There is a hasty exchange with Jeannie, the resident and most trustworthy zillennial, and then—
Incidentally also spylike, Lestat props his phone against the back of Louis' shoulder to peek the camera at the stage over the top, though there is still probably some visible sparkle from the case catching the light anyway. Whatever. Stealth mode journalism, recording Daniel's performance, a video which will also catch a low laugh from him at Daniel's smooth talk-singing correction, at the participatory shouts from a nearby table.
Also picks up a muttered complaint, "I don't know this song," to whoever might be listening.
A video which will also capture Louis laughing, soft and contained but unmistakable. Unmistakable, and deeply fond.
Daniel is so.
Himself.
So entirely unchanged, parted only from the disease that had been slowly killing him. Louis is so pleased about it. Had been pleased too, Daniel arriving in Dubai grown old and still sharp, still recognizable and familiar. This is not so far from that moment. An echo of that feeling, only now made more complex by present circumstances.
Explanation of the song is left in Jeannie's capable hands. Louis has hooked an ankle up over his knee, lounging back in his chair into the light, incidental touch required by Lestat's spycraft.
When he time comes, Louis is effusive in his applause. Whistles through two fingers, over the rest of the bar.
Daniel does a respectable bit of 'dancing', hands raised, side to side. Nothing that screams of wanting to recapture his youth, but he's playing along. No stage fright, even through the occasional laugh with his head ducked, incredulous at himself.
"Thank you, thank you," he still has the microphone, "I always knew in my heart I was destined to be a pop idol, and I'm here tonight in the Burlington Coat Factory, Vermont, to debut on this stage— yes, thank you,"
he is doing a bit, see, and this carries on for a minute as he walks as far away from the DJ as he can with the mic still plugged in, as said DJ participates gamely in the bit by trying to herd grandpa offstage, which he eventually does, after making a cartoonish bow.
Does not hop down, that would be pushing it. A normal retreat, passing the baton to whoever is after him, a young man agonizing between something by Johnny Cash and the siren song of Offspring's Pretty Fly for a White Guy.
Lestat only doesn't applaud because he is on 'old man recording' duty, and also a little distracted with a fond and slightly rueful glance to Louis beside him. Mixed feelings. Asshole behaviour, he knows, to want to be the only person in the world capable of making Louis laugh. A part of him he needs to hold back with both hands from devouring his ability to be simply pleased at the sound of it. That it can be evoked so readily.
He manages to stop recording without handing over his phone to Jeannie as Daniel returns (though there is going to be a random blurry few seconds length video after where he doubts he did it properly and starts recording again, and fixes this too). Not as smooth, this spycraft, but the deed is done.
"Naturally weird," he laughs, but follows it up with a "Thank you", so. You know. Not too self-effacing. (Eyes that burn like cigarettes. The song means nothing, and Daniel is heterosexual, don't worry about it.)
Jeannie is hammered, still, but clapping delightedly. Drunk enough that she's considering doing a song by herself, which seems much easier this side of all the alcohol. So it's on a delay when she notices Louis giving her an opening, but she scoots in there— "Everything booked by a bar. By this bar. In the future. But like not here."
"If you sang at your book readings, I would attend them all."
In case this is a major priority for Daniel.
Anyway, it has been too long without the attention of the masses on him alone, so Lestat is standing. He reaches past Mark to go and take Jeannie's hand, because the wobbly hamster wheel churning of song considerations happening in her brain barely takes effort for him to listen in on, and they might as well score a foothold in the queue.
"I leave it to you two to charm Louis into a song," he announces, as he makes to move around the table, leading Jeannie along. "Or I will be very disappointed."
The bottle abandoned on the table is easy enough to take custody of as Lestat absconds with Jeannie. He is filling his own cup to slide over to Daniel, casual about the allocation of resources as Mark levers unsteadily into Lestat's seat.
"He's exaggerating," Louis deadpans. An interjection that heralds a no.
