Up here, the wind is cool, occasionally dragging at his clothes, his hair. It'll likely catch a little on the microphone, come through to Louis as noise, but not enough to hide Lestat's voice. For Lestat, he can hear Louis just fine.
"Hello."
There is no one up here but him, so no one but himself needs to advise him to get a grip as he feels his eyes immediately prickle wet with dilute blood. Louis' voice with him, whenever he wants. It does not completely make up for the way their minds are shielded from one another, but nearly, as he presses the device to his ear.
Yes, he likes this one very much, all of a sudden. There may come a point (read: there will come a point) when Louis' voice is not enough, and it may happen so much faster than it should, given contrition, given penance, given the not irrational belief that even in a world of immortals, he might never hear it again, and it wouldn't be the first time. But Lestat has a habit for greed. For now, though, it's enough and everything.
"This one listens better. My voice was too sophistiqué for the last, I think." He focuses on the water, the reflection of a city dancing in it, then rolls that observation back up to the sky. Wisps of cloud. Haze. It looks different than it did a century ago.
Before, he hadn't noticed. "What were you doing before I called?" And, a little ironically given his complaint, the sentence comes out about as American as he gets.
But Louis hesitates over imparting it because it isn't only about Lestat, or about Daniel, who his thoughts often turn towards. It's also a bittersweet kind of pleasure to let his thoughts turn towards what and who please him. To think of Lestat and make no apology for it. (Had Armand extracted other apologies? How many? How often? How much patience had Louis been allotted before Armand intervened more actively?)
It is a lot of baggage for a telephone call to weather.
"Assisting Rashid in categorizing the photographs I own," Louis tells him, though even this answer is tinged with—
"Reorganizing the items that were incorrectly filed."
Mention of photographs piques interest. Lestat is a big fan of Molloy's work, you see, he has bought (stolen) his latest book twice so that having torn the first one into little pieces wouldn't interfere his ability to obsessively devour it again and again. Of course, Louis the Art Dealer could have all kinds of photographs, and be talking about them.
But he remembers very vividly encountering the glossy pages with prints of Louis' personal photography, of how striking the moment, even this little sample. His Louis, an artist? Thrilling. Never mind the verbiage surrounding it of its alleged mediocrity. Modesty is a part of the process. Or so Lestat has heard.
Tempting to bite after that topic, anyway, but it's set aside in the moment. There's time. He even made sure his phone was charged, prior.
"Uneventful."
No further attacks to fend off, he means.
"We're in DC now. There was a group of young people loitering outside the television station because of Daniel's appearance alone. They find him very alluring."
Edited (first name basis actually) 2024-08-03 02:19 (UTC)
Except Louis does wonder. Does Daniel take pleasure in the notoriety? Louis had never asked. And in all the time spent discussing the reception, Louis hadn't thought to ask after the broader reception among humanity.
He had said he'd wanted Daniel to enjoy his victory lap.
"How do you find him?" Louis asks. "Your impression of him?"
But maybe everyone does, these days. The landscape has changed. The standards have shifted. Lestat finds he won't flinch from some discordant sounding guitar riff or a voice pitching wrong, so long as it is all done with heart. And also, Daniel's band shirts are cute.
Kicks one leg over the other, less the tense perch on the steel and concrete of the bridge, relaxing better into the activity he is in. A day ago, Lestat killed someone for their blood but also their extremely good boots, which he correctly judged to be in his size, and he admires the knee-high lacing as he considers what he thinks of Daniel.
"He invited me along to travel with him properly, and I don't think it's motivated by a self-preservation instinct." Lestat isn't even sure he has one of those, given the trajectory of his career, the conclusion of his book. The book. "I imagine it is motivated by his deep fondness towards you."
The assumptions it makes. Or sounds like it's making.
"I don't know what I will do after New York," Lestat says. "It depends on my meeting. On what the vampires of the east coast have to say about certain scandalous publications. It depends, as well, on what you will do."
A shrug that no one can see. "Have you already made up your mind?"
A little overwhelming to contemplate. What will Louis do? He has thought as far as New York. He is reacclimating to life without a soft hand and whisper guiding his steps.
What will he do? Anything.
Picking a fight had felt therapeutic then and it does now. But Lestat is right. It has created a new set of complications.
That sounds like a 'no'. Some quiet edge in him that had been forming, relaxes. Just.
Lestat draws his phone away to look at it, still hovered near his mouth. Contemplating it, the man on the other end of it. The sound of wind rustling the microphone in his pause.
