, family, friendship or something entirely else, it was what both needed. It was right.
And neither can help it when they find themselves in the coffin room after a while, dressed in night robes, sitting on the Persian carpet by the fireplace and, suspiciously so, sounding like two lovers whispering sweet nothings to each other. Their coffins are open, awaiting and yet, they sit there for hours, which fly by like minutes and exchange words, giggles and chuckles and fond looks.
And neither can help it when they start to shift closer throughout the last of the night.
He can not help his hand coming up to brush a strand of silky hair behind her ear. Once, twice, using it as an excuse to simply lets his fingers brush over her cheeks, to touch divinity. ‘It’s not like that’, he thinks to him. It is an innocent act, done out of a simple want to touch something objectively divine, beautiful, gentle.
And she can not help it when her hand is beside his on the carpet, leaned back against it, fingers brushing ever so slightly. On accident, on purpose. God’s plan or not.
And oh, she hopes God (or her husband) will not strike her.
She should feel ashamed. She would, usually, immediately feel panic bubble in her chest at the mere thought of anything inappropriate. But she keeps telling herself, no, he is a homosexual. His tender touches and nearly loving gaze are out of love one feels for family. She ignores the voice in the back of her head telling her that she is a whore for even letting his fingers graze hers.
And the night passes in sweet whispers and fond words as two undead lie to themselves.
Sous Le Lion
part IV
part I
part II
part III
part V
pairing: lestat de lioncourt x oc!reader x louis de pointe du lac
summary: wife turned lamb.
warnings: angst, mentions of domestic abuse and rape, mentions of blood, s*x work, death. (let me know if I forget something!)
word count: 5.198k
disclaimer: OC story!!! english is not my first language, so sorry on that front. and this is my first published piece, thus please have mercy on me. this is also not always accurate to either the chronicles or show. might be shit but at least not ai. thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
Tis the following night after the outing with Louis and the stars seem so much brighter than they usually do. She had not seen Lestat before she went into her coffin, her husband had been out and about, leaving both wife and lover alone at home. Now, she had awoken not too long ago, the sky dark and yet so bright.
She sits curled up on the balcony armchair, in another of her long and dark silk robes, her gleaming hair draped over her slender shoulders and her gaze directed up at the stars as if they hold answers to something she had yet to ask. New Orleans buzzes with life, humans strolling around and driving in their automobiles. Lovers discovering the feeling of intimacy and companionship, children being put to bed, friends ready for a night out of debauchery, performers hurrying to work in the late time establishments.
Her chin rests on her drawn up knees, arms around her legs as she listens to the sounds of the city with a content and slight tug at the corner of her soft lips, brown eyes slightly narrowed as they stare up the evening sky.
She then notices the movement from the corner of her eyes, seeing the puff of smoke exhaled and traveling up into the air like a set free spirit. How she wished to be that whisper of smoke, to disappear into the world. Louis takes another drag of his lit cigarette, the end burning when he does so. He leans against the balcony doorway, gaze where hers is, directed heavenward. He too was clad in one of his robes, comfortable in the home they shared. Even more comfortable since the tension between then had been much defused.
Her gaze, after a brief glance at the source of the smoke, turns back to where it had been before. The silence stretches on, neither speaking since there was nothing to speak of in this calm moment, no desire to break the peaceful moment. Her feet on are on the edge of the plush outside armchair, toes wiggling slightly in enthusiastic contentment. Moments like these remind he vampires how young she was when turned, where her mind had stopped, how much her humanity lingered in her very essence. Louis almost smiles at it when he catches the movement from the corner of his eyes.
“What is there? The man on the moon?” A curious and yet slightly mocking voice sounds. Lestat, also clad in one of his robes, steps onto the balcony to stand beside Louis. His brows are pinched, lips curled downwards in confusion as his piercing eyes flicker over the night sky as to see what the big deal was. There was no big deal. Its simplicity was its beauty.
Louis exhales the smoke with a small amused huff, glancing at Lestat. “Stars just seem brighter than usual is all.” He replies with a small quirk of his lips. Her gaze shifts over to Louis at the words. So she had not imagined it? The stars did seem brighter. At least to them.
“They look the same as always.” Lestat replies carelessly, shaking his head with a small frown of his lips. His one hand lazily waves away at the sky, as to dismiss the entire subject before he snags the cigarette from between Louis’s fingers. Both her and Louis share a short look at Lestat’s dismissal, but it is brief and goes unnoticed.
Lestat inhales the smoke deeply, keeping his eyes on Louis’s face in silent appreciation before it shifts to his sitting and quiet wife. Those big brown eyes looking up toward him, that gleaming hair which darkness was equal to the dark of the sky. She smiles small at him in silent greeting, a gentle and warm thing of undeserved affection. And it is met with him lazily and uncaringly looking away, downward at the street below. Her smile immediately falls off her face, the usual slight pout on her lips when she too adverts her gaze, tucking her knees closer to her chest.
Louis watches it all silently and per usual, he feels sick to his stomach.
“I have to attend to some things. Will you be at the Azalea?” Lestat asks the darker skinned man, gaze affectionate and almost tender. His free hand not holding the lit cigarette moves to Louis’s cheek, knuckles caressing the top of his cheekbones.
Setareh watches it all silently and per usual, she feels sick to her stomach.
Louis only nods, returning the gaze with a slight smile of his own. His voice is calm when he speaks, not giving into much of the physical contact of the man he loved because the wife of that man was too dear to him to be as cruel. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“Bien. À plus tard, cher.” (”I will see you later, dear.”) Lestat hands the cigarette back to Louis, hand lingering on his cheek. He fleetingly gazes at his wife, affectionate gaze swapped immediately by century old warning and control and she unconsciously makes herself smaller on the chair, lowering her gaze once more in submission that was too much instinct now than anything else.
Who was she to defy the lion? The wolf killer. Her beloved husband.
After flicking the cigarette butt off to the side, Lestat vacates the balcony (not without letting his hand wander down Louis’s back) and they are once left alone with the sounds of France’s child city. She watches with quiet disdain how the cigarette butt pollutes her beloved balcony, watches it’s light fade and she feels an odd sense of companionship with the discarded, flicked off and dimming thing.
Louis sees the silent frown on her face, the displeasure written over her soft face and he thinks that it had absolutely no place there. It makes him blurt out his next words thoughtlessly.
“Come with me.”
Her gaze snaps up to his, displeasure swapped for confusion when brown meets green. Go where? He could not possible mean to come with him to that place. Sure, she was no stranger to it but she did not have to be around the whoring. It was not her place.
“Quoi?” (”What?”)
“To the Azalea. And now-… I know you ain’t got nothin’ to do in those kind of places, but it’s not as bad as the other ones on the street. It’s more classy and there are spots and seats where its more… better suited for a lady like you.”
A beat passes as the two blink at each other, his one hand keeping him leaned against the doorway. Just then, she tries to bite back a grin but cannot help the tug of the corners of her lips. Her hand clasps over her mouth and then, giggles erupt. A sweet and melodious sound that harmonises with the sounds of the city and his own chuckles. The words had sounded amusing coming from him, him calling her a ‘lady’ somehow having made both of them erupt into sweet sounds. The giggles die down after a bit, a gentle smile lingering on her face when she loosens her grip around her knees to let them lower down on the plush of the chair.
“Well, the offer is very kind, Louis. And I am sure it is a much more noble place-”
“I don’t want to leave you here.”
It makes the smile fade, soft eyes looking up into his. She felt touched, that he cared, that he wanted her around. It had been a while since even her own husband has wanted her by his side, if it was not to show off her beauty and poise. Louis wanted her around for her, wanted her to get out the house, to live a little of her immortal life instead of sitting around inside those walls, waiting like a porcelain doll for its keeper to play with.
“I do not know if my husband would want me in a place like the Azalea, Saint Louis.” She admits quietly, still always trying to not anger or disappoint her husband, no matter how much he did it with her. Louis pushes off the doorway, arms crossed when he unhurriedly walks to lean back against the railing. He briefly glances down at the people walking and tending to their evenings before he looks at her again, gaze suddenly more determined.
“Let me deal with that. He won’t care if it’s me.”
She wants to protest. To grab him by his beautiful and gentle face and tell him, yell at him: ‘Yes, he will care. My simple act of defiance, of listening to your words rather than his, will make him care.” But she does not. She only nods, silently.
He acknowledges her nod with his own, a silent agreement. He then leans down, picks up the dead cigarette butt from the balcony floor, fingers gentle with it, before he leaves her be with thoughts too old for him.
She is dressed in the finest clothes her husband could adorn her in, his beautiful porcelain doll clad in fine silk, a dark emerald green colour and dark silk gloves hiding delicate hands. Her hair up in a twist is as proper and chic as always, a stark contrast to the women’s hair inside the establishment Louis had driven her to in the automobile. He holds the door open for her, eyes following her when he lets her step inside and it is just as well visited at the streets beyond its walls.
