Dreamy amounts of dopamine, these little declarations and gestures, these little returns to form. By now, Louis could produce an out of focus photograph of a dog urinating on a fire hydrant and Lestat would wax poetic for its composition.
And then, disarming. Lestat opening his mouth to speak before he looks down at the gift, wrapped in gold.
Takes it into his hands. And why shouldn't he have anticipated an image of Claudia? He has seen a couple of them, and so at least there is no shock to the notion, except there still is, somehow. One of the few, and Lestat is carefully opening it, a fussy way of going at the folded edges and peeling it back, and turning the framed image around until its righted in his hands.
Another disarming thing, to see her this way. The vampire he made, the vampire she became, against all odds. "Look at her," he murmurs. She isn't even posing, really. No, no deliberate grimace for the camera, just a spontaneous grin of sharp teeth in the blur of a moment.
Louis' arm stretches across the back of the bench, body turning in as Lestat tears the paper, looks over the photograph. Louis had chosen a simple frame, no distractions from the radiance of Claudia's face.
"You'd have been proud to see her that night," Louis says, carving away every part of that outing that wasn't Claudia, exuberant in her hunting. "She was..."
There are some tragedies that cannot be ascribed to a certain gremlin.
Her death, yes, but also this: Lestat's absence, implied in this photograph. Her happiness returned to her, however briefly, however falsely. It is a strange and tangled mess of feeling, looking at her, so happy. The hurt of her betrayal, the strange sense of pride he has for her cutting him down so well, the petty angst for her finding a life beyond his shadow, and then all of it swallowed by that big black shadow of grief.
But it's a lovely photograph. His hands are relaxed holding the picture frame, but to his sense of composure he clutches with a white-knuckled grip.
He must say something nice. Something that isn't insane, like, I feel extremely bad now but if someone were to take this from me I would bite off their limbs, even though this is the most apt description. Deep breaths, Lioncourt.
"I'm proud of her all the time," is something true, excavated just for Louis, looking to him. A smile, tight, and a leaning in of his weight. "Whether she would like it or not."
Even that slight movement is enough to draw Louis' arm from the back of the bench to Lestat's shoulders. A grounding kind of comfort, Louis holding him closer as Lestat studies the picture.
"I know," Louis promises. "I think..."
A pause. His fingers tighten at Lesat's shoulder, breathes out.
"I think she'd hate it," is true, but only half. "And I think she'd value it. Yours more than mine, at least when it came to the vampire she became."
An area Louis could never hope to match Lestat in. Louis, reluctant still but more so in those days. Claudia had outstripped him before they'd ever left New Orleans.
And she'd been lonesome, Louis knows. She'd been lonely hunting on her own. Maybe that would have always been the way in which she and Lestat would relate. Hunting. If they'd had time to find their footing.
Maybe that should make him flinch, the word 'hate'. But it's a strange word. Passionate. Different to loathe, disdain, disgust, and maybe Claudia would summon those too, but no, Louis is right, she would hate his pride in her, and the thought draws a fond smile across Lestat's face as he leans into the way Louis holds him around the shoulders.
They would have hunted together. Their hunts prior had always been teacher and student, and then, after that, they were apart from one another. Too much to tolerate. But if things had been different—
They would have hunted together, and well, he thinks. Son petite monstre.
Yes, his eyes prickle, but Lestat distracts himself by bring up a hand and delicately snaring Louis' chin, leaning in to kiss him sweetly next to his mouth. A little too intimate, maybe, for mon ami, but still avoiding the thing they're avoiding.
"I love it," he tells him, tapping a finger where he has them placed before dropping his hand. "Merci. And look how well you captured her."
Yielding, a soft exhale of breath as Lestat leans in. Long held instinct parting his lips slightly, expectant, heartbeat leaping in his chest. His fingers tighten in turn at Lestat's shoulder, holding fast as Lestat's lips find the corner of his mouth.
Mon ami Lestat had said.
Louis thinks of that again now, how it feels mismatched. Like a loss, despite Lestat being so present.
