It is nearly sleep, what Lestat lapses into. A rest either way, stillness of mind and body, and kept on task of relaxing, recovery, by the occasional sweep of fingers over his hair, of his awareness of psychic orderliness. No crying fits, no sudden catches of feeling, no spiraling, no repeats of the strange day he'd spent in his hiding place. It even does something to nudge him closer to healing, so when he lifts his head at Daniel's prompt, at his own sense of Louis' presence, injuries twinge a little less.
He stays poised and alert this way for a moment before it becomes plain that the expectation is he will go down to the garage again.
A little groggily human in the way he pulls himself up and off Daniel's lap, onto his feet. Tugging his robe around him.
"For me?" he asks the air, and Daniel may sense that it is not directed to him, that Lestat expects Louis to hear something soft spoken all the way to the garage.
Silently alerted, and the summons is implied. Daniel raises his hands as Lestat hauls upright, helping. Stays sitting for a moment, thinking back to Armand and a book signing. Something he'd said, calling this way and that. He wonders who taught them.
It sinks in just how shitty he feels when he stands, but he doesn't say anything. Something about it is disorienting. Lestat speaks, but not to him, Louis assumes his attention, and Daniel feels as incidental as a toppled over chair in San Fransisco, suddenly.
Still doesn't say anything. Who cares. Get a grip, Molloy. There's no room for sad teenage girl bullshit.
He follows Lestat to the garage to make sure he doesn't topple over on the way there, and stays in the doorway, leaning against it. Doesn't know what Louis' been up to, doesn't know if he's in a position to guess. There's real relief there that he returned, but he doesn't feel like his concern is welcome.
"Yeah," Louis says, into empty air. Watches dispassionately as his offering, as this blank-faced man at his feet, opens his mouth and echoes hazily, "Yeah."
Time enough in between this answer and their arrival for Louis to think again if he should have made a different choice. Run a finger along the knife-edge of that self-destruction, and again put it off.
(Oblivion would give him a little space, Louis knows. A little space from everything in his body that is screaming, screaming, screaming. It's too much. Louis doesn't know how to hold it.
But no. He did not choose oblivion and now he is here.)
Approaching footsteps. Door swinging open on creaking hinges. Louis' head lifts, looks back at them over his shoulder. Lestat, steadier than Louis left him. Daniel, occupying the doorway.
Okay.
Louis looks back, down to the lunch meat on the floor. His eyes briefly trace the heavy vein in this man's throat, a last wavering consideration of how this night might have gone. And then a sigh, a flex of power. The man begins to rise, clumsy, sleepwalking, tugged upwards so Lestat might be spared the task of bending down.
"I'll hold him." Not with his hands. "Least until you drain the fight out of him."
Practical.
(In fairness to Daniel Molloy, no one's concerns are welcome.)
He would like to greet Louis. To move across the room, take him into his arms. But there is something like an emanating fuck off aura about him that may take more navigation, and Lestat flicks his attention to the mortal being puppeted to his feet. An approving twinge at the corner of his mouth.
Well, shades of Armand, maybe, but it is a power Louis possesses, granted to him by Lestat, and why shouldn't he use it?
"I've been very greedy," he says, a tip of his head. "Neither of you have eaten, have you." A trace of dark humour. "We could split it."
"Pass. Unless you want to see it again in a minute."
Do vampires throw up? He feels like he could, right now, and the horror of psychic intimacy with a stranger, draining their blood— no. Not with how he feels, after trying to help Lestat, and after contending with ... whatever, this all has been, the fight, and these pieces he's picking up.
If they want to share, he'll step away, give them space.
Or half lies. Louis has eaten recently enough. A mug, warmed, before anyone had realized what Lestat and Armand were doing with their evening.
He ate before. He does not want to eat now.
(Maybe it would have appealed before, a meal shared between three. Now, it's too much to ask of him.)
"Go on."
Prompting. Sphinx-like encouragement as Louis' hands slide into his coat pockets. Fingers the collection of the night's detritus, matchbook and tarnished coins and a crumpled dollar passed along a sticky bar to Louis who has not handled paper money in decades. Distraction. Reminders.