Keeps an eye on Lestat's approach. There are a number of people perking up as the collection of assembled mortals notice Lestat and Jeannie making their way towards the current organizing entity, hands twitching towards phones.
Evidence enough for Louis to stand by it: this is certainly a marketing strategy worth considering.
"It was hardly singing, but thank you. I'm keeping my opera talents hidden. For now."
Most of the videos being taken are going to be wobbly and indistinguishable, even the shiniest, newest Pixel cameras struggling with the dim, low-ceiling bar lights and the bright single stage light with its slowly rotating gel wheel. But still. Alcohol-soaked memories, held by intangible data, whatever that is.
A salute with the glass, to Louis. Close enough to a grasshopper. (Which would taste like glue anyway.)
"Any predictions on what we think their direction'll be?"
Meanwhile: Johnny Cash of some description, and a guy really having a wild go at it.
Louis' amendment gets a pirouetted accusatory look back towards the table, but Lestat leaves it there. He is exaggerating, only because he doubts anyone's ability to make Louis du Lac do anything he doesn't want to.
Least of all Mark's ability. Anyway. (Daniel has the best chance of all of them, Lestat is sure, but Daniel will not wield this ability for evil.)
At the sign ups, there is some fluttering around who should go first, but it's Lestat, Lestat will go first, making his selection while he talks Jeannie into her more ambitious hopes and dreams. Some banter with the DJ. Lestat, promising not to go rogue in such a tone that makes no such promise at all.
"None," Louis admits to Daniel, turning back to him after having met Lestat's look with a small, teasing smile. "He is unpredictable."
Understatement.
Louis says this so affectionately.
Mark has managed his very careful transfer between two chairs. A sign, perhaps, of intoxication, one that becomes clearer without Jeannie to overshadow it. Louis nudges a stray glass of water along the table to him as he touches Daniel's mind, asks: Is he what you imagined?
Mark takes the water; Daniel notices that, every so often, something he's drinking turns blue. Apparently he's not great at magic, but when intoxicated, weird shit can happen anyway. It's a little funny.
'Who, Mark?'
Daniel is very funny.
'Yes and no.' They're talking (sort of) about Lestat. 'He's charming, he's intense. I get it.'
Should he ask if they're making it work, if Louis is comfortable with Lestat around? If he feels safe after that outburst? Mm. Too much, for tonight.
He's having a nice time, and so it's not very pointed, but he still feels it: a spark of suddenly realized guilt. Armand has been in his apartment before Louis. He might say that, in fairness, it's clear Armand had been there on his own prior to Daniel's awareness, but still. Invited him in, more than once. He gave him a fucking key. Again, he could make the pathetic excuse of, well, Armand was breaking in anyway, might as well.
Still.
His junky mismatched decor, his tacky ceilings. He doesn't think Louis will like it. But he resolves to make sure he comes over anyway. Even out the scales.
'Not if I move first,' he jokes. 'If my offer on a house goes through in time, you can just see a pristine, empty home, instead of all my totally pedestrian art and knickknacks.'
Cue the jokes about Louis' long hiatus from true manual labor.
But it's a real offer. Louis would do this for him. (He would also pay to have it done, oversee it from afar.)
Don't sell your apartment, Louis offers. Keep it. You might need it again.
A split between real estate advice and something more genuine. This apartment Louis had never seen that was once Daniel's home. It shouldn't be set aside.
And also—
And I'd like to see it. Your place, before you tidy up all signs of yourself.
'I probably can't even sell it,' he admits. 'I've done too much to it over the years.'
Maybe he just doesn't want to have to paint over the clouds. They're not incredible or anything, but he likes them. Enough that he's been thinking about getting the same thing done in the new place. Maybe different shades, different times of day. Armand would probably have decent input. Frescos, all that shit.
They better not be making wedding plans back there.
A song or two slips by, and the queue, such as it is, is proportionately short compared to the crowd. As the next song wraps up, Jeannie returns to the table. Smiling, face flushed, grabbing at Mark's arm as she swings herself down into his former seat. Drunk and happy, but also mortified. She'd let herself get talked into an Adele song and is second guessing everything. Mark, trying to help, says she sounds great in the shower. She puts her head on the table.
