Merciful Death. How you love your precious guilt

Louis, king of never getting what he wants for no fault but his own.

ANON!!!!! I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR LITERAL YEARRRSSSSSS

I'm so mad tumblr's search system is ASS because i know i made a little post about my ideas for a cnc loustat fic about 2 years ago and it's not coming up when I look for it but suffice to say I wholeheartedly agree for the exact same reasons!!!!!

His biggest gripe about intimacy in general isn't necessarily the act of it, but the wanting of it. He doesn't want to claim responsibility over that part of himself that harbors all those nasty desires, and I've been wanting to write a rape fantasy fic for sooooooo long now.

And YES, 1,000% agree that Louis would never admit it out loud to Lestat. I think after all the baggage of their first relationship attempt, Lestat is hesitant and overly cautious with Louis many boundaries because he knows he fucked it up really badly in the past (and also!!! Lestat has CHANGED, he's GROWN, I really doubt he would WANT to treat Louis in that manner because it takes so little to make Lestat feel like a Monster these days).

Drabble Requests | Open

“Allow me,” Lestat’s voice is syrupy and sweet as he kneels before Louis, offering a sturdy knee and two ready hands with which Louis might brace himself.

There’s a flash of confusion across Louis’ delicate features, a slight crinkle in that perpetually worn brow, but the dusty old boot lands with only a sliver of hesitation in Lestat’s lap nonetheless. Despite the tattered clothes and infinitely disheveled demeanor, Louis had never lost the ease and elegance of his aristocratic blood— he seems comfortable here, with a man at his feet. Expectant.

Tracing his fingers up the line of little metal rivulets, he follows the laces to their final destination at the opening of the boot and grabs one in each hand. He can't remember when he was taught to tie his own laces; he was older than the age at which children these days learn to do it for themselves, without the silent attendance of servants or cobblers.

The boots are tall— not quite as tall as the sternly laced adornments he might have worn for riding, but gripping the swell of Louis' finely toned calf nonetheless. A sharp tug at the laces jostles his foot for a moment, threatens to throw Louis entirely off balance, but he rights himself with a small grunt and even that Lestat finds incredibly endearing.

Lestat wonders, for a moment, where Louis had picked these up. Did he buy them from the store, or yank them off of one of the poor young things that he sometimes fed from, behind back of the punk club on the outskirts of town? The leather is so cracked where the bend of his ankle forces a crease with every step. It's a miracle the heel is still intact at all; what a humiliation it would have been, Lestat thinks now, to have suffocated or crushed and perish beneath the heel of such a musty old thing.

“What are you thinking about?” Louis' voice is cool and flat.

“You know what I’m thinking about,” Lestat purrs in reply.

The silence that falls between them feels strange— not quite tense, and yet not quite easy, either. He can feel the sharp sting of Louis' gaze on him, but doesn't move his eyes from the criss-crossing of laces.

“I’m sor—“ “Would you do it to me again if I asked nicely?”

Lestat laughs as they speak over one another, their words colliding mid-air like a plane crash. Louis, on the other hand, flushes pink.

“What?” Louis breathes.

“Would you do it to me ag—“

“No.”

Lestat bites his lip as the foot on his thigh recoils, Louis taking a step back as if in horror.

“Why do you…why?”

Lestat shrugs, leaning back on one hand.

“I liked it. I thought it was hot.”

“I nearly killed you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“That isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“You weren’t even in your body!”

“I think that’s why I think of it so often,” Lestat confesses. “Your power intoxicates me, it always has. Even moreso when I'm defenseless."

"I nearly killed you," Louis says again, only this time there is a quiver in his voice, something strained with an emotion Lestat cannot quite place. His nostrils flare in a controlled breath, but he seems...hurt. Yes, hurt, and repulsed, and angry, and—

And Lestat doesn't have time to analyze the many complexities of his lover's delicate features because suddenly he's on his back on the ground, and that familiar worn-down heel is pressing against his windpipe and blocking off any air that wasn't already knocked out of him by the surprise blow. His body is no longer a fragile mortal thing, but it reacts in the same way, gripping instinctively around the slim bird-like ankle pinning him in place.

He doesn't need to breathe, he reminds himself as Louis digs in further, and the pain is somehow sharp and dull at the same time, bursting the delicate capillaries below the tender alabaster skin that Louis had kissed not even an hour before.

“Don’t ask me again,” he grits out between clenched teeth and bared fangs, like a rabid dog.

