THE BOX

He's getting used to the sound of Louis' boots up the stairs, when it's late at night and he already feels drawn towards his coffin, tired beyond limits even though he didn't move all night, even though dawn may be still at least a couple of hours ahead of him.

The first few times, that sound scared him out of his mind. Unable to sense who was coming, he used to rise up from the chair and hide in a dark corner, holding his bathrobe closed as if to protect himself from strangers eyes. He used to look with huge, terrified eyes towards the only door of the room, that creaking sound creeping and lingering in his ears, making him mad, until he saw it open, and whenever he saw Louis' face he used to burst into tears, hiding his face behind his hands, his shoulders shaking, his legs refusing to move until it was Louis who came and pick him up from the floor, gently escorting him back to the chair.

Now, he doesn't react like that anymore. Since he got used to Louis' visits, that sound ceased to be something to live in fear of, and started to be something he anticipated through the whole night. His soul feels lighter every time he hears it, as if waiting had a weight that is constantly lifted off his fragile body - this ridiculous, agonizing bag of fragile bones - every time he manages to lay eyes on Louis' face again.

He grabs the poker from the floor and uses it to revive the flames crackling in the fireplace, and then turns alightly around, casting an impatient look towards the door, expecting it to open any second now.

When Louis appears in the doorframe, a boy resting limp between his arms, unconscious but undeniably still alive, Lestat can't help but feel his own heart warm up in a wave of desperate affection. "My favorite," he whispers, standing up from the chair but not daring to move a step away from it, his hand clutched around the armrest to keep himself steady, "You remembered."

Louis offers him a small smile, moving towards him. Unable to stand on his legs any longer, Lestat falls back on the chair, resting his back and throwing his head backwards as he inhales the scent of the boy, filling the room, making him hungry.

"How are you, Lestat?" Louis asks. Lestat opens his eyes and spots him already sitting on the other chair in front of his own, the boy sitting on his lap, his head resting on the curve of Louis' neck. Lestat can see his chest move up and down to the rhythm of his slow, even breaths, faraway echo of his beating heart thumping slowly but powerfully in his ears.

"You came to see me again, Louis," Lestat says, ignoring Louis' question. After all, he doesn't have a proper answer to that. He doesn't know how he is. His days are nothing but an endless parade of pointless instants during which nothing happens, ever. And he doesn't think, doesn't dream. He sleeps only because his body commands him. He eats only because it's Louis feeding him.

He lives for the few moments he manages to spend with Louis. How is he, then? Dead, most of the time.

"I did, Lestat," Louis nods, studying his still face to the warm, dancing light of the fire. "You're too pale. You need to eat."

Lestat's eyes linger on the sleeping boy's body again. "Is he drugged?" he asks, "Drunk?"

Louis shakes his head, his eyes fixed on Lestat. "I drew blood from him," he answers. And then, as if to apologize, he adds, "Just enough to make him sleep."

Lestat smiles sweetly, leaning in to pat his hand on Louis' knee. "It's alright, Louis," he says, "I don't mind sharing with you."

Louis answers with half a smile, the corners of his lips barely curling upwards. Lestat looks at him and stares in awe at how beautifully he's grown, how perfect and smooth his pale face looks, how deep and dark his eyes are now. He can't help to admit Louis managed to achieve what he failed to do. He's grown up. Lestat has merely grown old.

"Here," Louis whispers, standing up and stepping forward, to place the sleeping boy on Lestat's lap. The boy's head, heavy with his wild and black curly mane, falls against Lestat's shoulder, and he moans under his breath, frowning lightly, his lips curling in complaint, as if he was plunged in a beautiful dream and unwilling to wake up. "Drink," Louis says.

Lestat looks down at the boy once more. He studies his features, now relaxed again, and holds his chin in his fingers, tilting his head enough to expose his neck. The marks of Louis' teeth are easy to spot on that perfect, peach pink baby skin. They're still open, but they're not spilling blood. Louis certainly got better at this, in the last few decades.

He bends over the sleeping kid, sucking blood from the same wounds. He closes his eyes and lets the taste become all that matters, slowly feeling the familiar wave of energy travel through his whole body, making it warm again.

Blood always works, it's like a spell. Like Louis' eyes.

