#lestat's letter

[uthseikoashx-goingmyway]

LAST EPISODE "DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO BE LOVED BY DEATH" YOU CERTAINLY ARE AN EPISODE OH MY GOD WHAT WAS THAT

[memoryisthemonster]

This part of Lestat's letter broke me cause it is the exact same feeling I have right now for someone. Lestat represents my feelings so well and that's why I've always loved him and I'll be a stan forever.

[userarmand]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE "The Thing Lay Still" • "Do You Know What It Means to Be Loved by Death"

[onlymywishfulthinking]

Interview with the Vampire | Dreamstat + endearments

[casyawn]

so the thing is.. the thing is. lestat is manipulative yes but crucially, CRUCIALLY he's not good at it. in ep 1 he had a plan for seducing louis but the moment it stopped going his way he got impatient threw a tantrum and basically strongarmed louis into becoming his companion which only really worked because louis is also crazy. but the thing is the thing IS that that's exactly what's scary about lestat, that he's a selfish irrational violent man with no impulse control and he's also often kind of stupid. and the fact that he DOES love louis extremely sincerely and passionately only ADDS to the horror of it because there's a level of volatility and unpredictability that simply wouldn't be present if he was a cold savvy master manipulator. there's simply nothing he wouldn't do to keep him and he is insane!!!!

and this is also what makes season 2 interesting because armand actually IS a master manipulator and that's scary in the completely opposite way, in a subtle way where you don't even get that you've been manipulated until it's too late or potentially ever. and he too is insane and capable of doing anything to get and keep what he wants. lestat was incapable of keeping louis with him without resorting to violence but armand doesn't even need to and better for him yet he's convinced louis that it's all his choice and that he has real agency in the relationship and that is also scary!!!! they are both really scary that's the thing

[serpentarius]

you’re allegro, I’m andante 🎶

[queenoftheimps]

Dream!Lestat: I am furious and I hate you and I am gonna kill you and I am hellbent for vengeance bb Lestat's Letter: hey baby guess i'm dead don't waste your life on revenge kisses from behind the veil love yooooooooooou

[savagewildnerness]

“In the event that you are reading this, something dreadful has occurred, which is not my own death, but rather the fact that we both now exist in two different worlds.

Do not waste your life seeking revenge on the person or persons who did this. Do not give them the satisfaction of the hunt. Let treachery eat away at them from within.

And you… you go carry on with your living. Know only this, Mon Cher, you are the only being I trust and whom I love, above and beyond myself.

All my love belongs to you. You are its keeper. A veil will now forever separate our union. But it is a thin veil… and I am always on the other side, my face pressed up against your longing.

Lestat de Lioncourt”

You & Me.

Me & You.

[reve-de-sang]

i love this a lot. i wanted to do a series of oneshots with lestat v florence. i wanted shade that would darken the earth. it was going to be fucking hilarious.

but first my brain forced me to get him in the house somehow.

getting this man in the door again, let alone living there? for my brain it takes Paul making a different choice and Lestat going all in. and Louis, with no tragedy to torch his life, facing his own misery. and a little more sex.

--

“You still doing business with that man Lestat?”

“Nah. Didn’t work out.”

“That’s good. ‘Cause he the devil.”

“You think everyone’s the devil.”

“He’s here to take souls. He told me so. He spoke to me without moving his lips.”

“He got tricks is all.”

“Mortal sins must be confessed, Louis.”

“Ain’t never gonna see him again, Paul.”

Paul nodded thoughtfully.

“You think Levi loves her enough? You know, Grace needs a lot of love.”

“I do.”

“Do you think he’s givin’ her everything he’s got inside him?”

Louis nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

Paul sighed, and stood up from his perch on the rooftop adjacent to Louis. “Mother made a good party for Grace.”

“Mm-hmm. Yeah, they gon’ talk about this one for years,” Louis grinned. 

Paul considered Louis. Louis’s face was bathed in the gold of the rising sun as he studied the sky.

“I love you, Louis.”

“And I love you too, baby brother.”

Paul made his way over and sat down on the peak of the roof next to Louis. “I ate too much chocolate cake,” Paul sighed. 

They watched the sunrise blossom from pink to lemon.

