The fake wooden keyboard clacked faintly under Lestat’s fingers. No sound, no music, just the rhythm of muscle memory and nerves fraying at the edges.

He sat on the old floor cushions of the little hut, back slightly hunched, shirt rumpled. One knee up, the other outstretched. Your head rested across his thigh, feverish and motionless but not entirely still. You hadn’t spoken in minutes, until a breathless half-word slipped through your lips, barely formed.

Lestat’s hand was already in motion. Smoothing your hair. Pressing cool fingers to your temple.

“Shhh, mon amour,” he whispered, voice almost too soft to hear. “Pas maintenant. Let it pass.”

You shifted slightly, breath catching again. He hushed you a second time. He hadn’t stopped touching the keys, not really. It was like something inside him would collapse if he did.

The door opened behind him.

He didn’t turn.

Louis’s shadow fell across the warped floorboards as he stepped inside the room. His eyes adjusted quickly. The air smelled like mold and pine and faint, old blood. But what hit him first was the shape of the figure seated in the dim light.

Lestat didn’t move. Just kept playing silence on plastic keys, head bowed over his lap.

Louis took two steps forward. “I should have known,” he said, voice flat and low. “You built another crypt out of nothing.”

That got Lestat’s attention. His eyes flicked up, sharp and stunned, as if he'd already convinced himself the voice had been imagined.

Louis stood in the doorway, still dressed for travel. Eyes fixed on him, and only him.

“You saved me,” Louis said, quieter now. “That night.”

Lestat swallowed but didn’t rise. His hand twitched over the keyboard. “You figured that out.”

“I did.”

The silence that followed was almost unbearable. The city noise filtered through the walls like a heartbeat too far away.

Louis’s gaze shifted—only slightly—toward the form curled against Lestat’s leg. Small. Still. Sick.

“You turned someone,” he observed.

Lestat let out a breath through his nose, almost a laugh. “Not well, as you can see.”

Louis didn’t comment. He didn’t approach. Just watched him. Watched the thin lines of tension in Lestat’s arms as he hovered over the child, the unnatural stillness in his face, like he'd been keeping himself from unraveling for days.

He looked older than Louis remembered. Not in body. Just… worn. Quiet in a way that didn’t suit him.

Louis turned his eyes back to Lestat. “I didn’t come here for explanations.”

“I know.”

“I just wanted to see if it was you.”

Lestat nodded faintly.

“Now I know,” Louis said.

He lingered in the doorway for another moment. The shape on Lestat’s lap shifted faintly, drawing breath through their teeth.

Lestat hushed them again. “It’s all right, mon ange,” he said softly, brushing the side of your face with the back of his knuckles. “Just a fever. It’ll pass.”

Louis didn’t respond.

And for a long stretch of quiet, he didn’t leave either.