No such attacks of nerves on the stage with Lestat again ascending, mic in hand, as if the space personally belonged to him. "Some of you may be aware," he is saying, and it's fifty-fifty on whether he is mind controlling the DJ yet again into affording him a little dramatic build up, or was simply slipped him a twenty, "of my monstrous proclivities. That I feed on the blood of terrible performers, and perhaps, you think, the Vampire Lestat is attending a buffet."
Some laughs, some jeers, the latter of which he points to and says, "But this is not so. I tell you this, because I will need your help for my next performance, and I wouldn't wish anyone to be afraid of singing with me. Also I will eat everyone who fails to."
A little gesture to the DJ, and moody piano suffuses the room. "Front table, I am counting on you," Lestat adds, before he begins the first line of Bonnie Tyler's karaoke favourite.
Overwrought, comedic on purpose, and as promised, full of audience participation for the overlapping vocals, directing the microphone out for backing as well as the titular lyric. Front table does indeed have his back, but it's an easy song to gather buy-in, and enough drunk people to happily shout-sing along all the way back to the bar, to cheer for the keychange, or laugh at the little improvisations in between.
Of course, alongside it all, Lestat meets the eighties power ballad on its own terms. There was no singing like this a century ago, two centuries ago, but oh, he does enjoy it, clear pleasure taken in making his voice meet the challenge. Good work, modern sensibility.
They are very far away from New Orleans, from the courtyard stage of the Azalea, but the performance is now as it was then. The ability Lestat has to play to his audience, to sweep every individual observing him up into his wake as he fills the space with his presence.
There is simply no comparable performer.
Some awareness of the beginnings of a thing. Louis watching Lestat so attentively, picking up the invocation of the name, the descriptor Louis had relayed to Daniel that had perhaps made it into the book. Louis observes him summon it and realign it, make it into something to suit him.
Something to think about in the coming weeks, whatever they may bring. (Nothing eventful, surely.)
Presently, the expression of satisfaction and joy on Lestat's face matters more. Louis is so pleased to see it. Happier to applaud, whenever opportunity allows.
Some people in the crowd have no idea what the Tabarnak with the great voice is talking about, most people think he's a very fun cosplayer here for the book thing, but a couple are believers. Little Mermaid especially. Lestat has a rapt, largely drunk, but fully enthusiastic audience. None more so than front table, but his own table — Daniel and the humans, at least — also help.
Daniel is off key. Mark is worse. Jeannie is great.
Lestat's just really good, is the thing. Takes Daniel's mind right off the Armand apartment guilt. He knows this one word for word, which is helpful for filling in the bits the audience choruses back. Exactly ten years after he encountered Louis is when it came out, he thinks. In New York by then, and it was playing nonstop in every corner store and train station. Nostalgia is so fucking weird.
Not because he is made more shameless or confident this way, he is fine in this department, but perhaps it broadens the necessary neurological pathways that convert stimulus into enjoyment. To enjoy a room full of humans singing along with him, or laughing at his little jokes, or glimmers of Louis, of Daniel and his mortals, their full attention. Nostalgia not as much for the Azalea, but those early days in Renaud's, when performing for a true audience had all felt new and exciting. Nostalgia for the travelling troupe who'd rambled past the orchards of de Lioncourt, who thought it would be funny to try him when he'd begged for the chance.
Just a karaoke stage in Burlington, but he's played rougher, humbler, sillier gigs in his time that pay just as well—that is to say, not at all save for what it does for his ego. Wooden planks assembled five inches off the ground, rain ruining everyone's makeup, bawdy Italian jokes in the French tongue. Drunk enough, then, to fleetingly recall this, and not feel anything too complicated.
Front table does a great impression of tiny gay fairies in a forest, enough that he ruins his last lyric with a laugh, but it's fine. The applause is great and full, and he sketches out a bow. Of course, there is no backstage to retreat to, this is not really a theatre, and for a moment he considers vanishing away somewhere quiet.