Rings an odd memory, of Louis coaxing him to the poisoned twin eighty years ago. Irrelevant to the moment, save that Lestat has a decent sense of when Louis is lying to him.
He lets out a 'hmm' in answer, disappointed and unsurprised, and in no mood to argue. His attention swivels back to the human, offered up for slaughter, and approaches. Tender hands on his face, claws gently stroking the soft flesh at his cheeks. A gift all the same, fetched for him. A moment to let his fangs down, to show them to the mortal as he parts his mouth before pulling him in close, and sinking a bite into his throat.
Bordering on indulgent, this third, even in his state, but Lestat drinks deeply all the same. Watches Louis as he does so before he follows the urge to close his eyes. The mortal's knees give as he swoons. Lestat holds him.
Nothing to contribute, no instinct to do anything but try and provoke Louis into engaging, but aware how fucking stupid that is. Thinks again about the exasperation and frustration of Armand being the only one willing to talk to him, a couple weeks ago— but now he has to wonder if any of it was genuine. He'd hit roadblocks, gotten around them, and he keeps turning it over in his head. That moment where it seemed like Armand was going to lose it if he didn't believe him, strained, tense, not at all like his obvious doe-eyed lying.
Is Daniel just a fucking idiot? Was Armand just lashing out at what he knew would piss Lestat off most, comfortable with putting Daniel in bad spots?
He doesn't leave, but he goes onto the back patio for a smoke.
Hears himself recite Fuck these vampires out from Claudia's diary, an apropos memory, and nearly laughs.
An arm's length away, an absence of a presence, watching as Lestat sinks teeth into this man's neck. Louis can feel the way the piercing pain ripples through mortal awareness, detached, unable to find purchase when Louis has pushed his mind so far under.
Louis watches as the man's legs buckle. As Lestat takes his weight, and doesn't topple. He is better than Louis left him.
Eventually, Louis turns from the sight of Lestat drinking deep from the throat of a man unlucky enough to smile hopefully down the bar at Louis.
Treads into the house, becomes aware he isn't certain of where to go. What now?
(Leave. Break all his promises. Fix one single thing, just one.
No.)
Well, necessities. Take out the phone, arrange for the disappearance of one more body. A practical task.
Being left alone in a smelly garage with his meal is the opposite of what Lestat was proposing.
Irritation and hurt feelings flicker together as he drains this offering dry, barely cognizant to the flow of bewildered, muted fear, little shards of memory of a mediocre life lived. A flash of seeing a handsome man in a bar, the hope for a fun evening. Lestat lets him crumple to the floor, and considers his mood. The various ways he might express it.
The impossible exhaustion that blankets it. He cleans his mouth with delicate fingers as he turns, and makes his careful way along Louis' path. Balances himself with a hand on the wall, here and there. There, Louis is taking out his phone. A sweep of perception notes the fledgling on the patio. That's fine.
He comes nearer, reaches out. Brushes his fingertips between Louis' shoulderblades.
Lestat isn't quite asking, just expressing a preference. He would like it if Louis sat with him. He would like it if Louis stayed here in his room.
Louis knows.
The same sensation of being locked within this room by them both, by their pleas, the promises they'd elicited. He's already made all his promises, but there is no blotting out awareness of passing minutes, of Lestat healing and Armand surely doing similar, faster, elsewhere.
Sends the message. Abandons the phone on nearby end table.
Daniel is a remote presence, adjacent. Lestat's voice has dipped so, so soft.
(Recollections of New Orleans. Spiraling into despair while Lestat reached after, coaxing and exploding by turns.)
"If you like."
If he sits, Lestat will sit, rest. And eventually Daniel will come back inside and Louis can leave the two of them to each others company, vanish into an adjoining room to watch the sun come up behind the curtains. Think on his failures.
Lestat picks up the remote control as he moves back towards the sofa to reclaim his spot there. Louis could sit beside him. Louis could also pick the armchair adjacent, or the decorative chair off in the corner by the decorative table with the vase, and that would be fine, preferable to him vanishing again, or going somewhere else in the house alone.