He won't throw the phone into the river if this doesn't work, but he will bitch about it for spoiling his bit. Touches the appropriate button, and says, "Search for Vermont."
A moment later—
"Hm. Vermont, Louis, is known for its scenic rolling mountains, its quality? skiing?, and its organic locally produced food. What a dreadful bore. You should come with me so I am less tempted to abandon Daniel to the mercy of the Canadian covens."
That said, Lestat's never been skiing. But that's beside the point.
To himself, Lestat smiles. A beatific kind of grin. How good, to call Louis down from his tower, to be so irresistibly charming? And not have to resort to plan B, which was tearfully and angrily begging Louis to stop being so brave and annoying and far away. And whatever occurs after the end of Daniel's tour—
Ah, well.
"There was a busker," he says, "who had a little amplifier and a guitar and a microphone on a street corner. I don't even remember the song anymore, you know."
Is he crying again? Jesus. Even by Lestat's standards, that's a lot. But maybe this new world could stand to be less overwhelming and beautiful and frightening, and he'll get over it better. Anyway, he palms tears away like they're annoying, and continues.
"But she was very talented. It was like listening to someone break their heart for pennies, over and over, and nearly everyone walked by without stopping. I don't remember that kind of beauty just being everywhere."
And in summary, "I would like it if you were around."
As Lestat speaks, relays this story, Louis listens so intently. Lays aside the photos. Imagines Lestat as he's described, walking and stopping to listen. Louis remembers so clearly how Lestat could be transported by music, how reverently he would devote his attention to song and tune.
A brief ache for the break in Lestat's voice, remembering how Louis would touch his hand. Hook a pinky into Lestat's when he was overcome in the privacy of their orchestra box.
"I wish I had been there," Louis says softly. "I'd have liked to hear her."
The tickets have been purchased. The steamer trunk retrieved from storage. Suitcases laid out, awaiting Louis' selections.
"I'll be there soon," is offered as reassurance. A promise. "Remind Daniel to send me the hotel details. I'll arrange a car."
To deliver him from the airport at whatever late hour Louis arrives from Dubai.
And he will also tell Daniel of this good tiding, that Louis will continue to accompany them, and maybe Lestat will also feel a little smug, that it was he who coaxed Louis to stay on even longer, and Daniel will have to forgive him that.
Daniel, who has been—well, forgiving is the wrong word. Kind, was the one Lestat used. Even before the trading of favours, Lestat had imagined something different. Prepared for it.
"He is like a sweet little bulldog," he says. "Are you glad that he is a vampire? It's nice to have friends, I think, that you're not trying to decide when to eat."
The description makes Louis smile, sight unseen, alone at the table in Dubai.
The question requires an answer, and the answer itself is—
Complicated.
"I was going to offer it to him," Louis admits. "The Gift."
A significance he knows Lestat will understand.
As the interview drew towards a close, Louis had been considering it. Considering offering again, giving Daniel the opportunity to choose what he'd scoffed at once and asked for too young.
Of course, now Louis must consider if the idea came from him, or from someone else.
But it's a separate contemplation from the answer he is offering Lestat.
"He was dying then, and I'm glad he isn't dying any longer. I'm only sorry it was given to him as a punishment."
For Louis. For Daniel. Armand's spite reflecting back at them both.
Fuck the phone; Lestat considers throwing himself into the river instead.
Not that dramatically. Not to die like a mortal would be aiming for, there. It's a thought like collapsing onto a fainting couch or throwing a valuable into a wall, where the sudden record scratch from bliss and fondness to whatever it is he is now currently experiencing demands an instant reaction.
He doesn't do that. Sits there. Louis was going to offer Daniel the Gift. Armand did it instead. Punishment.
"Oh," he says. Plucks some words out of the scramble of white noise occurring between his ears. "You have known him for some time?"
The thread he plucked at in Daniel's mind, leading back decades. It did not feel like fifty years of companionship, but profound all the same.
It is an uncharacteristically meek kind of response. Daniel had said first, not like you do, on the subject of love. Of course, Lestat has no clear idea how Louis feels in turn, not really. Only that he shared his entire life story. Only that he spoke in great detail of Lestat's failings, sprinkled with lukewarm praise. Preternaturally charming, sometimes thoughtful. Only that he gave him photographs to print. Only that they speak in each other's minds.
How ridiculous, to feel jealousy. In what universe does he have the right to it? But then, when has he ever, when has that stopped it? Lestat watches the sky, its light pollution, its satellites amongst the stars.