—

“I don’t take kindly to being avoided,” a voice at his elbow growled. 

Louis tipped back the last of his sazerac and met Lestat’s eyes in the mirror behind the bar. “Most people would pick up on the message in that. You all more direct in France? Tell each other to fuck off?” 

Louis had perhaps had too much to drink tonight. He felt worn thin. Things were supposed to have gotten back to normal after Grace’s wedding. He was back to being the dutiful son, the flawless executor of his family’s estate, the benevolent brother and caretaker, the generous parishioner, the upstanding community member, the ruthless proprietor, the deferential fellow businessman to the white power players who kept him in the orbit of their social circle—but never any closer. Every hour was accounted for, every movement beyond reproach. 

But “normal” didn’t work anymore. It was like having his head shoved back under water. He hadn’t had a breath in weeks, and Lestat looked like the surface of the ocean above him.

Even now he felt his heart pound at Lestat’s mere proximity. Damn him. 

Lestat waited for the bartender to pass them by. They had a miraculous bubble around them from the crowd at the moment, but nowhere would’ve been private enough for the conversation Louis was trying to avoid.

“You send mixed messages,” Lestat said, looking away from the mirror to address Louis’s profile. “Before your absence you made an excellent case for our…continued business dealings.”

“My schedule is full, Lestat. I don’t have time for what you’re proposing. Or interest, either, for that matter.” Louis signaled the bartender for another drink.

“A drowning man pouring even more fluids down his throat,” Lestat mused.

“What do you know about it.” He needed to tell him to fuck off. He was going to find the strength any moment now.

“Quite a lot, actually. By my own experiences.”

A tipsy man and woman bumped gently against Louis’s elbow as they settled at the bar, and apologized. Louis ignored them, and also tried to ignore the weight of Lestat’s gaze on him. 

“Before I came to America, I, too, ran my family’s estate. A town of people looked to me to fulfill a role. There was no escaping it, despite my attempts. It became my identity. I know what it means to suffocate, Louis.”

Louis scoffed. “Yet here you are.” The bartender slid his new glass to him, removed the empty.

“I met someone. We fell in love. My mother financed our escape.”

Louis rolled his eyes over to Lestat with sharp scorn. “So you abandoned your family.”

“Yes. Save for my mother, I despised them. And this person I loved showed me what it was to live.” Lestat laid his hand on the bar near Louis’s elbow, conversationally, not touching, but tantalizingly close. “However, you do not need to abandon your family, or your beautiful city, to live, Louis.”

“I’m doing just fine.”

 <<You are several fathoms deep, I wonder that you have endured so long. Perhaps it is practice. But now that you have had a taste of air, you will not survive like this. You know what it is to breathe, now.>>

Louis was humiliated to find sudden tears burning at his eyes and looked away, trying furiously to stifle them. Knocking most of his drink back. “Cut it out.”

<<Oh, Louis.>>

The woman next to him bumped Louis again as she burst into a gale of laughter, and Lestat steadied Louis’s elbow as he stumbled. Startled at the electric contact, they locked eyes.

“It is too crowded in here, and hot,” Lestat said. “Let’s get a breath of fresh air.”

—

Louis leaned into his intoxication on the walk back to Lestat’s place, inevitably Lestat’s place. He was too drunk to do the right thing, too drunk to remember his obligations, too drunk not to sin. 

He wasn’t drunk enough.

He was far too lucid as he pounced on Lestat the second the front door clicked closed, and was the one to drag them, guide them up the stairs as they feverishly slipped their tongues and lips together, pushing each others’ clothes away from their bodies. If it was inevitable tonight, Louis didn’t want to fuck around with music boxes and glass tumblers of expensive whiskey and talk.

Lestat took him apart in his bed once more, yet Louis felt power in being the one to cause Lestat’s hands to tremble, to inspire Lestat’s worshipful kisses down his body, settling between Louis’s legs like a supplicant. 

Louis couldn’t deny his own hand in this, how powerfully he needed it to happen. As they merged together, Lestat at his throat and buried in his body, Louis coaxed Lestat to greater heights—harder thrusts, stronger pulls from his neck—chasing the exquisite joining and obliteration of isolation in his own body.

