Chapter Text
Not every donor at the Farm is suited for every case. Some ads want high-alcohol content, some request vegans. But for a business run on the dark web, the ads can be surprisingly normal. Show up, extend your wrist, have some juice and leave. Those are the ones Louis seeks out.
Louis’s rating is particularly high because he arrives on time, doesn’t demand a chaperone—a third party to guarantee safety—and he doesn’t instigate conversation, but easily engages if the vampire feels talkative.
His high rating opens the doors for larger opportunities with higher payout, which is great because he needs to consider if he’s re-upping his lease in a month, and his job at the art gallery pays nowhere near the amount that he gets for being a nonsmoking, sober, lean protein-eater.
Louis sits on a couch in the lush hotel suite being used as the make-shift interview space. There are four other candidates on the couches with him, and as is customary, they try not to make eye-contact with each other. Louis recognized another donor out and about in the city once, but acknowledging each other is ill-advised. You never know who’s a narc.
This job is suspiciously high-paying and with no clear end date, which usually means a client is looking for something out of the ordinary. Louis doesn’t mind coming to interviews like this. He has pretty clear boundaries, and the Farm does a good job of vetting their clients, despite the fact that vampires are serial killers by nature.
The double doors that lead to a dining area open, and the first donor strides out and toward the exit. Louis glances over her quickly for any hints as to what the vampire wants, and only sees a bandage and gauze on her inner elbow, as if she’d just given blood.
Tastings aren’t abnormal at interviews, but if they are drawing blood instead of just having a sip, then the vampire isn’t in the room—and that is the odd part.
Louis wonders if this is a high-profile vampire, and if so, which of Hollywood’s darlings recently got turned?
Because the only high-profile vampire… Rumored to be a vampire, that is… Well, he wouldn’t need to use the Farm. Louis is certain of that.
The woman with bright red hair who had greeted them upon arrival appears through the double doors. She has a no-nonsense severity to her. A lawyer, maybe. “Number two,” she says.
Louis stands. Names aren’t shared at this stage. Not until the contracts are inked.
He follows her into the dining room where a woman in scrubs is laying out a vial for blood collection and sanitizing her station. The redhead closes the double doors behind them.
“Hello, I’m Christine,” she says. No last name, Louis recognizes. “Your paperwork please.”
Louis hands over the application and begins rolling up his right sleeve for the blood draw without being asked. Christine’s lips twist in approval.
Louis sits and takes in the dining room. There’s a door on the other side of the table that is shut, and Louis wonders if the client is in there, or if the vampire is truly having someone else conduct the interview.
Christine looks over his forms, sitting across from him. “No smoking, no drinking, no drugs?”
“No.”
“Are you open to changing any of those?”
Louis tilts his head at her in surprise as the woman in scrubs wraps the elastic tourniquet below his biceps. “Yes, but nothing harder than marijuana. And I’d need to be clean for other clients—”
“There would be no other clients,” Christine says. Her brows lift in challenge.
Louis nods once, taking in how long-term the relationship would be. “Okay. Then yes to nicotine, alcohol, and marijuana.”
Christine puts the paper on the table and stares at him as the other woman warns him that he’ll feel a pinch.
“My client is looking for someone who can travel. Eight months, with an option to extend to another six outside of the country. There will be breaks, but you will be expected to maintain the diet prescribed if visiting home. Housing and food will be provided all eight months, regardless if you take the breaks.”
Louis swallows. The pay he’d seen was weekly. He had imagined something lasting a month, but eight to fourteen months… He’d be grossing six figures easy. With no rent and no expenses.
Clearing his throat, he says, “Passport is in good standing, and I’m out of a lease in a month.”
Christine looks down at the table, concentrating, then glances back up at him. “No work commitments?” The vampire is talking to her, Louis realizes. His gaze lands on the door behind her.
“Nothing I’m attached to.”
The woman in scrubs caps the vial of his blood and begins marking it to put in the cooler next to the one marked “#1”. She pauses, going very still, and then she stands and walks the vial of his blood to the door behind Christine. She opens the door a crack and gives the vial to whoever is back there.