"Yes," more sure. "Perhaps over a cocktail waitress or two." Haha, vampire jokes.
Or some tender thing beneath that. Aware of his own failings. Of his persistent aversion to killing that Daniel does not share.
So Daniel and Lestat eat together. Easily, perhaps, without any of the reluctance or argument that had come to mark Lestat and Louis' shared hunting trips. A sore spot, struck unexpectedly.
"Yes," echoed, leaving the question of drinks to his arrival. Pivoting away with, "Would you let me take you to an opera, if I can find a suitable production in the city?"
It's the kind of pivot that, if Lestat were confident in his standing with Louis, he would make fun of Louis for it. Oh, you wish to change the subject, mon cher? You wish to dangle an opera in front of me? Well, good choice, it has worked.
This is circumvented, and the mnh sound from his side of the phone is all pleasure. Louis can probably imagine the shape of the smile that produces it. The ugly snarl of jealousy relaxes slowly, as if being petted, soothed.
"Not as strict now as it used to be," Louis admits. "But if you'd like, we can arrange something more lavish."
Their past ghosting into the present. Two tuxedos. Lestat's fingers linking his in a box. Louis would not have to walk behind him anymore, no playing at servitude.
Would Daniel call him foolish for it? For touching the past this way?
Lestat pauses over that. Is that what he wants? All that finery, sophistication? Yes, there is appeal, he finds, a heart ache and yearning, and at the same time, the notion sounds a little like putting on an old costume of himself.
But. Maybe it would be nice.
And being, as mentioned, a huge fan of Molloy's work, having read his book so many times, he does recall the scene in question. Playing aristocrat and manservant. Louis' frustration, indignity, and what had his words been then? Lestat's opportunity to disarm him. He might consider the tenor, the hours they spent feasting, the context that it had all been done to placate him after he had raised his voice—
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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"Hello."
There is no one up here but him, so no one but himself needs to advise him to get a grip as he feels his eyes immediately prickle wet with dilute blood. Louis' voice with him, whenever he wants. It does not completely make up for the way their minds are shielded from one another, but nearly, as he presses the device to his ear.
"Are you busy?"
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Without hesitation.
Of course there is nothing on Louis' voice to obscure or distract. The penthouse is quiet. Louis is alone.
"I'm glad you called," Louis tells him. "Did you find a phone you like?"
Hopefully a phone that will stick around for longer than an hour or so.
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Yes, he likes this one very much, all of a sudden. There may come a point (read: there will come a point) when Louis' voice is not enough, and it may happen so much faster than it should, given contrition, given penance, given the not irrational belief that even in a world of immortals, he might never hear it again, and it wouldn't be the first time. But Lestat has a habit for greed. For now, though, it's enough and everything.
"This one listens better. My voice was too sophistiqué for the last, I think." He focuses on the water, the reflection of a city dancing in it, then rolls that observation back up to the sky. Wisps of cloud. Haze. It looks different than it did a century ago.
Before, he hadn't noticed. "What were you doing before I called?" And, a little ironically given his complaint, the sentence comes out about as American as he gets.
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Lestat would like to hear that, Louis knows.
But Louis hesitates over imparting it because it isn't only about Lestat, or about Daniel, who his thoughts often turn towards. It's also a bittersweet kind of pleasure to let his thoughts turn towards what and who please him. To think of Lestat and make no apology for it. (Had Armand extracted other apologies? How many? How often? How much patience had Louis been allotted before Armand intervened more actively?)
It is a lot of baggage for a telephone call to weather.
"Assisting Rashid in categorizing the photographs I own," Louis tells him, though even this answer is tinged with—
"Reorganizing the items that were incorrectly filed."
And then, inviting:
"What have you been doing? How are your travels?"
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But he remembers very vividly encountering the glossy pages with prints of Louis' personal photography, of how striking the moment, even this little sample. His Louis, an artist? Thrilling. Never mind the verbiage surrounding it of its alleged mediocrity. Modesty is a part of the process. Or so Lestat has heard.
Tempting to bite after that topic, anyway, but it's set aside in the moment. There's time. He even made sure his phone was charged, prior.
"Uneventful."
No further attacks to fend off, he means.
"We're in DC now. There was a group of young people loitering outside the television station because of Daniel's appearance alone. They find him very alluring."
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Ha, ha.