Louis de Pointe du Lac had an eye for business. The Azalea was a place of opulence, no expanses spared, tastefully done decorations and refurbishments and the women confident and healthy as mortals can be. Sparsely clad and yet with each their own elegant, some are draped over men’s laps, other’s speaking in hushed tones behind their fans. Seta stands by the door he lets fall shut, hands clasped around her small purse as doe like eyes watch everything with silent, albeit reluctant, intrigue. He steps up beside her, hand resting on her lower back to guide her through the place, to make it know that she was in fact not for sale, not for the taking (if her appearance and demeanour did not already speak for itself).
“What’d you think? Shabby?” He asks her with a slight smile, like a boy asking for approval, his piercing eyes flickering over her pretty features. She returns the smile, all the while feeling his touch through the silk of her dress like a branding. It was not a place to touch her. No man touched her and least of all that place. But she reminds herself that she trusts Louis, that he is a man with a taste for other men. So she stays silent and only shakes her head. “Non, not shabby.”
His smile widens a bit, guiding her through the place. She hears the men acknowledge him, nods and words exchanged briefly.
A slightly shorter, robust and darker-skinned woman comes up to Louis, steps confidently unapologising and it is a certain freedom Setareh wishes to have.
“Mr. Du Lac, Anderson’s somewhere around here wantin’ to speak to you.” It is clear she holds a certain respect to Louis all the while seeing herself equal to him. Seta’s heart squeezes at her own thoughts and she unknowingly averts her gaze to the floor, still standing so fragilely soft. Louis’s glances at Seta from the corner of his eyes before speaking to the woman.
“I’ll talk to him in a bit. Got a table in the courtyard? She likes the jazz.” That makes both Seta and the other woman look at Louis. The lady surprised at the lady he had dragged inside, one that looks a bit too much off good standing and a little too white for him to be with. And Seta? She’s just surprised he remembers her love for music, especially the kind of soulful jazz that New Orleans had mastered.
The lady quirks a brow at Louis, then at Seta (who returns the look with big and warm eyes), then back at Louis. She takes a step back and lets her eyes almost scrutinisingly wander down Seta. She lets out a quiet and slightly attitude-filled ‘Mhmmm…’ before stepping aside to let them walk past. “Got a few tables. Maybe not the kind she should be sittin’ at, Mr Du Lac.”
It seems like silent judgment, or simple warning disguised as care. Bricktop Williams was the Madame of the house, appointed by Louis himself. And where else would she get that much security and position, as well as five percent ownership to combat City Ordinance 4118, which was meant to attempt segregation within Storyville. This was a good place for her, much better than other places here on the streets.
Louis only gives the Madame a fond yet exasperated smile before tugging Seta along by her waist. She silently follows, her and Williams letting their gazes linger when she’s being pulled along. Louis speaks when her gaze breaks off the other woman.
“She’s the Madame of the house, all bark and bite but she don’t bite much. At least not me. Just doesn’t want me gettin’ into any trouble.” He speaks to her as he opens some door and leading her down the stairs, and for some reason it feels natural. It feels like he’s always tugged her along, kept her by his side like an equal instead of behind him while talking over her head. It felt nice.
“She seemed to not like me already.” She replies when he keeps his hand on back, guiding her over to the courtyard. It was beautiful. Not the kind of place where she would think that more primal things were going on in the rooms above. The performers sang through voice and instruments with passion and love for their short lives, the people danced, drank, conversed and let life stop for a brief moment of enjoyment.
Louis lets out a small laugh at her words, noticing her steps slowing, her eyes widening and his laughter dies down some when he sees the warm lights reflect in her brown pools, like silent wonder found again in a wonderless life. Ripped out by the roar of a trumpet, he briefly shakes his head, shaking off any thoughtless thoughts and gently pulling her along once more towards a vacant table.
“She don’t know you. Only sees how you look.” He replies, quieter now in spite of the music and sounds of chatter. But he was right beside her, then behind her to pull her chair out and let her sit. Her gaze locks onto his again when he moves to not sit across her, but beside her, the chair scraping over the ground when he pulls it there. He sits down, one elbow resting on the back of his chair and body angled not to the performers but toward her.
“What do I look like?” She asks in reply, a small tilt of her head when they gaze at each other under twinkling lights above.
“Fine.” His answer is plain, shot out like a bullet and it makes him immediately continue as to not create any confusion, sitting up some in his seat. “I mean, like a fine lady, of good standing. And, well… white.”
“I am Persian.” She protests quietly, a faint pinch between her brows when she is being called white. Was even her identity stripped from her now, her heritage, her parent’s blood? Was she truly only Lestat’s blood now? Blood of his blood, with no remains of herself.
“Yeah, no, I know. But you got whiter skin than most white folks around here, that’s all I’m sayin’.” He clarifies, his own head tilting unconsciously to mimic hers. Her gaze softens some (it was already soft) and she nods in acknowledgement of his words. He was right after all.
They are quiet for a moment, her gaze flickering back to the stage and she cannot help the small smile on her lips at the genuinely passionate performance. Her and Lestat had that in common, something they could agree on. Music. It did transcend everything. To her, it was spiritual. She could feel the smoke of the candles vaporise into the warm air above, feel it vanishing into the other sphere or realm or whatever one wants to call it. It was a nearly mystical force, serving as a lifeline for this community, a way to connect with ancestors and history. A tool that blurred lines between past, present, and future. A fuel and act of unity in this rebellion against oppression in the era of Jim Crow.
While she watches the performance, Louis de Pointe du Lac watches her, infatuatedly enamoured. He watches her in a way Lestat had not done in decades. With silent awe, wonderment and gentleness. He watched her to watch her, not to observe her. His fingers twitch by the back of his chair, wanting to at least caress that glowing cheekbone. But some things were too beautiful to touch, to sacrilegious to disturb when she so clearly was enjoying the happenings around her.
He notices a gaze on him (how could he not with his heightened senses) and his own gaze shifts up towards the overlooking balconies. Upon it stands no other than Thomas Anderson. The man smokes his cigar, tumbler of bourbon in his hand as he leans against the railing. He looks right at Louis, gaze almost pensive when he recognises the woman beside Louis, the same woman Louis had gazed almost lovingly at. Anderson knew Setareh de Lioncourt. Had met the beautiful and quiet wife at the arm of her husband, remembers her once in a life time beauty and the quiet demeanour. And he also remembers how she was not the sort of woman to be in such places alone, let alone without her husband, let alone with a man of Louis’s skin colour. Louis sighs through his nose, gaze shifting back to Seta. His hand moves to her shoulder, feeling the hot skin underneath his palm when he gets up, not before speaking to her.
“I gotta go talk to Anderson. You gon’ be alright for a short while?” He asks her, hand slipping off her shoulder to adjust his suit jacket. She is broken out of the spell, looking at him through thick and dark lashes and silently nods. She was taught better than to protest.
“I’ll be quick. Order somethin’ to drink for yourself, tell em you’re with me, alright?” He tells her with a nod of his own, raising his brows at her since he knows her too well to know how she would not have even thought about quenching any sort of thirst if not allowed so. Again, she silently nods. And with a last lingering look, he leaves her and heads back up the stairs.
“Ain’t that Lioncourt’s wife?” Anderson greets Louis, a small tug at the corner of his lips when he thinks and hopes that Louis finally shows his true colours, instead of the admired unorthodox business mind. A man who does not have any integrity when it comes to married woman. Someone who finally has a crack in the armour that are his morals. Much like Anderson himself.
But Louis? He just huffs amused through his nose, hands in his pockets when he unhurriedly walks to lean against the same railing, briefly glancing down at Seta who sits there with a smile on her face and sparkling eyes, clapping along when the song switches to the next one.
“Yeah. He’s meeting us here.” At that, Anderson’s expression twitches. He too leans against the railing, puffing his cigar when his eyes linger on Seta who straightens up when a waiter approaches her, kindly asking the sweet girl for her order. Louis sees the look in Anderson’s eyes when he side glances at him, recognises it as one of the few looks men get in this sort of establishment… or anywhere for that matter. Lust and hunger. It makes him want to rip out his eyes and feed it to the crocodiles in the swamp. “Pretty young thing. Voice like an angel. Those are the worst ones though, I’ll tell you that,” Anderson continues, huffing amused and then coughing from the smoke of his own cigar. “Angel on the streets, devil in the sheets, if you know wh-”
“Now, Mr Anderson, Miss William’s said you wanted to speak to me about something in particular.” He pushes off the railing, smirking almost coldly at the white man beside him. Anderson stops speaking and lets his gaze linger on Louis before letting out another amused chuckle, raising his cigar holding hand in a placating manner.
Meanwhile, Setareh murmurs a quiet ‘Merci’ to the waiter when he returns with her glass of-… well, the sweetest thing the waiter had to offer. She hated the taste of alcohol and much rather preferred the sweeter things in life. She sips on the reddish drink in her crystal glass, gaze glued to the stage. She sits poised, elegantly as always with her back straight and legs crossed in an angle.
“Que fait ma femme dans un bordel?” (”What is my wife doing inside a brothel?”)
She almost chokes on the sweet drink, brown eyes snapping to the left where her husband stands without any sort of amusement on his face. His expression was as dangerous as it came, threat, disappointment and awaiting punishment all morphed into one cold and nearly murderous look. She blinks up at him like a caught child, drink lowered into her lap. His gaze shifts down to the drink and his nostrils briefly flare (in anger or smell of alcohol).
