Another of the conversations for your perusal.

Standard disclaimers...maters characters no money made.




(In which Lestat relates the tenderest time between him self and Louis in this century)




Lestat is leaning back in his chair, his hands behind his head. He's gazing out the window, his eyes are a little bit unfocused. When he turns to look at me to speak, he looks a little misty, actually.

"The tenderest time? " He says.



"That would be when Louis brought me back here from St. Elizabeth's." He pauses, thinking. " There was, of course, a great furor over whether I should be moved, and would I prove to be a danger to Louis or myself, and on and on. I don't recall many of the details. I *do* recall Louis' fierce protectiveness, and adamant refusal to back down. And I wanted to leave. I wanted to go home with him. There was no more that any of them could do for me. He told them this. I can remember his voice, not raised, not shouting. Just firmly saying to Maharet and to Marius that he was taking me home, and that he would see to me. That they needn't be concerned about his safety. They tried to argue with him. "



"Well...they knew no better. None of them knows Louis very well, after all. If he does not wish to engage in an argument, he simply *doesn't*. It was only a little while after that he came for me, and we walked home together. I have not been back there since. "

"It felt good to be walking the night with him. I remember feeling unclear as to *when* we were. I did not know yet how long I had been lying on the floor there, unresponsive. I was just so glad to be *away* from there. Away from them all staring at me. Away from Maharet and her chains. Away from their concern...or whatever it was."

"When we reached our door, I stopped for a moment, looking up at our home. My hand was in Louis', and he squeezed it, just slightly, as he watched me, and then he tugged gently at me.

"We're home, Lestat." He said to me, unlocking the door with the key. We went inside, and he closed and locked the door behind us. He took my jacket off of me...I remember looking at it, confused. Louis must have brought the clothes to me, for I did not remember having seen them before. We went up the stairs together, and I was looking around myself wonderingly. It was Louis' arm around me, and his scent all about me that made me sure that I was not dreaming."

"On the landing, I stopped, and turned to him, and his arms came up and around me, and I laid my head on his shoulder. I was trembling. "It's all right, Lestat. I've got you, and I won't let you go. " He led me to our bedroom. No tentativeness, no awkwardness. He removed his clothing, and then he removed mine, he got into the bed, and drew me in with him, pulling the sheets over us. Curling his body around me, winding one hand in my hair, and stroking me gently with the other one. My face and my back. My arm. Just running his hand up and down my arm. We lay quiet this way for some time, and then suddenly, like the bursting of a dam, I began to weep. Louis was unsurprised, as if he had been expecting this. He murmured to me, the soothing, crooning words that you say to comfort a distraught child. Holding me close.

"I knew you were there, Louis. I could feel it. But I couldn't move. I couldn't tell you." I mumbled this, through those hot tears. The tears were for him, for the suffering he had once again endured for my sake.

His lips were on my face, kissing my eyelids, his rough tongue, licking at the tears.

"Don't weep Lestat." He said this very softly. "You are here with me now." I stopped then. I stopped crying and he licked my face clean. He held me, all that long night, held me close to him. Tenderly...ahh yes, so tenderly. But not like he thought I would break. More like he thought I might fade away from him and by holding me against him this might be prevented.

You see, it was not as if I was an invalid. Physically I was sound. Mentally, no, probably not. but I was back to myself. I was able to speak and move. I remembered when I was imprisoned by Maharet's chains, and by her will. I remembered that Louis came to me and spoke of those twelve little books. Waiting for us, at our home in the Rue Royale. And so, later, when I came back to myself , his words had come back to me, and I knew that he was there to take me home. That we still *had* a home...together. I didn't care about the books. It was that he made it clear to me that he was waiting for me in *our* home. Do you see? Once again, Louis was there, my savior. It was then I decided it was time I put Louis first. To put Louis first, as he had always put *me* first. As I should have done many long years before. I did not say this to him. He knows it now. I never said any of these things in words before. I decided it, and then I did it, the best that I could. Occasionally we have words with the others. We see them separately now and again, or many of them together, once or twice, at some gathering or another. We see to ourselves now. "



"I am digressing, Chere. You should keep me on the subject."