Except Louis does wonder. Does Daniel take pleasure in the notoriety? Louis had never asked. And in all the time spent discussing the reception, Louis hadn't thought to ask after the broader reception among humanity.
He had said he'd wanted Daniel to enjoy his victory lap.
"How do you find him?" Louis asks. "Your impression of him?"
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But maybe everyone does, these days. The landscape has changed. The standards have shifted. Lestat finds he won't flinch from some discordant sounding guitar riff or a voice pitching wrong, so long as it is all done with heart. And also, Daniel's band shirts are cute.
Kicks one leg over the other, less the tense perch on the steel and concrete of the bridge, relaxing better into the activity he is in. A day ago, Lestat killed someone for their blood but also their extremely good boots, which he correctly judged to be in his size, and he admires the knee-high lacing as he considers what he thinks of Daniel.
"He invited me along to travel with him properly, and I don't think it's motivated by a self-preservation instinct." Lestat isn't even sure he has one of those, given the trajectory of his career, the conclusion of his book. The book. "I imagine it is motivated by his deep fondness towards you."
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Or is it the questions Louis knows Daniel has?
Maybe it is both.
"Maybe," Louis allows, declining to comment on Daniel's instincts or lack thereof.
They have not spoken of the book. Not beyond the danger it's created. Has Lestat read it? Had Daniel put San Francisco into it?
"Will you continue on with him after New York? I know you got your meeting."
The tour that Louis is also declining to ask after, only leaving space in which Lestat might expand further on it.
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The assumptions it makes. Or sounds like it's making.
"I don't know what I will do after New York," Lestat says. "It depends on my meeting. On what the vampires of the east coast have to say about certain scandalous publications. It depends, as well, on what you will do."
A shrug that no one can see. "Have you already made up your mind?"
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A little overwhelming to contemplate. What will Louis do? He has thought as far as New York. He is reacclimating to life without a soft hand and whisper guiding his steps.
What will he do? Anything.
Picking a fight had felt therapeutic then and it does now. But Lestat is right. It has created a new set of complications.
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That sounds like a 'no'. Some quiet edge in him that had been forming, relaxes. Just.
Lestat draws his phone away to look at it, still hovered near his mouth. Contemplating it, the man on the other end of it. The sound of wind rustling the microphone in his pause.
"Have you ever been to Vermont?"
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"No," Louis tells him. "I liked cities, when I was traveling."
A deliberate choice not to invoke Armand even passively with the use of we.
"Have you?"
Because who knows, maybe Lestat has been to Vermont.
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He won't throw the phone into the river if this doesn't work, but he will bitch about it for spoiling his bit. Touches the appropriate button, and says, "Search for Vermont."
A moment later—
"Hm. Vermont, Louis, is known for its scenic rolling mountains, its quality? skiing?, and its organic locally produced food. What a dreadful bore. You should come with me so I am less tempted to abandon Daniel to the mercy of the Canadian covens."
That said, Lestat's never been skiing. But that's beside the point.
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On the table, the opened archival boxes, photos scattered. Louis lifts the nearest print, studies it for a moment before he says, "I'd like that."
He has, after all, been explicitly invited to intrude by both Daniel and Lestat now. There's little reason to refuse.
Aside from the many good reasons, but who's counting.
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To himself, Lestat smiles. A beatific kind of grin. How good, to call Louis down from his tower, to be so irresistibly charming? And not have to resort to plan B, which was tearfully and angrily begging Louis to stop being so brave and annoying and far away. And whatever occurs after the end of Daniel's tour—
Ah, well.
"There was a busker," he says, "who had a little amplifier and a guitar and a microphone on a street corner. I don't even remember the song anymore, you know."
Is he crying again? Jesus. Even by Lestat's standards, that's a lot. But maybe this new world could stand to be less overwhelming and beautiful and frightening, and he'll get over it better. Anyway, he palms tears away like they're annoying, and continues.
"But she was very talented. It was like listening to someone break their heart for pennies, over and over, and nearly everyone walked by without stopping. I don't remember that kind of beauty just being everywhere."
And in summary, "I would like it if you were around."
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A brief ache for the break in Lestat's voice, remembering how Louis would touch his hand. Hook a pinky into Lestat's when he was overcome in the privacy of their orchestra box.
"I wish I had been there," Louis says softly. "I'd have liked to hear her."
The tickets have been purchased. The steamer trunk retrieved from storage. Suitcases laid out, awaiting Louis' selections.
"I'll be there soon," is offered as reassurance. A promise. "Remind Daniel to send me the hotel details. I'll arrange a car."
