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.
His picture is taken, and Lestat makes a sound of protest—both for the flash searing his retinas as well as an immediate complaint for the fact he hadn't had a chance to pose, but it wears off quickly, too immediately fond. Too immediately thrilled, also, for being Louis' first subject.
He takes the photograph with eagerness as they walk, bringing it up to look at. The flash in the dim street makes the moment unearthly, all colour leeched from his skin. Over the top of his glasses, his eyes show up nearly ice-white and blue tinged, and his expression in this split second before he flinched is expectant, keyed in on where Louis is, what he is doing, what he is thinking.
A different artefact to the formal portraits they'd taken a century ago, posing with Claudia, the occasional business partner. That had seemed less like an art to Lestat then. He wonders if he would have liked this then, its imperfection and messiness, his imperfection and messiness.
He likes it now. A smile that none should describe as 'dorky' in earshot in case he never does it again, and then veering back into Louis' space as they walk to hold it up for him to see.
"See," he urges. "When I'm famous, you can make a small fortune if you wished." He tips his head in study. "I look like Kurt Cobain." His tone implies that this is a compliment for them both.
There will be poses, Louis is certain. Their however long drive to Vermont. Whatever occupies them there, between one public appearance and the next. Lestat will pose, Daniel will grouse, Louis will run through the film and then—
Then perhaps that is all.
The little camera feels strange in his hands. Flimsy. Far from what he remembers, what he recalls of the cameras he'd used in Paris.
"You look good," Louis tells him, something Lestat of course already knows but has always liked to hear. Lets the camera dangle from one hand while he hooks the other into the bend of Lestat's elbow. "Always do."
A small fortune, dismissed.
The first photo taken in almost eighty years, and it's of Lestat. (A photo, at last. After hunting his ghost nightly in Paris.) Louis doesn't intend to part with it.
He does like to hear it. The affirmation is received well and warmly.
The second twists strangely. Not for the words themselves, really, not for the flattering, just the way it reaches back into the past, reaches forwards into the future. If things were different, perhaps Lestat could look forward to an eternity of this—trading flattery, and Louis' arm linking with his, and it could mean everything he wants it to mean.
And so, self-satisfaction twists into yearning, and it catches him sharp and sudden enough that he feels his eyes prickle. Fortunately, he can push his glasses up to sit properly on his nose, and laugh. A closed book. He has never cried for no reason in his life.
"I make an ideal subject, then," he says, reaching to slip the photograph into Louis' coat pocket. "As I said."
Precious, this little square. For all the flaws Louis will certainly find in it upon closer examination, he has already determined that it shall be kept.
He'd had so little of Lestat, all these years. Will likely have little of him in the coming years, once this tour is over. Once Lestat makes good on his resolution to become a rock star, absconds for his tour with Daniel in tow if he can convince him. Once Louis returns to Dubai and perhaps wages his war from atop his tower once more, or chooses a new field of battle until the whole slew of vengeful vampires lose interest in a century or so.
(It will be lonely. Louis has considered this, to some extent.)
"As you said," Louis agrees, easy enough. Saves his nitpicking, his meditations on his own mediocrity. Lets the conversation lapse, moving quietly together for a few moments before Louis says, "Can I ask you something, and you answer me honest?"
Hands free, Lestat can indulge in tucking the other over the bend of Louis' elbow, a cosy tangle. His keyboard balanced at his back from its strap, an easy and meaningless weight. His boot heels pitch him that little bit taller than the shoes he'd worn back when. Little differences, not unpleasant, just
threatened. Ephemeral. He is determined to enjoy his evening.
Then, this. He looks aside at Louis, as if to gauge the purpose of this set up. "Of course," he says. "I will always be honest with you."
Having secured this acquiescence, Louis says nothing immediately. Central Park is vast. They could spend a fair amount of time walking, if that's all they wish. Or Lestat has some trajectory in mind, some place he has discovered, and Louis will accompany him. He hasn't asked after the specifics of how Lestat wishes to spend the evening. Their shared company is enough.
Quiet long enough that Lestat would be forgiven for assuming Louis has thought better of what he was asking, given it up.
But eventually, "Have I burdened you with this? What I started?"
The book. The churn of outrage that followed immediately after, even before Louis made his challenge.
It is no lost on him that Lestat and Armand have both made the same point, the same roundabout observation about the dynamics of the fight as its occurred since Louis arrived in New York.