Louis’s lungs were heaving like a racehorse as he came down in the aftermath. Like before, Louis had the sensation they were of one mind as they stared, dazed, into each others’ eyes. Louis’s skin was a continuation of Lestat’s, and Lestat trailed a palm over his hip, an extension of himself. Lestat’s still-hard cock was Louis’s, sheathed deep within him; they shivered in unison as Louis squeezed down to stoke the pleasure again.

<<We should live like this forever,>> someone thought, and they agreed. 

—

And then it was morning.

The windows glowed lilac before sunrise. Louis stirred; he’d maybe had an hour of sleep, but he felt more alive than he had in years.

Reality hit him like a blow. 

He needed to learn how to cut all of this out of himself all over again.

“No,” Lestat rasped, coming awake with Louis's thoughts. <<Louis. Choose us. Choose us,>> he pleaded.

Louis curled away. They both groaned in pain, and Louis dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Can’t.”

Lestat shifted to press his forehead to Louis’s shoulder blade. <<Then take me into your world. Don’t leave me here.>>

Louis froze. “What?”

“Louis. My dowry would eclipse your family’s fortune several times over.” He pressed a kiss to Louis’s spine, skated his knuckles down Louis’s ribs. “Give your mother one more son to keep her in the life to which she is accustomed. A stronger safety net for Paul. And you…the companion heart you have been longing for.”

Louis reached back to still Lestat’s hand, clasp it. “That’s not going to work here. I don’t know what you get up to in France? But you have to know that’s insane.”

Something about the sunrise felt urgent to Louis, but he pushed it from his mind. He turned in the bedsheets to face Lestat. He forgot what he was going to say as they cupped each other’s faces. 

“Say yes.”

“I— I don’t— The world doesn’t work like that.”

“You make me want to try.”

“What?”

“Louis,” Lestat murmured. “You know that money opens most doors. And you must know the things I can do—” a frisson of power washed over them, “—has depths unfamiliar to you. But more than those things, if we are for each other, we can have a life we neither of us could have dreamed of.

“I want to tell you a story, Louis. I was sworn to secrecy, and the man who demanded my oath would kill you if he learned of this. But I swear to protect you with my life. You see—I have witnessed the kind of life we want. It was on an island, far from here. I will tell you how we can have something like it and make a home.” He stroked his thumb over Louis’s cheekbone. “There is danger in this knowledge. The choice is yours.” Lestat hesitated, looking uncertain, hopeful. Desperate. “Do you want to know?”

“Lestat. I— What the fuck is wrong with your head.” 

—

Louis’s distantly related cousin was overjoyed to find a family relation in New Orleans. They regaled their usual fellow card players at the Fair Play of their chance discussion of their ancestors, and their excitement at discovering kin in front of them all along.

“To have a likeminded ancestor travel from Auvergne to the new world—no wonder the journey called to me,” Lestat reflected as he lost a round of poker lavishly. Tom knew he was being buttered up with the winnings, but was off-balance as to how to treat the burgeoning union before him. 

Tom didn’t care what kind of money this ridiculous fucking foreigner threw around, there wasn’t room at the societal table for du Lac to move up in the ranks. Fenwick, when he sobered up, was going to throw a shitfit, but for now he seemly dimly ambivalent.

<<I would rather have your support than your ambivalence, Tom,>> Lestat’s voice rang in his head. Tom felt a sense of vertigo as he noticed the sudden stillness of the other players, frozen in their movements. Du Lac and Lioncourt alone were animated, smoking their respective cigar and cigarette, regarding Tom the way he himself was used to appraising those who worked for him. How drunk was he?

<<We’re so glad that you know a good opportunity when you see it. And that you’ve decided to take us under your wing as we expand our interests in the city,>> Lestat’s voice continued, everywhere and nowhere at once. He ashed his cigarette and studied Tom with his eerie cold eyes. <<Your generous offer to sell us the Fair Play at such a bargain—well. It feels like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.>>

“Uh, yes,” Tom stuttered, knuckling an eye. He felt like he was in a dream. He’d always liked Lioncourt, and du Lac was a decent fellow. Seemed a shame not to cultivate a strong relationship there. “Happy to, happy to. I know a good opportunity when I see it. I’ve decided to take y’all under my wing as you expand your interests in the city.” Tom sniffed, absently felt for his tumbler of whiskey. 

