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Tweak says, ""Arg, me harties.""

Lestat de Lioncourt (i_liveforever) wrote in we_coexist,
@ 2012-03-21 19:40:00

Entry tags:

eric northman, lestat de lioncourt, stand still

oh, now you're just taking things too far. (eric)
Lestat did not need as much rest as younger vampires of his kind did; in fact, he'd mostly gotten away from the Hells Bells of his youth, from the sound of dawn approaching feeling like a death knell.

But sleep he did, shortly after the sun came up, and he'd wake just before sunset. Fully fed and strong, he could withstand the sun--and had, in the dessert. The sun still put him to sleep, though, whether he wanted it to or not. There was only so hard he could fight it.

When he awoke this evening, in his beautifully appointed apartment made to look just like his home in New Orleans, something caught his eye. He was reaching into the wardrobe for a jacket and shirt to wear, something eye-catching.

That was when he saw it.

The heart on the mirror. A lipstick-drawn heart. And a square in the middle, a picture.

Holding his chosen garments, Lestat crossed the room in the blink of an eye, grabbing the picture up.

Eric. Eric in the park. During the day.

Lestat growled. It was a low, angry, predatory growl.

The clothes were donned in a flash. And he was out the door in a blur. Eric was out during the day? Eric, whose particular brand of vampire was so vulnerable to the sun?

Once he was on the street, he pursued Eric with a single-mindedness that rivaled actual obsession.

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i_liveforever
2012-04-20 09:44 pm UTC (link)

Lestat offered a slight nod in answer to Eric's admission.

Then he smiled. It was a large, charming smile. "I just saw a great deal of you. I have no need to 'dig around in your head.' There are plenty of others in this City to do that with, if I desire."

He enjoyed telepathically conversing with River, and Hannibal, too. And he quite enjoyed overhearing conversations having to do with and featuring characters he knew to be fiction. They tickled.

"You need not resent me just because you are suddenly attracted. You did ask," Lestat said, taking a seat on a chair that was about his age and worth, conservatively, the rental price of his entire apartment for half the year. He was facing Eric and had an irritating sort of amusement about Eric's situation that was beyond obvious. "This is why the Blood comes with a rule book. And also why I often toss that set of rules out the goddamn window."

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i_bite
2012-04-21 04:47 pm UTC (link)

"Need or no need, I doubt that is your motivation for doing so."

Eric was beginning to feel better. Less dazed and less filled with desire to throw Lestat onto the floor and do some things to him that the other vampire probably hadn't experienced in a long while, considering.

"You're something of a hypocrite." Eric shook his head. "You'd so willingly break these rules about blood exchanges, and yet it's the first thing you attempted to do to me, impose rules."

It wasn't said with snideness of any kind, just as a matter of fact. He'd already observed Lestat to be a creature of many conflicting views of the world. The more he got to know the other vampire, the more Eric thought that he might not really know what he wanted for himself.

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i_liveforever
2012-04-21 08:04 pm UTC (link)

Lestat's eyes shone.

There WAS a reason why he was so hated, or if not hated, seen as a goddamn annoyance by his kind.

He'd never deny what Eric had just said. Instead, he shrugged. "It's actually gotten much less over the last forty years or so," the vampire said. "I used to be flagrantly insufferable. And my reasoning for attempting to do that--get you to follow rules--was based on experience here, with other vampires who turned out to be largely moronic. I figured I'd hedge my bets. Whatever you may be, you are not moronic. I jumped the gun."

He considered, though. "Rules of some kind are necessary with the Blood, though. I'm sure your kind has them as well. Who can be turned, who cannot. Things of that nature. With us, since so few of us who are young remain, blood sharing has become a much larger issue due to the power we're carrying around."

He thought about the youngest vampire he knew. It was Mona, and he'd made her. Aside from her, it must be Quinn. "The youngest I know is a decade in the blood, but was made by a creature older even than you, I believe. We choose carefully, now. That was not always the case."

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i_bite
2012-04-26 07:11 pm UTC (link)

"I suppose it's nice to hear that you can admit when you're wrong." That bit, if nothing else, did raise Lestat in Eric's estimation. Eric was not fond of mistakes, or the insufferable, but the fact that the other vampire knew he'd been the latter and could admit when he'd made the former was something. Not a lot of people, humans, vampires, whatever, could manage to do that.

"We have the opposite rules." Eric didn't think anybody he'd ever known had been punished for making a vampire. "We're so few in numbers, our new die so routinely, that if you kill a vampire, often you are required to make a new one. That's if the punishment is light. There are times when you're sentenced to existing in a coffin underground, starving, for many many years."

He also chose carefully, Eric was not the type to require or desire many offspring. He knew what it meant to have to be around somebody for a very long time. He was picky. But he'd seen other vampires make progeny just to have bodyguards.

"So you haven't had a child in many years?"