There’s something oddly eerie about knowing a vampire is just feet away from him, sipping his blood like a splash of merlot, and not being able to see him. Louis feels tied to him, inexplicably—in the same unexplainable way that he knows the vampire is a man.
“No girlfriend? Boyfriend? Partner?”
Louis’s attention snaps back to Christine. He shakes his head no, and that familiar relief flames like it always does when someone assumes “girlfriend” before “boyfriend.”
Christine is looking over his form again, and Louis sees the moment her eyes catch on the usual issue.
“You’re Wrist or Draw only?” Christine asks.
Louis crosses his legs under the table. He swears he can hear a sound from the room behind Christine. A scoff maybe.
“That’s right. I only allow feeding from my wrist or a blood draw.”
Blood draw wasn’t always clinical, like with the vial tonight. Louis once spent eight hours at a dinner party in Chicago, sitting next to a vampire who ignored him except to slice his wrist open every hour and let his blood drip into a decanter.
Christine looks disappointed, as they sometimes do. That’s alright. As Louis knows all too well, not every donor at the Farm is suited for every case.
“My client prefers feeding from the neck,” Christine says in a leading way, as if expecting Louis to change the information on his application.
And perhaps some people would have changed their hard limits once they heard the dollar amount, but Louis simply nods, as if he expected as much from her client.
“Okay. Then maybe I’m not your guy.”
He expects her to thank him and dismiss him, but Christine stares at him, assessing.
“My client needs two to three humans accompanying him for work. The feeding would be on rotation—for example, you on Mondays and Thursdays and the other humans on the other days of the week. Protein and exercise will remain a priority, and if my client has a preference for you to add to your diet for flavor, he expects it to be done without a fuss. Transfusions will be available and administered by a medical professional, if needed.”
Louis listens to her spiel, wondering if another shoe will drop, or if the sinking feeling he has that he knows which extremely famous vampire would need companions for international travel… if that is the shoe.
“Some appearances at work events will be mandatory, some optional,” Christine continues, “but aside from resting the day after feeding, your time would be your own.”
Louis tries not to fidget, wondering if they really settled on Wrist or Draw only. “Sounds good to me. Beginning when?”
“In two weeks.” Christine leans back in her chair. “Your paperwork is agreeable to us. But my client would like to ask you to reconsider your stance on neck feeding.”
Louis almost smiles at his gullibility. Of course they hadn’t settled. She’d just laid out the conditions of a perfect job with transparency in order to renegotiate.
Doing his best to clear his mind, Louis tries not to think about his mama and the money these jobs send home to her. Grace, Levi, and the kids, who would never suspect in a million years that the devil walks among them. Paul, who used to see the sins inside of Louis before he even committed them…
How he couldn’t face any of them if the money he sent home to keep Mama housed and Paul safe came as the result of indescribable pleasure, and that the devil himself gave Louis that euphoria in exchange for his blood.
Louis sometimes feels stirrings with a wrist bite, but nothing like the first time his neck was bitten. He’d been a wanton thing, moaning and clutching onto the one biting him. He’d climaxed unexpectedly, but the vampire hadn’t been shocked. He’d been polite, asking Louis if he’d like to clean up before leaving.
He hadn’t known that vampire, but he’d felt connected to him for days after, his body still buzzing with all the latent desires that had bubbled to the surface, lust he’d never had the courage to act on—laid bare for him to see.
Later, he’d find that his response was normal, and that some of the Farm’s clients were more than happy to blur the lines of feeding and sex with their donors.
He’d understood then why people would seek vampires outside of the protections of the Farm, to treat being bitten like shooting heroin. Louis started working twice as hard to stay clean and healthy so he could still attract clients as a Wrist or Draw, and he learned how to spot which ads inferred that the client was interested in more than feeding.
A bolt of shame hits him as he wonders if he ignored the red flags for this ad because of the money.
Louis tries not to think about any of that, knowing a vampire who can read his thoughts is on the other side of the wall.
“I’m afraid I can’t reconsider,” Louis says firmly.