When he's done drinking, he looks up at Louis with liquid eyes, breathing heavily. The boy's still alive. It's always hard to drain them, when they're so young. That's why Louis keeps choosing them. Because at least there's a chance they will survive, and forget.

"Are you full?" Louis asks, his eyes, ever so kind, caressing Lestat's features from a distance.

Lestat nods, and Louis stands up again, to retrieve the boy's body. He quickly checks on him, to make sure he's still alive, and then settles him again on his lap, looking back at Lestat.

"Do you have to go already?" Lestat asks, his voice vibrating with the echo of an untold prayer. Please, don't go, he's asking, Not yet.

"In a little while, Lestat," he answers.

They talk no more. They sit, listening to the crackling fire and to the slow but regular beat of the boy's heart, staring long in each other's eyes. That's the only way for them - they came to understand through the years - to share time. As they sit still, that room ceases to be only a room. It's a box. A box where memories resurface easily, even through cloudy minds. A box where time stands still, and yet it moves. Backwards first, bringing them back to the New Orleans that was, where they used to walk those streets together, sharing each other's company, back when none of them knew how lucky they were to just have that connection between them; and onwards then, to the New Orleans that never was, and what they could have been if only they had stuck together as they probably should have done.

A box where memories become dreams, and come alive. Like the vivid, lucid dreams they both have when they sleep.

A box like a coffin. Their shared coffin.

The sky's getting clearer, when Louis finally moves again, standing up, the boy fast asleep in his arms. It'll be morning soon, and Lestat feels the longing call of his coffin already, as he's sure Louis does too.

"I'm going, now, Lestat," he says.

Lestat looks at him with eyes heavy with sleep. "Will you come back to see me again, Louis?" he asks.

He always asks this question when he sees Louis walk away, but Louis never answers. He doesn't this time either. He just smiles warmly, holding the boy close to his chest as he reaches out to stroke Lestat's hair lightly, before turning away, walking out of the room.

Lestat closes his eyes, listening to the sound of Louis boots down the stairs, dreaming for a little while about the day when Louis will hear that same question and ask him back: "Will you come with me, instead, Lestat?"

Now's not the time, but that day will come. Lestat knows it, and he's waiting eagerly for it.

For now, he'll settle for the box, waiting for the world to come and knock at his door once again.

MELLOW

”Did you bury them?” he asked me.

‘”They’re gone,” I said. I did not care to say even to myself that I had burned their remains in the old unused kitchen stove. “But there is the father to deal with, and the brother,” I said to him. I feared his temper. I wished at once to plan some way to quickly dispose of the whole problem. But he said now that the father and the brother were no more, that death had come to dinner in their small house near the ramparts and stayed to say grace when everyone was done. “Wine,” he whispered now, running his finger on his lip. “Both of them had drunk too much wine. I found myself tapping the fence posts with a stick to make a tune,” he laughed. “But I don’t like it, the dizziness. Do you like it?” And when he looked at me I had to smile at him because the wine was working in him and he was mellow.

For a moment, between us, the air stood still, and time seemed to freeze. My concern over where Claudia could have gone, his rage about the way she had disrespected the house we were living in, all those feelings seemed to fade away in the dim light of the sitting room that Lestat had elegantly decorated to his own taste not longer than two months before.

Lestat slowly laid his head back against the couch, inhaling and exhaling silently and deeply through his nose. I fixed my eyes on him, unable to look away. The straight, fine lines of his profile stood out against the darkness of the room, where the faint light of the candles wasn't able to enlighten every corner. I had never seen him so relaxed before. It was like watching a sated newborn right after having been fed, only more. I found myself wondering with a faint smile on whether he was as equally unable to stand alcohol before he got turned into a vampire.

"Louis," ha called me after a while, his eyes still closed, only his lips moving in the growing darkness of the room, "When was the last time we talked? I mean, really talked?"

"Has it ever happened?" I asked back, my smile turning into an ironic grin.

Much to my surprise, instead of instantly growing angry at me - as I knew he was perfectly able to do even with weaker excuses than the one I had just given him -, he erupted in a small, amused chuckle, tilting his head and opening his eyes to finally look at me.

