Settling alongside him, Louis breathes a little easier. Remembering that night after the opera too, talking about their daughter. Lestat's fingers hovering over Claudia's face framed in gold. How carefully they had arranged themselves, mindful of the ways they touched.
And here is Lestat, talking easily of the future. Of returning again, occupying this bench again. Nights ahead of them. Nights without interruption. A breath. A sigh. Louis stretches an arm out across the back of the bench along Lestat's shoulders, hooks an ankle up over his knee.
"He did," Louis agrees. Pleased still that invitation has been extended to Lestat. Pleased with their friendship, as ever. "I'm sorry we can't stay longer."
Which, yes, their hasty exit is not solely about Louis, but it's not not about Louis. There would always be another stop. They would always go on to Vermont. But they're going as quickly as they are because of him. Louis is considering that too.
"Stop that," he says, head tipping back on the hinge of his neck. "You must think me spoiled, complaining about not having more nights wandering New York City at our leisure. I like it, it's been nice, we should come back, that is all."
Lestat does not exactly know the shape of things, directly after the tour. Doesn't wish to pry them out, or frighten them away. But he thinks they will come back here still, whether very soon or a further flung future, and that is well enough.
"No apologies of any kind," he says, once he restores his posture. "For the rest of the evening, s'il te plaît. Besides, I have a gift for you."
We held in Louis' hand, turned over. Something else to consider, later. A thing they haven't spoken about.
A gift, Lestat says, and Louis feels it like a fingers pressing down hard over a bruise.
"Lestat," he says, soft. A little despairing. Caught, regardless, because Louis has already determined that this won't be stopped by any kind of protest or politeness.
"'Lestat'," Lestat echoes, shifting aside so he can get at his jacket pocket. "'Merci beaucoup, how thoughtful and kind. Perhaps I am the richest man in the world,'" is, surely, a deliberate exaggeration, "'but how sweet of you to recall that I still enjoy my material possessions'. Something like that, I think you mean."
Anyway—a gift, produced. It's nearing Christmas, and so it's not difficult to find a little charity table near a retail centre providing gift wrapping services. He had chosen the least Christmas-y kind, lest Louis get any ideas about being able to refuse holiday gifting, a slightly mishappen bundle taped in silvery paper with a green ribbon stuck on the broadest surface.
It's the camera, again, this time taken out of its packaging and bundled in paper with the film rolls Daniel had bought.
Louis' hand lifts from the bench, toys absently with the stray locks of Lestat's hair as the gift is presented.
This brings New Orleans to mind too. Their Christmases together. The gifts they'd share outside of holidays, for the pleasure of surprising each other. And then, Claudia. The gifts they would shower her with. How complicated that became, when they realized they could not buy her the things she needed.
And now, this camera in its silvery wrapping.
Louis lifts his arm away, reaches to lift the little package out of Lestat's hand. Turn it in his own, uses a nail to neatly slice away the tape. Slip the camera from the gleaming paper, the additional packets of film falling into his lap.
But the flippancy subsides, just a little, studying Louis' face through violet glass. Wondering at this, this instinct to pull away from some apparent long ago failure. At the scant years spent on something he longed to master, at the way he is a vampire and could spend the next century becoming the best photographer that ever lived, if he wished it so. It probably wouldn't even take that long.
But. Lestat lifts a hand, sets his sunglasses on his head, the arms pinning back his hair. "I haven't played the piano for fifty years," he says, casting a look out at the wide pathway. "I've continued to practice, bien sûr, but it isn't the same."
Louis looks over to him, this measure of time settling between them. The camera comes to rest on one thigh. New Orleans recedes. San Francisco looms closer. Lestat's words in Armand's mouth. The things Armand told him came after, that Louis can't remember still.
It would have been unthinkable, parting Lestat from his music. From his piano above all other things. But parted he has been. Louis saw the wreckage, occupying one corner of that waterlogged cottage.
