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.
Lestat is asking for such a small thing. Walks. Shared company. Louis has little business thinking of a church, a fire-lit altar. Lestat's weight over his thigh, hand at his chest. Promising, offering. Companionship. Acceptance.
All things vastly bigger than what they are capable of weathering in this moment, when all things between them feel fragile. Easily shattered. (Remembering Lestat banging open the door to his room, yelling, yelling in a way Louis hadn't thought him capable of still.)
And even so, even with the flutter of apprehension:
"Of course," softly. Weighted. Louis has not received the memo that this is not so serious. "Always."
Though of course here is the reality—
"Whenever you can find time for me, when you're so famous."
Say nothing of the many vampires that wish to tear Louis' limbs from his body.
Comfortably settling into something like how they intend to continue. Finding time for each other, making small and achievable promises.
What had he imagined of the day that Louis finds him again, hiding away? He had, at a certain point, stopped imagining it completely, and had found himself entirely unprepared when that day finally (finally) came about. But Lestat knows himself. Knows the kind of wild fantasies and hopes he might have harboured, even at a distance from himself.
Knows that even at his lowest moments, Louis has found someone else and it isn't even Armand would not have crossed his mind. Ego. Ego, and the idea of seeking alternative companionship being about as appealing as the prospect of crossing the Atacama desert.
"Then I promise you in return," Lestat says. So there. "You say, like you don't have your own horde of salivating fans intruding on our time."
To say something of the many vampires. A hair toss follows, "We endure."
Side-stepping Louis' fans. (Fans, critics, Louis is certain their chosen method of expression when it comes to their opinions of him will be identical.) Side-stepping what Louis may or may not choose to endure.
This, the promise they're making, feels like it'd fit in the palm of Louis' hand. Already, Louis worries over it. Over how they'd keep it once Lestat makes good on his intentions. Once Louis returns to Dubai. (When. This too, a growing certainty, even if Louis has said nothing aloud.) Will Lestat find someone else to hold his attention, easy in all the ways Louis is not and never has been?
"Been enduring long enough," he says instead, as the path slopes downward and his grip on Lestat's arm tightens. "You should have something good now."
Unexpected, this flash of—resentment? Perhaps that. Something bitter, rising, fangs out. That Louis can abandon him for long decades, and then one day step into his life, declare his punishment over, and say, you're free, Lestat, find happiness, as he waltzes back out of it.
Ducks his head as they walk, bracing against it. Abjures it somewhere. Those fans of the book (the human kind, not the vampiric) might say, shouldn't Lestat be snarling and snapping by now? Throwing a tantrum, perhaps. He thinks it was not emphasised enough how much bullshit he became practiced at swallowing, actually, all the time, skipping years to each instance where something finally gave.
Louis' grip on his arm is tight. He is wishing good things for him. Affection persists, after all this time. For that, he can be grateful, can't he?
"I should," he agrees. "But I am choosing to start small, mm? You should encourage this behaviour."
I should, Lestat says, and Louis aches. Aches and aches for the thought of Lestat, happy, somewhere in the world without him. Ugly and selfish, this feeling. Louis pushes it away, sequestered away with Armand's steadily delivered—
Accusation is not the right word. Armand had simply said all these things to Louis, and now Louis must carry them alongside all the rest.
"I am encouraging," Louis relents. "Just like you encouraging me to spend a lot of film while we're together."
Will Louis find happiness in that? Unclear. But he likes the bargain they've struck, likes the promise of Lestat singing for him.
Does something to skitter aside more complicated feelings, replaced with the satisfaction that he has managed to gift Louis something once again, that it has been received. Under duress, one might say, but Lestat would tell that one that getting Louis to do anything he exclusively doesn't wish to do is impossible. And the blood, first, not just the camera.
Louis who must feel better now because of him. So, he lets himself be pleased, laugh, believe this night to be a good one when the last was so horrible.
"Then when I am America's most famous rockstar and you are filling galleries with your photographs, we will know it was each other's doing."
And he thinks of Claudia. Claudia, sitting across the table from him snapping his picture. Claudia, jabbing him with her toes as he strung up clotheslines for his photos. Claudia, eyes bright alongside him at the table while he told her about art, about his art.
Painful, still. But Louis can feel it. Remember it.
Here and now, Louis catches Lestat's wrist, undoing the link of their arms to draw Lestat to a sudden halt. Just long enough to press a brief kiss to his cheek, grip tight. A silent expression of something too big for Louis to say, something he hasn't fully named.
