Don't be long, Lestat had said, and Louis had heard him.
So it is a conscious choice, when Louis does not return. When he indulges in hours of wrestling with whether to return at all.
When they had begun to fight, he and Armand, Louis had begun to vanish. Fucked off. Disappeared into the crush of nightlife in whichever city they had been in. Absences that stretched as long as Armand tolerated, blood-soaked days of separation.
It had been a relief, each time he was found. Collected. Armand, still inclined to retrieve Louis from the worst of his impulses, to mop up the blood, to find Louis from beneath the gore of his misery. Remained even after, through the days of Louis shaking through withdrawals and misery, wrestling with his own guilt. They'd come back together. They'd argue again. Louis would vanish again.
A cycle that broke, after Daniel. Louis has a better understanding of how that break had happened now than he had before the interview, a fuller picture of how he had so completely turned from the worst of his habits then. But they are in him still, the urge towards self-destruction. Venting what he has no other place to put.
Louis leaves their hotel, wreckage and misery and fury all turned inwards. He could accomplish his task as efficiently as Daniel had, but no. (The urge to fuck off. To go, vanish, run.) Louis takes his helpless, stymied fury and makes it into a cratering kind of implosion.
The routine is the same. Alterations so slight that they simply don't matter.
Find the right kind of man at the right kind of bar. Leave the bar. Sit together in a poorly lit room.
Louis is smoking, a coiled spring sitting on the opposite end of a scorched table, watching this man arrange his little collection of pills. Exhale a plume of smoke as he selects the desired from the neat groupings. Observe his ritual, the preparation.
Balance here, in this space, teetering on the edge of a razor edge of a different bad decision. Louis knows what it would taste like. Oblivion. Guilt, after. Louis could make a home there, for a time. Weighs the choice in his hand. Decides—
No. No, not tonight.
Instead, this man is robbed even of his last high. Louis takes him. He is blank-eyed and sober, steady on his feet as Louis leads him into the garage. Louis' chosen prey as an offering, broad-shouldered and thick-necked, guided down into a seat on the cement floor. Louis has a hold of his mind still, feeling his way through memory and sensation, blotting out the world. Aware of Daniel, of Lestat. Awake, nearby. Surely aware of his return.
So he straightens from his crouch, crosses his arms. Waits, listening the sound of footsteps, of approach, as he holds lunch immobile on the garage floor for Lestat.
no subject
So it is a conscious choice, when Louis does not return. When he indulges in hours of wrestling with whether to return at all.
When they had begun to fight, he and Armand, Louis had begun to vanish. Fucked off. Disappeared into the crush of nightlife in whichever city they had been in. Absences that stretched as long as Armand tolerated, blood-soaked days of separation.
It had been a relief, each time he was found. Collected. Armand, still inclined to retrieve Louis from the worst of his impulses, to mop up the blood, to find Louis from beneath the gore of his misery. Remained even after, through the days of Louis shaking through withdrawals and misery, wrestling with his own guilt. They'd come back together. They'd argue again. Louis would vanish again.
A cycle that broke, after Daniel. Louis has a better understanding of how that break had happened now than he had before the interview, a fuller picture of how he had so completely turned from the worst of his habits then. But they are in him still, the urge towards self-destruction. Venting what he has no other place to put.
Louis leaves their hotel, wreckage and misery and fury all turned inwards. He could accomplish his task as efficiently as Daniel had, but no. (The urge to fuck off. To go, vanish, run.) Louis takes his helpless, stymied fury and makes it into a cratering kind of implosion.
The routine is the same. Alterations so slight that they simply don't matter.
Find the right kind of man at the right kind of bar. Leave the bar. Sit together in a poorly lit room.
Louis is smoking, a coiled spring sitting on the opposite end of a scorched table, watching this man arrange his little collection of pills. Exhale a plume of smoke as he selects the desired from the neat groupings. Observe his ritual, the preparation.
Balance here, in this space, teetering on the edge of a razor edge of a different bad decision. Louis knows what it would taste like. Oblivion. Guilt, after. Louis could make a home there, for a time. Weighs the choice in his hand. Decides—
No. No, not tonight.
Instead, this man is robbed even of his last high. Louis takes him. He is blank-eyed and sober, steady on his feet as Louis leads him into the garage. Louis' chosen prey as an offering, broad-shouldered and thick-necked, guided down into a seat on the cement floor. Louis has a hold of his mind still, feeling his way through memory and sensation, blotting out the world. Aware of Daniel, of Lestat. Awake, nearby. Surely aware of his return.
So he straightens from his crouch, crosses his arms. Waits, listening the sound of footsteps, of approach, as he holds lunch immobile on the garage floor for Lestat.