Does not. Not yet. Hands off the microphone, wends his way to his table. Mark has taken his seat and he doesn't try to reclaim it or wedge in next to Jeannie, instead coming to hover between Louis and Daniel, a hand on each of their shoulders.
But there is no, and Lestat is welcomed back. Louis' head tips back to look at him, observe his expression, judge whether or not Lestat is enjoying the adoration of the crowd to the fullest.
Daniel has cigarettes and Louis does not, so he does not cut in. Lestat lays a hand on his shoulder and Louis lets himself indulge the impulse to reach up to tangle their fingers together. (Old habit. All the times Lestat laid a hand across Louis' shoulders, all the times Louis reached up to lay his hand over his to close the loop between them.) Looks between Lestat and Daniel, Mark and Jeannie as good as forgotten in this moment.
To Louis, "Don't look at me like that, I'm too old for you to suggest we go back to the rental and play Twister."
Get your sappy doe eyes away from him, nerd, he knows who you're looking at. Daniel pulls his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket, then, and thunks the pack against Louis' nearest wrist on the table. There you go.
"He's got them," Daniel then very helpfully informs Lestat. "Come back in time to watch Jeannie or she'll lose it tomorrow."
And then slides away, pressing a smile at Daniel, letting Louis pick up the cigarettes. Some private churn of thought, their recent conversations about makers, the vampiric bond. A complicated little twinge at a thing almost blatantly said, of this connection between the pair of them, of Lestat in proximity. But he would like to go outside, and smoke, and it is nice of Daniel to make room for them.
For him. All of this, a drunken sparkle of synapse firings before it is shoved aside, just as he pushes through soft humans on his way for the side door. Enjoying five minutes of celebrity, a few smiles and words of praise, an attempted high five he doesn't recognise as a gesture he needs to participate in and ducks past.
This too, Daniel has retained. Annoying, even as a vampire.
A nudge of contact, conveying some of this. Annoying (affectionate) needled at the edge of Daniel's mind as Louis collects the pack of cigarettes, rises to his feet.
Louis is content to trail after Lestat, observe the praise lavished upon him. Louis' brief claim to fame has been eclipsed, and he has no regrets about it. It's preferable, to avoid attention.
And then they are outside, into the cool air. Louis taps Daniel's pack against his palm, then turns to offer the contents wordlessly to Lestat.
Lestat delicately draws a cigarette out, turning it to look at. Letting the end burn, smolder, with a touch of willpower. Was it conscious, to conceal the fire gift from Louis, all those years back? Conscious, to hide his flying? Instinct either way. The correct thing to do, after Louis' difficult relationship with being what they were.
He takes a breath, then offers it out—to share or to light Louis' own for him. It had never mattered before if he had a lighter, so it shouldn't matter now that Louis has he fire gift as well.
"You aren't going to sing, are you?" sounds more affectionate than disappointed. An exaggeration after all.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Incidentally also spylike, Lestat props his phone against the back of Louis' shoulder to peek the camera at the stage over the top, though there is still probably some visible sparkle from the case catching the light anyway. Whatever. Stealth mode journalism, recording Daniel's performance, a video which will also catch a low laugh from him at Daniel's smooth talk-singing correction, at the participatory shouts from a nearby table.
Also picks up a muttered complaint, "I don't know this song," to whoever might be listening.
no subject
Daniel is so.
Himself.
So entirely unchanged, parted only from the disease that had been slowly killing him. Louis is so pleased about it. Had been pleased too, Daniel arriving in Dubai grown old and still sharp, still recognizable and familiar. This is not so far from that moment. An echo of that feeling, only now made more complex by present circumstances.
Explanation of the song is left in Jeannie's capable hands. Louis has hooked an ankle up over his knee, lounging back in his chair into the light, incidental touch required by Lestat's spycraft.