Of course, Lestat would prefer him near. The television is switched on, channels flipped through until landing on some bland, petty reality show which strikes him as engaging enough to settle on.
"I like these ones," he says. Leaning back into his seat, looking up at Louis. Hopeful invitation. "You imagine if they were all vampires, nothing would change but the content rating."
Head tilting, watching Lestat handle the remote, tip his face up to Louis with such clear intention and desire there, Louis entertains a retreat back to the window. Yes, he agreed to sit, yes. But there is some gathering momentum in his body, held there along with the turmoil caged in his chest, and the need to nurture it remains.
Maybe he'll need it. Maybe.
So it takes time for Louis to consider the chairs around the room, the window, and Lestat.
Louis feels coaxed and doesn't necessarily like it. Stubborn, always.
But the desire to avoid more explicit invitation guides him to the sofa. Hands occupied with the retrieval of a cigarette, no complaints for choice of programming.
The look he slants across the sofa cushions is assessing. Takes in the shadows of injury on Lestat's skin. All the hurt that remains, written on him. (Daniel, a splintering presence in the back of his head. The endless murmuring call out into the Many, a stubborn, seeking Armand, Armand, Armand.) Sets his cigarettes on the arm of the sofa beside him.
"I watched some," comes a little stiffly. Dug in heels. Lifting the cigarette. "Not lately."
Familiar, this pattern. Like trying to get a cat to like you, certain it might enjoy the attention it receives should it deign to allow for it. Lestat, of course, is a dog person. Unabashed love, a glutton for affection.
Knows better than to think Louis is being difficult on purpose. Knows the kind of tempers beneath the still like.
Still. He can push a little. He can reach across Louis, making a show even in his own tender state to specifically avoid touching him as he collects up his cigarette case while his focus remains on Louis' profile, and then settling back. Fidgeting loose a cigarette, the little crinkle of plastic.
"My television broke in the late nineties," he says. "Which I felt was for the better, at the time. Do you have a lighter?"
Earlier tonight, Louis had sunk his own fingers into Lestat's chest to dig out a misplaced claw. Has not forgotten the wet, pained sound of Lestat's breathing, the labored quality of his movements.
Louis has made a very detailed accounting. All Lestat's hurts. All Daniel's pains. Holds them close to his chest.
He knows what Lestat is inviting. Old shared habits. Leaning close, lighting cigarettes. Small intimacies that come easy even so many years removed from New Orleans, even with them both changed. Louis hadn't known himself to be capable of producing fire then. Lestat had always used matches.
Lestat breathes in a little heavier than the last. Does he feel better? Has all this blood done something, done enough? Perhaps not. But still. Envious for the scent of the smoke in the air, for this little point of familiar connection.
"The doctors of our time would probably have prescribed it," a little curl of humour as he turns the cigarette between his fingers, offering the unlit end.
A scoff. Not a laugh, but acknowledgment of the implication Lestat is chuckling over.
Louis' scrutiny gives way to action, a palmful of flame lifted and offered out. Lestat can make what he will of the offering. Louis' cigarette remains unlit, worked to the corner of his mouth.
"Go on," as the women on screen begin to yell. Raised voices, an explosion of sound filling the quiet between them.
A scoff, not a laugh. Close enough, enough to warm him. A slant of unlikely sunshine.
Lestat dips his head in, accepting the offered method. Eyes hooding as he tips the end of his cigarette to the flame, the other caught between his lips. His eyelashes get to be their usual blonde today, every trace of clinging ink thoroughly cried away.
"You know my life's work is making you smile," he says, because the thought comes to him, and the weight of its truth ushers it out of his mouth. "It feels so meaningless when I cannot."
Words meant as a comfort, Louis knows. To make him smile, crack the shell hardening over him.
It does touch him, this assertion. Louis knows it to be true. And feels it as he did once in New Orleans: a weight, a guilt. A sense of something wanted and hoped for and beyond Louis' ability to give.
His palm closes around the fire, extinguishing it as Lestat says this thing and Louis feels it twist in his chest.
"I don't got one for you tonight, Lestat."