“Louis m'a emmené avec lui. Il ne voulait pas que je reste seul à la maison.” (”Louis brought me along. He did not want me to be alone at home.”) She explains meekly, hands tightening around her crystal glass. She shifts in her seat, suddnely feeling so exposed, so dirty and shameful as if she herself had made use of the brothel, even when she had only gone with Louis. But man was man, no matter his preferences. She had gone with a man that was not her husband. And like a well conditioned dog, her eyes well up with tears and she looks at her keeper with a troubled gaze. “Je suis vraiment désolé. Je ne voulais pas te faire de mal, Lestat.” (”I'm so sorry. I did not mean to hurt you, Lestat.”)
He sucks his teeth, glancing at the performers, the dancing people, the sheer happiness and lightness when everything about them suddenly feels so heavy. She looks down, sweet face frowning up some, lips in a downward pout like a child. She felt guilty. But worst of all, she feared the punishment. Would it again be rough hands on tender skin? Or would it again be exile into her coffin, locked away inside a basement to starve for a week or two? Or perhaps he’d have something new in mind, get creative. She did not know. She never knew.
Having wrapped up his short conversation with Anderson, Louis joins her downstairs. His smile slightly fades when he sees Lestat in silent fury, and the angel cowered in the seat she had sat so happily on merely moments ago. “What’s the problem?” He asks utterly confused, hands by his sides when he steps up to her chair, sitting down on his own. He glances at her, how she avoids his gaze and sits there so fearfully.
“Did you bring her here, Louis? To this place of sin and whores? My wife?” Lestat’s anger is aimed toward Louis now, the latter a lot more durable than her since he knew only a speck of her husband’s anger. Louis’s gaze hardens some when she places her glass down onto the small, round table. He sees hoe dejected she is in her every move and twitch and he hates it. He hates how he wanted this to be a nice thing, to get her out the house for her own entertainment instead of Lestat’s. He would have even asked her to dance with him. If only Lestat had not come.
“It’s like that inside maybe, yes. But not out here. It’s just music, Lestat. She likes music.” He replies, shaking his head in sheer disbelief over the fact that a husband would not want his wife to enjoy herself with something as mundane as listening to a performance. He glances back down at her once more, a gentle hand placing on top of hers in her lap. It makes her fingers twitch underneath his palm, his one enveloping both of hers clasped ones. A silent sign of back up, a silent ‘I got you. I’ll fight this one for you.’ And she loved him for it.
Lestat’s jaw is clenched so tight when he sees it that it might shatter his teeth. “You have no dominion over my wife, Louis. Lève-toi, Setareh.” (”Get up, Setareh.”) He snaps at her, a hand latched onto her shoulder. She winces almost inaudibly at the nails dug into her subtle skin and it makes Louis stand up now, pushed off the chair. From above, Thomas Anderson watches with silent intrigue.
“Lestat, come on. What’d she do wrong right now, huh? She’s with me, she’s outside, away from all that shit inside and we knew you’d come. Why can’t we just enjoy some time outside together, listen to some music. She ain’t do nothin’ wrong.” His voice softens some, trying to sway the other man in his favour. “You know that’s right. Come on. Just sit down, have a drink, listen to the music. Don’t punish her for something like this, cher. Just have a good time…for me.” He uses all the right tones, all the right words and expressions. His hand briefly squeezes his arm, a very brief touch out here in public as to not rouse any sort of suspicion.
Meanwhile, Setareh sits between them, wishing to be locked away in her coffin or in some sort of time loop from two minutes ago where she sat alone, listening to the music and people’s joy, sweet drink in her hand and without phantom pain lingering in her body. She hates that Louis can calm Lestat down, hates the ‘for me’ part. Why could Lestat not sit for her?
Why did Louis suddenly have dominion over her husband?
A few long beats pass before Lestat huffs and puffs, sitting down on the third chair across from them. He crosses a leg over the other, arms crossed and his jaw tight. His gaze on Seta is less punishment now and more warning. ‘’One more screw up and you’ll see. Just try to get out the mould I made you.’
Louis lets out a relieved breath, sitting back down beside her when the moment is diffused. he flags down the waiter with a hand, silently ordering his usual for him and Lestat, because of course the waiters knew Lestat was frequent here. The whores did too.
She sits there stock still, perhaps even in derealisation, something to use whenever her fear took over. She was in no mood for any music anymore, the moment and night ruined by her pumping heart and quivering lower lip.
“Stop it.” Lestat tells her calmer now, albeit still cold in his previous anger. “I won't touch you tonight. Being in this place makes you as filthy as the rest of them. You are no longer clean.”
“How about you shut the fuck up?!” Louis exclaims at him with pinched brows and a frown on his face, quick to defend Setareh once more. But Seta? She lowers her gaze once more, her heart shattering for the umpteenth time in her immortal life. One would think she would get used to it. But she immediately chokes up and thick, salty tears roll down her flushed cheeks, flushed from embarrassment and the heat of the moment. She stifles her sobs and it makes Lestat’s eyes roll. He would not punish her physically but he was doing it emotionally. Take away her pride, her purity she so valued, make her feel dirty.
“Hey, you want me to take you home?” Louis’s voice lowers, almost hushed when his head bends down slightly, a gentle hand coming up to wipe the tears off her cheek. For a moment, he glances at the wet fingertips, marvelling at how different she is to them with the watery salty sadness coming out of her. No blood. No gore. Just human. She sniffles, wants to say yes at first, but refuses to be of any sort of burden.
“I will take a carriage.” She murmurs quietly and Lestat wordlessly exhales through his nose (more a sigh) before he rises from his seat already.
“I will take her home. You stay and tend to your business.” He tells Louis, buttoning his suit jacket up before extending a hand toward his wife (habit rather than care). She looks at his hand and silently places her own into it, getting up as well. Louis does to, mirroring her, fingers twitching as to pull her back. Before Louis can even protest, voice his concerns of Lestat hurting her, Lestat holds her hand in his like a firm vice. “I will not touch her, you have my word, even if she is my wife, to do and treat as I please. But pour toi, mon cher, I will leave her be tonight.” (”For you, my love.”) Lestat says as if he was doing Louis the biggest favour, granting some sort of grand wish.
Setareh is pulled along before Louis can even ask her if she needed something, if she really did want to go with her husband, even when he already knew the answers. He stands there with slumped shoulders, looking after angel and devil.
It is oddly quiet inside the carriage. No yelling nor quiet threats, no lectures or any sort of reprimanding. It makes her all the more nervous, hands kneading in her lap as she sits there stiffly beside him, looking out the carriage window. He too sits silently, albeit much calmer than her, watching the passing scenery.
“You have bewitched him.” He suddenly speaks, matter of factly and she is not sure if she likes that tone, no matter how calmly spoken. She swallows, gathering her courage to look over at him, his side profile, that beautiful side profile.
“Quoi?” She whispers shakily, not able to control the lingering quiver of fear nor those wet lashes of hers.
“Il te défend maintenant, mène tes combats à ta place. Il me défie pour toi. Il ne voit en toi que de la pénitence. Ça passera.” (”He defends you now, fights your battles for you. Defies me for you. He finds nothing in you besides penance. It will pass.”)
It will pass. It echos in her mind.
She remembers how Lestat used to be, much like Louis now and she thinks, yes.
It will pass.
Sous Le Lion
part III
part I
part II
part IV
part V
pairing: lestat de lioncourt x oc!reader x louis de pointe du lac
summary: wife turned lamb.
warnings: angst, mentions of blood, s*x work, religious themes. (let me know if I forget something!)
word count: 5.828k
disclaimer: OC story!!! english is not my first language, so sorry on that front. and this is my first published piece, thus please have mercy on me. this is also not always accurate to either the chronicles or show. might be shit but at least not ai. thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
As everyone knows, the dead slumber during the day. When everything is alive, rushing the beauty of the brief time they are given. Time in which everything becomes more meaningful due to its fleeting pace. A single passing moment that leaves an imprint for the rest of those few decades they rush through. Meanwhile, the dead can hardly remember the past century. Time flies as much as it drags on, moments have been lived and become insignificant. Nothing is new, nothing is special, nothing leaves its imprint because the dead have already been through all of it.
The worst has been done already in the years that have flown by before eternity. They have been stripped of the fleeting beauty, stripped of a future and forced to live only with the past and in the present. No growing old with a love, no children to see grow up and have children of their own. Never to experience how sweet death can be when it takes you in your sleep but rather through sharp fangs and a heart that pumps for its life, clinging to it with all there is.
All vampires are born out of trauma.
And they relive it each time they wake from their slumber. At least she does.
The wood of the lid creaks open when she sits slowly up. Her sleepy eyes blink sluggishly in the dim light, dark hair slightly mused from the tossing and turning inside the silk clad interior of the coffin. She had less energy than most vampires, wanting to keep inside the sanctuary of her silk box. But if she would stay inside for even one night, she might stay in there forever and sleep a dreamless sleep. It sounded soothing to her.
