A moment where perhaps Louis doesn't intend to let Daniel go. A tightening of his fingers around his hand, before Louis cedes his grip.
He has asked much of Daniel. If Daniel wishes to go, Louis will let him. None of this could have been so easy for him, even given the time that's passed since that week. The scant amount of time passed since they pieced all parts of it together themselves.
Daniel is allowed to extricate himself. He has done more than enough.
As Lestat straightens, Louis uses his now freed hand to touch his cheek. Thumb away some trace of tears.
"Heavy," is true, even if Louis says it with some measure of humor. "How are you?"
Lestat's hand roves to rest against said heavy heart, as if that might help, finds a resting place there.
"It was not the story I was expecting," he says, first. "But I am glad to know it."
Did not expect to have a guest appearance, did not expect the extent of Armand's villainy, Daniel's suffering, Louis' sadness. This vivid colouring in of a week of what had been, for the longest time, a truly devastating five minutes, warping the next half century. Information he might have expected from asking after that moment again, and not, 'so how did you two meet'.
He pulls in a breath, lets it out. "Does it all feel like it only happened a moment ago?"
Working off a cheatsheet, maybe, Daniel's observations to him, but Lestat can't say he doesn't feel the same. The sound of New Orleans traffic, the knowledge of the glaring sun outside the seven foot long shadow space he was trapped in while reaching so desperately, all vivid.
Reflexively, Louis lifts his own hand to cover Lestat's. Old habit, how he would guide Lestat's hand there, set his own over to press securely over his heart. As much as Louis has changed, this instinct remains.
"In some ways, yes."
Everything feels closer. Speaking of the past drew it into the room. For all that Louis feels he better understands all of it, has come to peace with much of it, there is the inevitable: it is all a kind of open wound. Healing, but raw still.
"I spent a long time, not knowing," and then, almost as a correction: "Not understanding."
Things obscured, memories faded or locked away. So much of his life tidily set aside. Louis had permitted that to happen.
"Fighting the vampire world in your big tower, this is making up for all that time?"
He could make it into something else, another abandoning, save that some distance had seemed imperative after the shock of contact. Lestat could see himself clinging to Louis' sleeve, hiding from the modern world still, making whatever this recovery of Louis' was about his own. Better, he had felt, to make his own haphazard way (and then climb into Daniel's purse, yes, that still counts, he'd found Daniel by himself) for a little while.
But then, the book. The war. Intolerable distance.
A slight flex of his fingers over Lestat's. A stroke of thumb along skin, the still-familiar planes of Lestat's hand.
"In a way," Louis says, because the fights he's picked, the stubborn dedication to drawing attention onto himself and away from Daniel.
Lestat is not the only one finding his way into the modern world. Despite his long life, Louis has lost years to the penthouse suite. The serenity of isolation, hidden within Dubai, Louis was excised from the world. He needs to reclaim his place. There is some healing in that.
"I was lost," he repeats, some similar mournful tremor in his voice. "Feels like I was far away, for a long time."
Lestat turns his hand, long fingers curling around Louis', capturing it there, still resting against his chest. Enticed, simply, to reacquaint himself with the ways they can tangle their fingers, find new configurations to hold each others hands in. His gaze, drifting to this.
Back to Louis' face.
"Uncharted wilderness." There be dragons, or at least, one fire-eyed demon. He has before tried to remember the exact configuration of emotions he had, that night in Magnus's lair. Was there any room for vindictiveness, anger, in his certainty that he had no place at Louis' side? Was there any meaning in his blessing, watching him and Armand wander into the darkness together?
Lestat squeezes their palms together, mouth twinging aside. "You won't be lost anymore," he says, after a moment of thinking. "I won't allow it. Even if you don't know where to go, you can come with me, and figure it out on the way."
A kindness, one that Louis hesitates to accept fully.
They both need to stand on their own, don't they?
