The reunion of writer Daniel Malloy and the vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac was proving to be an insightful one. Louis’ desire to tell his life’s story to the man he’d once met in San Francisco years ago had brought new light to events and people that Mr. Malloy had thought he understood. He’d poured over the tapes he’d recorded in the 1970s, dissecting every detail he could and relishing in the fact that he’d actually met, even gotten to know, a real vampire. But now, Mr. Malloy wasn’t as quick to believe everything the seductively mysterious vampire had to say. He questioned inconsistencies and inquired further than perhaps Louis would’ve liked but the pair’s common goal of documenting the history of the Louisiana vampire motivated them to continue.

“So, you’d sworn off human blood…too squeamish for it, and opted for killing rats and cats to feed you while Lestat went hunting for humans like I presume most vampires do. Didn’t that ever get old? I mean, good for you for having morals I guess but drinking vermin blood can’t taste that great” Daniel asked. “You would be right, Mr. Malloy. The blood of a street rat isn’t comparable to that of a human. Watching Lestat fill himself with the rich decadence of human blood was difficult at times, like seeing someone eat birthday cake if you were watching your diet” “You didn’t ever slip up? Give into the natural urges and snag a tourist or something?” Daniel pressed, getting a sigh of a laugh from his subject sitting across from him.

“Yes, I felt myself being drawn to a more instinctual way to quench my thirst quite often but Lestat, in what I at first thought was a moment of genuine compassion, offered me a way to distract me from my undesirable appetite” Louis explained while Daniel’s expression tightened with renewed intrigue. “There was a hidden wall in the house where he would take humans that he either wanted to especially enjoy draining or enjoy in a more human way. The wall had two padded cuffs hanging from it, one for each wrist, attached to the wall themselves by very strong anchors. There was also a belt of sorts attached to the wall” “So, Lestat had a kinky side is what you’re saying” Daniel interrupted. “Sure. I was reluctant at first, not quite as ‘kinky’ as you might say, as Lestat but I was especially thirsty that night he assured that it would dull my craving for human blood so I obliged. I stood with my back against the wall and let him secure my wrists above my head and latch the belt around my waist” Louis continued, painting a picture of the night in their luxurious home roughly a century earlier.

*Flashback Perspective*

“How exactly is this supposed to help me, Lestat??” Louis questioned with skeptical attitude. “What do you feel when you’re thirsty for blood?” “What kind of question is that? You know that” “Just answer me, my love” “Fine. My mouth feels like I could drink a whole saloon dry…my smell is intense and my body craves only blood” Louis answered as the enchantingly charming Lestat de Lioncourt grinned with listening ears. “This will help distract you from all of that. Your mind and body will be too focused on this to fixate on your thirst” “How? I’m just stuck to a wall” Louis questioned with a light-hearted laugh at his situation. “Let me show you” Lestat answered before using his nails to slice through Louis’ shirt as swiftly as he did throats and ripped away the rest until his lover was half-naked.

“I could’ve just taken that off before! I liked that shirt” “This is more fun” Lestat answered before his fingertips landed just above the belt around Louis’ waist and began wiggling up his naked upper half. “HhEehEY! CoOhmMOooNN!” Louis argued with a smile of aversion as he squirmed in place and let out low, reluctant giggles. Lestat didn’t reply, instead simply letting his fingers gently glide and trail the delicious body in front of him while Louis struggled to keep a grip on himself, wiggling and worming around as much as the wall bondage would allow. “oOK OoKK!” “Ok, what?” “EEnNNooUGGH! SSTtOOP! iIMmEAnNIIT!” “Oh, Louis…what a humorous idea to think you have any say in what happens while you’re in this position” Lestat pointed out with a vicious grin of familiar mischief as he continued teasing his vulnerable mate, obviously enjoying toying with him in this new way.