Nevertheless, she woke. Dark chocolate eyes adjust to the light, a delicate hand coming up to rub the sleep out of one eye. Her husband, awake and filled with inhuman energy, stood already by his open closet and was uncaring of any looks he might get from both lover and wife as he stood there bare as the day he was born. She blinks once as she glances at his buttocks before glancing over to Louis's coffin at the foot of hers. He too had just awoken, sleepy still, but less sluggish than the angel.
Their gazes meet briefly in silent greeting before he rises. At that, Lestat's head turns to glance over his shoulder, lips tugged up in the usual sultry way.
"Bonne nuit, mon cher." He regards Louis when he passes him to walk into the bathroom. Louis, running a hand over his face, barely glances at the blond and simply raises his hand in silent greeting. Lestat would have chocked the air out of Setareh if she would have done that. But with Louis, it seems to endear him. He simply blows out an amused huff through his nose, silk hangar with a suit jacket dangling from it in his fair hand. His gaze then turns to his wife who simply sits there, still arriving from the world of dreams into the world of nightmares.
"As-tu encore rêvé de pénitence, ma femme virginale?" ("Have you dreamt of penance again, my virginal wife?") He asks her, tone mocking and yet genuine. He meant the question, but was amused by it nonetheless. Only she could dream of nothing but rue.
She blinks at him, gaze now on his instead of his behind and shakes her head almost sweetly. Her body clad in her white nightgown, hair inky, the light warm and dim and the soft quilt around her shoulders made her look like the most comfortable little princess. It made him want to join her, hold her. But both knew she would not want his hands on her. Not anymore.
"Tu sors?" ("Are you going out?") Her voice is quiet when she pulls her knees up to her chest, hands resting on the tops of them. She simply wanted to know if he would leave now, did not want to know where he'd go, what he'd do or who he'd do. It wondered her, and she knew Louis must wonder as well. Lestat had both cock and cunt at home and yet he was not satisfied. How is one supposed to do right by a man like that? One as insatiable as him. As greedy as him.
"Oui. I will dine and commit acts of debauchery. No place for you, my virgin bride." He answers, tone light and uncaring when he dismisses wanting her in his presence tonight. He turns to focus his attention on picking out what to wear (she swore he spent more time on garments than she did). She briefly wonders why he speaks in English but then sees Louis returning from the bathroom, looking more awake than before.
"I'm gonna go check on my business." He lets both know when his steps lead him to his own closet as well, gaze lingering on the sleepy angel inside her coffin. And what would she do? She would go to church, sit and repent and try to think of what she might have done in this or any past life to have deserved a death which she did not die. And then she would return back into these walls, sit in front of the fireplace and read her sweet, eternal soul out. That was all there was to do. It was all her husband let her do, if he himself would not take her to the opera, out to dance or to simply brag with his perfectly beautiful bride at soirees he was invited to.
She was nice to look at, he once said.
Louis turns to her when he himself picks out a suit with quick efficiency (Lestat had hanged it onto the closet door for him), gaze gentle and tone much softer than when he had announced his plans before. "Are you going to church? Do you want me to take you in the automobile?"
Oh, sweet Louis. Not even her husband would drive her to church, thought it a waste of eternal time. But Louis? As much as he too thought it a waste when their souls were damned anyway, he still asked, offered, saw. A slight and almost timid smile grazes her soft lips when she shakes her head, hands pulling the quilt tighter around her shoulders.
"Non, merci beaucoup. I like the walk."
No hesitation, barely a beat: "I'll walk you then."
How her heart softens. His words earn a very brief and unreadable side glance from Lestat who still stood nudely in front of his closet, still deciding on what to wear. She thinks of declining his offer, thinks of how she would not want to burden him when he is obviously only asking because he is a polite and kind gentleman. Obviously. But for some unknown reason, she nods in agreement.
"Bien. Merci." She answers quietly, a inky strand of hair tugged behind her ear when she nods her delicate head. Lestat lets out a low huff through his nose, it could be mistaken for either a sigh or a displeased sound. But he says nothing, simply starts to get dressed.
She too rises soon to disappear into the bathroom, freshen up and gets dressed behind the paravent. She's alone in the bedroom by the time she buttons up her dress, the men having retreated downstairs. She wears the light pink dress, a tender whisper of silk and femininity, hair up in a twist. Her silk gloved hand lingers on the staircase when she too steps downwards. Lestat and Louis stop in their conversation, both their gazes lingering on the angel descending from above.
A clink breaks the silence, Lestat placing down his now empty scotch tumbler. With a cock of his head he looks at her for a silent moment before squeezing Louis's shoulder in passing, the Creole man standing by the couch with his hands on the back of it.
Fair skinned fingers grab his suit jacket off the back of the same couch, slipping it on as he wordlessly walks towards the end of the staircase she stands at. His lips are cold against her warm cheek, a rough kiss pressed onto the subtle porcelain skin.
A warning, or a claim, or perhaps both.
He turns his back to them, opening the front door with a whoosh of air that makes some of her hairstrands flutter. The door shuts when he walks out of it, the hinges rattling per usual. Her gaze immediately drifts up to the ceiling above the door, seeing the faint cracks which had not been there when they moved in. It makes her sigh faintly through her nose.
The townhouse is silent for a moment, her gaze returning to Louis who stands there in his dark grey suit and silent gentle gaze. What a beauty, she thinks. Helen of Troy, she concludes. She understands her husband.
"Allez?" ("Go?") She asks simply, quietly, not wanting to impose on him and still giving him the space to take back on his definite offer from before. She was used to men (Lestat) changing their minds quickly, saying they would do one thing and then deciding against it the second before it would have to be done. But Louis? Louis simply nods, already walking towards the door.
He holds it open for her, letting her step out before he steps out with her. The front door clicks shut behind them, a light sound, one that does not crack the plaster of their shared home. They fall into step beside each other. Her silk gloved hands clasp around her purse strap in front of her body, his own hands tucked into his pockets. It is silent for a stretch before he speaks.
"Are you christian?" He asks her, glancing at her streetlamp illuminated side profile, her chin held high poised, back straight when her heels click on the cobblestone.
"Non... pourqoui?" ("No, why?") She asks softly as ever, meeting his gaze as they walk. New Orleans was warm during this time of year, the nights more than accommodating in climate as such.
"Church." Is all he answers with a faint up-tug of his shoulders, stating the fact plain simple. Church equals christian, no? She lets out a small sound when she understands why he would ask her that. How would she explain that her soul felt so damned and dirtied, that she felt she needed to repent each granted night of immortal life? How would she explain that she prayed for the eternal soul of a man she had loved in both life and death, no matter how cruel he was at times?
"Je-I... I was born muslim. And I used to go to the mosque back in Persia mais... there are no mosques here. Even if they were, I am not sure if I would go to them. I do not know which God to pray to anymore. I simply pray. I must pray." She answers, gaze lingering on the cobblestone path, letting him be the one to look ahead, giving him the responsibility of not letting her walk into a light pole while she was trying to fight off the shadow of guilt once more.
He glances at her, gaze retuning back ahead when he thinks that she might not be comfortable with being looked at right now, not with how she evades his gaze.
"You pray for him or yourself?" He asks her with a faint crease between his brows. It makes her gaze snap up and at him and for a moment she thinks of how she always is surprised by how observant he is, how quickly he connects dots and had her figured out. But then again, she wore her emotions on her sleeve.
"For all of us." She answers quietly when they round a corner. A smiling couple walks past them into the opposite direction, arms around each other and no doubt heading towards the more alive parts of New Orleans, places where the sound of jazz lingers in the soul and lightens their steps. She loved music, loved to dance, loved how the people in this place made music feel close to something spiritual with how it takes over bodies.
"Thank you," he says after a beat of silence, earning a curious glance from the angel beside him. "With my brother gone and my mother ain't wanting me around anymore, I don't have anyone praying for me anymore. Paul used to go church every damn day, confessing sins much smaller than mine, praying for all of our souls. It felt good, knowing someone better than you put in a good word for you, lookin' out for you in that way."
Her gaze softens, almost pensively so, when it lingers on his poetic side profile. The slight part of his lips when he sighs silently, the downturn of his own gaze in quiet grief. A gaze she knew all to well herself.
"I pray for him too."
That makes his gaze snap up at her, feeling as if his soul was bared to her all of the sudden. He gives her a slight smile, a tragic smile of silent thanks before he looks back ahead, seeing the church in close distance when they approach.
A dryly amused scoff sounds from him beside her. He shakes his head at the irony of it all. "Dropping you off at church before I go tending to my business in Storyville... s'funny."
Of course she knew what kind of business Louis had. Business was business, no matter how dirty. She knew that. And she respected it, just did not want anything to do with it.
She does not reply to his words because what was she supposed to reply? She did not find it funny at all. She found it stupid. She hated the lust of men and the fact that other men profited of it with the bodies of lost or abandoned girls, taking them off the streets with promises of better when they would be given worse.
His steps come to a halt when they approach the steps leading up to the grand doors. He looks at the church with something akin to suspicious weariness, definitely not even thinking about entering. That she respected as well. She turns when she stands on the first step, same height as him now.
"Thank you for bringing me." Her tone is polite, sweet and genuine as always as they stand there, skin glowing from the warm street lamps. He smiles small at her, his eyes no longer filled with any kind of negative emotion, but mirroring the fondness he felt for her. How could he not be fond of her? She was sweet as can be. He had a hard time believing that there would ever be a time where he would feel any sort of negative emotion towards her.
