That first night of the Dark Gift is over in an instant, the rush of new sensation snuffed out by the threat of the rising sun. Louis can feel his energy drop; limbs like cinderblocks as Lestat coaxes him into the coffin just before dawn. It's a comfort, by the time he's followed him inside, pressed close to his chest with the lid heaved shut. There is no breath passed between them, but Louis can feel the steady drum of his heart, louder and more insistent than his own.
Some of Lestat's beauty is lost now that Louis sees him with supernatural vision, the way magic withers when one learns the sleight of hand behind a parlor trick. Louis tries to roll his shoulders, sandwiched between Lestat's cold body and the equally immovable hood of the coffin, which digs into his back every time his hips stumble through the motions of sex.
"Will it always be like this?"
This much longing? Lestat slides one hand between the seam of their bodies to grasp Louis between his legs. Louis makes a sound that sticks to what little negative space is left.
"Never again," Lestat chides. "By tomorrow evening the last of your humanity will have left you."
The smallness of the coffin no longer terrifies him, trapped between the two unforgiving planes offers Louis a respite from guilt. His face is still hot with the Blood Lestat has given him, humming in the marrow of his bones and now the hard length of his cock. Lestat traces the outline of it against his thigh, teasing through layers of clothing.
"Am I still to believe this is part of the process?"
His body has begun to die but the biological evidence of his mortality remains, in the pink sweat beading on his forehead and the semen pooling in his scrotum. He buries his nose in Lestat's neck and regrets it immediately, as the swell of his pulse beckons the beast inside him, arousal cloaked in hunger, the hound from the forest that beats the big drum.
"Beautiful one," Lestat dotes, speaking softly into the shell of his ear. "Temptation is always part of the process."
Louis pulls back to breathe, before remembering he doesn't have to. Lestat's eyes are glimmering like two hunks of ice, floating across the arctic in the middle of the night, deep winter. One of his hands crawls behind the waistband of Louis' pants to feel him fully, skin to skin. The muscles in his stomach tense, tendons drawn tight as the strings on a violin.
"My child," he whispers. "I want to see your surrender."
Lestat's tongue probes his lips, dragging purposefully along the sharp edge of a fang until the tissue breaks. Louis is drawn immediately to the wound, a hungry infant clutching his breast. Visions mix with his own thoughts as he drinks, shards that leave sharp impressions of Lestat's soul in his head. The exterior shakes as Louis ruts against him, desperate for friction.
Oblivion looms just beyond the precipice, a few strokes short from satisfying. The heels of Louis' shoes scrape the far reaches of the coffin, legs tangled in Lestat's. He threads one hand in Louis' hair, pressing closer, crowding him against the lid and tearing into the soft flesh of his mouth so that he can feed, sharing the life split between them.
He tightens his grip around Louis' cock, hot at the very core, incurably on fire. Louis comes with Lestat's blood flooding his mouth like a wave of lava, cock cradled in his curled fist. He swallows and chokes, snaking a hand between them to find Lestat's wrist, encircling it and forcing his movements to a grinding halt.
Is this the beginning of eternity?