“LESTAahAT!” Louis shouted with giggly frustration but it only earned him more tickling when the restrained grazing of the pale fingers became flurries in his incredibly exposed armpits. “AAhAhANNOO! NNOoAOHA!! SSTToHoHoPPIIITT!!” The reserved Louis bellowed into the air with laughter out of his control as a look of surprise covered his pretty face. “I knew you had more in you than that” Lestat teased with a sharp smirk as his nails proved excellent tools for bringing out a new side of Louis, one he couldn’t overthink or polish like he was so apt to. “TThiIiSSiIiSaohAOHACCRRAAhAZZYyY!” “You’re the one that looks crazy to me” Lestat pointed out as he watched Louis dance in place, his legs shifting their weight and floundering beneath him like they didn’t know what to do while forced laughter filled their home like the finest jazz band.

Lestat’s appetite for Louis never wavered, supremely attracted to him in that moment and letting himself bury his head into his neck to kiss and slurp on him while tormenting his caramel armpits. “AOAhohNOONoAohAOHA!! FFuUuhUCCKK!” Louis laughed harder with winced eyes and a scrunched face, with the affection overwhelming his neck tickling almost as much as the fingers dominating his pits. Lestat was ravenous, like he was trying to eat him without teeth. The way his tongue and mouth moved on Louis’ neck gave him goosebumps and made his toes curl in his shoes while Lestat’s fingers never missed a beat, like individual storms causing ticklish destruction every second they stayed in the hairy hollows. Louis tried to pull his arms down and yank away from it all but the cuffs kept his armpits the ideal buffets to gorge on, leaving him no choice but to laugh his head off and let Lestat devour his neck with ticklish kisses and a greedy tongue.

“AhAhAHANNoONOOMMMOOOREEAaohAOHA!! LLLEeSSTtAAhAHATT!!” Louis cried out with the kind of laughter one never grew tired of hearing. His voice had been dialed up to roaring heights that illustrated his suffering, the most unusual kind he’d ever experienced. The way Lestat’s hands manipulated him with such ease was nothing short of masterful, the unrelenting tickling mixing with the more aggressive necking keeping the handsome businessman bucking against the wall and howling right next to Lestat’s ear. “Were you this ticklish as a human or has the vampiric influence changed you in more ways than I thought?” Lestat questioned as if he didn’t know the answer with a taunting whisper near Louis’ ear before extending his tongue again and turning its attention to Louis’ stiff nipples, electrifying the eternal 33 year old all while never leaving his supremely sensitive armpits.

*Present Perspective*

“So, Lestat convinced you to be tied up and then tickled you? Am I getting this right?” a surprised yet not entirely impressed Daniel questioned. “Yes. It was honestly the last thing I imagined him doing or even being interested in doing” “Did you know you were ticklish before? Was Lestat right about becoming a vampire making it worse?” “I had only a brief idea of how ticklish I was before. The only person that had ever shown me was a girl in town that liked to flirt with me by poking my ribs and sides from time to time. But this, this was something else. With her I could recoil or walk away, I could avoid being tickled by her but Lestat gave me no chance for an escape or sanctuary. I’d never felt so helpless and so alive at the same time” “You know, in some cultures, tickling was used as torture at certain points in history” Mr. Malloy pointed out.

“Yes, I know. Torture may be an apt word for it but as much as it tickled, as much as I wanted relief, I think some part of me liked it” “Maybe that was the vampire part of you then. I sure as hell never liked getting tickled” “Perhaps” “You never knew Lestat to enjoy tickling outside of that night? Like you said, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing he’d be into” Daniel asked. “Lestat later explained to me that tickling to vampires is like drinking alcohol to humans. You don’t need it to survive, to nourish your body, but indulging in it can provide a different kind of pleasure than a tasty meal or rich wine might.” Louis enlightened. “You didn’t answer my question about if being a vampire made you more ticklish” “The short answer is yes. Our senses are greatly heightened so touch is also enhanced, meaning if you are ticklish as a human and become a vampire, it will likely triple” Louis answered before continuing his retelling.

