'No way, it was your idea. You can just blame me for all the parts that suck. I'm a notoriously bad gifter anyway.'
See. Easy.
A long drive, though—
Lestat might be able to sense a brief hint towards reluctance. Should he go with them? Give them space? (Deal with Armand, on his own? He can't imagine the lurking ancient wants to be left behind.) He might have to end up being on the phone the whole fucking drive anyway, forcing Lestat and Louis to sit in bored silence as he gets work done, and potentially pulls over halfway through in some bed and breakfast town to have dinner with fucking Raglan. Hm.
But not distracted from that twinge. A little incredulous, a little amused (and so an apology did in fact get Daniel somewhere), Lestat queries, 'You're thinking of ditching us?'
The camera settled, at least. The other half of the thing he wants to give them still sits in a folder tucked into the shopping bag that he's putting the camera box back into—
Maybe not yet. He and Louis might argue still. He doesn't want to appear to be trying quite that hard to get out of a conversation, he doesn't want to add another emotional weight to a bad week. The timing is strange. Once they get to their next location, he decides. Satisfied enough to have had it printed out now, in civilization with appropriate facilities. Vermont? What the fuck is in Vermont? Hopefully electricity, at least.
'Not in earnest,' is wry. 'But I have shit to juggle, still.'
Work. Secret agents. Eldritch horrors with big amber eyes.
'Just trying to work out a schedule in my head that doesn't make anyone insane.'
'Louis hasn't been trapped in a car for hours listening to me argue with people who aren't him.'
But there's a note of humor to his (mental) tone. Daniel resolves not to try and find a way to weasel out of it, self-aware at least partially that he's just avoiding emotional significance like an asshole. And of course the very real element of anxiety concerning what, exactly, the fuck, he's going to do about the prospect of Armand tagging along from the shadows.
A mark against all Louis' assertions of fine and nothing to worry about that he sleeps so late. Rises with bruises not yet faded. (The perils of forgoing the restorative properties of human blood taken hot from the vein and relying on donations, collected, sealed, and reheated in a cup.)
He wakes alone. Lays in coffin and weathers the complex feelings that turn provokes, before emerging.
Sitting up in his coffin, he can hear Lestat moving in his room. Can see the sticky note on Daniel's coffin, an immediate herald of his absence. Feels something complicated about all this as well, and chooses to set these things aside.
The lid of his coffin thunks audibly closed, followed by footsteps, the softer click of a bedroom door swinging shut. In the privacy of his own rooms, Louis can observe the faded shadows of bruising at his throat. Let himself be annoyed by it. Fall into familiar rituals, early evening ablutions that are unchanged in spite of the last night's skirmish.
Louis takes his time. (Louis is uncertain what waits for him when he emerges.) But eventually, returns to the main room to summon Rachida. Today's fashion: a mid-weight, high-necked sweater of mossy green, slightly oversized. He'd bent to roll back the hem of deep gold corduroy trousers to accommodate heavier boots, dropped a leather jacket of rich, creamy brown onto the back of the couch as he passes.
Intends to go out, maybe. Attend to last minute errands of his own. Stubbornly refuses to be cowed by the potential for any repetition of last night's trainwreck. He intends on continuing to be difficult to kill.
He bends to collect the post-it from the lid of Daniel's coffin.
Louis is not given an opportunity to linger alone once he emerges from his room. On cue, the sound of a door opening, footsteps.
Hair: texturised. Outfit: a lot. Faux fur, firstly, a jacket with fuzzy leopard spots over miscellaneous silken black textures beneath, which are permitted to fall over a pair of tight-fitted jeans. Boots with wide heels elevate him a predictable amount, and violet Wal-Mart glasses hang from his collar.
Lestat, likewise, has an air of perhaps intending on going out, errands and murder, but who can say when he will also get fully dressed, makeup and accessories included, and then go nowhere for the night if he doesn't feel like it.
"Bonsoir," he says, a wiggly meander on his way over. It doesn't sound disparaging when he says, "Dressing for an innocuous night out?" Mostly due to the way it invites an impulse to touch the various textures within reach. Keeps his hands to himself, bundled behind him.