But then, how lost can they be when they have each other? When Lestat will be nearby, always available for Louis to orient himself. Had the trouble started because they parted so completely? Because Louis was so alone?
Reaches with his free hand to touch Lestat's face, thumb that twinge of muscle at his mouth, the familiar territory of his cheek.
"Thank you."
Lestat, as much his home as New Orleans. True North.
"Have you found your way?" a soft question. Louis has tried not to pry, but he wonders. And while they're trading truths, why not this one?
That might be a flaw in his grand declaration, if Lestat has no fucking clue where he's going, but then, maybe not. Enough that they can navigate the past, if not necessarily the future. Warms to that touch to his face, a turn of his head that nudges mouth to hand, not quite a kiss.
"Of course," is what he says. "First, there will be talent scouting. My lawyer has spoken of various agencies and record labels to begin conversations with, but there was a remarkable group I heard on our way out of Boston that I'll check in on and see if they would like to be rich and famous. I assume so. Most of them desire this, now."
Stealing back Louis' hand, Lestat relaxes a little more into the couch rather than his poise from between hugging and not hugging. "Meanwhile, there is much work to be done. My own composing. I don't think I've written anything properly for one hundred years. Rome can be built in a day or so if you're willing to fund it and make it so, but music?"
His fingers spread. "Who knows. But I cannot begin empty handed."
So he had meant it, what he'd said in New Orleans. Lestat, intending to tour. To put himself on a stage, take music to crowds of people. Louis spares a moment to wonder what it will sound like now. It has been so many years since the days when they would sit together in the parlor, Lestat at his piano and Louis with a book. (And Claudia, sometimes playing a duet, sometimes painting, sometimes writing—) What has Lestat's music become, in all the passing decades?
A hum of acknowledgement, some passing understanding of the limitations of capital where the arts are concerned. Louis, who has amassed a disgusting fortune in the buying and selling of artwork, is more than aware of how useless all that money is when it comes to the production of it. All the money in the world has not made Louis into an artist.
"Will you begin as we travel?" Louis asks. "Or will you take the time after?"
A tricky question. How careful they have all been, when it comes to discussing the future. The past is a wound, to be handled delicately. But the future, the future is a void. Only the immediate present is easily dealt with, and even then, there are pitfalls. The acquisition of blood. The book, hanging overhead.
But those things are less painful to touch than what came before and what may yet come.
It all sounds a little different to his whim of becoming a master pianist, visiting with orchestras, bell of the concert hall, preaching the gospel of Bach and Beethoven. But music nonetheless. Audiences, divine visibility, the sun.
He had composed only infrequently. Perhaps it's like Louis' eye—a curse, in some ways, to have an ear for perfection, to only know it when you hear it. Perhaps this whole endeavour will shatter apart when Lestat finds he can't match creation to expectation. Perhaps, too, he is past being perfect. He is, after all, not that.
And besides, the point of all this doesn't necessitate perfection. Just attention.
"I should thank you both for the way there are those who already know my name. Some of the work done for me."
Lestat keeps his fangs out of his voice, limiting his tone to a prod of teasing rather than a piercing.
This glancing invocation doesn't bring tension, but a sharpening of Louis' gaze. Attentive, scrutinizing Lestat's expression for any sign of temper before he answers.
"We can talk about if, you like," he offers.
A heady topic to cover on the heels of San Francisco. But Louis is willing. If it is near to Lestat's thoughts now, and he would like to proceed past this light nudge—
Yes, Louis would indulge him. He owes that to Lestat as well.
But Louis looks at him, so open and attentive, and Lestat finds himself looking away, looking past him. No sign of lost temper so much as internal decision making about whether this is a fuss he truly wants to make tonight, when everyone is feeling a little wounded. When the book has been something like that path they are talking about, a retracing of steps. And Louis only just got here. To New York. To the present.
So, a shake of his head, focus returning. "Why weigh down such a light hearted evening with such heaviness?" with a little smile. "Actually, I wouldn't mind getting out of this room, if you like to walk with me."