"I haven't been a very good maker, have I?" he finally asked, a weary smile still lingering on his perfectly chiseled lips, still pink, radiating warmth as was doing his whole body, filled with the blood of the two men he had killed that night. His eyes shone in the darkness, and there was a soft, indulgent, even languid look in his pupils, that seemed to enchant me, urging my body into coming closer to his.

I slid on the couch, closing the distance between us. He was so close, now, I could feel the warmth of his skin on mine. It filled me with a sudden need for blood, for that same warmth I kept longing for despite how much I loathed the thought of killing.

"Why are you wondering about it now?" I asked him, lifting a hand and passing my fingers through his wavy blond locks. We had never touched this way before, except for when he had held me in his deadly embrace to suck my mortal life out of me and give me a new, immortal one. All the other times we had touched, it had been me fighting him to keep him still, or away from people I loved, unable to hurt them. This was different, and I wasn't even clearly aware of what I was really doing. My fingers seemed to move on their own will, I could just stare in fascination, watching them touch him delicately, as if he was made of porcelain like his pale, only vaguely colored in pink skin seemed to suggest.

"I don't know," he answered honestly, shrugging faintly, his eyes still locked on mine, as if he was trying to enchant me, though we both knew very well I didn't need any more enchantment to constantly feel drawn towards him, willing or not. "Maybe all that happened opened my eyes."

I let out a soft chuckle, entangling his hair around my fingers and shaking my head. "I'd never believe something like that, Lestat. You know that."

He smiled mischieviously, his eyes shining of a childish light for a moment, something that made me wonder about his age before he became a vampire. It was impossible to determine it. The dark gift doesn't just preserve you the way you are when it touches you, it brings you to a different time, a kind of time that doesn't flow like normal time does. Something equally ancient and new, something that keeps growing old day by day, even though it keeps you apparently young forever.

"You know me well, Louis," he told me, and turned his head from me, "Maybe too well for your own good."

"Do I have something to fear from you?" I asked him, and he turned to look at me again, his eyes wide and filled with surprise as if he wasn't expecting me to ask such an obvious question.

"Always," he answered, "Always fear me, Louis. Never stop. Never let your guard down when I'm around you, for, you see, I love you, but I hate you just as much. You're my creature and my nemesis. You're my child and my warden. I admire you, and I loathe you just as well. You're gorgeous, and I want you, and you repel me the same way. Do you see what I mean?"

I held my breath for a while, and then nodded, digging my fingers in his hair and massaging his scalp. I knew exactly what he meant, for I had lived for decades, now, pushed and pulled by the same contrasting impulses, towards and away from him. I had never stopped fearing and wanting him like I had done during the first night we had spent together, the night that had preceded my last dawn. I had never stopped running away from him with the same desperate need I had kept reaching my fingers out for him, hoping to touch him, someway, somehow.

I felt him lean against me, and I watched him as he closed his eyes again, abandoning himself against the palm of my hand. "I had plans, Louis," he started talking, soft whispers leaving his lips and reaching my ears like a soothing, distant melody. Despite everything, the thought of Claudia could have never been farther from my mind, in that moment. "The night I saw you for the first time, the night I saw your eyes. You were silently screaming for somebody to lift the weight of life and guilt off your shoulders. You looked so desperate, and yet there was nothing in those eyes of yours. They were empty. You were empty."

He opened his eyes again, and once more I felt drawn towards him. I slid closer on the couch again, our bodies touching while my fingers disentangled from his hair and started traveling down the elegant lines of his marble face.

"I wanted to fill you up," he kept going, lifting a hand and closing his almost trembling fingers around the rich fabric of my vest, "I wanted to taste the void inside of you, I wanted to suck it all out of you and fill it with myself, my blood, my raging lust of your body. And I wanted to do it for me," he said, and then paused for but a split second, uncertainty and confusion clear in his eyes, as well as some sort of hidden fear of exposing himself too much to me, "And I wanted to do it for you."

"So it was mercy," I said in a low voice, my thumb brushing against his warm, soft lips, "You felt pity for me, you wanted to give me something you thought I needed."