"Why did you stop?" Louis asks, a gentle invitation. Easily declined, if he chooses.
He looks away, considers the newly obtained keyboard next to him. It isn't the best of the best. In part because the best of the best require equipment, and this substantially lesser model has the benefit of committing hardware to its own speakers and battery, and so, here it is.
"I broke my last one," Lestat says. "And I didn't wish to break another. And I broke it," before Louis might feel moved to ask, "because I was upset, and unable to properly hear what I was doing. I would play a little, I would tune it, or try to, play some more," and so on, a stretch of fingers seems to say. "Anyway. I know what it is to be dissatisfied with your art. And there is wisdom," he has already given Daniel enough credit, "in lowering your expectations."
A mid-tier keyboard is probably a notch above an instant camera purchased off a wall, but an attempt was made. And anyway, his last attempt was an ever damp piece of driftwood. He's done his time.
Fifty years ago, Lestat was doing this. Alone, with the wreckage of his piano in New Orleans.
Louis is reluctant to ask outright. To try and put a timeline to it, to align it with what was unfolding in a small room in San Francisco. Instead, Louis gives him a faint smile for this proposal.
Here, Lestat's focus returns, shifting in his sit on the bench to turn his body inwards towards Louis. He does not, very much, wish to go over the painful things—or at least, does not want to lead them down that path himself, given how he has had a tantrum over Louis refraining from sharing his hurts.
This is about a camera, and a keyboard.
"That you use up all this film you've been given," he says, "and I will play again. Perform. Tonight, if you wish."
You probably need a permit in Central Park, but also, he does whatever he wants.
Louis tips a glance down at the assortment of film packs in his lap. Tips one to the side with a single finger.
"One performance, for all this film?"
Nevermind the bigger question. The things they aren't discussing. Lestat's plans for a tour. Whatever musical compositions that entails. Where Louis will be while Lestat is becoming a rock star.
And the little room. Lestat's voice in Armand's mouth. Armand's voice in his head.
"There are twelve pieces of film in each of these packs."
His arm lifts, slings back along the bench behind Lestat. An invitation to consider the math. Twelve times the absurd number of packs Daniel has purchased.
"And how long does a performance last?" is quick on the tail of it, head tipped. "Longer than a photograph."
Lestat, a little at a disadvantage. If all was as it was, this is where he might touch Louis, play his fingertips along the edge of his coat, find an excuse to press knee to thigh. But then, he didn't have those tools in his arsenal when they were out in public anyway.
And so—
"Twelve, then," because the number doesn't matter. It won't matter once the first time has occurred.
"Photograph lasts a hell of a long time, you put it in a frame."
Not even in a frame. Louis' photographs in archival boxes, carried out of Paris. Preserved. Moments frozen in time. Claudia, smiling with her fangs out. Her impromptu snaps of Louis across the table in a Parisian cafe. Her at her dressing table, applying her lipstick. Pulling a face at him. Little moments that are so painful to look at, just as the diaries were agony to touch for so long.
But no. Louis pulls himself back.
"Anytime I ask?" he questions. "Twelve performances, whenever I ask you?"
Louis had never had to ask. But they are a long way away from their home, Lestat's well-cherished piano, their well-appointed salon.
As if this were driving a hard bargain. As if, even with his own tangled reservations towards his return to the piano, it were any kind of burden to create a situation in which Louis is obliged to ask him to perform, and Lestat obliged to do so. As if the idea of Louis asking him for anything, more substantial than his continued existence and proximity, doesn't set off a twee flutter of feeling in his chest.
He is a good enough actor, but not as talented at lying as Claudia had suspected him of being, and the corner of his mouth turns up, unbidden. "Yes," he says. "And I must see the photographs if you were to listen to my performances."
A flicker of discomfort, some self-conscious tension in Louis' face at the stipulation.
Louis who has no idea that Daniel has gone ahead and displayed the whole of what he'd scanned of Louis' work for Lestat's perusal.