That moment, Lestat looking away from him, makes Louis' fingers itch to touch him. Touch him more intentionally than they are now, fingers to his cheek, to the long locks of his hair, draw his attention back.
How long it's been, since Louis felt desperately, clumsily in need of Lestat's intention. Louis shouldn't feel surprise, finding that need still somewhere inside of him.
But Lestat looks back, and smiles. Offers a respite.
"Yes," Louis answers. "I'd like to."
Was that in the book? Louis dreaming their walks? He'd missed them, among all the other parts of Lestat he couldn't shake from his mind.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He has asked much of Daniel. If Daniel wishes to go, Louis will let him. None of this could have been so easy for him, even given the time that's passed since that week. The scant amount of time passed since they pieced all parts of it together themselves.
Daniel is allowed to extricate himself. He has done more than enough.
As Lestat straightens, Louis uses his now freed hand to touch his cheek. Thumb away some trace of tears.
"Heavy," is true, even if Louis says it with some measure of humor. "How are you?"
no subject
"It was not the story I was expecting," he says, first. "But I am glad to know it."
Did not expect to have a guest appearance, did not expect the extent of Armand's villainy, Daniel's suffering, Louis' sadness. This vivid colouring in of a week of what had been, for the longest time, a truly devastating five minutes, warping the next half century. Information he might have expected from asking after that moment again, and not, 'so how did you two meet'.
He pulls in a breath, lets it out. "Does it all feel like it only happened a moment ago?"
Working off a cheatsheet, maybe, Daniel's observations to him, but Lestat can't say he doesn't feel the same. The sound of New Orleans traffic, the knowledge of the glaring sun outside the seven foot long shadow space he was trapped in while reaching so desperately, all vivid.
no subject
"In some ways, yes."
Everything feels closer. Speaking of the past drew it into the room. For all that Louis feels he better understands all of it, has come to peace with much of it, there is the inevitable: it is all a kind of open wound. Healing, but raw still.
"I spent a long time, not knowing," and then, almost as a correction: "Not understanding."
Things obscured, memories faded or locked away. So much of his life tidily set aside. Louis had permitted that to happen.
"I've been making it up for all the time I lost."
no subject
A small twist of a smile. Kindly, still,
"Fighting the vampire world in your big tower, this is making up for all that time?"
He could make it into something else, another abandoning, save that some distance had seemed imperative after the shock of contact. Lestat could see himself clinging to Louis' sleeve, hiding from the modern world still, making whatever this recovery of Louis' was about his own. Better, he had felt, to make his own haphazard way (and then climb into Daniel's purse, yes, that still counts, he'd found Daniel by himself) for a little while.
But then, the book. The war. Intolerable distance.
no subject
"In a way," Louis says, because the fights he's picked, the stubborn dedication to drawing attention onto himself and away from Daniel.
Lestat is not the only one finding his way into the modern world. Despite his long life, Louis has lost years to the penthouse suite. The serenity of isolation, hidden within Dubai, Louis was excised from the world. He needs to reclaim his place. There is some healing in that.
"I was lost," he repeats, some similar mournful tremor in his voice. "Feels like I was far away, for a long time."
no subject
Back to Louis' face.
"Uncharted wilderness." There be dragons, or at least, one fire-eyed demon. He has before tried to remember the exact configuration of emotions he had, that night in Magnus's lair. Was there any room for vindictiveness, anger, in his certainty that he had no place at Louis' side? Was there any meaning in his blessing, watching him and Armand wander into the darkness together?
Lestat squeezes their palms together, mouth twinging aside. "You won't be lost anymore," he says, after a moment of thinking. "I won't allow it. Even if you don't know where to go, you can come with me, and figure it out on the way."
no subject
They both need to stand on their own, don't they?
But then, how lost can they be when they have each other? When Lestat will be nearby, always available for Louis to orient himself. Had the trouble started because they parted so completely? Because Louis was so alone?