*Flashback Perspective*

Louis only ended the tickling when he finally kicked Lestat, convincing his tongue and fingers to retreat, leaving his chest and underarms tingling with overstimulation. Lestat laughed at the retaliation and took a moment to admire Louis’ exhaustion, “I told you I could distract you from your thirst, didn’t I?” Lestat asked, getting a look of realization from the vampire he’d made five years earlier. “Fine, yeah…you did…but we’re not doing anymore tickling. No more” “We don’t have to. I’ll do enough for both of us” Lestat answered with a twist of Louis’ words before proving there were more straps by securing Louis’ left leg to the wall, leaving his right free for him to grab.

“No! Lestat! Fuck, man! Don’t fucking tickle me!” “Such a whiner tonight. Loosen up, Louis” the sharp-jawed blonde answered as he made quick work of Louis’ boot, leaving only the brown, plaid sock as protection. Louis looked up at his wrists and yanked on them again with his enhanced strength but they were still too strong, a fact he had trouble swallowing as he felt the right sock begin to peel off. “Lestat! Enough! You’ve made your point! Let me outta this!” Louis tried to convince as the sock revealed more and more of his inviting foot until it slipped off his silky toes.  

*Present Perspective*

“It was the first time I’d ever felt like someone he was ready to feed on in this way. Of course, he’d already bitten me years earlier but the lust that radiated off of him was different than I’d experienced thus far. I could practically hear him salivating with an acute desire to punish my bare foot and hear me fall apart with more laughter” Louis recounted in the Dubai sky scraper. “Did he have a foot fetish?” Daniel asked with a more modern simplification. “Lestat loved every part of me. I know that now. I don’t believe he had any specific ‘fetish’ or unique interest. He liked indulging in me. Sometimes that was through sex or listening to music together and sometimes, as it turned out, was ravaging my body with vicious fingers until I was laughing more than I was breathing. It was the first time I’d ever truly had a love/hate relationship with anything in my life.”

*Past Perspective*

With the sock on the floor and Louis’ enticing foot so perfectly helpless, Lestat tightened his arm around the ankle and let his tongue extend out to taste the top, glazing along the lovely brown skin with especially wet licks while Louis enjoyed the change of pace. He exhaled through his nose with anticipatory relief as he watched Lestat enjoy how he tasted and waited for what he knew was still coming. Lestat wouldn’t just lick the top of his foot while the rest of it was right there. “Did you skip lunch or something?” Louis teased with a bit of attitude. “Funny man…strange how I’m not the one laughing though” Lestat answered before making good on the unspoken promise of tickling Louis’ foot by launching onto the supple sole like he would a prey in the night.

“AahAhAHAHNNOOAOOAAHO!!” Louis erupted with newfound horror, his normal laughter like warm brown sugar, now forced to exaggerated heights with the scratch of five rapid fingers. Lestat’s nails were nothing short of brutal as they scribbled and clawed away at the creamy sole of his lover. While that kind of tickling may have harmed a human, it only tickled like hell for men like the two of them. “LLEESSTTTAHAHATT!! AohAOhAOOKOOK!! AOhAOhAohAAohAAOHCCoOMmOoOONN!!” Louis howled with full-body laughter as he shook against the wall and tried to kick his leg free but it wouldn’t budge. “I offered you a solution to your thirst, didn’t I?” Lestat reminded while running his ruthless fingers all over the wrinkling sole, like the finest velvet under his fingertips.

But as Louis floundered in his bondage and laughed like he was from a tale of some tortured bayou ghost, his vampiric strength soon managed to prevail after all, allowing his other leg to finally break free of the strap and kick Lestat in the backside. “…if you wanted me to have both feet, all you had to do was say so” Lestat added with a tone like Louis’ leg breaking free didn’t make him any less in control. “NO! That’s not what I fucking wanted! Stop playing around!” Louis laughingly argued as Lestat ripped the second shoe and sock off without the patience of human speed this time and locked his hands around the bottoms of both ankles, this time so the soles were facing him and he was facing Louis, providing a stunning view of Louis’ masculine beauty and his tiramisu soles all at once.