A deep breath in. Finds a smile for him, pleased with Lestat's approval. Let's all the rest fall away, as he explains, "She made it easy. I was lucky to have turned when she did."
She'd always been turning to him on those days, reassuring herself that Louis was still there. Still following, keeping pace. That he hadn't fallen too far behind.
He will credit himself, too, with Claudia's flair for the dramatic. Had, certainly, that terrible day on the stage. Thoughts Lestat considers keeping to himself to ruminate on, leaning comfortably against Louis on the bench as he considers the photograph, allows himself to acclimate to looking at it without some internal flinch.
Instead, he speaks it out loud. Neither of them have had much opportunity to do so, for different reasons. "That terrible day on the stage," he says, and knows it may hurt Louis to bring up, but bring it up he does. "I had worked hard, you know, to bring the crowd under my thrall. You make them laugh, you make them sad, you give them these petty things and they will do anything for you. Almost."
Not enough. A breath in, released as a sigh. "But there was a shift, when she took the spotlight. All eyes on her. I could feel it, the way she changed the room. Their ruthless joy like a quiet pond, and then, ripples. Terror, just a moment. Held breaths."
Louis was there, of course, but perhaps there is only so much attention to be paid when you've been hamstrung, beaten, preparing to die.
"I thought, there she is. This one I've made. This one I had every fear for, in the beginning. She looked at me," no, not that moment, this earlier one, "she looked at me and I think she knew. My hated pride."
Yes, it does hurt. It hurts as it will always hurt. Maybe more so now for the freshness of the wound, torn open again by Daniel's revelations.
Lestat isn't prying. But the memory stirs up pain regardless, something to weather with a deep inhale, fingers running up and down the fabric of Leatat's jacket. He is here. They are here.
Claudia is still gone.
"Our daughter," Louis murmurs. A crack in his voice, eased by a breath, a pause. Gathering steadiness as he tells him, "She had plenty of you in her."
How different would things have been if they'd stayed? If Louis had tried harder to dissuade her from her plans?
"Headstrong," Louis says, a little laughter in his voice. "Talented. Voice like you wouldn't believe."
Twisted into something unbearable. But they don't need talk about that. Not tonight.
"I wish you'd seen her," softly. "I wish you'd gotten to see her before."
Lestat is watching him as he speaks, no impulse to hide away from it, even this close. Studying Louis' expression, drinking in the feeling of his voice, even as his own eyes remain that specific kind of glossy-bloodshot, both in concert with and in contrast to the way the corner of his mouth ticks up.
Fond. Devastated. He gives a small, hasty nod at this last thing.
Thinking further back, to that precious period of time where Lestat had gotten everything he had ever wanted. Louis' hand in his, Claudia's in his other. He just hadn't known it.
"Louis," he says. Voice not quite even, but we continue. "It was me that ruined it for us. I know it now."
He didn't before, not even in his coffin in New Orleans, laying there for however long beneath the trash. Not even during the awful pantomime in the theatre. Perhaps while reflecting on his origins in Magnus' prison. Perhaps after he'd read his own story, spoken by Louis, penned by Molloy. But now—
It isn't hard, to trace the fuck ups. Before the ball. Before the fight. "And I am sorry."
Receiving it now, he is uncertain. There is still pain. The memory of that fight that lives in his body still, alongside the trial. Alongside the loss of Claudia.
But it's less open wound, more scar tissue. Healing sped along by the process of untangling the memories as Daniel tapped at his keyboard, pressed Louis with question upon question.
Even so, Louis of all people knows that there is some relief in speaking a thing aloud.
When Louis lifts his arms from about Lestat's shoulders, it's only to take his hand. Lace their fingers together over the frame.
"I know you were trying to apologize at the trial. That you meant it, then."
Since they are skirting along that territory.
"I wasn't ready to hear it."
Not in the least because Louis hadn't understood. Hadn't realized what role Lestat was trying to play.
"But I know now. I know what you were trying to offer."