To deliver him from the airport at whatever late hour Louis arrives from Dubai.
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And he will also tell Daniel of this good tiding, that Louis will continue to accompany them, and maybe Lestat will also feel a little smug, that it was he who coaxed Louis to stay on even longer, and Daniel will have to forgive him that.
Daniel, who has been—well, forgiving is the wrong word. Kind, was the one Lestat used. Even before the trading of favours, Lestat had imagined something different. Prepared for it.
"He is like a sweet little bulldog," he says. "Are you glad that he is a vampire? It's nice to have friends, I think, that you're not trying to decide when to eat."
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The question requires an answer, and the answer itself is—
Complicated.
"I was going to offer it to him," Louis admits. "The Gift."
A significance he knows Lestat will understand.
As the interview drew towards a close, Louis had been considering it. Considering offering again, giving Daniel the opportunity to choose what he'd scoffed at once and asked for too young.
Of course, now Louis must consider if the idea came from him, or from someone else.
But it's a separate contemplation from the answer he is offering Lestat.
"He was dying then, and I'm glad he isn't dying any longer. I'm only sorry it was given to him as a punishment."
For Louis. For Daniel. Armand's spite reflecting back at them both.
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Not that dramatically. Not to die like a mortal would be aiming for, there. It's a thought like collapsing onto a fainting couch or throwing a valuable into a wall, where the sudden record scratch from bliss and fondness to whatever it is he is now currently experiencing demands an instant reaction.
He doesn't do that. Sits there. Louis was going to offer Daniel the Gift. Armand did it instead. Punishment.
"Oh," he says. Plucks some words out of the scramble of white noise occurring between his ears. "You have known him for some time?"
The thread he plucked at in Daniel's mind, leading back decades. It did not feel like fifty years of companionship, but profound all the same.
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A passing thought: had Daniel omitted San Francisco from the book entirely?
"I knew him when he was a young man," Louis explains, slow over the words. "He was charming. I found him interesting, right away."
However—
"I think we should tell you the story of how we met together."
Or at least, Louis should impart it in person. With Daniel's permission.
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It is an uncharacteristically meek kind of response. Daniel had said first, not like you do, on the subject of love. Of course, Lestat has no clear idea how Louis feels in turn, not really. Only that he shared his entire life story. Only that he spoke in great detail of Lestat's failings, sprinkled with lukewarm praise. Preternaturally charming, sometimes thoughtful. Only that he gave him photographs to print. Only that they speak in each other's minds.
How ridiculous, to feel jealousy. In what universe does he have the right to it? But then, when has he ever, when has that stopped it? Lestat watches the sky, its light pollution, its satellites amongst the stars.
"Yes," more sure. "Perhaps over a cocktail waitress or two." Haha, vampire jokes.
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A pause, where Louis feels some absurd twinge of—
Envy?
Jealousy.
Or some tender thing beneath that. Aware of his own failings. Of his persistent aversion to killing that Daniel does not share.
So Daniel and Lestat eat together. Easily, perhaps, without any of the reluctance or argument that had come to mark Lestat and Louis' shared hunting trips. A sore spot, struck unexpectedly.
"Yes," echoed, leaving the question of drinks to his arrival. Pivoting away with, "Would you let me take you to an opera, if I can find a suitable production in the city?"
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This is circumvented, and the mnh sound from his side of the phone is all pleasure. Louis can probably imagine the shape of the smile that produces it. The ugly snarl of jealousy relaxes slowly, as if being petted, soothed.
"Yes," he says. "It's been some time."
For them. For him. On that note—
"How do they dress for operas, now?"
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Their past ghosting into the present. Two tuxedos. Lestat's fingers linking his in a box. Louis would not have to walk behind him anymore, no playing at servitude.
Would Daniel call him foolish for it? For touching the past this way?
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Lestat pauses over that. Is that what he wants? All that finery, sophistication? Yes, there is appeal, he finds, a heart ache and yearning, and at the same time, the notion sounds a little like putting on an old costume of himself.
But. Maybe it would be nice.
And being, as mentioned, a huge fan of Molloy's work, having read his book so many times, he does recall the scene in question. Playing aristocrat and manservant. Louis' frustration, indignity, and what had his words been then? Lestat's opportunity to disarm him. He might consider the tenor, the hours they spent feasting, the context that it had all been done to placate him after he had raised his voice—
No. Steals his mind back from that.
"Would you enjoy it? A lavish thing."
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