"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.
It had been ritual, back then. Lestat lighting his cigarette, then Lestat lighting Louis'. The little ways they tended to each other, small intimacies that could pass muster in the public eye. Lestat offers it out and Louis, cigarette already held between his lips, leans in to light his own off Lestat's.
Another little dip, another closed circuit.
Small intimacies, enduring.
"No," Louis confirms, a smile flashing up onto his face, just for Lestat. "You know I ain't never been much of singer."
Coaxed into it for Claudia's birthdays, as a wavering third when Lestat and Claudia vocalized at their piano. Always serviceable, never anything that might impress.
"I pity anyone trying to follow you anyways," is subtle praise. Lestat must know Louis' admiration is unchanged.
Out here, the air is sharply chilly and he'd left his coat inside. But his blood alcohol content is helpful, and it's a nice change to the crowded warmth they'd left behind. Lestat mirrors that smile as he brings his cigarette up to take a breath from.
Louis is not a singer, not a dancer, not an artist. He appreciates all these talents, admires them where they manifest in others, in those around him. But they don't belong to him.
Lestat leans against the brick, considering Louis in this lower light. Infinitely familiar, these little shows of deference, self-effacement. As if to make up for his pride in other things. An astute reader, a self-taught intellect, a businessman who cracked the code a long time ago and never wants for anything.
Those are all nice, of course. "I was leading," he agrees. "But leading is only touring you around the room. Displaying you to them as you turned in my arms. All were watching you, in New Orleans."
Maybe Louis didn't notice. Maybe they are naturally biased in this way, locked in on each other, the world melting away, but Lestat is very sure he's correct, consumed as he was in the task of facilitating Louis' steps. As if to say, behold. None of you knew anything about him, none of you ever will, and your petty lives are at a deficit for it.
"But you were a dancer before you met me," he adds, turning his cigarette aside to ash it. "As though there could be even more to love about you, when I was turning you, your blood offered to me memories of you doing your steps with Paul as a child. Again, at your sister's wedding. It made me think, won't it be wonderful, our eternity, that we can dance together whenever we wish? That for us, there will always be music."
He has a had a lot to drink, so maybe he can be forgiven for the ways his eyes go misty, maybe disguised in his look aside, where ash spirals and winks out. Well, perhaps he is permitted one or two indulgences, given how well-behaved he has been.
They are both indulging tonight, Louis thinks. Only Lestat has been drinking and Louis has not, so what excuse does he have for offering:
"Can still dance whenever we like."
As if it is so simple. Louis knows it is not.
He also knows that Lestat says these things and it becomes so difficult to breathe. Air caches in Louis' lungs. He'd been talking about moments ago here in this crowded, mostly indifferent bar. But Lestat is talking about New Orleans and the delirious perfection of that last dance. He is talking about who Louis was once, about the life they had together.
The altar. The things Lestat had thought then, and Louis hadn't known until now.
What else he can he do but make this promise?
"Still got an eternity for us to learn some new steps."
This on the heels of a drag off his own cigarette, looking away, into the warmth of the bar. The muffled attempts at a second Johnny Cash tune, some mismatched stomping of feet in time with the song. Exhales a cloud of smoke as he looks back, meets Lestat's eyes.
It's a sweet sentiment. An exaggeration, he thinks, about whenever, but the thought is kind, and he is in the mood to feel warmly to it.
Walks through parks, attendance at music concerts, opera dates, and now dances. They are installing quite a lot of promises into this friendship of theirs, making it even more of a treasured thing. Lestat watches him through the cigarette smoke, fond, feels his heart trip over itself when eye contact is made again.
"You can lead next time," he says. "Show me what I've missed."
A bracing breath of cool air and smoke, willing his eyes to dry up. It would be a shame for his mood to turn maudlin.
"Alright," Louis agrees, tone tipping mischievous as he cautions, "But they ain't exactly waltzing these days."
News delivered with some amusement, until Louis fully considers the possibilities. Thinks about dancing so close to him, in some other bar.
Louis lifts the cigarette to his mouth, watching Lestat. It is, as always, a pleasure to look at him. The miracle of him, so welcome. Louis will never be tired of studying him, watching Lestat bloom into this era.
"I'll show you," he promises, breaking the silence drawing taut between them. "Next time we spend a night in a bar."
He can think of all things that would come natural for him to do in this moment. Slink closer, lure Louis into something like a dance out here in the smokey alleyway, muffled music, the sounds of their boots scraping the concrete louder than the melody. Cocoon them in each other's proximity so that, like it always did, the world around them fades to nothing.