"Louis' tenderness. That night he brought me back home. He held me all that night, and he held me as we slept through the next day. Waking the following night, I was still in his arms. We didn't speak much. We didn't need to. All that he wanted me to feel came through in his tender touch, and the way he looked into my eyes. The very scent of him. Days and nights passed this way. Nothing touched us. The phone rang and rang. There was knocking at the door. We ignored it. Tentative mind queries. I locked them out. He did too, he told me later. We didn't move from the bed. Just lay together in the dark of the room, listening to each other breathe. Listening one of the nights to a tremendous thunderstorm. Louis got up from the bed to open the louvres so that we could watch the lightening, and listen to the rain lashing at the windowpanes. The light from outside shone through, dimly. I could see the patterns of the rain rippling on the skin of Louis' arms, closed around me, and his voice, murmuring to me. Tender, that voice. And tender the arms that held me."

"He moved briefly from me early in the morning, after the rain stopped, to close the louvres against the dawn. I watched him, as he fastened them, and as he turned to come back to me, he paused, his pale form glimmering in the darkness of the room. He stood still for a long moment, just looking back at me. I could see him clearly, even in the darkness of the room. I could see the green gleam of his eyes, and I could see the love in his face. Tender. Ahh, oui. "

< He draws a finger across his lips, as he remembers. His eyes are far away, cloudy grey. >

"I don't know how many nights we passed in this way. Three?
Four? " He shrugs. "It doesn't matter too much, the number. We had awakened from the deathsleep, and he rose, and lit some of the candles around the room. Turned to me, moving with fluid grace back to the bed. His eyes wide, as he gazed at me. He leaned over me, his hands on the bed, on either side of my neck. Leaned in toward me, his hair falling forward, a dark curtain around our faces. He kissed me lingeringly on the lips, and pulled back. "I want to make love with you, Lestat." He murmured. He drew his leg up and over me, laying his body on top of mine. A small sound escaped him, as I put my arms around him, and drew his head down to mine. Kissing him. Mouths open to each other, as he pulled and sucked at my lips."



"Louis knows me so well. I know that I say this often, maybe too often. It almost sounds offhand, I suppose. He knew, though, that I needed him to say that to me. The nights before, he was letting me know that our bond was still there, still strong. Reassuring me that it was not undone. The way he can anticipate me so minutely is beyond my ability to actually describe. He just *knows*. And he knew right then that I wanted this intimacy. That I needed to feel him."

" To Louis, our being together is one continuous act of love. He has said this, that we are always making love, whether we are sitting together at the opera, walking together hand in hand somewhere, or burning up the sheets wildly fucking each other. I know what he means, when he says this. He chides me often, saying that I believe there are *beginnings* and *endings* to these acts. It's that time thing, I suppose. I tend to mark time. Louis does not."



"We kissed each other for a long while, tasting each other. Louis nursing at my lips, suckling my tongue. His hands skated over my body slowly, measuredly."



"When I say slowly, I am not sure that you really understand me. Humans cannot move as quickly as we can. I know you know *that*. Neither can they move as slowly, at least not for long periods of time. This languid movement is sensuous in the extreme. He moved over my body in this way. Licking at me, tasting my skin. Taking my nipples between his teeth and pulling at them, sucking on them. All of this so slowly. As he moved over me this way, my hands were busy too. sliding over his beautiful silky skin, tangled in the thick softness of his raven hair. Undulating against one another, the heat building between us."

" I spread my thighs apart for him, drawing one leg up, and I felt his engorged cock nudging at me. Still, we were not rushed. Still, he was moving slowly. He took my hand, pressed a kiss to my palm, and then slashed it open with his fangs. Guided it down to his twitching cock. I put my hand around him, tight, coating him with my blood. My blood, also on his lips, and I watched him, mesmerized as his tongue licked delicately at the crimson splash. I moved my hand upon him, once...twice, and then he pulled it away, bringing the wound to his mouth. He pushed his tongue into the wound, lapping hungrily. And between my legs, his cock...pushed into me, with excruciating slowness. Opening me up to him, parting my flesh. He filled me. He took me slowly and with great and tender deliberateness. My bleeding hand pressed to his mouth, and his eyes locked to mine as he speared me. Holding me with his eyes and his hands, his mouth and his cock. Holding me with his love. So slowly, this. No rushed and frantic slapping of flesh against flesh, non. He filled me and I closed myself around him, holding him inside of me. He let go of my bleeding hand and took my mouth in a hungry, wanting kiss, a kiss so filled with his longing and his love that the tears again spurted from my eyes. A great and wounding tenderness. His soul laid bare for me to see. He has always told me that he loved me and no other and I know that this is a pure and simple truth. How he loves me. How he always has."
~Fin~