He settles back ever so as that arm retreats, but splays his fingers willingly for the touch to his hand, accommodating it. Brings it closer to him, against his sternum, feels and allows to pass by the little twinge of renewed memory. An apology for Louis.
Claudia had been given none of it at all. He hadn't truly spoken to her, only read his lines, looked at her when he meant them.
Here, Lestat squeezes his hand.
"It was my heart's desire that you would live to do so," he says. "To hear it, someday."
A breath in, a theatrical way of hiking up his shoulders, "So now that I have it, I shall find a new one," with the rush of the exhale. He's fine and no one's crying, flinging a look back out at the park around them, keeping an iron grip of Louis' hand.
A flex of something in his chest. A new heart's desire. What will that be for the Vampire Lestat?
Louis is quiet. Makes a minor rearrangement as they sit together, reclaiming his arm's place around Lestat's shoulders, trading off the link of their hand. Intimate. They had sat so close in New Orleans, but never like this.
"We ruined it together, in New Orleans," Louis offers. "Wasn't just you."
Daniel may scoff over this, have something to say about how Louis takes on guilt.
But Louis says this anyway. Keeps hold of Lestat as he continues, "I don't need you to apologize for it again. Not anymore."
Quiet pleasure for Louis readjusting the way they sit together, letting him keep a hand, the resettling of the closeness of his arm around Lestat's shoulders, both of them leaning into the other. It feels a little like the world entire rearranging itself to become a more comfortable and amiable place, whole mountains moved to improve the view as Louis tells him he doesn't need to apologise again, again, again.
He has thought of so many ways to do so. Sometimes imagined what forgiveness would feel like. More often, imagined the sting of its absence.
Daniel may not scoff. If Louis had of rEaD tHe BoOk, him being a big book reader and all, he may find traces of nuance, of criticism. Of course, Lestat could not guide him this way. Call it ego, call it self-loathing, that he more or less only parses his own glaring mistakes.
He looks at him, a quiet study made of his features. He knows what it looks like when Louis is lying to him, knows better now when Lestat chose not to notice it. Here, a more careful regard, and then a flicker of feeling in him. Accepting it, quietly.
"'We ruined it together'," he says, meanwhile. "That might make a good lyric."
It is a lovely, cool night. The park is quiet, even with the noise of the city beyond them. Louis is so attuned to the link of their fingers, how Lestat permits him this minor touch, the shift and slip of his thumb across the back of his hand, knuckles, little bits of contact as they speak.
"It might," Louis agrees, as if he is any authority. Music had never been Louis' gift. "Will all your songs be about us?"
Egocentric, maybe, but Louis wouldn't begrudge him. Finds some sense in it. Louis has his book. Lestat will have his tour, his album.
He is entitled to it, to make something of their romance.
A quiet, breath of laughter, affectionate in the way it might be teasing.
"You're being so serious," Lestat says, hooking the photo against his palm so he can bring up one finger to tap a touch to Louis' chin. He can feel that earnest leniency behind the question. Louis and his deliberate deciding to be fine with whatever Lestat might commit to a record.
But, to answer his question, "Not all, yes, but some. The best ones."
Settling that hand and the photograph it carries back onto his lap. "You're an inspiring muse. Perhaps when you get back into your photography," spoken as an inevitability, now that Louis is free from the shadow of a most boorish gremlin, and also a little hair toss to accompany his claim, "I shall grant you the same favour. I am missing from your art."
It's not missed, that this is presented as inevitable.
What had Daniel said of it, in the book? Louis is hard pressed to guess. Daniel would be truthful, but perhaps his truth would be too generous, overly kind.
"My art," is a gentle scoff of a rejoinder. Dismissing. "I put that camera down almost eighty years ago, Lestat. Don't let Daniel be making me out as something I'm not."
Important, that he be recognized for what he was. Louis was no artist.
"Ah, nearly eighty years ago," Lestat says, leaning back in the hold Louis has on him to square on him a look. "I wonder what life might have been like at the time, for your passion to fail you. Such a mystery, and we may never know."