It itches, to stay where he is instead. Louis says next time, so Lestat will trust there is a next time. That Louis will reach a hand out to him and show him something. But until then—
"I have not seen your camera at all since we left," he says, mock-haughty, tapping some ash aside. "And now I have given two performances."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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.
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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.
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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?
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'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.'
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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.
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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.'
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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Another little dip, another closed circuit.
Small intimacies, enduring.
"No," Louis confirms, a smile flashing up onto his face, just for Lestat. "You know I ain't never been much of singer."
Coaxed into it for Claudia's birthdays, as a wavering third when Lestat and Claudia vocalized at their piano. Always serviceable, never anything that might impress.
"I pity anyone trying to follow you anyways," is subtle praise. Lestat must know Louis' admiration is unchanged.
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Out here, the air is sharply chilly and he'd left his coat inside. But his blood alcohol content is helpful, and it's a nice change to the crowded warmth they'd left behind. Lestat mirrors that smile as he brings his cigarette up to take a breath from.
"And anyway," he adds. "You're a dancer."
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Teasing disbelief.
Louis is not a singer, not a dancer, not an artist. He appreciates all these talents, admires them where they manifest in others, in those around him. But they don't belong to him.
"You were leading, last I checked."
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Those are all nice, of course. "I was leading," he agrees. "But leading is only touring you around the room. Displaying you to them as you turned in my arms. All were watching you, in New Orleans."
Maybe Louis didn't notice. Maybe they are naturally biased in this way, locked in on each other, the world melting away, but Lestat is very sure he's correct, consumed as he was in the task of facilitating Louis' steps. As if to say, behold. None of you knew anything about him, none of you ever will, and your petty lives are at a deficit for it.
"But you were a dancer before you met me," he adds, turning his cigarette aside to ash it. "As though there could be even more to love about you, when I was turning you, your blood offered to me memories of you doing your steps with Paul as a child. Again, at your sister's wedding. It made me think, won't it be wonderful, our eternity, that we can dance together whenever we wish? That for us, there will always be music."
He has a had a lot to drink, so maybe he can be forgiven for the ways his eyes go misty, maybe disguised in his look aside, where ash spirals and winks out. Well, perhaps he is permitted one or two indulgences, given how well-behaved he has been.
no subject
"Can still dance whenever we like."
As if it is so simple. Louis knows it is not.
He also knows that Lestat says these things and it becomes so difficult to breathe. Air caches in Louis' lungs. He'd been talking about moments ago here in this crowded, mostly indifferent bar. But Lestat is talking about New Orleans and the delirious perfection of that last dance. He is talking about who Louis was once, about the life they had together.
The altar. The things Lestat had thought then, and Louis hadn't known until now.
What else he can he do but make this promise?
"Still got an eternity for us to learn some new steps."
This on the heels of a drag off his own cigarette, looking away, into the warmth of the bar. The muffled attempts at a second Johnny Cash tune, some mismatched stomping of feet in time with the song. Exhales a cloud of smoke as he looks back, meets Lestat's eyes.
no subject
Walks through parks, attendance at music concerts, opera dates, and now dances. They are installing quite a lot of promises into this friendship of theirs, making it even more of a treasured thing. Lestat watches him through the cigarette smoke, fond, feels his heart trip over itself when eye contact is made again.
"You can lead next time," he says. "Show me what I've missed."
A bracing breath of cool air and smoke, willing his eyes to dry up. It would be a shame for his mood to turn maudlin.
no subject
News delivered with some amusement, until Louis fully considers the possibilities. Thinks about dancing so close to him, in some other bar.
Louis lifts the cigarette to his mouth, watching Lestat. It is, as always, a pleasure to look at him. The miracle of him, so welcome. Louis will never be tired of studying him, watching Lestat bloom into this era.
"I'll show you," he promises, breaking the silence drawing taut between them. "Next time we spend a night in a bar."
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He can think of all things that would come natural for him to do in this moment. Slink closer, lure Louis into something like a dance out here in the smokey alleyway, muffled music, the sounds of their boots scraping the concrete louder than the melody. Cocoon them in each other's proximity so that, like it always did, the world around them fades to nothing.
It itches, to stay where he is instead. Louis says next time, so Lestat will trust there is a next time. That Louis will reach a hand out to him and show him something. But until then—
"I have not seen your camera at all since we left," he says, mock-haughty, tapping some ash aside. "And now I have given two performances."
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