Relieved of his boots, Lestat's legs remain hooked over Louis' thigh. He settles his hands over Lestat's knee, his calf. Lifts his eyes back to Lestat's face, trying to glean what he can from Lestat's expression.
Finds no judgement there, none of the impatience or exasperation that had marked their earlier conversations. All those years ago in New Orleans, all those fights, Louis sees no sign of temper in Lestat's face.
"Yes," Louis answers quietly. "Gonna try to find my way."
And maybe he should try, sooner rather than later. It has been easy to put off for a number of reasons.
The offer is there. He had been heading towards it already, the offer that perhaps they might hunt together during his break.
But Louis says it like that. Finding his way. His own way.
It withers immediately, this notion, and swallowing it back feels bitter. Nodding into the silence, and Lestat then fills it with, "Good," hush. Fond, despite himself. Warmed to the knowledge of his not-so-fledgling taking this step. Nudges him with his leg, playful, and goes to slide them from Louis' lap, to shift around for whatever must come next.
He pulls his hair back and around from where he is buckled into his harness at two different points at his back. Shifts to his knees to find a helpful angle, leaning past Louis' knee. And if this is flirting, it is just as much because there is no other action he could imagine taking.
The sense of an absence, something held back, prompts a moment of scrutiny. Trying to decide whether or not to reach after it, what might be withheld.
But Lestat is moving, and Louis reaches for him, hands guiding Lestat closer. Encouraging the lean of his body, inviting him to set his weight into Louis. He runs a palm down Lestat's back, over the leather and metal fastenings, the buckles that need undoing. Thumbs over cool metal, before setting to work divesting him of the harness.
Lets the quiet settle, before asking, "Heard you ain't been eating."
So invited, Lestat rests there against Louis' lap, eyes shutting for this little moment in time. If this were another place and time, he would luxuriate in the way little manipulations of the harness tug at each point of connection, how it feels like Louis' hands are all over him.
He might tell Louis this too, a habit of old, wishing Louis to know exactly the effect he has on him, how unashamed they should be of it.
Relaxes instead. Gives a quiet rumble of sound at this mention.
"We're very busy," he murmurs. "High profile."
He could also just say he wasn't hungry tonight, but doesn't think to. He has been hungry. Life is hunger. "Who has been monitoring my little blood baggies and tattling on me, now?" And should he drain them?
It's very fine, this harness. Supple leather, gleaming buckles. Louis takes his time in the handling, rubbing fingertips over the red marks left here and there in the wake of each strap. It comes away in pieces, something Louis suspects wasn't strictly necessary but keeps Lestat where he has settled.
And Louis encourages him there, keeps Lestat draped close while Louis touches fading red marks on pale, sweat-cooled skin and drags his fingers through Lestat's hair. Thinks on what he says now. Lestat has denied nothing. Not eating, not properly. Not enough.
A number of things plucked up and cast aside. Louis, starving himself and starving himself and starving himself. Lestat's confusion, and frustration, and anger. It would serve no one to invoke those days.
"Is it because you'd rather hunt for yourself?" sidesteps the question; Louis has yet to decide if it would be productive to explain Cookie's text messages. Instead, a guess. Feeling out the causes, uncertain. Worried.
An agreeable sound. He doesn't enjoy the little blood bags, dead-tasting, entirely removed from the vein, the life it came from. It's easier to eschew them than a bare throat.
"And I have not been receiving visitors," Lestat says, letting his weight settle heavy over Louis' thighs, letting some of his energy burn itself out as Louis' fingers work through his hair, the familiar and comforting tug at his scalp. "Not since our disagreement."
He doesn't mind saying so. It is no secret, that he's been unhappy, but a specific kind of unhappy. Easily irritable, throwing guests out before anything could come of it, or simply shutting himself away, preferring hunger and self-pity than distraction and satiation.
Visitors, in spite of all that's happened and all that they've settled between them, sparks a stinging flare of jealousy.
But they've come to their agreements. Lestat has been lonely, and now Lestat is not eating. Louis' nails scrape lightly across his scalp, pull again slowly through Lestat's hair. Marks a shimmering of glitter in the fall of gold locks before Louis repeats the motion.
"I thought you would have been."
Neutral. Just a statement. Louis had thought he'd continue on as Louis had assumed he already was.
"Making it challenging for yourself to take a little drink each night, if you keep yourself hungry this way."
Practicality. Practical on the way to a more heartfelt appeal, the kind that would lay bare the depth of Louis' worries.
Yes, yes, of course Louis thought he would have been. Lestat feels a shimmer of resentment course through him, despite the way they have settled things. All the way back to Louis' steadfast refusal to see that Antoinette had, at least at first, been intended as a game for them both, through to this notion that all Lestat wants is company of any kind, Louis a number among the many.
They have not communicated very well. This, Lestat will concede. He draws in a long breath, letting this ripple of misgiving become soothed beneath the gentle pressure of Louis' fingers.
"My appetite is not as it was a century ago," he says, a small rub of his chin against Louis' thigh. "But of course you're right. Are you worried about me?"
He'd been worried before. Worried after the first show, after the party, carried the fretful sense that he was leaving Lestat unmoored there in the riotous celebration meant for him.
He's worried now, even with this profession about diminished appetites. Louis has no one but Armand to test this against, and there is a few hundred years difference. (Never mind the instinctive recoil away from direct comparisons, from looking too closely at Armand and Lestat side by side.)
Falters a little at exactly what should follow the admission. What Louis has a right to say.
His fingers sweep through Lestat's hair. Watches the slice of his profile. Feels the clench of tenderness in his chest. His beloved, their love as difficult now as it had been then. Louis is no better at navigating it a century later.