Goading, but he keeps his tone gentle, playful, including the innocence and impression of wounded feeling he loads into his voice when he adds, "You don't wish to take pictures of me?"
No, they do not need to dissect the nuances of Paris. Of when Louis put his camera down, why he had never found a reason to pick it back up.
They have not discussed the book.
Instead, tonight, Louis shakes his head. Squeezes their linked fingers.
"You're impossible," Louis tells him, achingly fond.
No use in splitting hairs between the finer points of photography and pictures he might take of Lestat. The difference between documenting and insighting. What he lacks, recognizes he lacks. What is missing in him that should come easy, to an artist.
"You don't think you'll have more photos than you know what to do with once you get yourself onstage?"
His kicked dog expression is immediately split open with a smile. Yes, he is impossible, an impossibility, and somehow, not half as stubborn as Louis de Pointe du Lac. Or perhaps equally, in his own way, at least about the things he wants. Louis, about the things he does not.
"Compelling, your argument," Lestat cedes. "But will any of them be able to look at me the way you do?"
They are not companions. This has been established. The heartache Lestat has for the potentiality, and occasionally the certainty, of Louis and Daniel finding each other has no bearing on the simple reality that they both view each other in certain ways.
His eyes hood, a little, as he adds, "Or shall your only documentation of the way you see me be through Daniel Molloy's account?"
Less playful, admittedly, but still soft, established hurt held in reserve. Off-roading into a conversation about himself rather than Louis' latent artistic tendencies. So it goes.
But it is as Claudia had once warned. Lestat is his heart. There is such relief in his nearness. How little time it takes to fall into him.
How intimately they know each other. Lestat, the only person on this earth who had seen Louis' brown eyes.
Lestat, who says will any of them be able to look at me the way you do? and Louis feels the old covetous flare of desire. All this time, wanting Lestat all to himself.
A held breath. Looking at him, conflicting emotions tangling in his chest.
"My account," softly, absolution for Daniel. "My memories."
His thumb, running along Lestat's knuckles as he tells him, "Is this what you want me to give you? Your portrait?"
This absolution is met with a steady look, a slight dimming of something behind his eyes. Yes, alright, Louis' account, memories, Louis' words. Is now the night to talk about the book? No, thinks Lestat. It's been a nice evening. He has a gift in his hands, and Louis' arm around him, and their hands tangled.
Will there ever be a time? Too good, too bad, just right?
Mercifully, there's no silence to fill. The smile he has for Louis' question is a milder thing than it might have been before, but not disingenuous.
"I would enjoy that indulgence," he says, easy. "But only if it would please you, Louis."
All the more reason for them to be better. More than what his limited ability could provide.
Louis' eyes drop to their linked fingers.
"I'd like to please you," Louis tells him. A thing unearthed in him, this desire. Still inside him even now. What a pleasure it is to offer Lestat the things Louis is certain he will enjoy.
But photos. There is something fraught in that.
"Ask me again when you've finished your compositions. We'll see."
See if Louis can bear to give him something less than art.
After? he's finished? his compositions?, and then we'll see? For a portrait???
Lestat lifts their linked hands, brushes a kiss to Louis' knuckles, and says, "I don't agree to those terms, but we can reopen negotiations in due course. Come," and he gets to his feet, keeping Louis' hand, pulling him up off the bench with easy strength, and still not letting go once this is done. "Let's visit Giuseppe Verdi's monument and give our thanks for the nice evening out."
And it is a nice evening. A comfortable chill in the air that reminds Lestat of former homes before New Orleans, not unpleasantly. An opera, a gift, an absolution.
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And then, disarming. Lestat opening his mouth to speak before he looks down at the gift, wrapped in gold.
Takes it into his hands. And why shouldn't he have anticipated an image of Claudia? He has seen a couple of them, and so at least there is no shock to the notion, except there still is, somehow. One of the few, and Lestat is carefully opening it, a fussy way of going at the folded edges and peeling it back, and turning the framed image around until its righted in his hands.