“I’m getting you back for this…you know that, right?” Louis warned with a cocky flare of his eyebrow, earning a grin of humor from Lestat. “It’s cute that you think you could” Lestat answered with his usual self-assuredness before diving into the pair of naked feet with his mouth this time, surprising Louis before the wave of fresh hell commanded his trapped body. “AAHGGAhoAOHAOHFFUuUuHUCKK! NOOOAOhAOHAOHAOOHAOHA!!! NNoOOTTThHAHAATT!!” Louis raged as Lestat moved with unnatural passion, nibbling along the tips of his toes and slurping up and down the lengths of both soles only to suddenly change it all up again. “LLEESSSTTAHAHAHATTT!” “Yes, my love?” “NNOOoAOAOHAMMOoOORREAAOhAOHA!!” Louis borderline begged but Lestat wasn’t deterred, instead moving fast enough to practically go at both feet at the same time.

His teeth tickled nearly as bad as his nails as they nibbled down the meatier edges of Louis’ feet and his tongue snaked between his toes like there was some savory delicacy hidden between them. Louis’ gushing laughter began spiking and cracking with embarrassing shrieks, breaking through his heavy laughter to show real ticklish desperation and he couldn’t stop it. There was one point in particular where Lestat began slurping and using his teeth at the same time on the left arch and Louis couldn’t help but scream with unnatural laughter against the wall, telling Lestat to do anything but stop.

Years of perfecting his role as a tough businessman and making sure everything about him seemed as traditionally masculine as he needed to retain the level of respect required on the streets of New Orleans was contradicted that night, undone in the privacy of their home in a way that made Louis feel more vulnerable than he ever liked. But there was a freeness to losing himself like that. Yes, his hunger for human blood was distracted by the incessant tickling but being unable to do anything but give into his body’s reactions to every stroke of Lestat’s fingers or flick of his tongue unwound Louis in a way he never would’ve expected.

*Present Perspective*

“So, did Lestat just tie you to the wall and tickle you every time you wanted blood after that?” Daniel asked. “No. I managed to get it under control and satiate my appetite in more pleasing way. It was not the last night we visited that wall though; I will say that” Louis confessed. “Did you ever actually get him back like you said you would? Is that when you went back to the wall?” Mr. Malloy questioned, getting a light laugh from Louis. “Did I say something funny?” “Lestat would never voluntarily let himself be strapped to that wall. It likely wouldn’t have held him for every long anyway but regardless; he was never willing to give up control like that. Actually, the wall didn’t hold me for much longer either that night. That’s when I got him back.”

*Flashback Perspective*

There was a certain point when Lestat had the smallest few right toes in his mouth, snacking on them in a way that tickled more than Louis knew possible, that the younger vampire became unglued. His laughter spiraled into a delirious outpouring and he writhed against the wall like a spirit was being exorcised from him until he managed to best the wall entirely. He flew off it and toward Lestat, landing them both on the floor. “Look at you” Lestat laughingly teased as he began to turn over to face Louis but his lover’s taste for blood had become a taste for revenge. Without so much as a quip back, Louis’s hands flew into Lestat’s armpits and did their worst, digging and wiggling around like a man on a mission to destroy. “AAhAHHAhAOOOAAOhAOH!! LLoOOOuIIIiSSS!!” “Louis my ass” Louis fired back as he began to drain the power from Lestat like it was blood, slowly acquiring the same affection for driving his man wild that Lestat had as he pinned him to the floor and tickled him as much as he could.

As formidable as Lestat was, the tickling seemed to weaken him a little, giving Louis a fighting chance to hold his own in a way he normally couldn’t have. “OoKOOK!! aOhAOhAohAIIiIVVVEEEBbEEeNNBBEeEEAATTEENN!” “You deserve it too” Louis assured, not taking the half-assed surrender as a win as he left the tender pits and reached under Lestat’s shirt to attack his marble stomach. “NnOoAOAoAohAOH!! EEnNOOUuUuGGHH!” Lestat protested with a look of slipping dominance that Louis had never seen on him. Even his voice was less powerful with the uncontrollable laughter spilling out of him thanks to the tight fingers drilling all over his stomach, the abs he’d crafted leaving his belly like an instrument even a beginner could play.