“Feels like—well. To the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Tom said, giving them a jaunty toast and draining his glass.

—

Louis absolutely refused for Lestat to use his tricks on his family. Anyone outside the house: fine. But not on his family.

“You’re doing what?” Florence’s polite voice could have frozen over hell. 

“Lestat will be moving in with us, Mama.” Louis perched on the edge of the sofa in the parlor. Lestat’s posture next to him was more relaxed, but Louis sensed his tension. Florence sat across from them. In Louis and Lestat’s planning for this, Lestat had insisted Louis was not truly asking for permission, and Louis agreed. They both knew they were lying to themselves. 

“We’re going to be working closely on a large business proposition over the next several years. Developments in the city,” Louis continued. He glanced to Lestat. “Lestat will be merging his fortune into ours.”

“Madam,” Lestat began, plucking an envelope from his inside suit pocket. “I have had my attorney make an accounting of my assets that will soon be at the du Lac family’s disposal. However, we would like your blessing.” Lestat offered her the envelope. “Does this meet with your approval?” 

Florence received the envelope as if she had been handed someone’s soiled handkerchief. And it smelled.

She delicately lifted up the flap and extracted the fine parchment. Florence tucked the envelope behind the document as she unfolded it and regarded the accounts.

Louis cut his eyes to Lestat. Narrowed them. No tricks, he willed Lestat to understand. Lestat gave him a tense smile in return. No tricks.

The silence was very long. Florence’s face was stone. Lestat imagined he saw a journey in her eyes as she made massive shifts to her priorities and sensibilities and tolerances. It was a breathtaking fortune after all.

“Well, then,” Florence intoned in her melodic voice as she returned the document to its envelope. “I’m sure Louis will make adequate accommodations for you in the carriage house. It’s been recently remodeled.” She tilted the envelope back to Lestat, and he took it. “Welcome to our home.”

“Oh, he won’t need the carriage house, Mama,” Louis smiled firmly. “We’ll be sharing my quarters. We’ll be working on a lot of business propositions. Wouldn’t want to disturb the household.”

Florence’s tight smile could have frozen over hell.

Paul glared at them from the hallway as if they’d just dipped communion wafers in dogshit. Louis gave him a hopeful smile. Lestat gave him a wink.

[slaygentford]

louis is so flattering to imagine lestat capable of reflection like every single cell of the brain is working overtime here. he is going to injure himself

[theresthespark]

So if we’re operating on the logic that the flashbacks happening during Louis’ retelling are essentially what goes to print and that the show will follow the same direction as the Vampire Lestat as far as Lestat having read Interview with a Vampire then does that mean he’ll know about Louis hallucinating him calling Louis a whore during one of the first Loumand dates?

[ikpwecanfly]

Book people, who wanted lestat dead?(enough to do something about it)

[beekeaper]

WHAT ELSE IS IN THAT BOX LOUIS

[onlymywishfulthinking]

"In the event that you are reading this, something dreadful has occurred. Which is not my own death, that rather the fact that we both now exist in two different worlds. Do not waste your life seeking revenge on the person or persons who did this. Do not give them the satisfaction of the hunt. Let treachery eat away at them from within. And you, you go carry on with your living. Know only this, mon cher, you are the only being I trust and whom I love above and beyond myself. All my love belongs to you. You are its keeper. A veil will now forever separate our union but it is a thin veil and I’m always on the other side, face pressed up against your longing. 

Lestat de Lioncourt" - Interview with the Vampire s2e2 - Do You Know What It Means To Be Loved by Death

[brotherconstant]

CLAUDIA (Interview with the Vampire) || MAX (Black Sails)

[nalyra-dreaming]

People on Twitter think that the letter is a gimmick by Armand. I don't know why people just don't want to see how Lestat loves Louis and I'm talking about people who read the books.

… lol.

I’m sorry but … that’s hilarious.

Also, the writers have already confirmed it was written for Louis by Lestat. 🤷🏽‍♀️

“We felt it would be totally romantic if Lestat left an 'open upon my demise' letter to Louis, solidifying his eternal love, and yet one that signals that he may still be alive in some way, 'waiting on the other side,' etc."

End of story. 🤷🏽‍♀️