Sticky note slipped into a pocket as he turns, takes in Lestat in all his splendor. Maybe smiles a little over the choice in glasses. Curbs the impulse to reach for him, mindful that he woke alone. That Lestat is entitled to space, that Louis had requested separation in the distance. They've been skirting the edges of what had been agreed upon, but that's no reason to push further.
"I've a few last threads to tie off before we go," Louis confirms. "Thought I'd handle it this evening."
Innocuous allowed to pass without commentary, taking it on its face.
Will there ever be a time that even an offhanded compliment from Louis would not make the world spin a little differently, a little more optimistically? Only if Lestat were making his best effort to deny it, perhaps.
"You as well," on the way to, "if tender, still." His eyes lingering on where shadows have failed to fade on Louis' skin. Distressing reminders for him personally. The reminder of a restrictive diet. The old misgivings and fretting that always came out wrong and hostile between them.
Head tipped as he asks, "Perhaps I can make a donation before you attend to your business. I assume your staff aren't squeamish."
There is no confusion as to what Lestat means. Louis understands the offer perfectly, is only taken aback by its unexpectedness. Caught entirely off-guard by the ease with which Lestat extends something so intimate.
It can be nothing other than intimate. (The memory of dinners ending with Armand, crossing to occupy the vacant seat alongside Louis, bare his neck, tip into Louis' hands without any hesitation.)
Louis hesitates now. The offer tugs something tender and raw in his chest, and he knows less what to do with it than he does the bruises, vestiges of their near miss the night before.
"No one is squeamish," he confirms, feeling his way through his own uncertainty, the uneven beat of his heart. Wanting. Apprehensive anyway. "But you ain't obligated that way. I'll be just fine in a day or two."
Is this the right thing? Louis is guided only by his sense of boundary, how careful they are with each other, the sense that he would be transgressing. He woke alone. What else does that signal but a return to the status quo?
Unbeknownst to them, a parallel. A maker offering his blood to his fledgling. A similar but also entirely different kind of resistance. Unbeknownst to Lestat, some half-thought thing caught from Daniel's mind, of what he might or should do, pushing him past the delineated territories of who they are to one another.
But, Lestat must reason, this is immutable: he is Louis' maker. If nothing else, that is always what he will be.
A flicker of a smile. Leaning forward, teasing nearly, when he says, "You must tell me no, if you don't wish to. I have already settled it in myself."
The hesitation doesn't abate. It maintains, this restraint in Louis, as he looks into Lestat's face. All the things that he is, Lestat. The deep affection that Louis holds for him, regardless of what they are to each other in the moment.
Affection. Love. Things maybe better left untouched. Things Lestat may have left behind. Louis said so many things, in the book. They have been apart for so long. Lestat woke early, left Louis to wake alone.
Is it so easy to offer this? Is it obligation?
Louis can glean nothing from Lestat's face. He's smiling, teasing, and Louis is alone with his hesitations.
"You that worried for me?" Louis murmurs, which isn't a no. Not yet.
The smile and teasing dims, more of a shift in mood than a retreat. A shrug of faux-fur laden shoulders as Lestat says, "I don't like seeing you hurt," which
is a hilarious understatement. It is all very fresh, still. He can still feel the concrete crumbling beneath his nails from his frantic attempts to get to his feet as Louis was taken from him.
He could say: I am worried about you. Louis would say: you don't need to, I'm fine. Then Daniel will walk through the door and the thing will be lost, or they will simply circle the point until Lestat becomes frustrated or Louis crumbles and it will likely be the former because Louis is nothing if not stubborn in his suffering and perhaps it would all play out like this even if they were companions again. But he doesn't know.
How often did Louis drink from Armand? The book never specified.
"We are helping each other," he says, light. "Does it suit you to go out, wounded?"
A thing Louis could point out: It's hardly helping you to weaken yourself for me.
But it is much the same, Louis thinks, as the reason for their coffins dragged into one room. For Lestat in his coffin last night. They were attacked. This will ease some of what lingers.
Maybe it is nothing else. Maybe it is this simple.
Louis reaches out to take his hand. Squeeze his fingers a little in his own.
Assuring him, these words. Assuring him, this action.
Lestat will take it.
Allows his hand to be taken in turn. His nails have the remnants of black nail polish, slowly chipped away, but the flex and curl of his fingers is all familiar, very particular grace.