Dull, tired tones flattening the words. A turn of his own hand, flame reappearing in miniature, caught between his fingers. Enough to light his own cigarette, and vanish.
"You shouldn't be worrying about me anyway."
Given the givens. The injuries still standing out stark on his body. Lestat should be resting. Louis knows a little about it. Recovering after such extensive injury.
And he'll take it. Lestat draws shallow from his cigarette, barely letting it graze his lungs before releasing smoke out into the air. A look swung back to the television, the flattened artifice of modern human experience.
He has wondered before, and wonders again now, what it's like to be mortal. Why they all waste time like they aren't. If he knew his death was a handful of decades away, would he have fucked around so much trying to be respectful, saying nothing, enduring all? Perhaps yes, he was left to rot in New Orleans, but he would still be there, it's true, if he thought Louis preferred him there.
A sigh. "It injures you, that I am hurt," he says. "Do you imagine the same cannot be said, the other way around?"
The kind of assertion Louis makes as if it is comfortable truth. And there is truth in it. Louis wasn't fished from a dumpster, drenched in blood. Louis spent a pleasant evening with Daniel. The scrapes Lestat dug into his arms are gone. There is not a mark on him.
And maybe, delayed, Louis recognizes the potential to be baited. Doesn't care to permit it, prefers to stay as he is.
Tacks away from the implication, the sigh, questioning: "Has the blood helped?"
Several arguments line themselves up behind Lestat's tongue, and a physical swallow expresses the desire to suppress them. He is too tired. He will blunder them. Louis will not be honest so long as when he looks at Lestat, he sees bloodied sclera and bruises.
"Yes," he says. Answering the question, smoke-soft.
And then nothing. His sense of Louis swerving out of reach of him, telling himself that it will be enough to linger in each others presence. That he did what he had to in forcing the issue, making sure Louis would not sacrifice himself on a useless altar. He has always maintained he would prefer Louis alive and hating him than Louis dead but thinking a little more fondly of Lestat in his final moments.
Lestat shifts, a sideways curl on the couch, head resting on the raised back and cigarette more or less permitted to burn itself out between small sips of smoke.
Wants to believe it will simply be better tomorrow. Would Lestat heal faster than Louis once had? Maybe. Enough blood, closed into his coffin, given the time, maybe it would all be better tomorrow.
And then quiet, but for the glossy artifice of reality television.
Lestat's cigarette burning down. Louis watching him, smoking, making no secret of his study.
Unbearable to simply be sitting here, opportunity slipping away. (How long until all this repeats itself? Until there is something else, something else from Armand where Daniel is hurt, Lestat is hurt.) Unbearable to leave when he has been snared so thoroughly by twinned appeals.
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He stays poised and alert this way for a moment before it becomes plain that the expectation is he will go down to the garage again.
A little groggily human in the way he pulls himself up and off Daniel's lap, onto his feet. Tugging his robe around him.
"For me?" he asks the air, and Daniel may sense that it is not directed to him, that Lestat expects Louis to hear something soft spoken all the way to the garage.
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It sinks in just how shitty he feels when he stands, but he doesn't say anything. Something about it is disorienting. Lestat speaks, but not to him, Louis assumes his attention, and Daniel feels as incidental as a toppled over chair in San Fransisco, suddenly.
Still doesn't say anything. Who cares. Get a grip, Molloy. There's no room for sad teenage girl bullshit.
He follows Lestat to the garage to make sure he doesn't topple over on the way there, and stays in the doorway, leaning against it. Doesn't know what Louis' been up to, doesn't know if he's in a position to guess. There's real relief there that he returned, but he doesn't feel like his concern is welcome.
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"Yeah," Louis says, into empty air. Watches dispassionately as his offering, as this blank-faced man at his feet, opens his mouth and echoes hazily, "Yeah."
Time enough in between this answer and their arrival for Louis to think again if he should have made a different choice. Run a finger along the knife-edge of that self-destruction, and again put it off.
(Oblivion would give him a little space, Louis knows. A little space from everything in his body that is screaming, screaming, screaming. It's too much. Louis doesn't know how to hold it.
But no. He did not choose oblivion and now he is here.)