Another disarming thing, to see her this way. The vampire he made, the vampire she became, against all odds. "Look at her," he murmurs. She isn't even posing, really. No, no deliberate grimace for the camera, just a spontaneous grin of sharp teeth in the blur of a moment.
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Louis' arm stretches across the back of the bench, body turning in as Lestat tears the paper, looks over the photograph. Louis had chosen a simple frame, no distractions from the radiance of Claudia's face.
"You'd have been proud to see her that night," Louis says, carving away every part of that outing that wasn't Claudia, exuberant in her hunting. "She was..."
Trailing into quiet for a moment. Remembering.
"She was so happy."
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Her death, yes, but also this: Lestat's absence, implied in this photograph. Her happiness returned to her, however briefly, however falsely. It is a strange and tangled mess of feeling, looking at her, so happy. The hurt of her betrayal, the strange sense of pride he has for her cutting him down so well, the petty angst for her finding a life beyond his shadow, and then all of it swallowed by that big black shadow of grief.
But it's a lovely photograph. His hands are relaxed holding the picture frame, but to his sense of composure he clutches with a white-knuckled grip.
He must say something nice. Something that isn't insane, like, I feel extremely bad now but if someone were to take this from me I would bite off their limbs, even though this is the most apt description. Deep breaths, Lioncourt.
"I'm proud of her all the time," is something true, excavated just for Louis, looking to him. A smile, tight, and a leaning in of his weight. "Whether she would like it or not."
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"I know," Louis promises. "I think..."
A pause. His fingers tighten at Lesat's shoulder, breathes out.
"I think she'd hate it," is true, but only half. "And I think she'd value it. Yours more than mine, at least when it came to the vampire she became."
An area Louis could never hope to match Lestat in. Louis, reluctant still but more so in those days. Claudia had outstripped him before they'd ever left New Orleans.
And she'd been lonesome, Louis knows. She'd been lonely hunting on her own. Maybe that would have always been the way in which she and Lestat would relate. Hunting. If they'd had time to find their footing.
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They would have hunted together. Their hunts prior had always been teacher and student, and then, after that, they were apart from one another. Too much to tolerate. But if things had been different—
They would have hunted together, and well, he thinks. Son petite monstre.
Yes, his eyes prickle, but Lestat distracts himself by bring up a hand and delicately snaring Louis' chin, leaning in to kiss him sweetly next to his mouth. A little too intimate, maybe, for mon ami, but still avoiding the thing they're avoiding.
"I love it," he tells him, tapping a finger where he has them placed before dropping his hand. "Merci. And look how well you captured her."
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Mon ami Lestat had said.
Louis thinks of that again now, how it feels mismatched. Like a loss, despite Lestat being so present.
A deep breath in. Finds a smile for him, pleased with Lestat's approval. Let's all the rest fall away, as he explains, "She made it easy. I was lucky to have turned when she did."
She'd always been turning to him on those days, reassuring herself that Louis was still there. Still following, keeping pace. That he hadn't fallen too far behind.
"I should have taken more of her."
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He will credit himself, too, with Claudia's flair for the dramatic. Had, certainly, that terrible day on the stage. Thoughts Lestat considers keeping to himself to ruminate on, leaning comfortably against Louis on the bench as he considers the photograph, allows himself to acclimate to looking at it without some internal flinch.
Instead, he speaks it out loud. Neither of them have had much opportunity to do so, for different reasons. "That terrible day on the stage," he says, and knows it may hurt Louis to bring up, but bring it up he does. "I had worked hard, you know, to bring the crowd under my thrall. You make them laugh, you make them sad, you give them these petty things and they will do anything for you. Almost."
Not enough. A breath in, released as a sigh. "But there was a shift, when she took the spotlight. All eyes on her. I could feel it, the way she changed the room. Their ruthless joy like a quiet pond, and then, ripples. Terror, just a moment. Held breaths."
Louis was there, of course, but perhaps there is only so much attention to be paid when you've been hamstrung, beaten, preparing to die.
"I thought, there she is. This one I've made. This one I had every fear for, in the beginning. She looked at me," no, not that moment, this earlier one, "she looked at me and I think she knew. My hated pride."