He looks briefly away. Strange, to be here. He'd dreamed Lestat in the little shared apartment, looking at his photographs. Critiquing. Flipping through a scattered assortment, eyes sharp. There had been a time where Louis had wanted this more than anything. Lestat, indulging him.
He is more aware now than he was then of how little he has to show off, years of honing his critical ability giving him a better understanding of what his work lacks.
Inevitably, his eyes return to Lestat. Fingers drum on the wood of the bench behind Lestat's shoulders as Louis asks, "How many of 'em?"
And inevitably, a flicker of anxiety. He senses a misstep. Daniel's explanations had emphasised the absence of pressure, the humbleness of the gift, and perhaps demanding to see the end product goes against the thing. Too eager. Selfish. Assumptive, that he would simply have full access to what Louis makes of this.
In this pause, Lestat considers how he might take it back without it going even more off-kilter—
Rescued, maybe. Self-consciousness reflected back at him, but played off with a little shrug. "I hadn't considered the math," dry. "Any you like. They're for you, not me."
"You consider the math, you'd have to adjust how many performances you'd be owing to match," Louis deadpans, unable to resist the urge to speak on potential valuations. Get a little more for whatever mediocre work he produces. No heat behind it. They are playing.
Lestat doesn't push him. It is enough space for Louis to continue on, to tell him, "Not sure they're for me anymore. But I'll come up with some, for you."
A long breath drawn in, and then, "Okay," and here, he can't help himself, Louis will just have to forgive the way Lestat clips a couple fingers around the edge of Louis' coat lapel, a pointless but affectionate little tug at the fabric. Braces against the wave of yearning that rises, crests. Getting used to it.
"Yes," Louis answers, low. A deep ache at the hitch of fingers, this small touch. "It's a deal."
So it's settled. Louis aware that he's gotten away with something, whatever Lestat has to say about fifty years without playing. Louis remembers exactly how talented Lestat is. A singular musician. And Louis—
Adequate.
He sets the camera down on his thigh. The mess of film remains where it settled in his lap.
If they stay on this bench any longer, he'll be fending off the urge to practically climb into Louis' lap, he thinks.
So. Lestat unfolds his legs and gets to his feet in one smooth motion, snagging up the strap attached to the keyboard's case, hefting it up against his back. "We walk," he says, resettling his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. Louis has left it up to him, after all. "We find a spot for you to cash in. Perhaps a talent scout will be walking the wilderness of Central Park and discover me, and I'll make it big."
"I haven't taken any pictures to cash in," is minor protest.
Louis remains seated, taking only a few moments to collect the packs of film and vanish them into this or that pocket. To consider the camera in its cardboard packaging before forcing himself to pop open the top. Withdraw the absurd item Daniel has selected.
He'd been so—
Hard to remember now, exactly, what he felt for that first camera. Opportunity, maybe. Or just...excitement. Something that felt eager, and young. Louis remembers that sense so clearly. Claudia had laughed. He'd joined her. Laughed at himself. Relieved to have something to laugh about, something easy at last.
(Had it been hope he'd felt? Maybe.)
This is not the same. Reserved. All things dampened by what came before. What came in the hours before he arrived here. In the long years since he last lifted a camera. All his own had remained in Paris, abandoned, but Louis had taken the photos. He'd wanted them. He doesn't know what he'll feel for these, on their glossy white-squared film.
"You eat?" is an off-hand query, as Louis rises at last. Deposits wrapping and packaging all into a trash can before falling in alongside Lestat.
Lestat would like to know more of it. The first camera, the first photograph. The book had included Louis' words on the matter, but he has his own follow ups. But there will be some time for that, and perhaps he's gotten away with enough for one evening. Perhaps, it will come easier once Louis has done the thing one or two times more.
Patient for Louis to rise, pivoting once he is on his feet so they can roam in step.
"I ate," he confirms. "And true. If you wish for my performance tonight, you will have to begin."