The pace Lestat has set is a wander, where the ghostly illumination of lamplight hovers amongst dark trees and slowly, the park empties itself of people. If they were in the mood, they could retreat into where the park is densest and darkest. Tonight, Lestat follows the sound of mortals, where they walk the reservoir, and the water is black and the skyline glitters beyond the trees.
It's not far, and he's in no rush. No rush, either, to answer this question. Louis has requested for truth, very specifically, and though Lestat's impulse isn't lying, he would like to make sure he isn't. That if he says everything is fine, it's true.
"What I know is my nights were empty," he says, once this is done. "And now they are full. Is that burden?"
Hardly something Louis can answer. Punts it back to Lestat asking,
"Is it?"
Has Louis been a burden? He must have been, in New Orleans. He may well be now. Failing to protect the ones he loves most, dragging a fight to their door. Hurting Lestat with the book he hasn't read and they haven't talked about.
Armand, twisting the knife. The implication of running to Lestat to make him the guard dog Lestat had accused them of treating him as.
His attention flicks back out to the path before them. "A burden is something you wish to set down. That you carry out of obligation. But if you were to say, Lestat, the puddles on this pavement will get my boots muddy, will you carry me across, I would rush to do it. And you may need to convince me to set you back down."
He is teasing, clearly, light humour in the weight he might lean his weight into him, cast a smile his way. More seriously, "You're no burden to me, Louis. Perhaps we would wish for a pleasant evening every night, uninterrupted, but I would hate to be bored."
Because if he were to cut to the heart of it, and beg Louis not to leave, or to send him away, this evening would get less pleasant quickly.
Louis quietly turns these things over in his mind. Weighs them, a counterbalance to Armand's insinuations, the things Lestat said outright.
He'd made his challenge. There had been utility in it, good strategy that Louis knows by heart, still the boy from New Orleans flexing his own strength in the face of a threat. He had known what he was inviting. Welcomed it.
It had been easier in Dubai. Many things had been easier in Dubai.
Quiet for too long, thinking on it, Louis realizes. And it's only part of what he means to ask, part of the corrosive worries circling his head.
Tacks away from them, offering instead, "I scared you, on the rooftop. I'm sorry."
Not that he'd done it, but that Lestat had to feel any of the things Louis had tasted in his blood earlier this evening. Sorry that Lestat had to fear for him, but not to have taken Eimear from the rooftop, drawn her attention away from Lestat and Daniel both.
When the silence persists, Lestat would like to think that Louis is admiring the gloom of the park at this hour. But he isn't. And neither is Lestat, watching instead Louis' face turned forward as they walk. Bracing, a little, for whatever he might say or ask next. For challenge, perhaps. Lestat has expressed unhappiness for all of this before.
It would be fair. What he receives instead is, then, a little disarming, and he veers his focus back forwards. A reminder. He hums out a sound, accepting the apology.
"I would prefer," after a moment, "that you had come to visit for the little things. I would prefer to have emerged and found the world with less challenges in it than there are now. I would prefer less reasons to fear for your life."
A little shrug. "And once, long ago, I had everything I had wanted, and look where that got us, hm?"
Lestat looks ahead and Louis' gaze slides back to him. Feels the weight of their past summoned a little closer. What they did to each other in New Orleans. How it all came apart. How Claudia chose to free them. How Louis felt he'd smelled of Lestat's blood for days, weeks, months, spiraling into despair over what they had done.
He says nothing. They haven't spoken of New Orleans, or Paris. Louis has not spoken about Dubai. They are here. They are making something of the present.
Look where it got them. Louis breathes out, breath puffing white in the cool air. Abandons his study of Lestat in profile, contents himself with the link of their arms as he looks away, eyes falling to the pavement below their feet, the winding path ahead.
"I'm sorry I brought it with me."
Naive to think he could divert the eyes of the vampire world forever.
"I've liked this. Traveling with you both," winds quietly to: "I like seeing you well. And seeing him healthy again."
Is well the right word for Lestat? He is better than he was when they parted. The right choice, Louis thinks. Agonizing, but right for both of them. And see, here is Lestat, having found his way to Daniel and onto his feet with no assistance at all from Louis.
Bittersweet. If Lestat has misgivings for the forces at play that have brought Louis back in proximity to him, the circumstances that keep him here, the way he shares Louis' affections and is likely to have even less of it whenever the other twosome find a way to spend their time together, he takes the time to fold them away in a place where s u r e l y they will never surface.
"I've liked it too," is true, anyway. He has enjoyed it, these moments with Louis, his hunts with Daniel, the unusual little group they make for however long it lasts.