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i_liveforever
2012-05-01 05:56 pm UTC (link)

Lestat smirked. He had not always been able to admit such things. Eric could ask any number of the remaining Coven of the Articulate, and they'd be quick to inform him of exactly how insufferable Lestat once was.

So you haven't had a child in many years?

He could see Mona, then, in his mind. Laying on that bed with all of the flowers, sick and weak, her red hair the most vibrant thing about her. He'd told her he was going to get her, and he had--but it hadn't been his idea. It was for Quinn. It was Quinn's idea. Her Mayfair blood had made her more enticing, but Lestat had not looked at Mona initially with an eye to make her a companion--even though she was dying young. He'd cared for Rowan, not Mona.

"I haven't sought out a child in quite some time," he answered. "My youngest was here, in the City, and is only a few years old. She was..."

... beloved boss...

"... dying. A witch. Promiscuous red-headed little thing who'd managed to bring a Taltos into the world and was paying for it. Her lover became something of an adopted child to me."

He remembered telling Quinn to man up and let her go. Or at least thinking it.

"He intended to turn her himself. I did it instead. We cannot hear the thoughts of our fledgelings. The blood is too close. I gave them the ability to preserve that bond. As a favor."

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i_liveforever
2012-05-02 03:15 am UTC (link)

Lestat caught himself then. He thought about his time in the City and shook his head.

"And Karen. There was Karen."

He'd damn near forgotten, focused so hard on his past. BEFORE here.

"I met her here, and turned her, here. But she isn't here anymore." He paused. He wasn't going to mention that he'd done it because he was bored. It sounded so childish.

There are those I'd like to give Blood to, but cannot. Not yet, anyway.

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i_bite
2012-05-02 03:24 am UTC (link)

Lestat's description of both of these progeny was interesting. Even without the last add-on, he still had more than Eric ever had. It seemed, despite the other vampire's attitude, that Eric was the more picky of the two.

At least when it came to children.

Eric held up a hand. "No in the head stuff." He also shot Lestat a warning glare. He'd really really meant it when he said he'd kill the other for that kind of thing.

"Why can't you give it to them?" As strange as it might have been, Lestat using the word blood with a capital B wasn't new to Eric. Vampires in his own world did the same thing. The Blood is sacred. The Blood is blah blah blah.

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i_liveforever
2012-05-02 03:37 am UTC (link)

It was simple.

Lestat could not be alone. He found it crippling, and thrived so much on the attention of others that he was unable to maintain a solitary existence for very long without going into the ground.

"It's quite unconscious," Lestat said. Hundreds of years communicating telepathically and Eric suddenly thought he should stop?

Lestat considered this.

"There are two," he said. "They would both have to agree. One without the other, and I'd be a dead man. The other would find me and dispatch me with what I can only describe as ... art."

River and Hannibal. He'd love to see what vampires they would make. His eyes damn near shone with it. He kept their names well hidden, though.

"I've spoken with them. About it." Which was true. He'd spoken to Hannibal, at least. He'd hinted at it in River's mind. "They'd never allow the other to make that decision. To die so willingly, despite the afterlife, so to speak. Never allow me to take one of them without the other, or make the choice themselves and cause the other any pain."

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i_bite
2012-05-04 07:36 pm UTC (link)

"Try to make a conscious effort." Things could go really bad between them, very easily, all because Lestat was just doing something he'd done since he'd first been able to. But it was something that Eric found intrusive and maddening. He was sure he could temper his own anger for a little while, at least. But if it continued, he couldn't make promises toward his actions. And if Lestat found something Eric didn't want known, well, that was something he couldn't predict at all.

His interest was piqued by the pair the other vampire was speaking about now. Eric found himself considering what had just been said. That if Lestat were to turn one and not the other, the other would kill him. That it would be done in some fashion that even he couldn't deny would be wonderfully creative and concrete.

"They are so attached to one another that they refuse to live apart?" In Eric's mind, that was a pretty good reason to run for the vampire line. He'd seen them made for worse reasons, or no reason at all. Devotion like that could last them several hundred years, if not forever.

"They'd rather both stay human and die?"

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i_liveforever
2012-05-04 10:33 pm UTC (link)

Lestat didn't respond to the command. In general, he did not respond to commands.

For a vampire to admit a human being was capable of ending its life--a vampire of Lestat's type-- was a huge admission and glimpse into the type of human being he was talking about. But both River and Hannibal were genius-level intelligent, and both had killed several people. They might not have super human strength, and Lestat might be faster...

... but they were smarter.

"It is an odd and complex relationship, for being such a simple thing," Lestat said. He began to slowly pace the length of his flat, damn near soundlessly. "Their pasts, before the City, were not kind."

He understood, though he had never found his own equal. River and Hannibal took refuge in each other. There was a purity there that could not be taken away.

They'd rather both stay human and die?

Lestat stopped, turned, and smiled at Eric. It was a proud smile.

"They have no fear of it." Probably because they were death, each, on their own. "There may be circumstances that could come about to make them allow it."

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