"S'my pleasure. I can wait here until you're done, take you back home if you want."
Oh, how her heart squeezes. How much it reminds her of how Lestat used to be. Selfless, attentive and oh so gentlemanly. She smiles at him, a coy and sweet thing when she evades his gaze, glancing at the step she stood on.
"Non, it is fine. It is barely five minutes of a walk and you have business to attend to."
"You're more important."
She almost gulps. It had been a long time since she has heard those words and in that very moment, she missed her husband and hated the fact of how much she longed to hear those words come out of his mouth once more.
"Vous êtes trop gentil. Mais vraiment, ça va. Merci beaucoup." ("You are too kind. But truly, it is fine. Thank you very much.") She tells him when her gaze lifts once more, brown meeting piercing and yet warm green.
He gives her an acknowledging nod, respecting her wish. He takes a step backward, hands still in his pockets when he smiles tenderly at the angel in front of the church. It looked right. Her in that light pink dress and her glowing self, in front of a place of worship. It was the rightest place for her. A place of sanctity. Saintly Seta.
"Go to the bookshop with me when I get back." He suddenly tells her, half a question and demand. But it never sounded like a demand from him. It always sounded like an offer, always sounded like he was giving her a choice instead of expecting something of her. He was not her husband after all.
"But it is not open so late, non?"
"I'll take care of that."
Her sweet and coy smile widens at that, almost bashfully so. She barely went outside if it was not for church or somewhere Lestat dragged her to and the mere thought of going to a place she would most certainly enjoy, a place of her choosing... well, it seemed like an offer too good to deny.
"Avec plaisir." ("With pleasure.") She replies, glancing over her shoulder at the grand church doors. She meets his gaze again and they share a silent moment of gentle smiles before he nods, stepping back fully back onto the sidewalk.
"I'll pick you up at home." And with an agreeing nod of her, he turns and walks back towards the corner they had rounded earlier, on his way to tend to his filthy business after having dropped of the angel at church.
It makes him quietly chuckle to himself once more.
After her nightly visit to the church, the brief smile shared with the priest, she now sits in the drawing room of their home. The fireplace is unlit, only the few lamps illuminating everything dimly as she sits on the chaise. Even alone, she sat with her back straight, hands poised in her lap. There was always an audience in her head, her husband in the front row.
She waits patiently in silence, spaced out. She could have killed some time with reading, even tried to do so but for some reason she was too excited to even do that, having read over the same sentence four times and still not having internalised any of the written words. She felt goofy for sitting there, as if she had no person of her own, on standby for a man. And she was half expecting him to not show up, to push their meeting aside or forgetting it wholly. She had been used to being brushed aside. It would be no great surprise nor grievance to her.
Just then as she waits like a porcelain doll on a shelf, the front door creaks open and a head peeks into the drawing room. His brows pinch slightly when their gazes meet, seeing that she was sitting as still as a stature.
"Seta,... you alright?" He asks her almost concerned, leaving the front door open when he stands by the drawing room's doorway. She nods, getting up from her seat.
"Oui... Are we still going?" With her hands behind her back and big eyes looking into his with silent hope, he nods, because of course he would go with her. He would't miss it for the world. He silently holds the door open for her, letting her grab her purse and gloves, slipping past him once more that night. He has to swallow, for some reason smelling the scent of her bared neck more than usual. But, with a huff and puff, he shuts the door gently and walks with her again.
"Has your business been alright?" She inquired softly, shooting him a curious look from the side as they walk. It was later now, his business would just now start to boom, rush hour for a place like that was now, in the middle of the night.
"Yeah, it's alright. The usual." He replies with a small nod, a small smile grazing his lips, hands in his pockets once more as they walk side by side. He glances over at her as they walk, at her elegant silhouette, the long dark hair pulled up, the grace in her every step. How can this person be so gentle and utterly poised?
They arrive at the bookstore within the next ten minutes, the shop the only one with lights on in the street. He took care of it alright. Slipped the man a hefty sum into his hand after having dropped her off at church, told him to keep the lights on, stay behind his counter and let the pretty girl stroll around the shelfs if that was what she wanted. Who was the clerk to say no to so many green bills? Said clerk perks up when the bell above the door rings, breaking the silence inside and announcing their presence.
The clerk, a thin, white man of older age, nods in greeting at the two. His eyes glimmer at Louis in silent collaboration. Louis returns the nod, holding the door open for her and letting her enter first. His hand ghosts at her lower back, guiding her over to the shelves behind the counter. She smiles sweetly at the clerk, evading her gaze quickly after a quiet "Bonjour."
Her gaze then flickers to the numerous shelves filled with categorial organised books. The whole place is empty, save for the tired looking man behind the counter and the odd pairing. Black and white (passing). The clerk did not say anything nor even look because well, Louis payed him.
Her steps leads her towards the row of novels first, brown eyes skimming over the selection in the dim and warm light. Louis trails idly after her, hands in his pockets again, gazing at the shelves as well. He had been there once before, having thought of how much she would like it the entire time. At home, the walls were decked with rows of books.
When he first asked, Lestat said they were his, told him how well read he was, explaining the plots of some of the books, the symbolisms. Then Louis moved in and noticed how Lestat barely ever seemed to read and when he did, he was suspiciously quick with finishing. It was then when Louis found out that Lestat reads a few of the first pages, then a few of the last pages and then asks his wife as to what was fundamental in said book. The books at home were bought because she asked Lestat to buy those books for her. And she read them, all of it and afterwards was tasked on informing her husband about them. It would make him look better in front of others, to be educated about literature and such themes and she let him take credit for his knowledge, let him tell people that he read the books and that he had interpreted them in that way.
Louis lets his gaze shift back to her, watching the grace and elegance that was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Her slender and gloved fingers trail over the spines of different books, halting at one in particular. It makes the corners of her lips tug up, glancing over her shoulder at him.
"Les voyages de Gulliver." She muses fondly. It makes his gaze flicker with recognition at the title. Gulliver's Travels. He comes to stand beside her, looking at the spine of said book.
"You like Swift?" He asks her quietly, a soothing rumble in the intimate setting of the dimly lit bookstore. From behind her, he can smell her once more. Not only her blood this time, but her. Sweet vanilla, roses, citrus, cardamom and something only her.
"J'aime ce livre, oui. Lestat used to read it to me." ("I love the book, yes.") She replies, voice quieting and smile fading at the melancholy filling her once more. She had hoped her old friend would stay away at least for the time with Louis, but it seemed to seep back into the cracks of her heart which had been shattered over and over again.
"He did?" Louis's expression softens at her words and he notices the sudden absence of her smile. Even her words wondered him. The idea of Lestat being so gentle with and to her, tender enough to read to her... it felt new.
"Oui," She almost whispers, a wistful smile on her lips when her gaze lingers on the spine of the Swift book. "En Auvergne. Underneath weeping willows or lying in high weeds, hidden from parents or nosy people. He read to me in French and made me learn the language better. Now French is the language I think in." She explains, gaze traveling over the spines of the other books, fingers tugging one out briefly to glance at the cover before gently pushing it back in.
Louis had stayed silent for a moment, having heard the tone of her voice and now feeling something heavy and close to longing settle in his stomach. He imagines the two of them, flushed with the essence of life and few lived years, lying underneath weeping willows and reading together and its as if he almost hears their shared laughter at her mispronouncing a word she would echo after Lestat. It makes him melancholic for her, makes him feel for her and the memories she grieved. "Seems uncharacteristic for a man like Lestat."
"It had been entirely characteristic for him then."
A pang goes through him like a shot through his heart and his brows pinch at it, almost frowning when she rounds the corner to get to another shelf. Ever the empath, he imagines how it must feel for her. It was one thing to suffer through the death of someone, to not have them there anymore. But it was entirely a different thing to have the person you loved most change into something unrecognisable.
"Why do you stay with him, Seta?" His voice sounds almost pained, a quiet and slow question as he tries to wrap his head around it. Why does the angel stay with the devil? Perhaps it is not even his place to ask, he doesn't know how his relationship is to her and if he has any right to ask but he must inquire. It made no sense to him, even when part of him knew the answer (obedience, fear), but he hopes, foolishly so, that she might defy his expectation.
"C'est mon mari. We are bound under his and my own God. We swore beneath them to be together until death do us part. Death has not done us apart." ("He is my husband.") It feels like recitation to her, something drilled into her head, the conviction learned throughout the decades. It was more plain fact than anything else, no real opinion on it. But she was a woman. No one cares for her opinion.
Louis's jaw clenches some at her words, something protesting flickering in his eyes. His one hand rests against the bookshelf, holding onto a plank of it and he is close to having the wood splinter underneath his palm.
"Gods do not bind, Seta. Men do. You could walk right out the door right now and he wouldn't stop you." It is a blatant lie and both know it. Lestat would tear the world apart to drag her back by her hair. But Louis says it anyway, wanting both her and him to believe it.
"A lie, Saint Louis." She replies with a slight look before she turns to shift her attention to the row of neatly organised books.