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Lestat isn't prying. But the memory stirs up pain regardless, something to weather with a deep inhale, fingers running up and down the fabric of Leatat's jacket. He is here. They are here.
Claudia is still gone.
"Our daughter," Louis murmurs. A crack in his voice, eased by a breath, a pause. Gathering steadiness as he tells him, "She had plenty of you in her."
How different would things have been if they'd stayed? If Louis had tried harder to dissuade her from her plans?
"Headstrong," Louis says, a little laughter in his voice. "Talented. Voice like you wouldn't believe."
Twisted into something unbearable. But they don't need talk about that. Not tonight.
"I wish you'd seen her," softly. "I wish you'd gotten to see her before."
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Fond. Devastated. He gives a small, hasty nod at this last thing.
Thinking further back, to that precious period of time where Lestat had gotten everything he had ever wanted. Louis' hand in his, Claudia's in his other. He just hadn't known it.
"Louis," he says. Voice not quite even, but we continue. "It was me that ruined it for us. I know it now."
He didn't before, not even in his coffin in New Orleans, laying there for however long beneath the trash. Not even during the awful pantomime in the theatre. Perhaps while reflecting on his origins in Magnus' prison. Perhaps after he'd read his own story, spoken by Louis, penned by Molloy. But now—
It isn't hard, to trace the fuck ups. Before the ball. Before the fight. "And I am sorry."
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Receiving it now, he is uncertain. There is still pain. The memory of that fight that lives in his body still, alongside the trial. Alongside the loss of Claudia.
But it's less open wound, more scar tissue. Healing sped along by the process of untangling the memories as Daniel tapped at his keyboard, pressed Louis with question upon question.
Even so, Louis of all people knows that there is some relief in speaking a thing aloud.
When Louis lifts his arms from about Lestat's shoulders, it's only to take his hand. Lace their fingers together over the frame.
"I know you were trying to apologize at the trial. That you meant it, then."
Since they are skirting along that territory.
"I wasn't ready to hear it."
Not in the least because Louis hadn't understood. Hadn't realized what role Lestat was trying to play.
"But I know now. I know what you were trying to offer."
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Claudia had been given none of it at all. He hadn't truly spoken to her, only read his lines, looked at her when he meant them.
Here, Lestat squeezes his hand.
"It was my heart's desire that you would live to do so," he says. "To hear it, someday."
A breath in, a theatrical way of hiking up his shoulders, "So now that I have it, I shall find a new one," with the rush of the exhale. He's fine and no one's crying, flinging a look back out at the park around them, keeping an iron grip of Louis' hand.
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Louis is quiet. Makes a minor rearrangement as they sit together, reclaiming his arm's place around Lestat's shoulders, trading off the link of their hand. Intimate. They had sat so close in New Orleans, but never like this.
"We ruined it together, in New Orleans," Louis offers. "Wasn't just you."
Daniel may scoff over this, have something to say about how Louis takes on guilt.
But Louis says this anyway. Keeps hold of Lestat as he continues, "I don't need you to apologize for it again. Not anymore."
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He has thought of so many ways to do so. Sometimes imagined what forgiveness would feel like. More often, imagined the sting of its absence.
Daniel may not scoff. If Louis had of rEaD tHe BoOk, him being a big book reader and all, he may find traces of nuance, of criticism. Of course, Lestat could not guide him this way. Call it ego, call it self-loathing, that he more or less only parses his own glaring mistakes.
He looks at him, a quiet study made of his features. He knows what it looks like when Louis is lying to him, knows better now when Lestat chose not to notice it. Here, a more careful regard, and then a flicker of feeling in him. Accepting it, quietly.
"'We ruined it together'," he says, meanwhile. "That might make a good lyric."
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"It might," Louis agrees, as if he is any authority. Music had never been Louis' gift. "Will all your songs be about us?"
Egocentric, maybe, but Louis wouldn't begrudge him. Finds some sense in it. Louis has his book. Lestat will have his tour, his album.
He is entitled to it, to make something of their romance.
