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.
Daniel is wrapping up his conversation (they all sound like arguments), and it means he gets to backpedal and give Louis a comically incredulous look.
Where have you been!
Did Louis just try to Dad Voice him. Does Louis have one of those? He must, of course. The look on Daniel's face is of compulsory consternation of being a practically-70-year-old hearing that kind of inquiry, and also stupid affection. Did you really. He did.
Lestat is rising off the couch as Daniel backpedals back out to join them, adjusting the sit of his fuzzy jacket, flipping his trapped hair out from the collar. The pleasant ache of a bite, the distinct lightheadedness from Louis' taking. He can be amused too, and not just consumed with the agony of not possessing every scrap of Louis' focus and attention.
Getting used to it, graciously. The agony, that is.
"A rocket came through the window, as you predicted," he answers, as he roves for another angle of the room, teasing directed back over his shoulder, "but it was informed of Mr. du Lac's busy schedule and to come back another time."
Either buying Louis a moment or making it worse, difficult to say.
Recovering, plucking up the threads of poise until it's as if Louis was never unsteady at all.
The taste of Lestat's blood lingers at the back of his mouth. Inescapable. But manageable.
"No explosions," Louis deadpans in the wake of this description. "Have you accomplished all the errands you meant to do?"
All of them, in their own ways, pulling up stakes and preparing to leave town. It's not a hardship for Louis, not really. He's managed all aspects of his small empire remotely for years.
"Yeah." He holds up a square box, a raised tab on one corner from where it was hanging on a sales rack. Colorful descriptions of the product within, ominous in its tackiness. No pause to show it off before he's tossing it Blondiewards. "Lestat got you a present."
Daniel is going to say something else—
Catches sight of him properly, and a flicker of something else. Maybe Lestat will notice the way Daniel recognizes the fortified appearance, and feels relief and approval. Thank fuck he's not just using blood bags after that. Anyway. That gets folded up quick as anything, unwilling to betray any deeper associations. But: Good.
Lestat catches it, turning it in his hands to look at. Processing bright colours, plastic, blocky script. In his mind, he does well at betraying nothing on his face for what he thinks of it. In reality, there's a distinctly distrustful shape to his mouth, a visible pulling in of a breath before he looks back up, a smile in place.
"Yes," he got Louis a present. "Here it is."
Retracing those steps to offer out the instant camera, clearly taken off a wall somewhere inexpensive. "We can make believe we are all taking a vacation, and not making a tactical retreat."
Louis' face does something inscrutable and pained in the immediate, before whatever passing conflux of emotion is swept away into behind Louis' well-honed composure.
Some brittle quality remains, in spite of this.
"Thank you," is only polite. Is not effusive, is not colored by any enthusiasm or dismay as Louis handles the box. Not opening it, just observing type face and splashy fonts, stock photography and slightly gummy price sticker. Considers setting it down, as he lifts his eyes to look between Lestat and Daniel.
Reminds them, "You're very kind, but you both know your company has been enough of a gift for me."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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.
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"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."
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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."
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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?
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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."
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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.
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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?"
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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."
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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."
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Where have you been!
Did Louis just try to Dad Voice him. Does Louis have one of those? He must, of course. The look on Daniel's face is of compulsory consternation of being a practically-70-year-old hearing that kind of inquiry, and also stupid affection. Did you really. He did.
"Errands."
As Per My Electronic Mail (Sticky Note).
"Nothing exploded while I was gone?"
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Getting used to it, graciously. The agony, that is.
"A rocket came through the window, as you predicted," he answers, as he roves for another angle of the room, teasing directed back over his shoulder, "but it was informed of Mr. du Lac's busy schedule and to come back another time."
Either buying Louis a moment or making it worse, difficult to say.
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The taste of Lestat's blood lingers at the back of his mouth. Inescapable. But manageable.
"No explosions," Louis deadpans in the wake of this description. "Have you accomplished all the errands you meant to do?"
All of them, in their own ways, pulling up stakes and preparing to leave town. It's not a hardship for Louis, not really. He's managed all aspects of his small empire remotely for years.
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With the rocket.
"Yeah." He holds up a square box, a raised tab on one corner from where it was hanging on a sales rack. Colorful descriptions of the product within, ominous in its tackiness. No pause to show it off before he's tossing it Blondiewards. "Lestat got you a present."
Daniel is going to say something else—
Catches sight of him properly, and a flicker of something else. Maybe Lestat will notice the way Daniel recognizes the fortified appearance, and feels relief and approval. Thank fuck he's not just using blood bags after that. Anyway. That gets folded up quick as anything, unwilling to betray any deeper associations. But: Good.
No further commentary.
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"Yes," he got Louis a present. "Here it is."
Retracing those steps to offer out the instant camera, clearly taken off a wall somewhere inexpensive. "We can make believe we are all taking a vacation, and not making a tactical retreat."
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Some brittle quality remains, in spite of this.
"Thank you," is only polite. Is not effusive, is not colored by any enthusiasm or dismay as Louis handles the box. Not opening it, just observing type face and splashy fonts, stock photography and slightly gummy price sticker. Considers setting it down, as he lifts his eyes to look between Lestat and Daniel.
Reminds them, "You're very kind, but you both know your company has been enough of a gift for me."
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bow territory i think