He is, at least, well accustomed to live with sickly yearning. He is becoming practiced at wanting more and circling back to the conclusion that he is receiving more than he deserves. He has slipped once, and will not again.
Oblivious to this particular internal struggle, the scrutiny Louis levels Lestat-wards in the wake of this muted reply seeks more to measure this against all that's been said before. To try and discern if Lestat is being kind, even in the wake of Louis' request for honesty.
An unconscious tightening of his arm in Lestat's. Holding him a little closer, a little more securely, as they follow the loop of the path. As Louis tries to find something to say, dredge something light from beneath all his worries, beneath the weight of his conversation with Armand, what Armand left him to contemplate.
Eventually, Louis dredges up a question. Not so subtly diverging away from heavier topics.
"What now, Lestat?" swings towards lightness, an attempt being made. "Any last thing you wanna see tonight?"
Even while mired in the sorrow of not having all of Louis' attention the way he would like it—
"Can we spend the evening like this?" Lestat asks, gamely following the swing towards lightness. "See how long it takes for the city to close its eyes, to finish tossing and turning. It will get cold, and frost will paint the weeds in the pavement, on the cars, the railings. Sirens in between the silence. I quite like how cities have become, you know."
And this one, so brightly lit. He doesn't need to compare New York's vibrancy to the eighteenth century. Even modern day New Orleans lacks this scale of light and electric waste, a pleasant kind of excess.
"There is also ice skating," which isn't mutually exclusive.
A little furrow of surprise at this option, offered up so casually. Maybe not surprising that Louis doesn't seem overly tempted by the question mark of an activity, though at least part of that has to do with the options presented.
"We can keep on like this," Louis says, even as he draws them to a meandering stop. "Used to think on it a lot, how we'd walk together in New Orleans. I wouldn't mind spending the time here."
In the earliest days of their acquaintance, Louis seeing Lestat to his door, Lestat seeing Louis off to his extremely late night's work. And then later, long nights looping the park together, their nightly routine reversing, becoming the start of their day together.
"You gonna be warm enough in that?" is a measure of practicality. Lestat's outfit is so—
Lestat glances down at himself. The jeans could be thicker, and his draping silky top is prone to showing off the occasionally triangle of skin about the waist, exposed clavicles. But his jacket is very fuzzy, and besides,
"You have no constitution for cold weather," teasing, a dismissive flick of his hand. "Between Louisiana and Dubai."
He walked uphill both ways in the snow to kill wolves, and so on.
"Why? You are coming around to a lively Olympic activity after all?"
It had been cold, cold, cold as he and Claudia had moved back and forth through the war front. Trekked into the dark in search of the vampires Claudia had hoped to be more than stories.
Far from this, the kind of chill that comes to a city so lively it never truly quiets.
"I like walking with you," doesn't necessarily exclude ice skating. Maybe if Lestat applies enough pleading eyes, enough pressure, Louis will capitulate. "Reminds me of home."
In which home is as much Lestat as it is New Orleans.
He has Armand's voice now still, a needle sharp nudge, recasting the comfort Louis takes in these things, these memories, the familiarity of finding his way to them in the present.
Assurance against the possibility of pleading eyes and whimsy. Lestat is pretty sure he could coax Louis into ice skating, but perhaps it would be a waste of the time they could spend doing just this.
A pause, a debate about whether he should say the thing that comes to him next, or press it back down amongst the other little instincts and urges that have gone unexpressed. He doesn't want to be maudlin. Not when Louis is prone to pensiveness. But, oh well,
"Promise me," he says, and here, a nudge of his weight shoulder to shoulder, he's not being so serious as all this, "we'll find time to walk together often."
Often can mean anything, so long as it means again and again.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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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He takes the photograph with eagerness as they walk, bringing it up to look at. The flash in the dim street makes the moment unearthly, all colour leeched from his skin. Over the top of his glasses, his eyes show up nearly ice-white and blue tinged, and his expression in this split second before he flinched is expectant, keyed in on where Louis is, what he is doing, what he is thinking.
A different artefact to the formal portraits they'd taken a century ago, posing with Claudia, the occasional business partner. That had seemed less like an art to Lestat then. He wonders if he would have liked this then, its imperfection and messiness, his imperfection and messiness.
He likes it now. A smile that none should describe as 'dorky' in earshot in case he never does it again, and then veering back into Louis' space as they walk to hold it up for him to see.