Approaching footsteps. Door swinging open on creaking hinges. Louis' head lifts, looks back at them over his shoulder. Lestat, steadier than Louis left him. Daniel, occupying the doorway.
Okay.
Louis looks back, down to the lunch meat on the floor. His eyes briefly trace the heavy vein in this man's throat, a last wavering consideration of how this night might have gone. And then a sigh, a flex of power. The man begins to rise, clumsy, sleepwalking, tugged upwards so Lestat might be spared the task of bending down.
"I'll hold him." Not with his hands. "Least until you drain the fight out of him."
Practical.
(In fairness to Daniel Molloy, no one's concerns are welcome.)
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Well, shades of Armand, maybe, but it is a power Louis possesses, granted to him by Lestat, and why shouldn't he use it?
"I've been very greedy," he says, a tip of his head. "Neither of you have eaten, have you." A trace of dark humour. "We could split it."
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Do vampires throw up? He feels like he could, right now, and the horror of psychic intimacy with a stranger, draining their blood— no. Not with how he feels, after trying to help Lestat, and after contending with ... whatever, this all has been, the fight, and these pieces he's picking up.
If they want to share, he'll step away, give them space.
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"I've had enough," Louis lies.
Or half lies. Louis has eaten recently enough. A mug, warmed, before anyone had realized what Lestat and Armand were doing with their evening.
He ate before. He does not want to eat now.
(Maybe it would have appealed before, a meal shared between three. Now, it's too much to ask of him.)
"Go on."
Prompting. Sphinx-like encouragement as Louis' hands slide into his coat pockets. Fingers the collection of the night's detritus, matchbook and tarnished coins and a crumpled dollar passed along a sticky bar to Louis who has not handled paper money in decades. Distraction. Reminders.
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He lets out a 'hmm' in answer, disappointed and unsurprised, and in no mood to argue. His attention swivels back to the human, offered up for slaughter, and approaches. Tender hands on his face, claws gently stroking the soft flesh at his cheeks. A gift all the same, fetched for him. A moment to let his fangs down, to show them to the mortal as he parts his mouth before pulling him in close, and sinking a bite into his throat.
Bordering on indulgent, this third, even in his state, but Lestat drinks deeply all the same. Watches Louis as he does so before he follows the urge to close his eyes. The mortal's knees give as he swoons. Lestat holds him.
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Nothing to contribute, no instinct to do anything but try and provoke Louis into engaging, but aware how fucking stupid that is. Thinks again about the exasperation and frustration of Armand being the only one willing to talk to him, a couple weeks ago— but now he has to wonder if any of it was genuine. He'd hit roadblocks, gotten around them, and he keeps turning it over in his head. That moment where it seemed like Armand was going to lose it if he didn't believe him, strained, tense, not at all like his obvious doe-eyed lying.
Is Daniel just a fucking idiot? Was Armand just lashing out at what he knew would piss Lestat off most, comfortable with putting Daniel in bad spots?
He doesn't leave, but he goes onto the back patio for a smoke.
Hears himself recite Fuck these vampires out from Claudia's diary, an apropos memory, and nearly laughs.
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Louis lingers.
An arm's length away, an absence of a presence, watching as Lestat sinks teeth into this man's neck. Louis can feel the way the piercing pain ripples through mortal awareness, detached, unable to find purchase when Louis has pushed his mind so far under.
Louis watches as the man's legs buckle. As Lestat takes his weight, and doesn't topple. He is better than Louis left him.
Eventually, Louis turns from the sight of Lestat drinking deep from the throat of a man unlucky enough to smile hopefully down the bar at Louis.
Treads into the house, becomes aware he isn't certain of where to go. What now?
(Leave. Break all his promises. Fix one single thing, just one.
No.)
Well, necessities. Take out the phone, arrange for the disappearance of one more body. A practical task.
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Irritation and hurt feelings flicker together as he drains this offering dry, barely cognizant to the flow of bewildered, muted fear, little shards of memory of a mediocre life lived. A flash of seeing a handsome man in a bar, the hope for a fun evening. Lestat lets him crumple to the floor, and considers his mood. The various ways he might express it.