He sighs behind her, hand slipping off the shelf and crossing his arms over his chest. The power Lestat had over her, the power they both had over her (because she had some, believe it or not), it was a complex thing to Louis, an unfair thing. He cannot believe how resigned she is to being trapped in the role of the obedient and silent wife. It sickens him.
After a few minutes of silence, her steps lead her to more 'radical' selections. Her beloved Dubois, Douglass and other free thinkers.
"I thought Lestat disapproves of such books." Louis almost mutters dryly, but he keeps his tone gentler than he likes, for her it came naturally. Even against his will.
"I do not try to anger him but I am interested in things. I have interests, a mind of my own and my own convictions, as does he. He lets me be with my books and thoughts at least." She replies with a slight shake of her head, gaze focused on the Douglass book she pulls out the shelf. "I do not only sit and cry when my husband makes me. Je suis une personne." ("I am a person.")
He almost winces at the soft and slightly chiding tone of her voice. It's gentle and yet feels like a slap. "I know you are. I didn't mean it like that. Just... I guess I thought he'd try to even dominate that part of your being. Thoughts and all."
"My thoughts are my own. Even he knows it." She replies finally, a book clutched to her chest after having picked it off a row. "And besides, he is not always that way with me. He does not always treat me poorly. He lets me be quiet, lets me indulge in the written word and the fine things in life." She turns to look at his face, piercing green meeting warm brown. "Did you not see it? He is gentle sometimes."
Oh how his heart breaks. Because, no, he had not seen it.
"You don't have to lie for him." His voice is a whisper, something slightly bitter in his expression. It makes her redirect her gaze to the book in her hands. His gaze felt too close to displeasure and she never liked being the reason of said displeasure.
"Perhaps I lie for myself. He can be cruel, oui, downright vicious in a way that makes one wonder if he has ever been human. But I know him in ways you do not. In ways you never will. I know all of him. Tout. I have seen fear in his eyes, love, emptiness and much more. It is not a simple thing...us. Ask Lestat what I am to him and watch him tell you six different things in the span of a minute. He will call me his wife, his possession, his child, his angel, his salvation, his creation. After nearly two hundred years together, one is much to the other. You are never only the cruel or the gentle."
It is quiet for a moment when Louis regards her with an almost unreadable gaze. He feels like her words are still no excuse for how Lestat is with her sometimes (it is not) but he understands. And that makes him sad. It makes him angry and pity her all the same.
"How can you say those things? How can you just justify his cruelty like it's nothing?" He murmurs when he shifts his weight onto the other foot. "He doesn't respect you, Seta. He doesn't even view you as a person. You're... what? Just an extension of him? Someone he can choose to be cruel or nice to? Someone to present like some trophy?" His arms tighten over his chest and he seems puzzled by the sheer complexity of them.
Her own gaze softens at his words, no, it saddens. She has no answer. Because how does she justify his cruelty? How can anyone justify such cruelty?
A genuine question forms in her mind at his words, her back to him as her fingers tug at one of the other books almost absentmindedly. "If you know how he is, how cruel he can be, as you say, why do you stay? You've barely history with him, you've known him for a meek amount of years. Pourqoui?" ("Why?")
It is dead silent for a moment. The wheels in his head turn and he searches for a way to phrase his feelings. Those complicated feelings that he was not used to voicing at all if it was not his late brother Paul he'd be voicing them to.
"Because I love him." He replies finally, sounding almost resigned by his own words. "God, how messed up is that?" He laughs softly, a bitter sound. "I shouldn't. Hell, I know I shouldn't for a number of reasons. But I do... I...need him."
"Bon alors." ("Well then.") She murmurs in the same slightly bitter tone as him. She turns to face him. And in this moment, both pity the other for having fallen into the silken web of the man they loved. "You sound like I do. This is what he does to us. I hope the next two hundred years will be much more gentle to you than they have been to me."
He smiles at her, a gentle thing and he truly hopes the same. Because to be honest, he's nothing like her in that regard.
"You're so... 'strong' seems like the wrong word but... 'resilient'. Yeah, that's better. You're resilient. You have the patience of a saint, Seta." He shakes his head slightly in silent disbelief at the angel in front of him. "I'd have broken long ago in your situation."
"You are in my situation."
A beat.
"Ça suffit. Sil te plaît. I came to see the books and I want to purchase this one." ("That is enough. Please.") She tells him in a quiet but firm voice. With one last shared look of various emotions she turns and heads towards the counter, where the clerk looks close to falling asleep. The man perks up when the black man and white woman approach, him trailing after her before he quickly comes to stand beside her, hand dug into the inner pocket of his suit jacket for dollar bills. "I'm paying."
"Merci." She looks at him as he pays, the man behind the register eyeing up the cash Louis places on the counter. She did not hesitate to let him pay, he is the man after all. 'Her' money is Lestat's money, thus, a man would have payed one way or another. She stands beside him as the books are rung up and bagged, her hands clasped around her purse, back straight and poised.
Louis glances at Seta when the man behind the counter places the bagged book on the counter, refusing to hand it to Louis as to not touch him. Disgusting prejudices that Louis unfortunately was too used to.
"Ready?" He murmurs lowly, nodding toward the door as if they could just step out and leave all of this behind. And when she nods, he just steps toward the door, holding it open for her to exit through.
The bell above the door jingles a last time, announcing their departure.
Sous Le Lion
part II
part I
part III
part IV
part V
pairing: lestat de lioncourt x oc!reader x louis de pointe du lac
summary: wife turned lamb.
warnings: angst, mentions of domestic abuse and rape, mentions of blood, death. (let me know if I forget something!)
word count: 2.221k
disclaimer: OC story!!! english is not my first language, so sorry on that front. and this is my first published piece, thus please have mercy on me. this is also not always accurate to either the chronicles or show. might be shit but at least not ai. thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
Darling Setareh, with her saintliness and holiness. Still going to church, not because she was Christian or bound to religion in any way in spite of having grown up Muslim. Simply because she wanted a place to repent in, somewhere to give penance, somewhere to bear her few sins. Any house of God would do. And this church, which was tucked away in the sin of France’s child town, would do for the next few years they’d reside here. She liked churches. The stained windows, the colours and most importantly, the memory. She would always remember the 18th century candlelight in an old Auvergne chapel. The scent of roses and incense. Her trembling hands in white silk gloves as she vowed to love him forever… not knowing then that forever would truly last forever.
It is not a rosary in her graceful hands but a tasbih, a token from her late father who had long died of old age. It was both a connection to him as to her own humanity and religion. Her fingers tremble ever so slightly as they push bead for bead along the thread, her vulnerable gaze fixed on the cross and the man nailed to it with penitence. Her back is straight as a bowstring as she sits on the third pew from the front, her body unmoving besides her dutiful fingers. Ever the poised girl from earlier times.
The priest noticed her always. She came in like clockwork, always during the dark, always when a woman obviously fine and respectful standing, should be at home. But she always came, an hour after sun down, dressed cleanly and elegantly and sat down on one of the first four pews with an unwavering gaze at the cross.
He had spoken to her once and was greeted with the gentlest voice known to mankind, with a gaze soft enough to be forgiven any sin if it was after him. But she had stayed curt and short in her answers to his very few questions, evasive, albeit kind to the man of God. Who was she to not give him the respect he was owed?
She always left an hour after she arrived, steps quiet with the faintest click of her fine shoes. Guilt followed her like a dark shadow, her companion along with melancholy and fear. She felt guilt for every unnatural breath she took, let alone for a life. So what she did was simple: she fed only from animals, rodents, sometimes a bit larger animals such as cats or squirrels. Even to the animals, no matter how small or insignificant, she would apologise to in whispers and salty tears. And when her body would be weak with hunger and fatigue, her maker would force the strong drum of a human pulse against her lips. Her fangs would only sink into men of the worst kind. Predators, thieves, murderers, charlatans. Men the world would not miss nor mourn. Men that would not make her feel all too guilt ridden.
After exiting the church, she walks with perfect poise, taught and criticised by the very man she had married under both the Christian God and the Muslim Allah, wrapped up in dark red fabrics, adorned with gold and henna stained hands. She had only been a girl when she married the over a decade older man. But it did not matter if she had been only eighteen, times were different. And he himself was so young and filled with hope that he himself might as well been her age. His light had only been numbed by their curse. A curse put upon him by Magnus the deserter.
A curse put upon her by Lestat the cruel.
Against her pleads and cries, in spite of weak fists, he had turned her. Fuelled by fear of losing his bride, the fledgling vampire had grabbed her and turned her in the comfort of the De Lioncourt estate. It had been not too long ago when he was turned into a creature slave to the moon, strolling through Paris as if he were untouchable, with lovers of the flesh and love to the theatre. The coven had noticed him. Armand had noticed him. A heretic, a blasphemer, a condemned. That was all Lestat had been to Armand’s followers.