The woman in scrubs seems shocked at this. Christine watches him, but then looks at the table again and frowns. “I’m not asking him that,” she mutters.
A dramatic sigh comes from the other room, and suddenly the door is swinging open wide.
“Oh, come now, Christine, there is no vampire HR to report you to,” says a gently accented voice.
Louis’s body goes stiff and then loses tension all at once. The Vampire Lestat comes through the door, and even without his show makeup or garish costumes, Louis recognizes him instantly. He’s in simple clothing, jeans and a t-shirt, but the eyes and the hair are a dead giveaway.
The rumors in the feeding community have been unclear on if Lestat de Lioncourt is actually a vampire due to all his flashy gimmicks, but all of Louis’s senses are singing. This man isn’t human.
The Vampire Lestat trails his eyes over Louis, tilting his head in appraisal. “Christine, we must find you a thesaurus. ‘Handsome’ doesn’t begin to cover it.”
Louis's cheeks heat. He resolves not to look away.
The Vampire Lestat lays his hands on the back of the chair next to Christine and leans his weight on it. Louis tracks how his arm muscles pop with the movement.
“I merely wanted Christine to ask you if you were Catholic,” he says with a smirk. When Louis doesn’t answer, he points to himself. “I have my own complicated history with religion, of course.”
Louis knows. Louis knows his music, loathe as he is to admit that.
Lestat grins. “I only wished to know if the”—he gestures flippantly—“neck issue was for all vampires… or only the men.”
There’s something devilish in his gaze, like he sees exactly what Louis is.
Louis swallows. “All vampires.”
Lestat’s mouth twitches in delight. “Very Catholic then,” he whispers as if to himself. “No pleasure allowed, no matter who’s sucking you off—”
“My boundaries remain,” Louis says, turning his focus to Christine. “I’m Wrist or Draw, but everything else that you laid out works for me.”
Christine takes a deep breath, but Lestat cuts her off.
“Leave us.”
The woman in scrubs that drew his blood stands immediately. Louis is about to join her when he realizes Lestat is staring him down with a mercurial smile. They are the us.
“Christine?” Lestat prompts when she doesn’t move.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea—”
“Oh, but it says right here—” Lestat picks up Louis’s application and waves it theatrically without reading it. “He doesn’t require a chaperone when alone with a vampire. Go.”
Christine excuses herself wearily. Lestat’s gaze is glued to him, and Louis meets his eye with a stubborn confidence. Louis curls his fingers around the arms of the chair.
Lestat begins walking slowly to the head of the table, perusing Louis’s application.
“You know I am going on tour, yes?” he says lazily. Then he glances up with a smirk. “You know who I am?”
Louis nods. “Yep.”
He drops Louis’s application with a flick of his hand, and Louis watches it flutter across the table.
“I work up quite an appetite onstage,” Lestat says. “And not just for blood.”
He levels a look at Louis that is equal parts seductive and mischievous.
“The way I hear it, you got plenty of groupies.” Louis tracks him as he rounds the corner of the table, now on Louis’s side of it.
“Hm.” Lestat leans on the table, facing him. Louis can’t help but notice the length of his legs and the way the t-shirt seems to taper along a flat stomach. “The fans aren’t as discreet as the donors from the Farm. They’re too eager to prove that vampires do exist. Too eager to become vampires themselves.” He pauses, looking tired. “Things can get so messy.”
Lestat seems to recover, pasting his lazy expression back on. He continues, “So I’d prefer to keep several donors with me on tour instead.” He focuses on Louis. “For all of my needs.”
Louis doesn’t like feeling below him, so he stands. “Well, I hope you find some donors for that. As I said, I’m—”
“Wrist or Draw only,” Lestat finishes for him.
Louis regrets standing now, as the vampire takes the opportunity to glance over his entire body.
“You know,” Lestat says, “I don’t appreciate sharing.” He lets his fingers trail over the table innocently, but Louis realizes he’s stepping closer. “I expect my donors to remain… uncontaminated, if you will, with outside partners.”
Louis presses his lips together. “Just so I’m clear, I wouldn’t be allowed to have sex with anyone unless it’s you?”
