Home / Fan Fiction / V(cough) C(cough) fic / Stand Alone Stories / Wishes

DISCLAIMER: The following stories are all non-profit, amateur efforts not intended to infringe on the rights of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, David Geffen, Warner Brothers, Geffen Pictures, Knopf, Randomhouse, the city of New Orleans, the U.S. Constitution, any copyright holders that I might not have thought of or even a certain author who shall remain nameless but who has a set of initials which are, coincidentally enough, just one letter off from spelling "B.S."

Wishes
by The Brat Queen

Summary: For the "It's not as funny as you think" story challenge (wherein a silly spec concept is made into a serious one). Louis thinks about life as another gender.
Spoilers: Up to IWTV
Nod of thanks to: Torch and Cindy, who talked jokingly about something similar to this.

The lace felt harsh underneath his fingertips.

Which was a foolish feeling. Stupid. Lace was merely fabric, fabric merely thread. It was not, totally, something he had never felt before.

He had worn lace.

But the lace was in a dress, and the dress lay limply in his hands as he held it, his hands clutching it tightly in a manner that might have left wet stains on it had he been mortal.

Of course, that was part of the joke.

Part of the joke that no, he was no longer mortal; no, he was no longer human; no, life was not what he had expected it to be.

He sat down. The chair at the dressmaker's was old and faded but was still strong enough to hold him. The dressmaker himself knew better than to come near.

Louis imagined his face must look like death itself.

Which, of course, it would.

Did death feel nausea? He wondered this as the sick, leaden feeling filled his guts – guts, assuming he had them – and left a dry, moldy taste in his mouth. Mortal companions from years ago had joked about waking with a dead rat in their mouths after a night of deliberately excessive drinking.

Louis could manage a wry smile at that. The taste of dead rat. Even now, years later, he could still feel each individual strand of fur against his lips from the one meal he had allowed himself again and again.

The grey-green of illness gave way to a sharp, white-hot spike of anger. Anger directed at one person and one person only. Lestat. His personal devil and tormentor. Louis could hear the sound of Lestat's laughter in his mind just as clearly and easily as he could remember his meal from before. Lestat's laughter was like no other. Each breath of it was a lash that struck its victim again and again until nothing but humiliation lay in its wake.

Which was something Lestat, of course, did not care about.

But even still…

Even still, Louis wondered. He wondered why such laughter, why such cruelty? He had been with Lestat long enough now to know it was not to mock him solely. To often mock him yes, but not because Louis was the only one he laughed at. Lestat simply laughed. At everyone and everything. His revenge against something Louis knew not what.

So he wondered. Wondered if anything could keep him from laughing. Wondered if there was something that even Lestat could take seriously.

Louis held the dress up in his hands and studied it. He could see it, feel it, but not truly absorb it. His mind kept him from taking in the wholeness of it, instead only allowing enough thought to dance about it academically. Here was a sleeve, here a collar, here the color red.

And then, quickly, here was the image of it in front of him. Covering him. With only his eyes looking back at him to provide a shock of recognition.

But the vision left one heartbeat later. Leaving him with the dress in hand, eyes unfocused, and chest once again filled with pain.

Louis wanted to scream. Wanted to take the bright red cloth and fling it in Lestat's face. Wanted to demand recognition, demand that Lestat see him. See the whole of him. See that Louis existed, was alive. Tear Lestat's eyes away from his mockery and his cruelty and his scheming and his jests and force him to just stop.

The dress rustled as Louis' fingertips shook.

In his mind, Lestat stopped. And looked at him.

It was with his own great will that Louis did not tear the garment in a fit of his own insanity.

Louis tried to map out the rest of his existence. He tried to imagine the rest of his life stretching out before him. From this, what? What could become of this pantomime of civility that defined his life for him? What would it be like ten years from now? Fifty? One hundred? Would it be he and Lestat and Claudia like this forever, locked together in this gross imitation of a family unit?