When he time comes, Louis is effusive in his applause. Whistles through two fingers, over the rest of the bar.
no subject
"Thank you, thank you," he still has the microphone, "I always knew in my heart I was destined to be a pop idol, and I'm here tonight in the Burlington Coat Factory, Vermont, to debut on this stage— yes, thank you,"
he is doing a bit, see, and this carries on for a minute as he walks as far away from the DJ as he can with the mic still plugged in, as said DJ participates gamely in the bit by trying to herd grandpa offstage, which he eventually does, after making a cartoonish bow.
Does not hop down, that would be pushing it. A normal retreat, passing the baton to whoever is after him, a young man agonizing between something by Johnny Cash and the siren song of Offspring's Pretty Fly for a White Guy.
When he returns—
"Never again."
no subject
He manages to stop recording without handing over his phone to Jeannie as Daniel returns (though there is going to be a random blurry few seconds length video after where he doubts he did it properly and starts recording again, and fixes this too). Not as smooth, this spycraft, but the deed is done.
"Never again?" he says. "But you are a natural."
no subject
Is this a viable business strategy? Drum up some local interest prior to the reading?
Louis cuts a glance to Jeannie, perhaps assessing the likelihood of her getting in on the bit.
no subject
No it's fine. Anyway,
"Naturally weird," he laughs, but follows it up with a "Thank you", so. You know. Not too self-effacing. (Eyes that burn like cigarettes. The song means nothing, and Daniel is heterosexual, don't worry about it.)
Jeannie is hammered, still, but clapping delightedly. Drunk enough that she's considering doing a song by herself, which seems much easier this side of all the alcohol. So it's on a delay when she notices Louis giving her an opening, but she scoots in there— "Everything booked by a bar. By this bar. In the future. But like not here."
Nailed it.
no subject
In case this is a major priority for Daniel.
Anyway, it has been too long without the attention of the masses on him alone, so Lestat is standing. He reaches past Mark to go and take Jeannie's hand, because the wobbly hamster wheel churning of song considerations happening in her brain barely takes effort for him to listen in on, and they might as well score a foothold in the queue.
"I leave it to you two to charm Louis into a song," he announces, as he makes to move around the table, leading Jeannie along. "Or I will be very disappointed."
no subject
"He's exaggerating," Louis deadpans. An interjection that heralds a no.
Keeps an eye on Lestat's approach. There are a number of people perking up as the collection of assembled mortals notice Lestat and Jeannie making their way towards the current organizing entity, hands twitching towards phones.
Evidence enough for Louis to stand by it: this is certainly a marketing strategy worth considering.
no subject
Most of the videos being taken are going to be wobbly and indistinguishable, even the shiniest, newest Pixel cameras struggling with the dim, low-ceiling bar lights and the bright single stage light with its slowly rotating gel wheel. But still. Alcohol-soaked memories, held by intangible data, whatever that is.
A salute with the glass, to Louis. Close enough to a grasshopper. (Which would taste like glue anyway.)
"Any predictions on what we think their direction'll be?"
Meanwhile: Johnny Cash of some description, and a guy really having a wild go at it.
no subject
Least of all Mark's ability. Anyway. (Daniel has the best chance of all of them, Lestat is sure, but Daniel will not wield this ability for evil.)
At the sign ups, there is some fluttering around who should go first, but it's Lestat, Lestat will go first, making his selection while he talks Jeannie into her more ambitious hopes and dreams. Some banter with the DJ. Lestat, promising not to go rogue in such a tone that makes no such promise at all.
no subject
Understatement.
Louis says this so affectionately.
Mark has managed his very careful transfer between two chairs. A sign, perhaps, of intoxication, one that becomes clearer without Jeannie to overshadow it. Louis nudges a stray glass of water along the table to him as he touches Daniel's mind, asks: Is he what you imagined?
no subject
'Who, Mark?'
Daniel is very funny.
'Yes and no.' They're talking (sort of) about Lestat. 'He's charming, he's intense. I get it.'