"See," he urges. "When I'm famous, you can make a small fortune if you wished." He tips his head in study. "I look like Kurt Cobain." His tone implies that this is a compliment for them both.
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Then perhaps that is all.
The little camera feels strange in his hands. Flimsy. Far from what he remembers, what he recalls of the cameras he'd used in Paris.
"You look good," Louis tells him, something Lestat of course already knows but has always liked to hear. Lets the camera dangle from one hand while he hooks the other into the bend of Lestat's elbow. "Always do."
A small fortune, dismissed.
The first photo taken in almost eighty years, and it's of Lestat. (A photo, at last. After hunting his ghost nightly in Paris.) Louis doesn't intend to part with it.
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The second twists strangely. Not for the words themselves, really, not for the flattering, just the way it reaches back into the past, reaches forwards into the future. If things were different, perhaps Lestat could look forward to an eternity of this—trading flattery, and Louis' arm linking with his, and it could mean everything he wants it to mean.
And so, self-satisfaction twists into yearning, and it catches him sharp and sudden enough that he feels his eyes prickle. Fortunately, he can push his glasses up to sit properly on his nose, and laugh. A closed book. He has never cried for no reason in his life.
"I make an ideal subject, then," he says, reaching to slip the photograph into Louis' coat pocket. "As I said."
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He'd had so little of Lestat, all these years. Will likely have little of him in the coming years, once this tour is over. Once Lestat makes good on his resolution to become a rock star, absconds for his tour with Daniel in tow if he can convince him. Once Louis returns to Dubai and perhaps wages his war from atop his tower once more, or chooses a new field of battle until the whole slew of vengeful vampires lose interest in a century or so.
(It will be lonely. Louis has considered this, to some extent.)
"As you said," Louis agrees, easy enough. Saves his nitpicking, his meditations on his own mediocrity. Lets the conversation lapse, moving quietly together for a few moments before Louis says, "Can I ask you something, and you answer me honest?"
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threatened. Ephemeral. He is determined to enjoy his evening.
Then, this. He looks aside at Louis, as if to gauge the purpose of this set up. "Of course," he says. "I will always be honest with you."
I mean, he tries, and that's what matters.
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Quiet long enough that Lestat would be forgiven for assuming Louis has thought better of what he was asking, given it up.
But eventually, "Have I burdened you with this? What I started?"
The book. The churn of outrage that followed immediately after, even before Louis made his challenge.
It is no lost on him that Lestat and Armand have both made the same point, the same roundabout observation about the dynamics of the fight as its occurred since Louis arrived in New York.
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It's not far, and he's in no rush. No rush, either, to answer this question. Louis has requested for truth, very specifically, and though Lestat's impulse isn't lying, he would like to make sure he isn't. That if he says everything is fine, it's true.
"What I know is my nights were empty," he says, once this is done. "And now they are full. Is that burden?"
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"Is it?"
Has Louis been a burden? He must have been, in New Orleans. He may well be now. Failing to protect the ones he loves most, dragging a fight to their door. Hurting Lestat with the book he hasn't read and they haven't talked about.
Armand, twisting the knife. The implication of running to Lestat to make him the guard dog Lestat had accused them of treating him as.
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His attention flicks back out to the path before them. "A burden is something you wish to set down. That you carry out of obligation. But if you were to say, Lestat, the puddles on this pavement will get my boots muddy, will you carry me across, I would rush to do it. And you may need to convince me to set you back down."
He is teasing, clearly, light humour in the weight he might lean his weight into him, cast a smile his way. More seriously, "You're no burden to me, Louis. Perhaps we would wish for a pleasant evening every night, uninterrupted, but I would hate to be bored."
Because if he were to cut to the heart of it, and beg Louis not to leave, or to send him away, this evening would get less pleasant quickly.
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Louis quietly turns these things over in his mind. Weighs them, a counterbalance to Armand's insinuations, the things Lestat said outright.
He'd made his challenge. There had been utility in it, good strategy that Louis knows by heart, still the boy from New Orleans flexing his own strength in the face of a threat. He had known what he was inviting. Welcomed it.
It had been easier in Dubai. Many things had been easier in Dubai.
Quiet for too long, thinking on it, Louis realizes. And it's only part of what he means to ask, part of the corrosive worries circling his head.
Tacks away from them, offering instead, "I scared you, on the rooftop. I'm sorry."
Not that he'd done it, but that Lestat had to feel any of the things Louis had tasted in his blood earlier this evening. Sorry that Lestat had to fear for him, but not to have taken Eimear from the rooftop, drawn her attention away from Lestat and Daniel both.