Having encountered Lestat, grown intrigued with him and his entirely unnatural charm, an affair occurred. It had been nothing grand to the fledgling vampire, he had many lovers alongside having his wife. But when Armand found out that Lestat did had wife he doted on, a human wife, Armand had set his coven lose like dogs that had a fresh sniff of meat. She was ripped out of her home, brought to their lair and it was then when she found out why her husband slept through the day, why he had ceased to dine with her, why his appearance had suddenly changed. As soon as he had found out, Lestat came to the coven’s lair, wooden cross in hand, voice mocking and yet demanding. He had killed half of them with an unusual strength, the rest had cowered in fear and retreated behind their unmoving and observant leader. Her trembling form had clung to her husband, his arms around her as he had finished his business with Armand. Lestat would've killed him, but saintly Seta had mercy and told him to simply take her and leave with her. And for once, he had obeyed.
It still was one of the worst nights she could remember as she strides over the sidewalk of the busy streets of New Orleans. How Lestat had brought her home to their estate at the outskirts of splendid Paris. How he had gone mad with worry of his possession having been lost for even the slightest moment. He was reminded of how fragile she was, how fragile her life was. He had turned her the same night. The man who had once kissed her shadow on the grounds of flower fields, as he was to timid to taint such beauty and divinity… that same man had seethed his sharp fangs into the delicate skin of her neck, held her screaming and crying form when he turned her into something which her entire being had thought monstrous.
The angel did not fall, but had been pushed into the deepest and darkest pits of hell. A place worse than Dante’s inferno.
He had changed much since the night he was turned. He might as well have died that day, it would be the same. He was entirely something- someone- else. His temper had become unpredictable, his manner ruthless and cold. Too many nights Lestat would throw tantrums, roar like a lion with a rage unfamiliar to her. Some nights, in fits of rage and displeasure, his anger would become reckless and downright cruel. With a simple grasp of her, he would take away her autonomy and sense of self. He fed from her neck in a primal manner, worse and more painful than he would any human. Her blood- to any vampire and for some unexplainable reason- smelled like the nectar of the Gods. And Lestat knew, since he was the only one who got to drink from her, that some nights it tasted better than human blood. It was honey and any sweet fruit, it was the tender touch of a mother and the first warm breeze of fresh spring. Additionally, many times over, his backhand would collide with her sweet and oh so delicate face. Some nights his hand would wrap firmly around her throat, lifting her off dainty feet.
And then, some nights, there were the times where her Lestat would vanish utterly and something truly evil would take his place. Her craving for the touch of skin, the simple act of loving one another would become the last thing on her animal fed and weak mind. And he hated it. He loathed not being desired, especially not by his own wife. So he would take her. With her nails scratching over floorboards and pained screams, cries and dryness betwene her thighs, he’d take her. And it would leave her a wounded mess each time.
But it was not all that. In a sense, Lestat was devoted to her. Any man could see the standard to which he held her, how he sanctified her in the way he hovered around her whenever he could, how his gaze followed her when she would leave a room. It was another level of devotion. Some sick sense of Lestat’s devotion. Some nights he would kneel, like it has been all he had been doing the past century. It always made Louis wonder: What has he missed in those years in which they had been together, before Louis was even born? Has her love always coexisted with her fear or has their love been pure and young before? Untouched by the cruelty that existed between them now. Boy and girl fallen in love. Or was it always what it had been now? A simple take, take, take.
The front door shuts gently when she enters. No rattled hinges or cracks in the ceilings by her hands, never. She places down her purse and slips off the silken gloves, leaving them neatly on the side table by the door. Her heart beats calmly, her body at peace ever since she rounded the corner of the block they lived on. She had immediately felt the absence of His presence, no looming grandeur of a soul sucking energy. She had only felt the opposite.
Quiet, calm, soothing. Saint Louis.
“Bonjour.” She greets him with a small and almost timid tug of her soft lips when she steps into the drawing room. He, as most times, sits by the fire with a leather bound book in his hands. His gaze meets hers, piercing green and warm brown. So starkly different and yet the same in their essence. Gentle and genuine.
“Bonjour.” He cannot help but to meet her smile with one of his own, lowering his book into his lap to give her his full attention. “How was church?” He implores gently, very much having noticed her nearly nightly habit. He notices. How could he not notice her?
She steps in further, hands resting on the top of one of the chairs when she replies. “Enriching.” Because what else could it be to her? It was a quiet place, devoid of monsters and sinners. It was a place of forgiveness in which sinners would leave from absolved. It was a place of new beginnings, which to her was holy enough.
He nods once at her one-word response, taking in the calmness of the moment. No underlying fear or sick thrill of the unknown and unpredictable that one would have with Lestat. It was a nice change, a welcome one at that.
“Où est Lestat?” (”Where is Lestat?”) It is as if she was not allowing herself to speak to Louis without her husbands presence. And even if she did, she would simply not allow herself to speak about anything else but her husband. A habit she would have to unlearn.
“Out, feeding.” He replies calmly, blinking a bit longer when he thinks of the dramatiques that Lestat acted out whenever he fed. Well, he did not feed. He feasted. He made it a spectacle each time and Louis was not always in the mood for it. He was rarely in the mood for it actually. He preferred quick and painless, for both him and the victim. It was not the part of him taking a life per se- it never really felt like murder- but the simple guilt of not feeling guilty. He was born and raised Catholic, believing in sinning and repentance. To feel guilty was the right thing to do. It should come naturally and it always did to him. But it had stopped as soon as he became a creature of the night. And it disturbed him, made him grapple with his modes of identity, moral and beliefs. Which is why he understood and respected the durability of her… diet.
A long beat of thick silence passes as the two look at each other. Just then, he lifts his leather bound book slightly as if presenting it towards her.
“There’s a new bookshop. Got a wide selection from all over. Really… worldly. I think you’d like it.” He tells her, using the only shared interest he knew of as a lifeboat, something to grasp together with her.
Her brows lift some at his words, interest and slight surprise at his effort of connection. Her hands move behind her back, toying with her fingers out of view. A habit Lestat always snatched her out of by holding one of her hands in a firm grip. Like holding the hand of an insolent child who would not sit still.
“Oh, how interesting. I shall go there.” She replies with a polite tone and smile. An idea forms in her mind just the second after she had uttered her previous words. “Perhaps you would like to accompany me?”
Now his brows lift. The book in his lap shifts when he sits up, taken somewhat off guard by her suggestion veiled as question. Lifeboat turned ship.
“I’d love to.”
Sous Le Lion
part I
part II
part III
part IV
part V
pairing: lestat de lioncourt x oc!reader x louis de pointe du lac
summary: wife turned lamb.
warnings: angst, mentions of domestic abuse, mentions of blood.
word count: 2.583k disclaimer: OC story!!! english is not my first language, so sorry on that front. and this is my first published piece, thus please have mercy on me. I am also not sure if I will make this a multiple chapter situation but do let me know if you guys want more. might be shit but at least not ai. thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!
The shadows had bowed to her and her steps were a faint whisper on the lively spring ground of the woods. The trees rustled their leaves in greeting to their feminine breeze, the sun grazed her porcelain akin skin, longing to touch her. An angel sent onto the world, unleashed onto its people and wonders. With hair as silky and inky as the night and brown eyes as warm as honey, and a smile as genuine and gentle as a mother’s touch, she was encapsulating everything which was good in the world. And He was drawn to it immediately.
He followed her, as He always done, something akin to the shadows of the trees. She knew He followed, she did not hear him but felt His very presence in every cell of her physical being and soul.
He had seen her first when her family had descended from the ship at Le Havre, a cluster of immigrants from central Asia and amongst them, an angel. With her devoted steps following after her father and sister, she seemed almost holy in comparison. Unlike anything He had ever see or would ever see.
Breathless kisses against the sturdy tree trunks and sweet whispers followed, tender in anything and everything they share. A love gentle as a grass blade ghosting on one's skin. A love as old as empires. A love set in stone and shared in blood.
The year writes 1910 and New Orleans buzzes with sin and jazz and the Devil had arrived two nights ago. His confident saunter leads him to the more… lustrous streets in the French named city that had captured His attention enough to lay roots in it for as long as time allows Him. The first time He lays his gaze onto Louis de Pointe du Lac, Lestat de Lioncourt is infatuatedly enamoured. An ancient fire awakes within Him when the black man passes Him like a breeze of promise. And at home, Lestat de Lioncourt’s wife holds onto promise as she toys with the gold banded diamond ring on her finger and her gaze longingly shifting out the window in silent hope.
Used to His many side steps, she does not bother asking Him where He was. There were only ever a few options and by the look on His face and the unbothered smoothness in His movements, she knew she’d get the one option she liked least. He always came back home to her, never tangled her into His sinful encounters which she let him have because Lestat de Lioncourt needs variety. He had called it as simple as a ‘new colour palette’. Was she allowed to expand her palette? Of course not. She was his. His wife, his companion, his first child of the Dark Gift.
But when He brings one of His side steps into their shared home on one foggy evening, calling him His acquaintance and telling her he was simply introducing him to his hometown, she knows her fate was sealed. It was the first time she would lay eyes on Louis de Pointe du Lac, and to her misfortune or fortune (yet to be debated), she was infatuatedly enamoured. She was burdened by her maker’s preferences.