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"You're being so serious," Lestat says, hooking the photo against his palm so he can bring up one finger to tap a touch to Louis' chin. He can feel that earnest leniency behind the question. Louis and his deliberate deciding to be fine with whatever Lestat might commit to a record.
But, to answer his question, "Not all, yes, but some. The best ones."
Settling that hand and the photograph it carries back onto his lap. "You're an inspiring muse. Perhaps when you get back into your photography," spoken as an inevitability, now that Louis is free from the shadow of a most boorish gremlin, and also a little hair toss to accompany his claim, "I shall grant you the same favour. I am missing from your art."
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What had Daniel said of it, in the book? Louis is hard pressed to guess. Daniel would be truthful, but perhaps his truth would be too generous, overly kind.
"My art," is a gentle scoff of a rejoinder. Dismissing. "I put that camera down almost eighty years ago, Lestat. Don't let Daniel be making me out as something I'm not."
Important, that he be recognized for what he was. Louis was no artist.
"Better muse than photographer, I'd say."
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Goading, but he keeps his tone gentle, playful, including the innocence and impression of wounded feeling he loads into his voice when he adds, "You don't wish to take pictures of me?"
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They have not discussed the book.
Instead, tonight, Louis shakes his head. Squeezes their linked fingers.
"You're impossible," Louis tells him, achingly fond.
No use in splitting hairs between the finer points of photography and pictures he might take of Lestat. The difference between documenting and insighting. What he lacks, recognizes he lacks. What is missing in him that should come easy, to an artist.
"You don't think you'll have more photos than you know what to do with once you get yourself onstage?"
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"Compelling, your argument," Lestat cedes. "But will any of them be able to look at me the way you do?"
They are not companions. This has been established. The heartache Lestat has for the potentiality, and occasionally the certainty, of Louis and Daniel finding each other has no bearing on the simple reality that they both view each other in certain ways.
His eyes hood, a little, as he adds, "Or shall your only documentation of the way you see me be through Daniel Molloy's account?"
Less playful, admittedly, but still soft, established hurt held in reserve. Off-roading into a conversation about himself rather than Louis' latent artistic tendencies. So it goes.
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But it is as Claudia had once warned. Lestat is his heart. There is such relief in his nearness. How little time it takes to fall into him.
How intimately they know each other. Lestat, the only person on this earth who had seen Louis' brown eyes.
Lestat, who says will any of them be able to look at me the way you do? and Louis feels the old covetous flare of desire. All this time, wanting Lestat all to himself.
A held breath. Looking at him, conflicting emotions tangling in his chest.
"My account," softly, absolution for Daniel. "My memories."
His thumb, running along Lestat's knuckles as he tells him, "Is this what you want me to give you? Your portrait?"
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Will there ever be a time? Too good, too bad, just right?
Mercifully, there's no silence to fill. The smile he has for Louis' question is a milder thing than it might have been before, but not disingenuous.
"I would enjoy that indulgence," he says, easy. "But only if it would please you, Louis."
A surrender, giving up the game.
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All the more reason for them to be better. More than what his limited ability could provide.
Louis' eyes drop to their linked fingers.
"I'd like to please you," Louis tells him. A thing unearthed in him, this desire. Still inside him even now. What a pleasure it is to offer Lestat the things Louis is certain he will enjoy.
But photos. There is something fraught in that.
"Ask me again when you've finished your compositions. We'll see."
See if Louis can bear to give him something less than art.
no subject
After? he's finished? his compositions?, and then we'll see? For a portrait???
Lestat lifts their linked hands, brushes a kiss to Louis' knuckles, and says, "I don't agree to those terms, but we can reopen negotiations in due course. Come," and he gets to his feet, keeping Louis' hand, pulling him up off the bench with easy strength, and still not letting go once this is done. "Let's visit Giuseppe Verdi's monument and give our thanks for the nice evening out."
And it is a nice evening. A comfortable chill in the air that reminds Lestat of former homes before New Orleans, not unpleasantly. An opera, a gift, an absolution.