"Then come on back with me, and give me that song," Louis tells him, drawing back. Returning to what they have determined to be polite stasis. "Let me start my encouragement early, before we gotta start driving."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
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—
no subject
"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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
Lestat is asking for such a small thing. Walks. Shared company. Louis has little business thinking of a church, a fire-lit altar. Lestat's weight over his thigh, hand at his chest. Promising, offering. Companionship. Acceptance.
All things vastly bigger than what they are capable of weathering in this moment, when all things between them feel fragile. Easily shattered. (Remembering Lestat banging open the door to his room, yelling, yelling in a way Louis hadn't thought him capable of still.)
And even so, even with the flutter of apprehension:
"Of course," softly. Weighted. Louis has not received the memo that this is not so serious. "Always."
Though of course here is the reality—
"Whenever you can find time for me, when you're so famous."
Say nothing of the many vampires that wish to tear Louis' limbs from his body.
no subject
What had he imagined of the day that Louis finds him again, hiding away? He had, at a certain point, stopped imagining it completely, and had found himself entirely unprepared when that day finally (finally) came about. But Lestat knows himself. Knows the kind of wild fantasies and hopes he might have harboured, even at a distance from himself.
Knows that even at his lowest moments, Louis has found someone else and it isn't even Armand would not have crossed his mind. Ego. Ego, and the idea of seeking alternative companionship being about as appealing as the prospect of crossing the Atacama desert.
"Then I promise you in return," Lestat says. So there. "You say, like you don't have your own horde of salivating fans intruding on our time."
To say something of the many vampires. A hair toss follows, "We endure."
no subject
Side-stepping Louis' fans. (Fans, critics, Louis is certain their chosen method of expression when it comes to their opinions of him will be identical.) Side-stepping what Louis may or may not choose to endure.
This, the promise they're making, feels like it'd fit in the palm of Louis' hand. Already, Louis worries over it. Over how they'd keep it once Lestat makes good on his intentions. Once Louis returns to Dubai. (When. This too, a growing certainty, even if Louis has said nothing aloud.) Will Lestat find someone else to hold his attention, easy in all the ways Louis is not and never has been?
"Been enduring long enough," he says instead, as the path slopes downward and his grip on Lestat's arm tightens. "You should have something good now."
no subject
Ducks his head as they walk, bracing against it. Abjures it somewhere. Those fans of the book (the human kind, not the vampiric) might say, shouldn't Lestat be snarling and snapping by now? Throwing a tantrum, perhaps. He thinks it was not emphasised enough how much bullshit he became practiced at swallowing, actually, all the time, skipping years to each instance where something finally gave.
Louis' grip on his arm is tight. He is wishing good things for him. Affection persists, after all this time. For that, he can be grateful, can't he?
"I should," he agrees. "But I am choosing to start small, mm? You should encourage this behaviour."
no subject
Accusation is not the right word. Armand had simply said all these things to Louis, and now Louis must carry them alongside all the rest.
"I am encouraging," Louis relents. "Just like you encouraging me to spend a lot of film while we're together."
Will Louis find happiness in that? Unclear. But he likes the bargain they've struck, likes the promise of Lestat singing for him.
no subject
Does something to skitter aside more complicated feelings, replaced with the satisfaction that he has managed to gift Louis something once again, that it has been received. Under duress, one might say, but Lestat would tell that one that getting Louis to do anything he exclusively doesn't wish to do is impossible. And the blood, first, not just the camera.
Louis who must feel better now because of him. So, he lets himself be pleased, laugh, believe this night to be a good one when the last was so horrible.
"Then when I am America's most famous rockstar and you are filling galleries with your photographs, we will know it was each other's doing."
lil bow
And he thinks of Claudia. Claudia, sitting across the table from him snapping his picture. Claudia, jabbing him with her toes as he strung up clotheslines for his photos. Claudia, eyes bright alongside him at the table while he told her about art, about his art.
Painful, still. But Louis can feel it. Remember it.
Here and now, Louis catches Lestat's wrist, undoing the link of their arms to draw Lestat to a sudden halt. Just long enough to press a brief kiss to his cheek, grip tight. A silent expression of something too big for Louis to say, something he hasn't fully named.
"Then come on back with me, and give me that song," Louis tells him, drawing back. Returning to what they have determined to be polite stasis. "Let me start my encouragement early, before we gotta start driving."