And certainly, part of him, most of him, desires to bare his throat to him, a tempting kind of too much, too far, too close that he considers as his eyes drag a look down Louis' jaw, his throat. Tugs at his hand, directing them both towards the couch nearby, sitting down and ushering Louis to sit with him.
Here, he can shrug off his jacket. The fashionable drapey thing beneath bares his arms, and a little rattling collection of silver jewelry hangs off his wrists. "Here," he says—directing Louis not to his wrist or throat, but touching his upper arm, between elbow and shoulder, where the artery is laid closed to the surface. "Straight from the heart."
Hesitating, still. Contemplating newly bared skin, the closeness with which they seat themselves on the couch. Louis' grip resettles, fingers circling Lestat's wrist, thumb hooked beneath the loops of silver there.
Briskly crushes the flutter of disappointment, of wanting to put fangs to Lestat's throat. A transgression. Louis knows better.
"Only a sip," Louis cautions. "Don't let me take too much."
For so many reasons, but chief among them how it would weaken Lestat. How Louis does not wish to do anything of the sort.
His free hand thumbs up the delicate skin offered to him in the wake of Lestat's instructive little touch. Louis takes a moment, looking down as if to consider the angle more fully, and—
Maybe it's a bad idea.
Lestat had looked so pleased though.
So Louis lowers his head. Kisses that beating pulse in Lestat's arm before he drops his fangs, uses them to carefully break the skin.
Lestat accommodates, allowing Louis to move his arm as he prefers.
"Neatly," he says. As if he were still teaching him, over a century later.
Holds his breath through the kiss, and then through the sting of fangs piercing through. The squeeze of pressure, the immediate sense of a pull, tingled numbness flowing down his arm to his fingertips. Only a sip, Louis says, when he would very much enjoy the sensation of Louis taking his proper fill of him.
It would be harder to resist if he'd given his throat. To stop the thing that is letting Louis hold him close, as if they hadn't done that all night. Something to taste in his blood, that sense of comfort in closeness, the panic and rage of last night, and then the chill wind of the sky flowing around him like water as he dived from it, all ice cold intent forged of and replacing that panic, that rage.
His other hand moves to fan and settle his fingers against Louis' nape, thumb gently rubbing in that little spot behind his ear.
A passing thought: Louis' instincts had been correct. This is a kind of transgression. It is too intimate. It will be wrenchingly difficult to let go.
Leaning half over him to drink from Lestat's arm, the lay of Lestat's hand heavy across his neck, Louis has a sense of dreaming. That he didn't wake and will open his eyes alone once more in coffin.
The encouraging press of Lestat's thumb prompts a soft sound, a shuddering sort of catch in Louis' body between one swallow and the next. The circling touch like a tug on a hook behind Louis' belly, interfering with his heartbeat. Lestat's tastes as Louis remembers. Better. Complicated, with recollections and emotion lingering from the night before. Louis drinks down all these things, the deep emotion and sense memory flowing forth from Lestat's blood, confirmation of all things Louis had guessed at but now feels in his body body.
Only a sip, Louis had stipulated. Wrenching, just as he had expected, when he forces himself to let go. Moving already to cut his fingertips on a thumbnail, reaching unsteadily to close up the deep impressions of his fangs before blood trickles out onto Lestat's chosen finery.
His breathing, a little unsteady. As if he has become too aware of it, must manage it consciously while Louis drinks, pulls blood from veins. Only a sip, this little drink, but Lestat can feel the low swoop of sensation at the immediate loss.
Wants, more than anything, for Louis to continue to drink. Wants to have offered his neck after all and wants to bury his own fangs in Louis' flesh until they are a single loop of bloodletting, blood drinking, a single organism. Wants to know for absolute certainty that it isn't the last time between them, fangs sinking into flesh.
Louis recovers his self-control. Pity.
Lestat slides his hand down off Louis' neck, palm resting high on his chest as Louis tends to the wound. "You've come far," he says. "I am certain your donors appreciate your restraint."
Nothing Louis had managed in their time together. Enough, chéri, in the midst of lovemaking. He misses that as well.
