didntrun | (no subject)

Entry tags:

lestat

(no subject)

lestat

ANSWER ME

dude, im at work you need to come visit me here right now

Eddie drums his fingers on the front counter at the record store, staring at his phone, waiting for Lestat to acknowledge his fucking existence. And yeah, okay, it's not like they're the sort of friends who do a lot of texting or any texting, really, but he knows Lestat at least looks at his phone from time to time. Eddie figures if he can get annoying enough, he'll eventually get an answer.

Or Lestat will jump out at him from the shadows when he leaves later, but either way, he'll at least be able to tell him what he's discovered tonight.

seriously

He waits another minute.

i will text you until you answer me or SHOW UP HERE

Thirty seconds this time, then he sends a series of vampire emojis.

He gets interrupted by actual customers, rings three people through, staring at his phone the entire time, waiting for an answer, then jumps right back to it to keep making himself the most annoying person Lestat de Lioncourt has ever met in his however many years he's been alive.

im not joking this is so serious i need to see you right now!!!!!!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Something in the apartment was buzzing. Buzzing. Incessantly buzzing.

It was the first sound he was made aware of, as he woke from his vampire slumber. An annoyance, drifting in through the death shroud moments before the sun set. Eyes springing open, Lestat gritted his teeth, drew in a breath, and lifted the lid of his coffin with enough force that the wood creaked in protest.

"What is that infernal noise," he muttered, stalking through the darkened apartment, heavy curtains drawn across every window. Beyond them, the night was only just beginning. It called to him, and he would go out to greet it...

As soon as he found the source of that noise.

Tossing aside a stack of books, Lestat realized he'd let the apartment get a bit unruly, and he should probably—

"Ah. It was you," he muttered to his cellular phone, which he often forgot existed. It wasn't that he feared it, or even distrusted it. In fact, he thought it came in rather handy, from time to time. Still, its use did not come naturally to him, and Lestat had always been rather slow when it came to learning anything new.

As he peered at the screen, the latest message appeared. im not joking this is so serious i need to see you right now!!!!!!

"Hm," Lestat's brow arched. While Eddie had a flare for the dramatic, this was... unusual.

Tossing the phone aside (the battery was nearly dead, anyway), Lestat dressed, and was there at Phoenix within moments.

"Those little pictures," Lestat said, seeming to appear at Eddie's side. He mimicked the emoji, teeth bared and fingers curled to claws. "Terribly inaccurate. I would never wear a cape."

He would and he had.

"Gah!" Eddie practically shrieks, fumbling to keep a grip on his phone, even though he knows he should have expected Lestat to just appear like that. It was what he did. By now, Eddie should be used to it.

He recovers quickly enough, though, and says, "Liar, you've totally worn a cape and that's not even the point of me texting you." At the same time as he's speaking, Eddie is trying to propel Lestat backward, toward the store room where they can actually talk with a bit of privacy.

While he may not be strong enough to actually manhandle Lestat, he kind of hopes his friend just lets it happen and gives his ego a little boost.

Lestat arched a brow and stood his ground, letting the boy all but bounce off of the solid, immovable wall of his chest. Hardly attempting to conceal his amusement, he took an accommodating step back, and another, angling his body to slip behind the counter and backing through the store room door with an exaggeratedly scandalized look.

"A back room dalliance? I never would've thought you had it in you."

“You wish,” he counters, even though sometimes he kind of wishes, too. He loves Chrissy and would never do anything to hurt her, but now and then, he’s definitely had some dirty thoughts about Lestat. It probably comes with the vampire territory, he thinks, although this is also not the point and he slaps on the store room light to bring his focus back.

“This is serious, man, and I’m gonna tell you something and I need you to not like, rip my head off or anything in response.” He looks at Lestat sternly, as if he could do anything to prevent violence if Lestat really wanted to hurt him. “Don’t shoot the messenger and all that, right? I’m telling you about this because you’re my friend.”

Lestat frowned, his amusement dosed as abruptly as if Eddie had slapped him across the face. The young man was only incidentally serious, and never so stern.

Taking Eddie by the shoulders, Lestat steered him deeper into the room, pressing him bodily against the wall next to a set of dusty shelves. Lestat's piercing eyes narrowed, and pressed deeper past the jumble of surface thoughts in Eddie's mind to something deeper.

A face.

Lestat's expression shifted. To shock. To anger. Strangely, to fear. Finally, resigned sorrow. All in an instant. The mask settled, and he took a step back, impassive.

"Where?"

"Okay, you and me, we're going to have a discussion about mind reading and consent later," Eddie says, his hands having gone to Lestat's forearms when he'd been taken by the shoulders. Even though Lestat steps back, Eddie doesn't let go, stepping away from the wall at the same time.

"Here," he says. "Like... an hour ago? Just after sunset. I've been texting you since he left."

And if he hadn't answered, Eddie would have gone to his place and banged on the door until he got an answer. He doesn't want to explain how he knows who Louis is, why he knows enough of their history to know Lestat had to be told, but he couldn't pretend he didn't know Louis was here.