The impossible exhaustion that blankets it. He cleans his mouth with delicate fingers as he turns, and makes his careful way along Louis' path. Balances himself with a hand on the wall, here and there. There, Louis is taking out his phone. A sweep of perception notes the fledgling on the patio. That's fine.
He comes nearer, reaches out. Brushes his fingertips between Louis' shoulderblades.
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But Louis says instead:
"You should sit."
And then, after, "I can take care of the body."
Daniel has tended to enough.
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"Your people can take care of the body," he says. His tone is soft, the whispery way he can make it. "I would prefer it if you sat with me."
He drops his gaze to his hands, smudges away the little smears of blood there. "We could watch something on the television. Listen to music."
No talking, at least not as a standing invitation. Perhaps it would be enough to listen to one another's beating heart.
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Lestat isn't quite asking, just expressing a preference. He would like it if Louis sat with him. He would like it if Louis stayed here in his room.
Louis knows.
The same sensation of being locked within this room by them both, by their pleas, the promises they'd elicited. He's already made all his promises, but there is no blotting out awareness of passing minutes, of Lestat healing and Armand surely doing similar, faster, elsewhere.
Sends the message. Abandons the phone on nearby end table.
Daniel is a remote presence, adjacent. Lestat's voice has dipped so, so soft.
(Recollections of New Orleans. Spiraling into despair while Lestat reached after, coaxing and exploding by turns.)
"If you like."
If he sits, Lestat will sit, rest. And eventually Daniel will come back inside and Louis can leave the two of them to each others company, vanish into an adjoining room to watch the sun come up behind the curtains. Think on his failures.
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Lestat picks up the remote control as he moves back towards the sofa to reclaim his spot there. Louis could sit beside him. Louis could also pick the armchair adjacent, or the decorative chair off in the corner by the decorative table with the vase, and that would be fine, preferable to him vanishing again, or going somewhere else in the house alone.
Of course, Lestat would prefer him near. The television is switched on, channels flipped through until landing on some bland, petty reality show which strikes him as engaging enough to settle on.
"I like these ones," he says. Leaning back into his seat, looking up at Louis. Hopeful invitation. "You imagine if they were all vampires, nothing would change but the content rating."
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Head tilting, watching Lestat handle the remote, tip his face up to Louis with such clear intention and desire there, Louis entertains a retreat back to the window. Yes, he agreed to sit, yes. But there is some gathering momentum in his body, held there along with the turmoil caged in his chest, and the need to nurture it remains.
Maybe he'll need it. Maybe.
So it takes time for Louis to consider the chairs around the room, the window, and Lestat.
Louis feels coaxed and doesn't necessarily like it. Stubborn, always.
But the desire to avoid more explicit invitation guides him to the sofa. Hands occupied with the retrieval of a cigarette, no complaints for choice of programming.
The look he slants across the sofa cushions is assessing. Takes in the shadows of injury on Lestat's skin. All the hurt that remains, written on him. (Daniel, a splintering presence in the back of his head. The endless murmuring call out into the Many, a stubborn, seeking Armand, Armand, Armand.) Sets his cigarettes on the arm of the sofa beside him.
"I watched some," comes a little stiffly. Dug in heels. Lifting the cigarette. "Not lately."
A chosen way to pass the time, in Dubai.
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Knows better than to think Louis is being difficult on purpose. Knows the kind of tempers beneath the still like.
Still. He can push a little. He can reach across Louis, making a show even in his own tender state to specifically avoid touching him as he collects up his cigarette case while his focus remains on Louis' profile, and then settling back. Fidgeting loose a cigarette, the little crinkle of plastic.
"My television broke in the late nineties," he says. "Which I felt was for the better, at the time. Do you have a lighter?"
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Earlier tonight, Louis had sunk his own fingers into Lestat's chest to dig out a misplaced claw. Has not forgotten the wet, pained sound of Lestat's breathing, the labored quality of his movements.
Louis has made a very detailed accounting. All Lestat's hurts. All Daniel's pains. Holds them close to his chest.