With his palm set over Louis' chest, there is no way hiding the uneven thud of his heart, the shallow quality of his breath. The taste of Lestat heavy in his mouth, an intoxicant. Difficult to coax his fangs back and away, trying to swallow back the urge to lean back in, undo the work of own blood-slick fingers healing away the mark he'd left.
They remain there, touching where his teeth had been, while his opposite hand lifts to cover Lestat's. This too, old habit.
"Took me a few more decades than we guessed," Louis answers, unable to curb the breathless quality in his voice. Swallows again. Offers, "But I got hold of it, in the end."
More or less. The ways in which he restricts himself, how carefully he attempts to step outside of those restrictions, Louis doesn't want to debate them now.
"Thank you," is what he wants to say. Low. Sincere.
It's nothing, an absurd nicety. Recalls the words dedicated to Louis' painful recovery, how much faster it would have gone if he'd feasted off of human blood, off of his own blood. But then, Lestat did not need Daniel's book to be painfully aware of it, the slow healing happening across the Mississippi. These bruises are nothing in comparison.
Louis accepting his blood is, conversely, everything. Denies the urge to offer thanks in return, or lick the blood off Louis' fingers. "I can join you in your errands later. Say goodbye to civilisation for the time being."
The urge to bite him again doesn't ebb. Louis is hyperaware of all the places they touch. Of the taste of him.
Says, "I'd like that," before he's fully considered the offer, swaying slightly in against the palm splayed across his chest. A warding kind of pressure, keeping Louis upright, grounded in the remainders of their set boundaries.
Still, his eyes catch briefly on Lestat's mouth. Draws a breath, lips parting, as—
As he straightens, suddenly, a pull at the edge of his awareness. His head turns, clocking Daniel's approach before he clears the elevators.
Look, Lestat knew Daniel was on his way back, it's his own fault for not hiding in a back room for optimal romance potential.
Annnyyway. Daniel is on the phone AGAIN as he exits the elevator and heads to his own room, calling out, "Good morning," over his shoulder into the primary sitting area but not actually stopping or paying any close attention to them, and thus missing (or seeming to miss) any gloomy looks or teenage-like awkward posturing. Still has the shopping back, but he's en route to put something away. Also arguing with someone about the Vatican. Don't worry about it. This is the tag. We are doing a scene transition.
His own attempt to distract himself falters when he feels that slight pressure of Louis leaning against his hand, finding himself at the centre of Louis' attention, aware that Louis likely still tastes his own blood at the back of his tongue—
And still a moment of gazing when Louis turns his head and Lestat can appreciate the curve of neck and shoulder, tendon and muscle, before he pulls back from this and indulges in a sigh. Hands slipping back from Louis, collecting up his jacket from behind him to slip back over his shoulders, unmindful of remaining smears of blood on his arm. Hard to be fussed about such things, as a vampire.
"Then you can text me," he says, as if they are having a normal conversation, "when you would like some company."
The look of confusion on Louis' face is an unavoidable by product of trying to recalibrate from Daniel's sudden appearance in the midst of a moment where Louis' entire thought process was struggling through the overwhelming, familiar experience of desiring Lestat.
It is not helped by the still incongruous suggestion that Louis texts him.
So maybe Louis can be forgiven for answering, "What?" as he buffers through to steadier, cooler composure to correct himself and supplement, "Yes, I'll text you."
And then swivel his focus as he straightens, collects himself to call back, "Where have you been?" towards Daniel's room.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
See. Easy.
A long drive, though—
Lestat might be able to sense a brief hint towards reluctance. Should he go with them? Give them space? (Deal with Armand, on his own? He can't imagine the lurking ancient wants to be left behind.) He might have to end up being on the phone the whole fucking drive anyway, forcing Lestat and Louis to sit in bored silence as he gets work done, and potentially pulls over halfway through in some bed and breakfast town to have dinner with fucking Raglan. Hm.
no subject
And then,
'Thank you for finding it.'
The gift he'd been looking for.
But not distracted from that twinge. A little incredulous, a little amused (and so an apology did in fact get Daniel somewhere), Lestat queries, 'You're thinking of ditching us?'
That will go down so well.
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Maybe not yet. He and Louis might argue still. He doesn't want to appear to be trying quite that hard to get out of a conversation, he doesn't want to add another emotional weight to a bad week. The timing is strange. Once they get to their next location, he decides. Satisfied enough to have had it printed out now, in civilization with appropriate facilities. Vermont? What the fuck is in Vermont? Hopefully electricity, at least.
