Okay but Lestat ruminating on that one time Louis crushed him underfoot and constantly trying to get Louis to do it again. Of course, it's a painful memory for Louis so he's just pissed off and weirded out by it
“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 and perished 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.
“Would you do it to me ag—“
Lestat bites his lip as the foot on his thigh recoils, Louis taking a step back as if in horror.
Lestat shrugs, leaning back on one hand.
“I liked it. I thought it was hot.”
“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.
And eventually, when his foot lifts and the air floods back to his lungs in one dizzying rush, the only sound that passes Lestat’s lips is a wheezy, grateful moan.