But: a swerve, a bump of his shoulder to Louis. "I will content myself with your company otherwise. Gift enough, and so on."
Unreasonable to feel nettled. This is a kind gesture. It would have been kind enough as it stood in the hotel room, all three of them gathered together. It has been made more by Lestat, additions of gleaming wrapping paper and the coaxing promise of a performance.
Mediocre. Adequate. A small office cluttered with the work of superior artists, in which Louis had been instructed upon the clear difference between his work and theirs. We know it when we see it. True now as it had been then.
Louis carries these contemplations alongside the weightier matters he's been turning over in his head. His own inadequacies, as it were.
Still, when they come to a bend in the looping park path, Louis hangs back. Waits for Lestat to turn to him before he lifts the camera and snaps a picture of him.
Daniel hadn't been kidding. The flash is more than excessive. Louis grimaces a little behind the lens as the camera grinds out its first square of film.
"There," he says, tugging the film free. Waving it in the air, moving to fall back in alongside Lestat. "We made a start."
How many frames in Paris developed hoping to see Lestat come into focus? Slapping his own face, hyperventilating, a split second thinking maybe—
But Lestat had never come out in film then. He does now, his image blooming across the photo as it develops. Louis hands it over for inspection, sight unseen.
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And here is Lestat, talking easily of the future. Of returning again, occupying this bench again. Nights ahead of them. Nights without interruption. A breath. A sigh. Louis stretches an arm out across the back of the bench along Lestat's shoulders, hooks an ankle up over his knee.
"He did," Louis agrees. Pleased still that invitation has been extended to Lestat. Pleased with their friendship, as ever. "I'm sorry we can't stay longer."
Which, yes, their hasty exit is not solely about Louis, but it's not not about Louis. There would always be another stop. They would always go on to Vermont. But they're going as quickly as they are because of him. Louis is considering that too.
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Lestat does not exactly know the shape of things, directly after the tour. Doesn't wish to pry them out, or frighten them away. But he thinks they will come back here still, whether very soon or a further flung future, and that is well enough.
"No apologies of any kind," he says, once he restores his posture. "For the rest of the evening, s'il te plaît. Besides, I have a gift for you."
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A gift, Lestat says, and Louis feels it like a fingers pressing down hard over a bruise.
"Lestat," he says, soft. A little despairing. Caught, regardless, because Louis has already determined that this won't be stopped by any kind of protest or politeness.
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Anyway—a gift, produced. It's nearing Christmas, and so it's not difficult to find a little charity table near a retail centre providing gift wrapping services. He had chosen the least Christmas-y kind, lest Louis get any ideas about being able to refuse holiday gifting, a slightly mishappen bundle taped in silvery paper with a green ribbon stuck on the broadest surface.
It's the camera, again, this time taken out of its packaging and bundled in paper with the film rolls Daniel had bought.
"You can open it," generously.
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This brings New Orleans to mind too. Their Christmases together. The gifts they'd share outside of holidays, for the pleasure of surprising each other. And then, Claudia. The gifts they would shower her with. How complicated that became, when they realized they could not buy her the things she needed.
And now, this camera in its silvery wrapping.
Louis lifts his arm away, reaches to lift the little package out of Lestat's hand. Turn it in his own, uses a nail to neatly slice away the tape. Slip the camera from the gleaming paper, the additional packets of film falling into his lap.
"What will I do with this, Lestat?"
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Innocent.
But the flippancy subsides, just a little, studying Louis' face through violet glass. Wondering at this, this instinct to pull away from some apparent long ago failure. At the scant years spent on something he longed to master, at the way he is a vampire and could spend the next century becoming the best photographer that ever lived, if he wished it so. It probably wouldn't even take that long.
But. Lestat lifts a hand, sets his sunglasses on his head, the arms pinning back his hair. "I haven't played the piano for fifty years," he says, casting a look out at the wide pathway. "I've continued to practice, bien sûr, but it isn't the same."