'Not in earnest,' is wry. 'But I have shit to juggle, still.'
Work. Secret agents. Eldritch horrors with big amber eyes.
'Just trying to work out a schedule in my head that doesn't make anyone insane.'
no subject
A shrugging tone carries this message.
'And Louis loves to behold your juggling acts. I would not worry.'
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But there's a note of humor to his (mental) tone. Daniel resolves not to try and find a way to weasel out of it, self-aware at least partially that he's just avoiding emotional significance like an asshole. And of course the very real element of anxiety concerning what, exactly, the fuck, he's going to do about the prospect of Armand tagging along from the shadows.
'I'll let you go. Be back soon.'
Camera in tow.
contribution delayed by Fashion.
He wakes alone. Lays in coffin and weathers the complex feelings that turn provokes, before emerging.
Sitting up in his coffin, he can hear Lestat moving in his room. Can see the sticky note on Daniel's coffin, an immediate herald of his absence. Feels something complicated about all this as well, and chooses to set these things aside.
The lid of his coffin thunks audibly closed, followed by footsteps, the softer click of a bedroom door swinging shut. In the privacy of his own rooms, Louis can observe the faded shadows of bruising at his throat. Let himself be annoyed by it. Fall into familiar rituals, early evening ablutions that are unchanged in spite of the last night's skirmish.
Louis takes his time. (Louis is uncertain what waits for him when he emerges.) But eventually, returns to the main room to summon Rachida. Today's fashion: a mid-weight, high-necked sweater of mossy green, slightly oversized. He'd bent to roll back the hem of deep gold corduroy trousers to accommodate heavier boots, dropped a leather jacket of rich, creamy brown onto the back of the couch as he passes.
Intends to go out, maybe. Attend to last minute errands of his own. Stubbornly refuses to be cowed by the potential for any repetition of last night's trainwreck. He intends on continuing to be difficult to kill.
He bends to collect the post-it from the lid of Daniel's coffin.
It's fine. All things, fine.
no subject
Hair: texturised. Outfit: a lot. Faux fur, firstly, a jacket with fuzzy leopard spots over miscellaneous silken black textures beneath, which are permitted to fall over a pair of tight-fitted jeans. Boots with wide heels elevate him a predictable amount, and violet Wal-Mart glasses hang from his collar.
Lestat, likewise, has an air of perhaps intending on going out, errands and murder, but who can say when he will also get fully dressed, makeup and accessories included, and then go nowhere for the night if he doesn't feel like it.
"Bonsoir," he says, a wiggly meander on his way over. It doesn't sound disparaging when he says, "Dressing for an innocuous night out?" Mostly due to the way it invites an impulse to touch the various textures within reach. Keeps his hands to himself, bundled behind him.
no subject
"I've a few last threads to tie off before we go," Louis confirms. "Thought I'd handle it this evening."
Innocuous allowed to pass without commentary, taking it on its face.
"You look nice."
no subject
Will there ever be a time that even an offhanded compliment from Louis would not make the world spin a little differently, a little more optimistically? Only if Lestat were making his best effort to deny it, perhaps.
"You as well," on the way to, "if tender, still." His eyes lingering on where shadows have failed to fade on Louis' skin. Distressing reminders for him personally. The reminder of a restrictive diet. The old misgivings and fretting that always came out wrong and hostile between them.
Head tipped as he asks, "Perhaps I can make a donation before you attend to your business. I assume your staff aren't squeamish."
no subject
It can be nothing other than intimate. (The memory of dinners ending with Armand, crossing to occupy the vacant seat alongside Louis, bare his neck, tip into Louis' hands without any hesitation.)
Louis hesitates now. The offer tugs something tender and raw in his chest, and he knows less what to do with it than he does the bruises, vestiges of their near miss the night before.
"No one is squeamish," he confirms, feeling his way through his own uncertainty, the uneven beat of his heart. Wanting. Apprehensive anyway. "But you ain't obligated that way. I'll be just fine in a day or two."
