face pressed up against your longing

hello loustat nation, if you're craving a lil fic where louis and lestat never lost their heads and instead run away to the desert together... that's exactly what i just posted...

—

Fingers on his throat. The sun was gone again. 

Louis woke to the gentle warmth of Lestat against his back, fingertips slowly dancing along the scar that circled his neck. “How does it feel?” Lestat asked, his voice a strain of music rising in the darkness. He touched Louis gently as the keys of a piano. “Have the nerves along the space where you were stitched come alive again?”

A shiver ran the length of Louis’ spine. Lestat’s hands on him. Lestat’s breath warm against his earlobe. “Can’t, uh…” He swallowed, tried to shake the sleep from his brain, desire low in his gut waking before the rest of him. “Can’t feel too much right on the line yet, but around it…”

Berating himself via Gabriella in his head (because of course it would be her), telling himself what he felt with Louis wasn't love. It never was, not after the book. He was only pretending it was. He sees a flash of Mardi Gras just after, immediately followed by the final words they exchanged on the bench playing back to him in reverse...

Mardi Gras, where he was hoping the love they'd fallen back into was real and Louis wouldn't go through with it. But then Louis slit his throat anyway. And then the night on the bench in Montreal when he lost his head because he was so blinded by that same love he couldn't see what was coming. Could be. Hands touch. And it couldn't have been real either time, right? Because Louis has never said it, never uttered the words out loud. Only...

On the brink of death, the truth, pushing past all the self-loathing and self-doubt. He is loved by Louis. And whether these words are truly coming from Paul's ghost or Lestat's imagining of him, the full circle moment is all the same...

He is loved. Even Paul would be able to see it. And now is the time for their new beginning, picking up right where they left off on that bench, imagining their future together. In love. So so so in love...

—

“You were all I could think about, you know that?” Louis said, an ache coming low in his gut and a heat sweeping over his brow like a fever. Healing neck wound, Lestat’s hand resting easy against the small of his back. “Head on a skewer, losing myself, the girl in front of me with a blade to her wrist…”

Lestat said nothing, his heart knocking strong and sure in his chest. He leaned closer, resting his forehead against Louis’ as he spoke. Just… breathing him in.

“And it was only you. Like a fog hangin’ over me. Like…”

Words were failing him now. Lestat so close, his breath phantom kisses falling over Louis’ lips. He wanted to lean forward and press their mouths together very badly, but it seemed like the sort of thing they should make a big deal about. The first time there in that new beginning together. The first time, like they were untouched, unscarred, brand new beings. Flashes of February 1940 flooding Louis’ head, the very last time their lips had slotted together. The last time—yes. The end, it had been. And now there they were again just beginning.

“Louis,” Lestat said, almost whispered, when Louis’ voice went still. His hand on Louis’ lower back moving upward slowly, fingertips dancing along his spine through his shirt. “Mon cher…”

And Lestat... his life with Louis flashing before his eyes at the long table, recounting his failures, shots of their kisses in reverse because he could feel himself slipping away from his beloved, never to feel the knock of his heart again. The final memory a flash of himself knocking on Louis' coffin, trying to wake him, longing for his touch...

"Could be. Hands touch." That moment on the bench anchoring him to reality. Louis as his tether just as he is for Louis. His Louis, Louis, Louis the most precious gift he has on this earth...

And then Paul shows up. I'm not sure if we were meant to see him as a ghost or merely an imagining saying what Lestat wanted to hear (I'm assuming the latter) but either way... Lestat was only thinking of Louis. Their love. The way Louis never said it in words but how, after their reunion, the moment on the bench, he felt that love all the same. "He has a hard time saying it. Doesn't mean he doesn't."

For both of them, their love is the beginning and the end of all things. The last thing they think of, the last thing they ache for...

i can't stop thinking about their sweet lil neck touches, that they are together now and will be together when season 4 begins, that season 4 might just be everything we were hoping season 3 would be because this is just the midpoint of the story.... the neck touches... the. neck. touches.

lestat's fingers dancing along the nape of louis' neck... the backs of louis' fingers brushing along lestat's scar... i thought i would be upset if they didn't kiss but i'm not because it's so clear they will do that in season 4????

THE NECK TOUCHES!!!

also louis admitting that lestat is the love of his life.... that even in that moment of horror all he could think about was lestat.... season 4 i need you to come to me now..........