Louis knew it would not. Knew it would never last. It could not last. There was nothing to allow it to do so. Family was three, but not a three such as this. From something like this could come only two. Claudia could be a daughter and Claudia could have a father, but Claudia could not have yet another father too.

Claudia, Louis knew, was his daughter.

But Louis knew that in his own, strange way, Lestat loved her too.

And Claudia was drawn to Lestat. His charisma and charm appealed to her, as did his cavalier way of dealing with mortals. In that, all of it, Claudia was Lestat's own child.

But Claudia did not love Lestat. Which was Lestat's own failing. He couldn't teach her that. She felt nothing for him, just as he showed her no feeling of his own.

Only with Louis was there that spark.

Rarely, but Louis believed in it, believed it to be there. Knew that without it, Lestat would never have the patience to even try to speak with her anymore, or to speak with him. And only when he was with Louis did he ever show a flicker of honesty, a moment of compassion.

Claudia could live with two. Louis did not want less than three.

He could hate himself for it. Did, in fact, hate himself for it. Felt contempt that he would want this or even care. There would be deep satisfaction, he knew, in defying Lestat and dismissing him after all these years. But even so he did not, could not, dared not.

He bent over the dress, holding it in his lap now as his face turned towards the floor, his hair – cut only a little bit shorter for the current fashion – long enough still to at least hide his eyes.

The image came to him of disappearing, vanishing, being born again.

Years ago – it seemed like centuries now – he and Lestat could withstand one another enough to go out dancing. Louis had not cared for it, but it was one of the few ways he could spend an evening with Lestat in a manner that bordered on pleasurable. Together, sometimes even arm in arm, they would go to parties and balls. Always some excuse was given – they were brothers, cousins, business partners – it all changed as time and generations moved on; but always they went together. At the party they would separate. Louis often to a corner, Lestat to the crowd. Then the night would move on and Lestat would spend the whole of it dancing, his face the handsomest in the crowd as he held in his arms one woman after another, his blond hair flying, his eyes sparkling, his lips moving in close to whisper something into her ear, or perhaps even take a nip of her blood.

Louis would sit. And watch.

And now…

He wondered.

Wondered if things could have been different, with one little change.

If…

No. That was a sentence he couldn't finish. But he could think about it, in pieces. Not take in the whole of it, but ponder it in parts.

Lestat could dance with a woman. Lestat could hold a woman in his arms in the middle of the largest of crowds. Lestat could be with a woman. Be with a woman in true – as his wife, as his sister – and not in some falsified, pseudo-pairing that was never believed in even by the most gullible of listeners.

Lestat could be a father, with a woman. Claudia could have a mother, with a woman.

There could be a family, with a woman.

And, just as he pondered the parts of this, he pondered the other half. The half that understood Lestat's too-keen mockery, the half that mocked himself for feeling this way. Who could take a man such as himself seriously? Louis would not, if the tables were turned.

He could not blame Lestat for his distance. Louis would have drawn away too. Had he, that is, been a man such as Lestat so obviously was. A man comfortable in his own role in society, a man who understood his place to control and take charge.

A man such as that would not, Louis estimated, think kindly on another who would submit.

It was, Louis reasoned, Lestat's version of a kindness to not cast him out utterly.

That Lestat knew of his feelings Louis was certain. This was too obvious to him. Unthinkable that his emotions had somehow been hidden no matter how desperately Louis had tried. He knew it was all written on his face. Lestat knew. Perhaps Claudia as well. But they did not cast him aside and he would take that gift for what it was.

He allowed himself one last moment. One last moment to clutch the garment to him, feel its creases against his chest even through his own, thick, clothes, then let it go. He placed the dress back in the hands of the dressmaker, muttering something about a wife lost years ago, then turned and walked away.

He glanced at dresses all around him everywhere he went. Thinking, wondering, sometimes distracted and lightheaded enough to allow for wishing, but only allowing it to go so far as that.

Speaking of it was out of the question.