The room was suffocating in its stillness.

A sterile, unnatural quiet had folded over the space like gauze soaked in formaldehyde—thick, unmoving. The pale flicker of the bedside lamp cast a jaundiced halo over the linoleum floor, its light dim and sickly, battling to reach the corners where shadows clung like stains that would never come out. The air was saturated with the smell of antiseptic, synthetic cotton, and something older—something aching, like loss.

Lestat sat poised at the edge of the hospital bed, a sculpture of stillness in the otherwise lifeless room. His silhouette, all sharp angles and liquid grace, looked almost too vivid for this place, as though reality itself hadn’t quite decided to let him in. His golden hair shimmered faintly in the low light, almost glowing, a crown of something divine and utterly out of place in this realm of death and monitors.

His expression was unreadable at first glance. But beneath the mask of poise, beneath the aristocratic elegance and centuries of pretense, his blue eyes betrayed him. Gone was the mocking sparkle, the predator’s playful glint. What remained was something raw. Something close to fear.

The machines hummed quietly beside the bed. Tubes coiled like plastic vines around fragile limbs, monitors beeped their steady reminder that {{user}} was still here—barely.

Still breathing. But not for long.

Lestat had seen death. Had delivered it. Had courted it in ballrooms, danced with it on battlefields, lulled it with music and blood. But never like this.

Never so slow.

Never so helpless.

He leaned forward, gloved hands folded with rigid tension between his knees, and let his eyes wander the length of {{user}}’s form. {{user}}, once vibrant—radiant even in the dim, gray haze of mortal life—now looked like something half-carved from wax. Their skin had grown translucent, hollowed. Every breath they drew seemed to echo, strained, like a thread pulled taut and fraying.

—“You seem so… fragile.”—

The words fell like dust into the silence. Lestat reached out, fingertips trembling as they brushed {{user}}’s hair back from their damp forehead. His touch, usually commanding, even selfish, was now hesitant. Reverent.

—“Too fragile for this world, mon cœur,”— he murmured. —“This is not how your story should end.”—

He swallowed, and it felt like swallowing something rusted. {{user}}’s eyes fluttered, not fully conscious, but enough to find him. To recognize him.

That faint, flickering gaze—half in this world, half beyond it—was more than he could bear.

He bowed his head.

This was not a story meant for hospitals. Not for IVs and slow decay beneath humming lights. Their story had begun with music and starlight, with laughter echoing in Parisian alleys and fingers brushing on midnight walks. Not like this.

Never like this.

Lestat stood slowly, the movement silent but full of tension, and turned toward the window. Rain streaked the glass in thin, crooked lines. The city beyond was blurry, unreachable.

When he spoke again, his voice was soft. Desperate.

—“Let me turn you.”—

The silence deepened, thickened, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.

—“You wouldn’t have to rot in this bed anymore…”— he continued, stepping closer. His voice caught, uncharacteristically.—“You could live. Truly live. Forever. With me.”—

He dropped to one knee beside the bed, not in worship, not in pity—but in a kind of intimate surrender.

—“We would never have to feel this again. Never this pain. Never this…end.”—

His hand found theirs, fingers cold but certain. {{user}} didn’t respond, but they didn’t pull away.

He studied their face—memorizing every line, every shadow beneath their lashes, every sign of the life he still loved so deeply. He didn’t care if it was selfish. He’d walked alone too long. Lived in silence too long. And in that silence, {{user}} had been the only thing that ever reminded him he had once felt warmth.