Lestat was dismayed at not feeling the echoes of Louis here, within these walls. It was a foolish, maudlin thought, but he could not seem to rid himself of it.

And what he ought to have felt was anger. Fury. Betrayal. Instead, what consumed him was regret. An unspeakable longing, despite all that had happened between them.

"You spoke with him? Did he..." Lestat was uncharacteristically ineloquent. "Was there anyone with him? A girl."

"No," Eddie says. "It was just him."

Later, he'll be grateful for his genuine concern being the primary focus of the moment. If he'd thought about her then, if Lestat had heard her name in Eddie's head, maybe things would be a lot worse, but it doesn't even occur to Eddie to think that. He's just watching Lestat, still holding his forearms, his brows pulled together in concern.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

Lestat's mind was a tempest.

Claudia. He wanted, viciously, to put his hands around her little neck and squeeze. To tear her sneering, hateful little head from her body. He wanted to set her ablaze. He wanted to have her as far away from himself as possible. On another planet, perhaps.

He was mortified to realize that he did not want her dead.

And Louis. Oh God...

"Yes, of course," he said airily. "Never better."

Lestat is so full of shit and Eddie's head tilts slightly, looking at his friend, not with pity, but with an expression caught somewhere between disbelief and concern. He knows Lestat is lying to him. He also knows he can't really dig in and demand Lestat share, no matter how badly he wants to.

Eddie is full of feeling and he knows Lestat is, too, but the difference between them is that Eddie tends to direct a lot of his feelings out.

"Can I do anything?" he asks.

"What could you possibly do?" Lestat said, not unkindly. There was nothing to be done. It rankled him to be treated as fragile. The raw humanity of the moment ought to have disgusted him.

Genuine care was something he had little experience with, and despite his desperate craving of it, he'd never known how to accept or return it.

"How does he look? Well, I hope."

"I dunno, man, get you a place to sit, keep you company once I'm off work, distract you with my shining personality?" he responds. "Yeah, he liked fine. Like a normal person, I guess, except not a person, which I didn't tell him I knew, for the record."

Whatever drama might happen between them, Eddie is content to let it happen between them. But Lestat is his friend, whether he admits to it or not, and Eddie couldn't have not told him or not offered to help, even if he can't.

"I cannot be placated like a child," he snapped, showing teeth. "You cannot comprehend what I am feeling in this moment, so I would ask you not to coddle me."

Taking a step into the center of the cramped storage room, Lestat straightened his vest, his hand fluttering briefly in front of his mouth. It was a small gesture, over in a moment, but it might as well have been a scream for how loudly it spoke of his uneasiness.

"You're lucky he didn't sense it. My Louis abhors killing humans, but his rage is unmatched. He might have killed you," Lestat said, almost wistfully.

“I wasn’t coddling, that’s why I asked.”

Eddie watches, gaze sharp, and doesn’t say anything else for awhile. The gesture throws him a little. It feels like such a small thing, but also like it says so much, and he resists the urge to try and comfort Lestat again.

“Yeah, well, nice to hear you’d be so disappointed if he had,” he finally says, voice a little dry.

"Well, stop asking!" Lestat shouted, knocking a box of old cassette tapes to the floor with a wild sweep of his hand.

He was dangerous in that moment, but more than that, he was wounded. He did not like being caught off-guard. It so rarely happened. He might have torn down the entire building with his bare hands. He might've dropped to his knees and wept.

Instead, he turned, a frown creasing the brow of his otherwise impassive face. "If I wanted you dead, I would've done it myself." He shook his head, and turned to look away in a gesture so human he ought to have been ashamed.

"Snuffed out the only source of companionship I have in this hideous place," he continued, crowding in close once again.

“Jesus,” Eddie says, then exhales heavily. This is it, he figures, the moment he either breaks through for a second or gets his life drained out of him and he may still be a bit of a coward, but the one thing that can override Eddie’s fear is his need to care for people.

Even his vampire person.

“You can just say we’re friends,” he says before he loops both his arms around Lestat and hugs him tightly.

Was this a friendship? Was he even capable of such a thing?

Even as a man, Lestat's emotions had been in such turmoil, that he could hardly think in such terms. Friendship was small and inadequate. He'd had mortal enemies and great loves, and in between there was hardly more than ambivalence.

And this was hardly ambivalence.

Frozen in the circle of Eddie's arms, Lestat returned the embrace, not with reluctance but with wariness. Even fear, perhaps. He had cautioned Claudia against this very thing, and yet, he seemed powerless to stop it.

“I’m sorry shit went bad between you two,” he mumbles into Lestat’s shoulder. “And I’m sorry that you’re hurt. You wanna tell me about him, I’m here, man. You wanna wander around the city drinking and doing weird shit to take your mind off it, I’m here for that, too.”

His parents had never been around. Never. Eddie had promised himself a long time ago he would never be that sort of person, someone unreliable and only out for themselves. He might be a freak, but he’s a good one.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only