this whole episode is everything but i still cannot get over that whole sequence of the argument, with lestat stress-vomiting (cause that's what it was), the panic attack AND LOUIS HOLDING HIM😭😭😭
i've already watched this scene like 15 times and i cannot get over it, oh my god. lestat's wheezing, the gagging/choking in between, the immediate realization on louis' face when lestat starts to hyperventilate, the constant "it's okay" - my god. MY HEART
i will be screaming about this for the next week i fear. longer. can't even get into the brutal love scene just yet (THAT WAS EVERYTHING😭) cause then this ask would be a dozen paragraphs longer omg.
also a side note but i, personally, have rarely seen a panic attack portrayed so viscerally, so well, so "not prettily", if you get what i mean? it's messy, it's ugly, it hurts to all hell (i have experience unfortunately) and i love love love sam even more than i already do for portraying this like he did.
Yes. I had a....visceral reaction to it, to say the least.
This is the scene certain reviewers watched and still came away acting as if the abuse was "consensual" or "sexy" or "being treated flippantly."
Yeah, fuck right off with that shit.
Lestat has been hiding this for literal centuries. CENTURIES! He is embarrassed. He is ashamed. There is a part of him that feels it's his fault that she does what she does to him. He hid this from Louis, because he was terrified that Louis would be disgusted with him (because he's disgusted with himself) and the moment Louis finds out his worst "failure", Lestat is sick. He starts throwing up and panicking that Louis is going to leave him again.
The first time I watched this? I was begging Louis to please hug him and comfort him. Louis' initial words were diabolical, yes, but he represented an (unfortunately) real reaction to incestuous sexual abuse. People simply don't understand it and look no further than the ghouls in this fandom and how they've spent the last six weeks blaming the abuse on Lestat and mocking him for it.
But Louis, as I've stressed, is trying and when he finally hugged Lestat, I was sobbing and just saying "thank you, Louis!" over and over. Because at the end of the day, that is all Lestat wants and needs. Louis comforting him. Louis just "sitting with him." Remember in Episode 1 when Lestat was injured, and he was begging Gabs to come find him? She asked if he had any "expectations", but Lestat desperately said "No. Nothing. Just sit with me. Please. I need you."
If you notice, when Louis says the abuse is a sickness, that is when Lestat truly breaks. He tells Louis that he never called Louis' suffering a sickness and points out to Louis that he's been taking care of him during the Regina/Claudia madness frenzy. Something, btw, Lestat coins as "unimaginable", which hints at Louis being even more deep into the psychosis spiral than even Lestat has seen before. He starts listing all the things he's "offered" Louis to help him and care for him, because that's what Lestat thinks has to happen for anyone to just "sit with him." There's a part of him that can't really understand why Louis is reacting like this, right? Because he offered Louis something.
But for Louis? Lestat doesn't need to offer him anything. Louis loves him and the moment Lestat starts wheezing and stuttering, it finally clicks for Louis how serious it is and that it is, in fact, sexual abuse and what does Louis do? He immediately apologizes and tries to comfort Lestat and calm him down.
Louis, unlike Gabs, doesn't have any "expectations." He doesn't need Lestat to offer him anything. He doesn't need Lestat to offer his body up as a sacrifice for crumbs of affection.
Louis freely gives it to him out of love and compassion and concern. Louis will just "sit with him" and this entire scene hammers that home.
Also? It's not lost on me that Louis asking Lestat for his blood in the next scene was a poignant moment demonstrating to Lestat that Louis actively desires his blood — the blood in which we were told in Episode 5 is another of Lestat's greatest shames and another point of self-loathing for Lestat.
But Louis? He wants it. He wants Lestat's blood and that statement threaded within the conversation about Lestat unburdening himself to Louis about the sexual abuse? Directly after we learned of Lestat's shame over his blood? It hits. Because Louis wants all of Lestat and accepts all of Lestat.
Louis can't give a verbal straight answer, but his actions speak much louder than any words ever could, because a little over an hour after this? Louis is planning their future together.
Lestat is his fucking baby.
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