He knows what Lestat is inviting. Old shared habits. Leaning close, lighting cigarettes. Small intimacies that come easy even so many years removed from New Orleans, even with them both changed. Louis hadn't known himself to be capable of producing fire then. Lestat had always used matches.
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Lestat breathes in a little heavier than the last. Does he feel better? Has all this blood done something, done enough? Perhaps not. But still. Envious for the scent of the smoke in the air, for this little point of familiar connection.
"The doctors of our time would probably have prescribed it," a little curl of humour as he turns the cigarette between his fingers, offering the unlit end.
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Louis' scrutiny gives way to action, a palmful of flame lifted and offered out. Lestat can make what he will of the offering. Louis' cigarette remains unlit, worked to the corner of his mouth.
"Go on," as the women on screen begin to yell. Raised voices, an explosion of sound filling the quiet between them.
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Lestat dips his head in, accepting the offered method. Eyes hooding as he tips the end of his cigarette to the flame, the other caught between his lips. His eyelashes get to be their usual blonde today, every trace of clinging ink thoroughly cried away.
"You know my life's work is making you smile," he says, because the thought comes to him, and the weight of its truth ushers it out of his mouth. "It feels so meaningless when I cannot."
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It does touch him, this assertion. Louis knows it to be true. And feels it as he did once in New Orleans: a weight, a guilt. A sense of something wanted and hoped for and beyond Louis' ability to give.
His palm closes around the fire, extinguishing it as Lestat says this thing and Louis feels it twist in his chest.
"I don't got one for you tonight, Lestat."
Dull, tired tones flattening the words. A turn of his own hand, flame reappearing in miniature, caught between his fingers. Enough to light his own cigarette, and vanish.
"You shouldn't be worrying about me anyway."
Given the givens. The injuries still standing out stark on his body. Lestat should be resting. Louis knows a little about it. Recovering after such extensive injury.
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And he'll take it. Lestat draws shallow from his cigarette, barely letting it graze his lungs before releasing smoke out into the air. A look swung back to the television, the flattened artifice of modern human experience.
He has wondered before, and wonders again now, what it's like to be mortal. Why they all waste time like they aren't. If he knew his death was a handful of decades away, would he have fucked around so much trying to be respectful, saying nothing, enduring all? Perhaps yes, he was left to rot in New Orleans, but he would still be there, it's true, if he thought Louis preferred him there.
A sigh. "It injures you, that I am hurt," he says. "Do you imagine the same cannot be said, the other way around?"
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The kind of assertion Louis makes as if it is comfortable truth. And there is truth in it. Louis wasn't fished from a dumpster, drenched in blood. Louis spent a pleasant evening with Daniel. The scrapes Lestat dug into his arms are gone. There is not a mark on him.
And maybe, delayed, Louis recognizes the potential to be baited. Doesn't care to permit it, prefers to stay as he is.
Tacks away from the implication, the sigh, questioning: "Has the blood helped?"
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"Yes," he says. Answering the question, smoke-soft.
And then nothing. His sense of Louis swerving out of reach of him, telling himself that it will be enough to linger in each others presence. That he did what he had to in forcing the issue, making sure Louis would not sacrifice himself on a useless altar. He has always maintained he would prefer Louis alive and hating him than Louis dead but thinking a little more fondly of Lestat in his final moments.
Lestat shifts, a sideways curl on the couch, head resting on the raised back and cigarette more or less permitted to burn itself out between small sips of smoke.
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Wants to believe it will simply be better tomorrow. Would Lestat heal faster than Louis once had? Maybe. Enough blood, closed into his coffin, given the time, maybe it would all be better tomorrow.
And then quiet, but for the glossy artifice of reality television.
Lestat's cigarette burning down. Louis watching him, smoking, making no secret of his study.
Unbearable to simply be sitting here, opportunity slipping away. (How long until all this repeats itself? Until there is something else, something else from Armand where Daniel is hurt, Lestat is hurt.) Unbearable to leave when he has been snared so thoroughly by twinned appeals.
Eventually, "You should go to coffin, and rest."
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sneaks in a tag forgive
(no subject)
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(no subject)