Title: The Taste of Louis
Author: RavenWolf
Pairing: Louis/Lestat
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Lestat remembered things very vividly for having been alive over two hundred years. But certain things stood out in his mind, as though they were etched in concrete. Important events, ones that he considered life-changing. There were several of those; not too many, because he didn’t want to cheapen the idea. The day he met Nicholas, for instance. The day he died. The day Gabrielle was born to darkness. The day he first tasted Louis...
Ta, now that was a life-changing experience. In more ways than one. Louis was very nearly the death of him, once literally, many times figuratively. But oh, the taste of him. He didn’t taste like sin; that was too simple. Oh, no, he tasted like a flower about to bloom in the full heat of the night, like a boy on the edge of a cliff, ready to be pushed. Lestat craved that taste, fervently and desperately. That was the real reason he’d offered Louis the Dark Gift. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing such a sweet face and delicate bouquet to the merciless hands of time.
Of course, he hadn’t known then that time touches everything, even vampires. Though Louis never changed in body, his spirit grew older and more cynical. And as it did, something strange came about. His blood changed. It thickened. And the taste...
Lestat still fed from his fledgling, as he considered it his right to do. Louis was his, as far as he was concerned; he could do anything he wanted with his fledgling love. Fortunately, there never was any conflict between them on that issue. Louis wanted to be abused, and so his relationship with Lestat suited him finely.
When Louis first fed from Claudia, Lestat was dismayed to find that something had changed about him. Now his blood did taste sinful. It tasted almost dirty. Guilty. Tinged with something, some kind of poison. Perhaps spiked with bad alcohol. It tasted like crushed flower petals under the foot of a gentleman. It tasted like the tattered blue of a little girl’s ugly torn dress.
From the description, it sounds almost as if Lestat didn’t like it. That’s not true. He loved this new taste, just as he loved everything else about Louis. Louis was his ever-changing infatuation; how many men, human or vampire, were lucky enough to get that?
It was a bit of a disappointment when he realized that he would never again taste Louis as he used to be. That part of him was lost and would never be returned. It saddened Lestat, not just the loss of the exquisite blood, but the loss of the delicate personality. Lestat had set out to corrupt Louis. And he had, as surely as he did anything else he set his mind to. He’d turned his sweet Louis into a monster, and the sad thing was, it had almost been an accident. He almost hadn’t wanted it.
It was too late for that, anyway. And Louis, despite what Lestat might like to pretend, had never really been under his control.
Now Louis killed freely and without discrimination. Lestat hadn’t tasted him in a long while, because he was afraid that he would not like it. That he would not like what he had forced Louis to become. How Louis had become this in order to survive.
But he could not hold out forever against the seduction of his favorite lover. He courted and danced with Louis and felt his blood flutter beneath fragile skin. He felt this, and he bit him and tasted it for himself.
And now Lestat is sitting alone in his room. He does not rock or moan cry like a crazy person. He just sits on his bed, still as a stone, and cries tears of blood.
Because when he tasted Louis that last night, he could no longer catch anything unique at all.