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Louis looks over to him, this measure of time settling between them. The camera comes to rest on one thigh. New Orleans recedes. San Francisco looms closer. Lestat's words in Armand's mouth. The things Armand told him came after, that Louis can't remember still.
It would have been unthinkable, parting Lestat from his music. From his piano above all other things. But parted he has been. Louis saw the wreckage, occupying one corner of that waterlogged cottage.
"Why did you stop?" Louis asks, a gentle invitation. Easily declined, if he chooses.
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He looks away, considers the newly obtained keyboard next to him. It isn't the best of the best. In part because the best of the best require equipment, and this substantially lesser model has the benefit of committing hardware to its own speakers and battery, and so, here it is.
"I broke my last one," Lestat says. "And I didn't wish to break another. And I broke it," before Louis might feel moved to ask, "because I was upset, and unable to properly hear what I was doing. I would play a little, I would tune it, or try to, play some more," and so on, a stretch of fingers seems to say. "Anyway. I know what it is to be dissatisfied with your art. And there is wisdom," he has already given Daniel enough credit, "in lowering your expectations."
A mid-tier keyboard is probably a notch above an instant camera purchased off a wall, but an attempt was made. And anyway, his last attempt was an ever damp piece of driftwood. He's done his time.
"Can we make a deal?"
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Louis is reluctant to ask outright. To try and put a timeline to it, to align it with what was unfolding in a small room in San Francisco. Instead, Louis gives him a faint smile for this proposal.
"What kind of deal?"
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This is about a camera, and a keyboard.
"That you use up all this film you've been given," he says, "and I will play again. Perform. Tonight, if you wish."
You probably need a permit in Central Park, but also, he does whatever he wants.
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Louis tips a glance down at the assortment of film packs in his lap. Tips one to the side with a single finger.
"One performance, for all this film?"
Nevermind the bigger question. The things they aren't discussing. Lestat's plans for a tour. Whatever musical compositions that entails. Where Louis will be while Lestat is becoming a rock star.
And the little room. Lestat's voice in Armand's mouth. Armand's voice in his head.
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Pleased. Flirtatious. Oblivious, while Louis is playing along.
"What would meet your satisfaction?" Lestat asks, letting the foot on the leg he has over a knee bounce a little. "Two performances."
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His arm lifts, slings back along the bench behind Lestat. An invitation to consider the math. Twelve times the absurd number of packs Daniel has purchased.
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Lestat, a little at a disadvantage. If all was as it was, this is where he might touch Louis, play his fingertips along the edge of his coat, find an excuse to press knee to thigh. But then, he didn't have those tools in his arsenal when they were out in public anyway.
And so—
"Twelve, then," because the number doesn't matter. It won't matter once the first time has occurred.
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Not even in a frame. Louis' photographs in archival boxes, carried out of Paris. Preserved. Moments frozen in time. Claudia, smiling with her fangs out. Her impromptu snaps of Louis across the table in a Parisian cafe. Her at her dressing table, applying her lipstick. Pulling a face at him. Little moments that are so painful to look at, just as the diaries were agony to touch for so long.
But no. Louis pulls himself back.
"Anytime I ask?" he questions. "Twelve performances, whenever I ask you?"
Louis had never had to ask. But they are a long way away from their home, Lestat's well-cherished piano, their well-appointed salon.
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As if this were driving a hard bargain. As if, even with his own tangled reservations towards his return to the piano, it were any kind of burden to create a situation in which Louis is obliged to ask him to perform, and Lestat obliged to do so. As if the idea of Louis asking him for anything, more substantial than his continued existence and proximity, doesn't set off a twee flutter of feeling in his chest.
He is a good enough actor, but not as talented at lying as Claudia had suspected him of being, and the corner of his mouth turns up, unbidden. "Yes," he says. "And I must see the photographs if you were to listen to my performances."