Louis de Pointe du Lac thought he was a homosexual man. He had thought it since he was a young boy, drowned in shame and reclusion when he stayed away from any sexual or romantic encounters. But all his doubts and all his knowledge about his own being and preferences blew away with the same wind that pushed Their sails forward into the city of jazz. Setareh de Lioncourt was and will infinitely be angelic in her very essence. Sanctified by the very man that had stripped her of her beloved humanity. _________________________________________________________ The fire cracks, wood splinters and burns like a wound inside the fireplace of Their shared home. The man of the house wasn’t present, but both his wife and lover were. Her dark and oddly human eyes glance up from the edge of her open book, at the man sitting on the sofa across from hers, while she inhabited the other one. A small table separated them like the red sea.
It was partly her fault, as she had aided her husband in ‘seducing’ the Creole man. Not out of love or devotion but out of an disgusting sense of obligation that her husband simply seemed to lack. Now, as if it had always been this way, Louis De Pointe Du Lac had entered her home and husband as if he had belonged there all along. And oh, and how it ached whenever she heard the faint sweet whispers that were once uttered to her in reverence, now spat upon and dishonoured as her husband uttered them to another, right in front of her.
The air inside the New Orleans townhouse was thick with one too many scent crowding her senses. By the eight glance she had shot him over the open book in her hands, he lets out an almost exasperated breath, smiles small and looks up from his own hardcover. ”Do I have something on my face?” He asks her almost amused, but ever with the underlying sense of sharpness Lestat swore his new lover did not have.
She returns the slight smile, although hers carried a hint of a bitterness. ”Only my husbands devotion.”
It makes him glance down at the floor in something close to guilt but he raises his gaze back to her, his eyes so much more piercing than hers. ”Listen,…I know I don’t really have a place here and I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have someone suddenly come in here and disrupt your marriage like this but… I…I care about him. And believe it or not, I care about you. And I want to make this work.” His voice is calm when he speaks, always the mediator and something so different than what she’s used to by the man usually around her. Lestat, who barks like an angry dog, who roars like a lion and throws vases at his trembling wife. Lestat who had shattered her heart the same way he did with mirrors. With a quick indifference.
She lowers her book in her hands, placing it down onto her thigh which was covered by expensive and dark silk, the colour resembling the essence of human life. Blood. Lestat thought it amusing.
“Je ne sais pas what it is you want of me. To befriend the man my husband beds?” She asks him with a genuinely curious tilt of her head and a slight sharpness to her smooth voice, sharp and yet soft, almost helpless really.
“As messed up as it sounds: yes. We live here together, with him, and as far as I can see, it won’t change for a while. I don’t want to replace you nor do I think I ever could. I don’t want to be at war.”
“There is no war.”
“Then why do your looks hurt as much as a shot to my heart?”
She looks at him, her face blank but her beautiful eyes softening a fraction at his words. When they had first met, they had clicked. She really had believed her husband and thought of Louis as a friend. Someone to show them the city at night, to entertain them until Lestat had dared to leave them alone one night, sitting on a bench in the park. They had talked for hours that night and she was close to burning herself in the rising sun, having forgotten what she was cursed with. When she was lying in her coffin that sunny day, Louis’s voice had still rung in her head like a lullaby. He had been gentle, tender and almost melodic to her senses. A man naturally charming, while Lestat had been utterly unnatural.
Things had spun around when Lestat had revealed the truth to her, all the nights spend with Louis, conversations and understandings crumbling to nothing but regret.
“I… I do not want to be at war either.” She tells him after a moment of thick silence. Her slender fingers barely folding the corners of her book but not enough to crease the page. Lestat had found it a nasty habit when she did it. Her nails were human, not like Lestat’s or Louis’s or any other vampire’s. It evoked questions in each of them, but Lestat had no answer to any of them.
“Then how do we do this? What would make you feel more comfortable with this?” He asks her with a slight tilt of his head, mirroring her unconsciously. He seemed genuinely concerned, genuinely trying to be better, to make amends with the wife of the man he loved.
“I would feel better if my husband would stop loving you,” she tells him almost dryly amused, bitter but not sharp. “But I know he will not change his mind. He rarely does. I suppose I simply have to…adjust. It will take time. You will have to be patient, s’il te plaît.”
He nods dutifully, kind eyes locked onto hers and that faint but charming smirk of his gracing her lips. She understood Lestat. Very much.
“We got all the time in the world, ain’t that right?”
“Oui. Correct.” She lets out a silent breath, evading his gaze shortly, glancing past her own shoulder and out the window as if He was lurking in the shadows. “I suppose ‘tis nice, in its own way. Now I am no longer alone in living with his...extravagance.” She says with a faint smile, one that, to him, resembled the sun.
Louis lets out a soft and rueful laugh, nodding along to her words. “Yeah, he’s…something.” He replies with a bigger smile and a breathy chuckle, before his voice softens, same as his smile. “I felt like your silence has been louder than his tantrums and theatrics. Maybe we don’t have to share his attention but more the burden of loving him.” He tells her earnestly, green eyes shimmering the dim light of their home.
“I would like that.” An understanding shared in warm and dim lights, in the warmth of a now truly shared home… and man.
Their comforting bubble is burst by the sound of the front door flying open and smashing shut in the usual unbothered motion of a wrist flick. Of course she had sensed his presence long before he had entered. She always did. How couldn’t she when it was like a blare of a horn as well as the rumble of thunder in dark and heavy clouds. Her gaze drifts to him, same as Louis’s. The aristocrat enters his home, smouldering gaze at the two he owns. He comes to a halt a step inside through the doorway, polished shoes on the Persian carpet that was nearly as old as his wife. His hands clasp almost innocently in front of him, tilting his head like a curious dog as he smiles deceivingly calm, voice smooth and low as always. Pleasant, yes. But threatening to her.
“What do we have here? A soiree without the man of the house?” He asks them with a slow blink of his piercing eyes. She simply grasps her book closer to her chest, honeyed eyes looking at her husband with an childlike obedience.
“Nous ne faisions que discuter de mon livre.” (”We were just discussing my book.”) She replies in her quiet and almost timid voice, one that could never ever make one think that she was not telling the truth. He keeps the slight up-tug at the corner of his sensual lips but his gaze remains piercing, telling as he regards his wife. His gaze briefly glances down at the book held to her ample chest. DuBois and his ideas of equality. His radical wife with her radical ideas. Little did he know she was trying to understand Louis better, to understand his world and standing in Lestat’s world. The one of men with opaque skin and consuming desires of having and owning.
“Ah… A supporter of the Creole folk, mon amour?” He asks almost mockingly with a slight but feigned pinch of sympathy between his brows. It makes Louis inhale through his nose and lean back in the plush armchair. He was in no mood for Lestat’s hostile energy towards his own wife, in no mood to see that gentle frown on her oh so gentle face. She was too sweet for it.
“Aren’t you?” Louis asks him with a small tilt of his head. The flames from the fireplace graze the left side of his face, creating golden skin. Nevertheless, his gaze remains seriously playful, in no mood for Lestat’s games, in no mood to fall victim to them. It did not have its usual appeal right now. Not with her in the middle, between two fronts.
Lestat’s gaze flicks to his lover, the tug lifting some and his gaze almost seems amused, as careful as it suddenly becomes, if even slightly. He had some less bite with Louis.
“Of course, mon cher. Always.” He replies smoothly, lowering his chin some in a calming manner. His gaze shoots back to his wife and like the snap of one’s fingers, it carries the usual strictness in it. The look a mother gives a child during family events, silently telling it to not touch the laid out sweets… even if they are meant to be enjoyed.
She blinks at him before her doe like eyes turn downwards, as if chastised. She shuts her book after marking the page with its string, never dog earring the page as her husband did. She did not like to destroy beautiful things.
She silently rises from her seat, the robe like a whisper against her skin when she steps out the seating area. Book clasped in her hands, she aims towards the staircase, to walk up the stairs, lock herself into her coffin and dream of other things than this nightmare of an afterlife. But before she can even cross the doorway, a firm hand grasps her delicate upper arm. Her gaze keeps on the carpeted floor, book still clasped to her chest like a lifeline when he clasps her arm.
“Je suis fatigué.” (”I am tired.”) Her voice is quiet, silently asking for permission even though it is not what she means to do. It comes to her naturally, trained like a dog by its master.
His thumb briefly strokes over her silk robe covered arm, feeling her human warmth beneath his palm. His gaze is scorching on the profile of her lowered face, his gaze tracking the divine slop of her nose, the sharp yet soft jawline, the plush of her rosy lips. Just after a few long beats he lets go off her, hand snapped away as if she were on fire, gaze back ahead at Louis when he speaks to her nearly dismissively.
“Va dormir.” ("Go to sleep.") He orders her in his contemptuous tone, waving her away with a lazy and feline motion of his hand. She feels Louis’s gaze on her back, the silent show of support… or was it pity? Whatever it was, she silently obeys his order, seeing it more as an escape than that when her delicate feet pad up the stairs.
Like a purr, his voice seeps to her for the last time that night before she sleeps as well as an undead being could sleep.
“Dors bien, mon ange.” ("Sleep well, my angel.")
Hannibal (2013-2015) Interview with the Vampire (2022-) Wake Up Dead Man (2025)
#ipad kid holy trinity
You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?
worship and violence both require your devotion
and your hands
AND YOUR HANDS