Should he ask if they're making it work, if Louis is comfortable with Lestat around? If he feels safe after that outburst? Mm. Too much, for tonight.
'I'm glad you're here.'
elbows an extra tag in here
I'm glad you're happy.
Among other things. Healthy. Safe, enjoying fame. All good things in the wake of something terrible.
You still owe me a tour of your apartment, by the way.
In case Daniel thinks Louis has forgotten. They left in a hurry, yes. But the interest, the promise, Louis holds all of it still.
owie
Still.
His junky mismatched decor, his tacky ceilings. He doesn't think Louis will like it. But he resolves to make sure he comes over anyway. Even out the scales.
'Not if I move first,' he jokes. 'If my offer on a house goes through in time, you can just see a pristine, empty home, instead of all my totally pedestrian art and knickknacks.'
no subject
Cue the jokes about Louis' long hiatus from true manual labor.
But it's a real offer. Louis would do this for him. (He would also pay to have it done, oversee it from afar.)
Don't sell your apartment, Louis offers. Keep it. You might need it again.
A split between real estate advice and something more genuine. This apartment Louis had never seen that was once Daniel's home. It shouldn't be set aside.
And also—
And I'd like to see it. Your place, before you tidy up all signs of yourself.
no subject
Maybe he just doesn't want to have to paint over the clouds. They're not incredible or anything, but he likes them. Enough that he's been thinking about getting the same thing done in the new place. Maybe different shades, different times of day. Armand would probably have decent input. Frescos, all that shit.
Christ, what a bad thought.
'When we get back. First thing.'
no subject
A song or two slips by, and the queue, such as it is, is proportionately short compared to the crowd. As the next song wraps up, Jeannie returns to the table. Smiling, face flushed, grabbing at Mark's arm as she swings herself down into his former seat. Drunk and happy, but also mortified. She'd let herself get talked into an Adele song and is second guessing everything. Mark, trying to help, says she sounds great in the shower. She puts her head on the table.
No such attacks of nerves on the stage with Lestat again ascending, mic in hand, as if the space personally belonged to him. "Some of you may be aware," he is saying, and it's fifty-fifty on whether he is mind controlling the DJ yet again into affording him a little dramatic build up, or was simply slipped him a twenty, "of my monstrous proclivities. That I feed on the blood of terrible performers, and perhaps, you think, the Vampire Lestat is attending a buffet."
Some laughs, some jeers, the latter of which he points to and says, "But this is not so. I tell you this, because I will need your help for my next performance, and I wouldn't wish anyone to be afraid of singing with me. Also I will eat everyone who fails to."
A little gesture to the DJ, and moody piano suffuses the room. "Front table, I am counting on you," Lestat adds, before he begins the first line of Bonnie Tyler's karaoke favourite.
Overwrought, comedic on purpose, and as promised, full of audience participation for the overlapping vocals, directing the microphone out for backing as well as the titular lyric. Front table does indeed have his back, but it's an easy song to gather buy-in, and enough drunk people to happily shout-sing along all the way back to the bar, to cheer for the keychange, or laugh at the little improvisations in between.
Of course, alongside it all, Lestat meets the eighties power ballad on its own terms. There was no singing like this a century ago, two centuries ago, but oh, he does enjoy it, clear pleasure taken in making his voice meet the challenge. Good work, modern sensibility.
yet another tag of nothing
There is simply no comparable performer.
Some awareness of the beginnings of a thing. Louis watching Lestat so attentively, picking up the invocation of the name, the descriptor Louis had relayed to Daniel that had perhaps made it into the book. Louis observes him summon it and realign it, make it into something to suit him.
Something to think about in the coming weeks, whatever they may bring. (Nothing eventful, surely.)
Presently, the expression of satisfaction and joy on Lestat's face matters more. Louis is so pleased to see it. Happier to applaud, whenever opportunity allows.
nothing but uwu eyes
Daniel is off key. Mark is worse. Jeannie is great.