Is this the right thing? Louis is guided only by his sense of boundary, how careful they are with each other, the sense that he would be transgressing. He woke alone. What else does that signal but a return to the status quo?
no subject
But, Lestat must reason, this is immutable: he is Louis' maker. If nothing else, that is always what he will be.
A flicker of a smile. Leaning forward, teasing nearly, when he says, "You must tell me no, if you don't wish to. I have already settled it in myself."
no subject
Unbearable.
The hesitation doesn't abate. It maintains, this restraint in Louis, as he looks into Lestat's face. All the things that he is, Lestat. The deep affection that Louis holds for him, regardless of what they are to each other in the moment.
Affection. Love. Things maybe better left untouched. Things Lestat may have left behind. Louis said so many things, in the book. They have been apart for so long. Lestat woke early, left Louis to wake alone.
Is it so easy to offer this? Is it obligation?
Louis can glean nothing from Lestat's face. He's smiling, teasing, and Louis is alone with his hesitations.
"You that worried for me?" Louis murmurs, which isn't a no. Not yet.
no subject
is a hilarious understatement. It is all very fresh, still. He can still feel the concrete crumbling beneath his nails from his frantic attempts to get to his feet as Louis was taken from him.
He could say: I am worried about you. Louis would say: you don't need to, I'm fine. Then Daniel will walk through the door and the thing will be lost, or they will simply circle the point until Lestat becomes frustrated or Louis crumbles and it will likely be the former because Louis is nothing if not stubborn in his suffering and perhaps it would all play out like this even if they were companions again. But he doesn't know.
How often did Louis drink from Armand? The book never specified.
"We are helping each other," he says, light. "Does it suit you to go out, wounded?"
no subject
But it is much the same, Louis thinks, as the reason for their coffins dragged into one room. For Lestat in his coffin last night. They were attacked. This will ease some of what lingers.
Maybe it is nothing else. Maybe it is this simple.
Louis reaches out to take his hand. Squeeze his fingers a little in his own.
"It ain't as bad as it looks."
Stipulating.
But then—
"Show me where."
no subject
Lestat will take it.
Allows his hand to be taken in turn. His nails have the remnants of black nail polish, slowly chipped away, but the flex and curl of his fingers is all familiar, very particular grace.
And certainly, part of him, most of him, desires to bare his throat to him, a tempting kind of too much, too far, too close that he considers as his eyes drag a look down Louis' jaw, his throat. Tugs at his hand, directing them both towards the couch nearby, sitting down and ushering Louis to sit with him.
Here, he can shrug off his jacket. The fashionable drapey thing beneath bares his arms, and a little rattling collection of silver jewelry hangs off his wrists. "Here," he says—directing Louis not to his wrist or throat, but touching his upper arm, between elbow and shoulder, where the artery is laid closed to the surface. "Straight from the heart."
no subject
Briskly crushes the flutter of disappointment, of wanting to put fangs to Lestat's throat. A transgression. Louis knows better.
"Only a sip," Louis cautions. "Don't let me take too much."
For so many reasons, but chief among them how it would weaken Lestat. How Louis does not wish to do anything of the sort.
His free hand thumbs up the delicate skin offered to him in the wake of Lestat's instructive little touch. Louis takes a moment, looking down as if to consider the angle more fully, and—
Maybe it's a bad idea.
Lestat had looked so pleased though.
So Louis lowers his head. Kisses that beating pulse in Lestat's arm before he drops his fangs, uses them to carefully break the skin.
no subject
"Neatly," he says. As if he were still teaching him, over a century later.
Holds his breath through the kiss, and then through the sting of fangs piercing through. The squeeze of pressure, the immediate sense of a pull, tingled numbness flowing down his arm to his fingertips. Only a sip, Louis says, when he would very much enjoy the sensation of Louis taking his proper fill of him.
It would be harder to resist if he'd given his throat. To stop the thing that is letting Louis hold him close, as if they hadn't done that all night. Something to taste in his blood, that sense of comfort in closeness, the panic and rage of last night, and then the chill wind of the sky flowing around him like water as he dived from it, all ice cold intent forged of and replacing that panic, that rage.
His other hand moves to fan and settle his fingers against Louis' nape, thumb gently rubbing in that little spot behind his ear.
no subject
Leaning half over him to drink from Lestat's arm, the lay of Lestat's hand heavy across his neck, Louis has a sense of dreaming. That he didn't wake and will open his eyes alone once more in coffin.