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Louis who has no idea that Daniel has gone ahead and displayed the whole of what he'd scanned of Louis' work for Lestat's perusal.
He looks briefly away. Strange, to be here. He'd dreamed Lestat in the little shared apartment, looking at his photographs. Critiquing. Flipping through a scattered assortment, eyes sharp. There had been a time where Louis had wanted this more than anything. Lestat, indulging him.
He is more aware now than he was then of how little he has to show off, years of honing his critical ability giving him a better understanding of what his work lacks.
Inevitably, his eyes return to Lestat. Fingers drum on the wood of the bench behind Lestat's shoulders as Louis asks, "How many of 'em?"
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In this pause, Lestat considers how he might take it back without it going even more off-kilter—
Rescued, maybe. Self-consciousness reflected back at him, but played off with a little shrug. "I hadn't considered the math," dry. "Any you like. They're for you, not me."
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Lestat doesn't push him. It is enough space for Louis to continue on, to tell him, "Not sure they're for me anymore. But I'll come up with some, for you."
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Maybe. "It's a deal, then?"
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So it's settled. Louis aware that he's gotten away with something, whatever Lestat has to say about fifty years without playing. Louis remembers exactly how talented Lestat is. A singular musician. And Louis—
Adequate.
He sets the camera down on his thigh. The mess of film remains where it settled in his lap.
Asks, "What now, Lestat?"
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So. Lestat unfolds his legs and gets to his feet in one smooth motion, snagging up the strap attached to the keyboard's case, hefting it up against his back. "We walk," he says, resettling his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. Louis has left it up to him, after all. "We find a spot for you to cash in. Perhaps a talent scout will be walking the wilderness of Central Park and discover me, and I'll make it big."
City of dreams, and all that. So he's heard.
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Louis remains seated, taking only a few moments to collect the packs of film and vanish them into this or that pocket. To consider the camera in its cardboard packaging before forcing himself to pop open the top. Withdraw the absurd item Daniel has selected.
He'd been so—
Hard to remember now, exactly, what he felt for that first camera. Opportunity, maybe. Or just...excitement. Something that felt eager, and young. Louis remembers that sense so clearly. Claudia had laughed. He'd joined her. Laughed at himself. Relieved to have something to laugh about, something easy at last.
(Had it been hope he'd felt? Maybe.)
This is not the same. Reserved. All things dampened by what came before. What came in the hours before he arrived here. In the long years since he last lifted a camera. All his own had remained in Paris, abandoned, but Louis had taken the photos. He'd wanted them. He doesn't know what he'll feel for these, on their glossy white-squared film.
"You eat?" is an off-hand query, as Louis rises at last. Deposits wrapping and packaging all into a trash can before falling in alongside Lestat.
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Patient for Louis to rise, pivoting once he is on his feet so they can roam in step.
"I ate," he confirms. "And true. If you wish for my performance tonight, you will have to begin."
But: a swerve, a bump of his shoulder to Louis. "I will content myself with your company otherwise. Gift enough, and so on."
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Mediocre. Adequate. A small office cluttered with the work of superior artists, in which Louis had been instructed upon the clear difference between his work and theirs. We know it when we see it. True now as it had been then.
Louis carries these contemplations alongside the weightier matters he's been turning over in his head. His own inadequacies, as it were.
Still, when they come to a bend in the looping park path, Louis hangs back. Waits for Lestat to turn to him before he lifts the camera and snaps a picture of him.
Daniel hadn't been kidding. The flash is more than excessive. Louis grimaces a little behind the lens as the camera grinds out its first square of film.
"There," he says, tugging the film free. Waving it in the air, moving to fall back in alongside Lestat. "We made a start."
How many frames in Paris developed hoping to see Lestat come into focus? Slapping his own face, hyperventilating, a split second thinking maybe—
But Lestat had never come out in film then. He does now, his image blooming across the photo as it develops. Louis hands it over for inspection, sight unseen.
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lil bow