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It would be fair. What he receives instead is, then, a little disarming, and he veers his focus back forwards. A reminder. He hums out a sound, accepting the apology.
"I would prefer," after a moment, "that you had come to visit for the little things. I would prefer to have emerged and found the world with less challenges in it than there are now. I would prefer less reasons to fear for your life."
A little shrug. "And once, long ago, I had everything I had wanted, and look where that got us, hm?"
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He says nothing. They haven't spoken of New Orleans, or Paris. Louis has not spoken about Dubai. They are here. They are making something of the present.
Look where it got them. Louis breathes out, breath puffing white in the cool air. Abandons his study of Lestat in profile, contents himself with the link of their arms as he looks away, eyes falling to the pavement below their feet, the winding path ahead.
"I'm sorry I brought it with me."
Naive to think he could divert the eyes of the vampire world forever.
"I've liked this. Traveling with you both," winds quietly to: "I like seeing you well. And seeing him healthy again."
Is well the right word for Lestat? He is better than he was when they parted. The right choice, Louis thinks. Agonizing, but right for both of them. And see, here is Lestat, having found his way to Daniel and onto his feet with no assistance at all from Louis.
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"I've liked it too," is true, anyway. He has enjoyed it, these moments with Louis, his hunts with Daniel, the unusual little group they make for however long it lasts.
He is, at least, well accustomed to live with sickly yearning. He is becoming practiced at wanting more and circling back to the conclusion that he is receiving more than he deserves. He has slipped once, and will not again.
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An unconscious tightening of his arm in Lestat's. Holding him a little closer, a little more securely, as they follow the loop of the path. As Louis tries to find something to say, dredge something light from beneath all his worries, beneath the weight of his conversation with Armand, what Armand left him to contemplate.
Eventually, Louis dredges up a question. Not so subtly diverging away from heavier topics.
"What now, Lestat?" swings towards lightness, an attempt being made. "Any last thing you wanna see tonight?"
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"Can we spend the evening like this?" Lestat asks, gamely following the swing towards lightness. "See how long it takes for the city to close its eyes, to finish tossing and turning. It will get cold, and frost will paint the weeds in the pavement, on the cars, the railings. Sirens in between the silence. I quite like how cities have become, you know."
And this one, so brightly lit. He doesn't need to compare New York's vibrancy to the eighteenth century. Even modern day New Orleans lacks this scale of light and electric waste, a pleasant kind of excess.
"There is also ice skating," which isn't mutually exclusive.
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A little furrow of surprise at this option, offered up so casually. Maybe not surprising that Louis doesn't seem overly tempted by the question mark of an activity, though at least part of that has to do with the options presented.
"We can keep on like this," Louis says, even as he draws them to a meandering stop. "Used to think on it a lot, how we'd walk together in New Orleans. I wouldn't mind spending the time here."
In the earliest days of their acquaintance, Louis seeing Lestat to his door, Lestat seeing Louis off to his extremely late night's work. And then later, long nights looping the park together, their nightly routine reversing, becoming the start of their day together.
"You gonna be warm enough in that?" is a measure of practicality. Lestat's outfit is so—
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"You have no constitution for cold weather," teasing, a dismissive flick of his hand. "Between Louisiana and Dubai."
He walked uphill both ways in the snow to kill wolves, and so on.
"Why? You are coming around to a lively Olympic activity after all?"
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Far from this, the kind of chill that comes to a city so lively it never truly quiets.
"I like walking with you," doesn't necessarily exclude ice skating. Maybe if Lestat applies enough pleading eyes, enough pressure, Louis will capitulate. "Reminds me of home."
In which home is as much Lestat as it is New Orleans.
He has Armand's voice now still, a needle sharp nudge, recasting the comfort Louis takes in these things, these memories, the familiarity of finding his way to them in the present.
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"Walking with you is my preference."
Assurance against the possibility of pleading eyes and whimsy. Lestat is pretty sure he could coax Louis into ice skating, but perhaps it would be a waste of the time they could spend doing just this.
A pause, a debate about whether he should say the thing that comes to him next, or press it back down amongst the other little instincts and urges that have gone unexpressed. He doesn't want to be maudlin. Not when Louis is prone to pensiveness. But, oh well,
"Promise me," he says, and here, a nudge of his weight shoulder to shoulder, he's not being so serious as all this, "we'll find time to walk together often."
Often can mean anything, so long as it means again and again.
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lil bow