The encouraging press of Lestat's thumb prompts a soft sound, a shuddering sort of catch in Louis' body between one swallow and the next. The circling touch like a tug on a hook behind Louis' belly, interfering with his heartbeat. Lestat's tastes as Louis remembers. Better. Complicated, with recollections and emotion lingering from the night before. Louis drinks down all these things, the deep emotion and sense memory flowing forth from Lestat's blood, confirmation of all things Louis had guessed at but now feels in his body body.
Only a sip, Louis had stipulated. Wrenching, just as he had expected, when he forces himself to let go. Moving already to cut his fingertips on a thumbnail, reaching unsteadily to close up the deep impressions of his fangs before blood trickles out onto Lestat's chosen finery.
no subject
Wants, more than anything, for Louis to continue to drink. Wants to have offered his neck after all and wants to bury his own fangs in Louis' flesh until they are a single loop of bloodletting, blood drinking, a single organism. Wants to know for absolute certainty that it isn't the last time between them, fangs sinking into flesh.
Louis recovers his self-control. Pity.
Lestat slides his hand down off Louis' neck, palm resting high on his chest as Louis tends to the wound. "You've come far," he says. "I am certain your donors appreciate your restraint."
Nothing Louis had managed in their time together. Enough, chéri, in the midst of lovemaking. He misses that as well.
no subject
They remain there, touching where his teeth had been, while his opposite hand lifts to cover Lestat's. This too, old habit.
"Took me a few more decades than we guessed," Louis answers, unable to curb the breathless quality in his voice. Swallows again. Offers, "But I got hold of it, in the end."
More or less. The ways in which he restricts himself, how carefully he attempts to step outside of those restrictions, Louis doesn't want to debate them now.
"Thank you," is what he wants to say. Low. Sincere.
no subject
It's nothing, an absurd nicety. Recalls the words dedicated to Louis' painful recovery, how much faster it would have gone if he'd feasted off of human blood, off of his own blood. But then, Lestat did not need Daniel's book to be painfully aware of it, the slow healing happening across the Mississippi. These bruises are nothing in comparison.
Louis accepting his blood is, conversely, everything. Denies the urge to offer thanks in return, or lick the blood off Louis' fingers. "I can join you in your errands later. Say goodbye to civilisation for the time being."
Sorry Vermont.
no subject
Nothing. How ridiculous.
The urge to bite him again doesn't ebb. Louis is hyperaware of all the places they touch. Of the taste of him.
Says, "I'd like that," before he's fully considered the offer, swaying slightly in against the palm splayed across his chest. A warding kind of pressure, keeping Louis upright, grounded in the remainders of their set boundaries.
Still, his eyes catch briefly on Lestat's mouth. Draws a breath, lips parting, as—
As he straightens, suddenly, a pull at the edge of his awareness. His head turns, clocking Daniel's approach before he clears the elevators.
no subject
Annnyyway. Daniel is on the phone AGAIN as he exits the elevator and heads to his own room, calling out, "Good morning," over his shoulder into the primary sitting area but not actually stopping or paying any close attention to them, and thus missing (or seeming to miss) any gloomy looks or teenage-like awkward posturing. Still has the shopping back, but he's en route to put something away. Also arguing with someone about the Vatican. Don't worry about it. This is the tag. We are doing a scene transition.
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And still a moment of gazing when Louis turns his head and Lestat can appreciate the curve of neck and shoulder, tendon and muscle, before he pulls back from this and indulges in a sigh. Hands slipping back from Louis, collecting up his jacket from behind him to slip back over his shoulders, unmindful of remaining smears of blood on his arm. Hard to be fussed about such things, as a vampire.
"Then you can text me," he says, as if they are having a normal conversation, "when you would like some company."
He's going to get an A+ in friendship.
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It is not helped by the still incongruous suggestion that Louis texts him.
So maybe Louis can be forgiven for answering, "What?" as he buffers through to steadier, cooler composure to correct himself and supplement, "Yes, I'll text you."
And then swivel his focus as he straightens, collects himself to call back, "Where have you been?" towards Daniel's room.
Nailed it.
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bow territory i think