They're so close. All Lestat would have to do is relax enough to lean in, and he is certain Louis would have his arms around him. Easy as gravity.
Easy as them falling into each other in New Orleans, but he understands why, now, how they could hold each other like they never had before. The stakes are gone. Louis is no longer in real danger of being trapped by him, by his love. An easy expenditure, this kindness. None of these thoughts articulate themselves to Lestat in coherent order. He remembers squirming rats in his fingers and the scent of the brackish bayou. Remembers long nights, peeling wallpaper, moths eating cloth, wood turning soft. Remembers imagining Louis' pretty face on the other side of a coffin lid.
He isn't reading Daniel's mind, but his mind has been flayed open, a pulsing and over sensitive organ with nerve endings that spill invisibly all around, and he can sense it. The idea of Lestat being left here. How delicate it will work out to be, these kindnesses.
You can't stay here, and Lestat makes a sound. Pained, in time with his weeping, but a gasp of something else. A laugh, nearly, and a flash of his teeth. "Certainly not," voice thick, hoarse, breathless.
The avalanche continues as Lestat makes to move. Aware of hands reaching for them. He doesn't reach back. A slip of motion, close to tumbling to the alleyway floor, and hands catch him, an arm, a shoulder—
"Stop," choked out, and a surge of movement, clumsy, a stumbling forwards and away to recklessly careen out of range of attempts to assist. A half collapse against the car, grasping hands laying bloody fingerprints on the paintwork, window glass. "Stop it. Just leave me alone. I told you to take him," is slanted to Daniel, past one feathery shoulder. "Why can't you just— both of you, it's ridiculous, this is ridiculous—"
He's laughing. They should be too. He is moving away from the open back door, near-breaking the wing mirror in his effort to start down the alleyway. Soon, he will run out of car to lean against, but he'll figure it out once he gets there.
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Easy as them falling into each other in New Orleans, but he understands why, now, how they could hold each other like they never had before. The stakes are gone. Louis is no longer in real danger of being trapped by him, by his love. An easy expenditure, this kindness. None of these thoughts articulate themselves to Lestat in coherent order. He remembers squirming rats in his fingers and the scent of the brackish bayou. Remembers long nights, peeling wallpaper, moths eating cloth, wood turning soft. Remembers imagining Louis' pretty face on the other side of a coffin lid.
He isn't reading Daniel's mind, but his mind has been flayed open, a pulsing and over sensitive organ with nerve endings that spill invisibly all around, and he can sense it. The idea of Lestat being left here. How delicate it will work out to be, these kindnesses.
You can't stay here, and Lestat makes a sound. Pained, in time with his weeping, but a gasp of something else. A laugh, nearly, and a flash of his teeth. "Certainly not," voice thick, hoarse, breathless.
The avalanche continues as Lestat makes to move. Aware of hands reaching for them. He doesn't reach back. A slip of motion, close to tumbling to the alleyway floor, and hands catch him, an arm, a shoulder—
"Stop," choked out, and a surge of movement, clumsy, a stumbling forwards and away to recklessly careen out of range of attempts to assist. A half collapse against the car, grasping hands laying bloody fingerprints on the paintwork, window glass. "Stop it. Just leave me alone. I told you to take him," is slanted to Daniel, past one feathery shoulder. "Why can't you just— both of you, it's ridiculous, this is ridiculous—"
He's laughing. They should be too. He is moving away from the open back door, near-breaking the wing mirror in his effort to start down the alleyway. Soon, he will run out of car to lean against, but he'll figure it out once he gets there.