He looked down for a moment, concentrating on the touch of my finger. I couldn't explain to myself his sudden thoughtful and rational behavior, aside from the fact that he was clearly drunk on blood and wine. Some sort of languor seemed to be making his limbs heavier, his eyes deeper, his voice more hypnotic and melodious than ever.

"I don't know," he answered then, "I never thought about it in these terms. Was it merciful of me to kill you just to satisfy my hunger for your blood, even if I also did it to stop you from feeling miserable as you did back then?" He shrugged, "I have no idea. Did it do you any good? Did you stop feeling miserable? Was my hunger satiated?" he lifted his eyes into mine once more, "I don't think so. I think not."

My finger stopped moving, and so did my whole body. His words came sudden to me, and it was as if I had momentarily put my life on hold to better absorb what he had just said.

I had never thought about it. About Lestat's hunger for me. Busy as I was with my own feelings towards him, towards Claudia, towards the world I had started to look at with different eyes, my vampire eyes, I had never stopped to think about what Lestat could have felt for me, which could have been his feelings towards me. In my blindness, I took for granted he had none, for that was what he kept showing while interacting with other people, with the exception of his victims - for whom his interest used to rise and then set in just a few hours - and his occasional mortal companions, people he thought interesting, people he wanted by his side for a limited period of time, until he got bored with them and resolved to kill them to move on to somebody else.

I was different. He had made me a vampire. And I wasn't like Claudia, whom he had made a vampire to keep me company. I had been born for him and him alone. I was the gift he had done to himself, and I had never realized it up to that moment.

He hadn't been a good father, for me, that much was true. But I hadn't been a good son for him either.

"Do you still feel that way?" I asked him, my eyes sliding on his features in a soft caress, just like my fingers had resumed to do, moving smoothly along the outlines of his lips and then up and down his cheekbone. "Do you still want me that way?"

He turned his head, searching for my hand, leaning against it, and I could feel a subtle fear of my touch leaving him running in a rush under his paper-thin skin. "I never stopped," he admitted, closing his eyes and pressing his nose against my palm, inhaling my scent.

A wild, famelic shiver run through my entire body, shaking me deep inside. I wanted him. I wanted him like I had wanted him when he first bit me, like I had wanted him when he let me taste the sweetness of his poisonous blood.

My fingers snapped closed around his chin, forcing him to tilt his head backwards and look at me. He stared at me through heavy eyelids, eyes shining with hunger and need. I could see the tip of his tongue flicker between his lips, as he licked them lustfully, anticipating the taste of my blood in his mouth.

"I don't taste the same anymore," I told him, finding myself worried with the thought of disappointing him. The last he had tasted of me was my mortal blood, a taste he could never find in me again, while the last I had had of him was his vampire blood, a taste I knew already, a taste I found myself in need for all of a sudden, as if every other kind of blood I had tasted during the years since I had become a vampire was nothing but a shadow of what I had sucked out of the veins of his wrist. As if only that taste could satiate me fully.

"It doesn't matter," he told me, shaking his head, his eyes now suddenly focusing on me, on the curve of my neck, on the smell of my blood underneath my skin, the path of veins and capillaries it ran through. "Come, now, my friend. Louis, love, child," he lifted both his arms, circling my neck to pull me closer while I shivered to the sound of the word love spoke to me by a voice so different from Claudia's, "Let me taste you."

I tilted my head, exposing my neck to his bite. I felt his fangs tearing my skin open, digging into me, and a moan escaped my lips when I felt him sucking my blood hard into his mouth, stopping every now and then to taste it fully before he swallowed it. His arms clung to my neck, drawing me closer and closer, and as I felt my body weaken with every drop of blood leaving it, I clutched my arms around his waist, feeling every single inch of my body melt into his, becoming one with his.

I don't know how long it took him to satiate himself with my blood. I couldn't take account of the seconds, the minutes. He could have sucked blood out of me for hours, I wouldn't have cared less. I felt his hunger, his desire, his need. It flattered me. It aroused me. It made me feel satisfied with myself, for the first time since I had changed I was just content with who I was, because it was enough for Lestat, because he wanted the creature I had become. He wanted me.

I felt emptied out, when he withdrew from me. I felt his fangs make their way out of my flesh, and then I looked at him with weary, heavy eyes. He looked dizzy, even more drunk than he had looked before. He was so beautiful, really. His slender, silky fingers wandered all over my face, as if trying to see it through touching it, more than through watching it.