Re-reading TVL I felt compelled to draw Eleni (who I love and who I want as a pen pal) writing Lestat about what was happening with Nicki, Armand and The Théâtre des Vampires. The letters are scattered, yes, Lestat just read the last one, informing him of Nicki's tragic fate...

I tried to do the Colombina from La Commédia dell'arte costume but in blue. Hopefully it translates well on paper.

The ruin of the lamb

10. In the second to last book in the series Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, Lestat goes to the lost city of Atlantis! This is not in fact a thing that happens in the book. It's a fun book, you should read it.

9. Anne Rice hated [insert character here] which is why they aren't in the later books! No she probably didn't, she probably just forgot they existed. She cared much less about minor characters than any of us do. She also didn't feel like she could write Louis because of his headspace being so tied to a particular point in her life.

8. In Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, you find out that the vampires are aliens! That's also not what happens in that book, go read it, it's pretty fun book.

7. Anne Rice hired a ghostwriter to write Blood Canticle, or any of a number of her other books! Literally what the fuck are you talking about, why would someone write that book if they weren't Anne Rice!? Also, you think Anne Rice let someone else write LESTAT!? A thing she famously had a weird problem with!?

6. Anne Rice disowned and denounced her former work when she reverted to Christianity! All of the actual quotes about the series from her after she stopped writing it because she consecrated her writing to Christ are much funnier than the thing you're hallucinating, go look them up, she said something about how even her pornography was probably divinely inspired.

5. None of Anne Rice's books after The Queen of the Damned underwent any editing! It's not editing she was talking about, it was developmental comments from her editor, her editor who would give her feedback as she was writing the book. All of her work was copyedited, some better than others, and she actually paid for additional editors for some of her books to catch continuity issues. If you're wondering why she stopped taking developmental comments from her editor, I can only speculate, but I can tell you from reading her diary that her editor thought she should scrap most of that Armand nonsense in the middle of The Vampire Lestat. So I can't be too mad about it.

4. The concept of an unreliable narrator is central to the series throughout! No it's not, well, that and most people are using the term wrong or using it inconsistently. The series is a bunch of books mostly in first person, they rarely contradict on actual external events and most of the places where the point of views diverge are purely the personal opinions and subjective experiences of the characters. You are almost never supposed to assume a character is lying in the narration, and there are only two points in the series where anyone is actually noted to have been false in their narration. Neither of the falsehoods is a significant plot point.

3. Anne Rice didn't write books with female leads because she had too much internalized sexism and was ignorant about it! Anne Rice had internalized sexism she was completely cognizant of and actively working through in her work, you can find a bunch of interviews of her talking about it. She also did write fewer female leads because they didn't sell as well, you can find a bunch of interviews with her talking about that too. You don't have to love the way she writes about women, you can't complain she didn't write enough female leads unless you actually read the books that she wrote with female leads in them. You should go read The Witching Hour, it has a great female lead, and if you don't have time to read half a million words, go read Pandora, which is also great.

2. The books aren't gay because she either had to censor them because she couldn't make them gay in the '70s, or because she was naive and homophobic! Neither of these things are true, Anne Rice wrote Cry to Heaven in 1982, she confirmed the queerness of her characters as early as in the first book in the second half, and if you really need it hammered home, it's also in the second and third books. For what it's worth she didn't try to make them less gay later on either. It's Anne Rice, if a character isn't bisexual that's an anomaly. The sex stuff is for thematic reasons in the lore, and there's a bunch of sex stuff that doesn't contradict the lore later on. It's crazy that people who have read The Vampire Armand think this woman was avoiding writing gay sex.

As the last notes ring out through the room, Lestat wipes at his eyes, a smile curving his lips upwards.

"That was wonderful."

He's met with a sigh and slumped shoulders as Nicki goes to place the violin back in its case.

"What?" Lestat asks, tilting his head. "What's the matter?"

"It still isn't right," Nicki says, sounding irritated and down-trodden all at once.

He walks over to the bed, sitting on the edge with his back to Lestat, hunched forward with his elbows resting on his knees. Lestat frowns at him from where he sits on the bed behind him.

"It sounded alright to me."

"Well it would to you," Nicki scoffs, "you can't hear it the way I can." He rubs at his forehead as if trying to stave off a headache, pinching the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. "It's just that one part near the end, I can't quite–" He scoffs again, leaning his forehead against his palm. "I don't know why I'm trying to explain it to you, it's not like you'd understand."