Lestat’s eyes sparkle. “Well, when you put it that way it sounds shocking. I only mean that you would be expected to prioritize the job.” He grins. “And how else would you entertain yourself for eight months?”
“Well, I have been meaning to reread War and Peace.”
“Books?” Lestat asks. “Is that how you’ve satisfied your denial this long?”
“Books and museums will be fine for me,” Louis says, ignoring the second half of his question. “I’ll keep entertained.”
Lestat seems to take him in, but there’s something less predatory about it now. Like he wants to peel back Louis’s exterior, like he thinks there are fascinating things inside.
Louis doesn’t know how much longer they can face off about this. At some point, the vampire will excuse him when he can’t get what he wants.
“And if the job paid more?” Lestat asks softly.
Louis’s brows knit together. “What?”
“If perhaps it was double the salary,” Lestat says, his eyes lifting from where they settled briefly on Louis’s throat, “would that make it easier for you?”
Easier. As if there was something hard about this that money could soften. As if Louis didn’t already think of himself as some kind of sex worker for what he did offer.
“No, the pay is already outstanding for the job… which is to provide you blood.”
The corner of Lestat’s mouth lifts. He glances down at the short distance between them, and something about his expression is resigned.
“Do you have any other items to discuss?” Lestat asks, and when he lifts his gaze back to Louis, Louis gets lost for a moment before realizing he may have just won.
Louis clears his throat. “If I am to be offered to friends of yours, I’d expect them to abide by my specifications as well.”
Lestat smirks. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t trust any of my friends with you.” He trails his eyes down Louis’s body again. He extends his hand. “Lestat de Lioncourt.”
His heart is pounding, and he knows Lestat can hear it. Louis slips his palm into Lestat’s.
“Louis.” When Lestat gives him a probing look, Louis adds, “Louis de Pointe du Lac.”
Lestat squeezes his hand as his eyes dance. “French?”
“From New Orleans.”
Lestat grins, and Louis can’t help but focus on his teeth.
Suddenly, Lestat tugs him forward by his hand. Louis is forced to step closer as Lestat lifts Louis’s wrist to his lips.
“Shall we seal it with a kiss, Louis?” Lestat says coyly, smiling at him.
Louis shivers at the sound of his name on Lestat’s tongue. He breathes through his nose, surrendering.
“Has anyone ever told you no before?” Louis asks flatly.
“Of course,” Lestat says, “but just not when their body and mind are screaming yes so violently.”
Lestat turns Louis’s wrist toward his mouth and stares into Louis’s eyes as his teeth pierce the thin flesh.
Louis loses his breath in a quiet sigh. The first pull of Lestat’s lips on his blood sends unbearable desire through him. Louis’s free hand reaches out to grip the edge of the table, so he doesn’t reach for Lestat.
Vibrant blue eyes watch Louis as pale pink lips that are usually smeared with colorful lipstick suck at his skin, and Louis has a very distinct image—a premonition almost—of that lipstick being left behind on his wrist after concerts. Hot pleasure starts to spiral in his stomach, and he imagines Lestat’s concert lipstick on his neck instead. Then on his cock.
Louis looks away finally, biting the inside of his cheek until there’s pain.
Lestat pulls off. Louis braces himself to see Lestat grinning in victory, as there’s no way he wouldn’t have danced inside of his head during all that.
Lestat’s eyes are hot on him, but there is no smugness. He licks his mouth decadently, smearing the red blood like a lip color.
Louis swallows. His knees feel unsteady. Lestat cuts his thumb and brushes his vampiric blood over Louis’s wrist to heal the puncture wounds.
“Thank you, Louis,” Lestat whispers, the name a caress. Lestat’s eyes are glassy. “Christine will be in touch with your contract.”
Louis nods, moving to the door on shaking legs. He can’t meet anyone’s eye as he leaves the hotel suite.
It isn’t until he’s outside in the fresh night air that Louis’s feet stop. He leans against the side of the building, bile running up his throat as shame quivers through his body.
He isn't sure he can do this.