Reaches with his free hand to touch Lestat's face, thumb that twinge of muscle at his mouth, the familiar territory of his cheek.
"Thank you."
Lestat, as much his home as New Orleans. True North.
"Have you found your way?" a soft question. Louis has tried not to pry, but he wonders. And while they're trading truths, why not this one?
no subject
That might be a flaw in his grand declaration, if Lestat has no fucking clue where he's going, but then, maybe not. Enough that they can navigate the past, if not necessarily the future. Warms to that touch to his face, a turn of his head that nudges mouth to hand, not quite a kiss.
"Of course," is what he says. "First, there will be talent scouting. My lawyer has spoken of various agencies and record labels to begin conversations with, but there was a remarkable group I heard on our way out of Boston that I'll check in on and see if they would like to be rich and famous. I assume so. Most of them desire this, now."
Stealing back Louis' hand, Lestat relaxes a little more into the couch rather than his poise from between hugging and not hugging. "Meanwhile, there is much work to be done. My own composing. I don't think I've written anything properly for one hundred years. Rome can be built in a day or so if you're willing to fund it and make it so, but music?"
His fingers spread. "Who knows. But I cannot begin empty handed."
no subject
A hum of acknowledgement, some passing understanding of the limitations of capital where the arts are concerned. Louis, who has amassed a disgusting fortune in the buying and selling of artwork, is more than aware of how useless all that money is when it comes to the production of it. All the money in the world has not made Louis into an artist.
"Will you begin as we travel?" Louis asks. "Or will you take the time after?"
A tricky question. How careful they have all been, when it comes to discussing the future. The past is a wound, to be handled delicately. But the future, the future is a void. Only the immediate present is easily dealt with, and even then, there are pitfalls. The acquisition of blood. The book, hanging overhead.
But those things are less painful to touch than what came before and what may yet come.
no subject
It all sounds a little different to his whim of becoming a master pianist, visiting with orchestras, bell of the concert hall, preaching the gospel of Bach and Beethoven. But music nonetheless. Audiences, divine visibility, the sun.
He had composed only infrequently. Perhaps it's like Louis' eye—a curse, in some ways, to have an ear for perfection, to only know it when you hear it. Perhaps this whole endeavour will shatter apart when Lestat finds he can't match creation to expectation. Perhaps, too, he is past being perfect. He is, after all, not that.
And besides, the point of all this doesn't necessitate perfection. Just attention.
"I should thank you both for the way there are those who already know my name. Some of the work done for me."
Lestat keeps his fangs out of his voice, limiting his tone to a prod of teasing rather than a piercing.
no subject
This glancing invocation doesn't bring tension, but a sharpening of Louis' gaze. Attentive, scrutinizing Lestat's expression for any sign of temper before he answers.
"We can talk about if, you like," he offers.
A heady topic to cover on the heels of San Francisco. But Louis is willing. If it is near to Lestat's thoughts now, and he would like to proceed past this light nudge—
Yes, Louis would indulge him. He owes that to Lestat as well.
no subject
But Louis looks at him, so open and attentive, and Lestat finds himself looking away, looking past him. No sign of lost temper so much as internal decision making about whether this is a fuss he truly wants to make tonight, when everyone is feeling a little wounded. When the book has been something like that path they are talking about, a retracing of steps. And Louis only just got here. To New York. To the present.
So, a shake of his head, focus returning. "Why weigh down such a light hearted evening with such heaviness?" with a little smile. "Actually, I wouldn't mind getting out of this room, if you like to walk with me."
no subject
How long it's been, since Louis felt desperately, clumsily in need of Lestat's intention. Louis shouldn't feel surprise, finding that need still somewhere inside of him.
But Lestat looks back, and smiles. Offers a respite.
"Yes," Louis answers. "I'd like to."
Was that in the book? Louis dreaming their walks? He'd missed them, among all the other parts of Lestat he couldn't shake from his mind.