Lestat's just really good, is the thing. Takes Daniel's mind right off the Armand apartment guilt. He knows this one word for word, which is helpful for filling in the bits the audience choruses back. Exactly ten years after he encountered Louis is when it came out, he thinks. In New York by then, and it was playing nonstop in every corner store and train station. Nostalgia is so fucking weird.
no subject
Not because he is made more shameless or confident this way, he is fine in this department, but perhaps it broadens the necessary neurological pathways that convert stimulus into enjoyment. To enjoy a room full of humans singing along with him, or laughing at his little jokes, or glimmers of Louis, of Daniel and his mortals, their full attention. Nostalgia not as much for the Azalea, but those early days in Renaud's, when performing for a true audience had all felt new and exciting. Nostalgia for the travelling troupe who'd rambled past the orchards of de Lioncourt, who thought it would be funny to try him when he'd begged for the chance.
Just a karaoke stage in Burlington, but he's played rougher, humbler, sillier gigs in his time that pay just as well—that is to say, not at all save for what it does for his ego. Wooden planks assembled five inches off the ground, rain ruining everyone's makeup, bawdy Italian jokes in the French tongue. Drunk enough, then, to fleetingly recall this, and not feel anything too complicated.
Front table does a great impression of tiny gay fairies in a forest, enough that he ruins his last lyric with a laugh, but it's fine. The applause is great and full, and he sketches out a bow. Of course, there is no backstage to retreat to, this is not really a theatre, and for a moment he considers vanishing away somewhere quiet.
Does not. Not yet. Hands off the microphone, wends his way to his table. Mark has taken his seat and he doesn't try to reclaim it or wedge in next to Jeannie, instead coming to hover between Louis and Daniel, a hand on each of their shoulders.
"Where are your cigarettes?" to Daniel.
no subject
But there is no, and Lestat is welcomed back. Louis' head tips back to look at him, observe his expression, judge whether or not Lestat is enjoying the adoration of the crowd to the fullest.
Daniel has cigarettes and Louis does not, so he does not cut in. Lestat lays a hand on his shoulder and Louis lets himself indulge the impulse to reach up to tangle their fingers together. (Old habit. All the times Lestat laid a hand across Louis' shoulders, all the times Louis reached up to lay his hand over his to close the loop between them.) Looks between Lestat and Daniel, Mark and Jeannie as good as forgotten in this moment.
no subject
Get your sappy doe eyes away from him, nerd, he knows who you're looking at. Daniel pulls his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket, then, and thunks the pack against Louis' nearest wrist on the table. There you go.
"He's got them," Daniel then very helpfully informs Lestat. "Come back in time to watch Jeannie or she'll lose it tomorrow."
no subject
And then slides away, pressing a smile at Daniel, letting Louis pick up the cigarettes. Some private churn of thought, their recent conversations about makers, the vampiric bond. A complicated little twinge at a thing almost blatantly said, of this connection between the pair of them, of Lestat in proximity. But he would like to go outside, and smoke, and it is nice of Daniel to make room for them.
For him. All of this, a drunken sparkle of synapse firings before it is shoved aside, just as he pushes through soft humans on his way for the side door. Enjoying five minutes of celebrity, a few smiles and words of praise, an attempted high five he doesn't recognise as a gesture he needs to participate in and ducks past.
no subject
A nudge of contact, conveying some of this. Annoying (affectionate) needled at the edge of Daniel's mind as Louis collects the pack of cigarettes, rises to his feet.
Louis is content to trail after Lestat, observe the praise lavished upon him. Louis' brief claim to fame has been eclipsed, and he has no regrets about it. It's preferable, to avoid attention.
And then they are outside, into the cool air. Louis taps Daniel's pack against his palm, then turns to offer the contents wordlessly to Lestat.
no subject
He takes a breath, then offers it out—to share or to light Louis' own for him. It had never mattered before if he had a lighter, so it shouldn't matter now that Louis has he fire gift as well.
"You aren't going to sing, are you?" sounds more affectionate than disappointed. An exaggeration after all.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)