"Do you want me, Louis?" he asked in a soft, low voice, already urging me to press my lips against his bare neck, "Do you want to taste me?"

God, I wanted to. It felt like I had never wanted anything more than I wanted that.

"Yes," I answered breathlessly, the pointy edge of my teeth grazing his perfect, porcelain skin.

A moan filled with excitement and anticipation bloomed on his parted lips, painted red with my blood. "Then feed," he whispered, both hands on my head, pressing me against the curve of his neck.

I wasn't prepared for what I felt.

The last time I had fed from him, I was about to die. Thirsty for blood, feeling emptied of my own, I swallowed the one Lestat was offering me without thinking, without tasting. Then came the pain, the insufferable pain of dying, and the equally insufferable, terrifying pain of coming alive again.

I knew I wanted to taste Lestat's blood again. I knew I was thirsty for it, hungry for him, I knew I was going to like it, the moment I swallowed it.

But to have my mind blown away the way it was when I felt the bittersweet taste of his blood on my tongue, no, nothing would have been able to prepare me for that. I dug my fangs into his flesh, clutching at the fabric of his silken shirt and tugging violently at it, tearing it apart, exposing the rounded, tempting curve of his shoulder. I held him still in a powerful grip as I dug deeper and deeper, blood flowing freely from the wounds I had opened with my teeth, filling my mouth completely. I savoured the taste, drawing long, lustful sips of his poison, closing my eyes, getting lost in the warmth, and the taste, and the feeling of accomplishment and deep satisfaction.

I pushed him down on the couch, towering over him, settling over his slim, slender body, feeling him moan in pleasure with every sip of blood I took. I remembered the look on his face when it was me or Claudia sucking from him, the moment he changed us. It seemed painful. But it wasn't the case now, he had his eyes closed, his features relaxed, his lips parted as a symphony of moans and gasps escaped from them, and his whole body was quivering under mine, his hands reaching behind my back, grabbing the fabric of my shirt, pulling me closer, his body unconsciously and silently begging me to go on, drain him if I wanted to, just keep going, never stopping.

Then came the heartbeat. The drums. The banging, furious rhythm of his beating heart, pounding through his blood, flowing into my body, synchronizing with my own. I followed that rhythm, filled my thoughts with it alone, and as my fangs dug deeper inside Lestat's flash, as his blood filled me up completely as mine has done just a few moments before, I felt him arch under me and against the couch, throw his head back and moan loudly, and there it was, the last sip of blood I could take from him, the one that finally satisfied my thirst the moment I felt its taste on my tongue.

I parted from him and looked down at his body, still buried under mine. A blissful smile lingered on his lips, curling them upwards, shaping his features into a childish, pretty mask. He was covered in blood, but my bite was already starting to heal, the wounds closing faster, his skin absorbing the blood that had flown out of it, only the stains on his shirt bearing witness of what had just happened.

I combed his golden locks away from his forehead and brushed my fingertips against his warm cheeks, colored in such a soft shade of pink that, for a moment, gave me the impression I could still see how magnificent he had to look as a human being before he got turned.

He opened his eyes, two small, shining, cat-like cracks on his perfectly polished face, and his smile widened sensibly.

I had never felt closer to him.

As I looked at him as if he had suddenly changed into a gift from God right before my eyes, under my body, between my arms, he lifted a hand and brushed his fingertips along my jaw. "Put me in my coffin, Louis," he said in a whisper.

I could feel the sunrise approaching, that typical weariness that used to fill my limbs, make them heavy, minutes before dawn. I nodded, standing up in uncertain, shaky legs, lifting him up from the couch between my arms and taking him to his bedroom.

I put him down inside his coffin, my eyes lingering on his smile way after he had already fallen asleep.

I caressed his face one last time, refusing to spoil the moment by asking myself if what had happened would have been an isolated case, of if there was any chance of it happening again as I knew my body ached for. Then I closed the top of his coffin and turned away from him, walking back into the sitting room. I sat on the couch - it smelled of us - closed my eyes and stood awake as long as I could, waiting for Claudia to come back.

We had something to discuss.