didntrun | the morning evening after

Eddie is clean, rested, and a fucking vampire.

He's called Chrissy, but he hasn't gone home. After getting back, he had needed to let her know he was safe, physically, that he was alive and okay, in a sense, but also maybe that he wasn't safe to be around. That he needed to figure some things out before he came back home to see her. He said he loved her and nothing had or ever would change that, he only wanted to make sure she was safe.

From what? From him.

Now he's sitting in Lestat's home, his arms wrapped around his knees, thinking about what the fuck he's done and how everything is going to change. There's still no regret, no matter how heard he thinks about it, no matter how deeply he searches himself, because he's here and he's alive, for the most part, and that is preferable to having died back in that awful place.

But he's different. He's changed. He only needs to look at his reflection in a mirror to see that, his eyes an eerie colour of gold, his canines sharpening into fangs when he feels a strange rumble of hunger. That's the thing that keeps him from going home. If he goes home hungry, will he hurt Chrissy even if he doesn't want to?

The sun has set, he's pretty sure, or it's nearly there, and he squeezes his knees tighter to his chest for a moment, then stands and begins to pace. He needs Lestat to wake up.

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Lestat had wanted the boy to come to coffin with him. The loss of his thoughts, the severing of that connection, hit Lestat as profoundly as it had with Louis, all those years ago. A door had slammed shut between them, and the closeness, he'd thought, might ease some of his disquiet.

But instead, he'd gone to sleep alone, leaving Eddie to his anxieties and his doubts. Oh, there would be so many doubts. Even Lestat had them, in the beginning.

He rose, as he always did, when the sun was just beginning to set. Coffin open with a creak, he made his way silently downstairs to find the boy pacing the living room. Throwing the lever just at the base of the stairs, Lestat opened the heavy shutters to expose the tall windows lining the entire wall of the living space. Outside, the sky was a deepening blue, the sun having just dipped below the horizon.

"Did you sleep?"

"Hi," he says, then, "Yeah, some."

After a long pause, Eddie's nose wrinkles and he admits, "Okay, not much. I kept trying, but all these sounds are so loud and it's like I can hear everything. A floor creaks next door and it sounds like someone is standing right next to me or someone sneezes outside on the street and I expect to feel it. I can't hear people, though. Like, their thoughts."

Or not really. Maybe some kind of din, but he knows Lestat can fully read minds and Eddie has tried, a little frightened of the possibility. It must be exhausting, hearing thought all the time, having the world's trauma and worries and happiness and sorrow all heaped on you no matter what you're trying to do.

"You will," he said confidently. He had never heard of one of their own being incapable of that particular gift, though some were more skilled than others.

"It will come. You have time to let it," Lestat said, hands at his hips as he gave Eddie an appraising look. After a moment, he smiled faintly and said, "The Gift suits you, mon cher."

"Yeah, my eyes look pretty cool, huh?" he asks, smiling a little despite his worrying. "How come they're not blue, like yours?"

Even though he'd read the first book years ago, he doesn't remember a lot of the lore. He has no idea if it had said anything about eye colour or what it might mean, but Lestat's eyes are piercing in how blue they are, and Eddie's are gold, sparkling and a little creepy.

"Also," he says, then pauses. "Also I'm pretty hungry."

"Each vampire is unique. If there is a rhyme or reason to it, I am unaware," Lestat said, urging Eddie to sit and kneeling at his feet.

Pricking his own wrist with his fangs, Lestat lifted the bleeding wound to Eddie in offering. "Do you understand what that will mean? That you will hunt? That it will be your instinct to kill?"

He sits, more than willing to follow Lestat's lead right now, because he doesn't know how to do any of this. If he tries to go off on his own too soon, he's pretty sure he'll die somehow, and wouldn't that be a bitch? To die after everything Lestat did to keep him safe.

"I know," he says, his voice soft. He nods, partly to himself, then takes Lestat's wrist in both his hands and drinks from him. He does know and he knows, too, that he'll have to be careful.

It's funny in a weird way, that he uses something he learned in therapy, and closes his eyes, focuses on how he feels. Something inside him wants to take over, wants to drink and drink and drink, but Eddie is careful and cautious and aware and he pulls back after he's had enough. Before he's had too much.

"We will go out, in a moment. I give you my blood now, so that you might be clearheaded," he explained, his pale eyes searching Eddie's face.

He showed a great deal of restraint for such a newly made creature, and Lestat felt a bloom of pride in his chest.

"Good," he murmured, pulling his wrist away gently, his other hand tucking Eddie's hair behind his ear. "You are not without the capacity for remorse. My Louis is proof of that."

Eddie nods again, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, eyes lowered as Lestat tucks his hair back. It's weirdly comforting and he draws in a deep breath, one he's not even sure he needs, then exhales slowly.

"But I can eat without killing, right?" he asks. "Like... there are people who'd be willing? Or... can I leave them alive and make them forget it even happened?"

He still doesn't completely understand how that works, how those powers are possible.

the morning evening after

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