But, Lestat wouldn’t just let Louis dominate him. It wasn’t in his nature to be bested. If the fake surrender wouldn’t convince Louis to stop, he’d have to make him. Lestat soon latched around Louis’ waist and delivered a fury of squeezes, ratcheting Louis up into an upright position as fresh laughter was cranked out. “AAAhGGAhAHSSHIIIT!!” was all he could say as Lestat fought him for the upper hand but unlike Lestat, Louis was driven by a need to settle the score as much as he could, motivating him to push through the horrible hip tickling and jerk himself free of the strong hands. When he fell backwards, Louis took the next opening he saw and yanked off one of Lestat’s slippers, the ones he wore when they were about to sleep for the day.

“You will not win this game, Louis! I assure you!” Lestat laughingly warned as his pale foot was exposed and Louis locked onto it to do as much damage as possible, defying the confident argument that he was only biding his time before the tides turned on him again. He wrapped both legs around Lestat’s ankle as fast as he could and unleashed on the bright pink sole like his fangs might if he had a human in the room to drink from. “OAoOAGGH! AohAOhAooOAGGoOODDAAMMMYYOOuAhoAOHA!!” Lestat had no choice but to bend to the 10 eager fingers scribbling away on his unprotected foot, exploiting the same sensory enhancing side effect of being a vampire that Lestat had.

Lestat was facing the torment he’d brought on himself and his roaring laughter was nothing short of fantastic to Louis. The only time Lestat ever got close to laughing like that was if he was mocking someone or pretending to be amused, usually for social reasons. But the atypical distressed tone in his voice and the genuine suffering flavoring his laughter quenched a thirst Louis didn’t know he even had until it was already hitting just the right spot, guiding his fingers to tickle Lestat’s picturesque foot, with soles as pink as the swamp azaleas and as divine to touch as the petals of a rose.

*Present Perspective*

“So, did you end up losing like Lestat said you would?” Mr. Malloy asked. “Yes and no. That day we slept head to toe in the same coffin, the opposite of how we normally did. Both of us were too riled by the blood ‘distraction’ to go right to sleep, instead enjoying each other’s feet until we drifted off. When I woke up, Lestat had already left the coffin and when I tried to sit up to join him, I could not. My wrists had been bound over my head with the other end of the rope attached to something I couldn’t see. I knew he must’ve been up to something as I attempted to free myself but before I could make much progress, Lestat showed himself and proceeded to straddle my waist in the coffin. He reminded me of what he’d said, about me not winning the game, and I tried to sweet talk him, convince him it was silly to keep going but as the moon fell firmly behind the horizon that night, Lestat tickled me nearly until the next sun started to rise. Tears normally reserved for anguish or anger were coaxed out and he made me beg him to stop only to defy my surrender” Louis explained while Daniel looked as if he didn’t know tickling could take on a life of its own like that, slightly horrified and intrigued.

“How long did your little back and forth continue?” Mr. Malloy prodded. “For roughly a week. It would’ve likely extended longer if I wouldn’t have given up trying to have the last laugh. I knew Lestat would never let me beat him without coming back to reclaim his dominance” “Well, this has been a riveting story but I think it’s about time I got some sleep. This session went longer than I anticipated” the grey-haired writer announced as he stopped the recording and stood up. “Good night, Mr. Malloy. I hope all this talk of tickling won’t give you any peculiar dreams” Louis answered. “I’m usually out cold so I wouldn’t worry about that” “Let’s hope so” Louis added with a warm half smile as Daniel left for his room, making a mental note to tuck the duvet around his feet that night just in case blood wasn’t the only thing Louis still had a taste for.