What had Lestat expected? A little bit of deflection, perhaps. Redirection. The answer stands stark on its own and he doesn't reply immediately, the subtle curve of a smile diminishing. Louis is worried about him.
He does not want that. How badly he has wanted, instead, to be seen as himself once more, desirable for it, coveted. He has lost sight of this, when it had been so clear to him when he'd invited Louis to Auvergne.
Or he does want that. This worry has brought Louis back to him.
A silence, then. He wants to ask: would you be here if you weren't? Except he doesn't want the answer, or to make Louis produce it.
"Well," Lestat says, after too much quiet. "I feel better now that we've spoken."
Louis doesn't break it. As long as they are quiet together, Louis can be doing this. Touching his hair. Holding him across his thighs. Lestat can stay close and they can leave the most complicated aspects of that closeness outside the door.
Yes, Louis had come because he had been worried. They hadn't had to find out if Louis were strong enough to stay away for any extended period of time. Maybe Louis will struggle with that tomorrow, the day after. Right now, it is only simple fact: Louis worried for him.
"So do I."
Say nothing of how Louis had passed the time after their fight.
Finally, Lestat eases to kneel up, still with an arm draped across Louis' thighs, and slow enough not to disrupt, too much, the way Louis is touching him. Bloodshot eyes now come across as sleeper rather than manic, a soft fondness to the way he looks up at him.
"Perhaps after Tennessee," he says, "there will be time for hunting."
The drape of him, half in the tub, half across Louis' lap, is a minor reminder of what they're meant to be doing. Washing the concert off Lestat. Winding their way towards sleep after a fraught night.
Lestat tips his face up and Louis cups his cheek. Thumbs over the familiar scar at the corner of his mouth once more.
"I don't ever want you to be hungry," Louis says quietly. "Don't wanna hear you're denying yourself."
Is it too long to wait, this maybe hunt after Tennessee? (Is it rich of Louis to lever this, after long years together in which Lestat begged and raged trying to get Louis to eat?)
"You promise me you're gonna eat, and I'll eat too."
This too, fraught. Louis struggling, unmoored from long decades of ascetic ritual and trying to find what is comfortable, what is good, in this new future he has found for himself.
It's how this conversation begun, Lestat inquiring after Louis' habits. The book had described his anger and frustration for Louis' declining to feed himself, and detailed less precisely how maddening he found it to be, how worried it made him, how upsetting it was to stand by, to allow to occur. It is a book from one perspective, he knows.
He is not even aiming to assert these experiences when it comes time for his interview, not really. But he thinks of it now, a flicker, sees it reflected back at him.
"I promise," Lestat says. Head tipping into that touch to his face, the claim is makes. "And you promise me back."
Lestat closes his eyes under the kiss, under the gentle contact of their foreheads pressing together, the brush of their noses. There is no one he has been with, no one Louis has been jealous of, that he would share these little moments with, these sweeter intimacies. It is for Louis alone, and always will be.
So it is upsetting to think he may never have it again, but, they've made promises tonight. Louis has said he will come back for him. Lestat will hold him to it.
Still, Louis lingers. They breathe together. Their pulse beats together.
And outside are legions of fans clamoring for Lestat, and an entire slew of vampires that wish for Louis' blood, and all the wreckage of the past they have not quite sorted through. Little and less incentive to break apart.
Still.
Louis offers, "You want me to leave you to it?"
The tub, the array of little soaps and shampoos. The task of washing away the evening's work.
Unearned (or dangerous) intimacies. Louis has little claim to them.
Hush, still, but now a smile in his tone, and now shifting backwards, sinking lower, so that they can make eye contact. "But I think you should."
He hopes Louis can catch his meaning. How much he would like it, touching one another, sharing in it. Ushering themselves so close to the line they have drawn that they are more or less past it despite everything. He would want it to last forever. Funny, for Louis to tell him not to deny himself, and yet here they are.
Turns his head, brushing a kiss to Louis' wrist. One last little transgression.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Finds no judgement there, none of the impatience or exasperation that had marked their earlier conversations. All those years ago in New Orleans, all those fights, Louis sees no sign of temper in Lestat's face.
"Yes," Louis answers quietly. "Gonna try to find my way."
And maybe he should try, sooner rather than later. It has been easy to put off for a number of reasons.
no subject
But Louis says it like that. Finding his way. His own way.
It withers immediately, this notion, and swallowing it back feels bitter. Nodding into the silence, and Lestat then fills it with, "Good," hush. Fond, despite himself. Warmed to the knowledge of his not-so-fledgling taking this step. Nudges him with his leg, playful, and goes to slide them from Louis' lap, to shift around for whatever must come next.
He pulls his hair back and around from where he is buckled into his harness at two different points at his back. Shifts to his knees to find a helpful angle, leaning past Louis' knee. And if this is flirting, it is just as much because there is no other action he could imagine taking.
no subject
But Lestat is moving, and Louis reaches for him, hands guiding Lestat closer. Encouraging the lean of his body, inviting him to set his weight into Louis. He runs a palm down Lestat's back, over the leather and metal fastenings, the buckles that need undoing. Thumbs over cool metal, before setting to work divesting him of the harness.
Lets the quiet settle, before asking, "Heard you ain't been eating."
Speaking of.
no subject
He might tell Louis this too, a habit of old, wishing Louis to know exactly the effect he has on him, how unashamed they should be of it.
Relaxes instead. Gives a quiet rumble of sound at this mention.
"We're very busy," he murmurs. "High profile."
He could also just say he wasn't hungry tonight, but doesn't think to. He has been hungry. Life is hunger. "Who has been monitoring my little blood baggies and tattling on me, now?" And should he drain them?
no subject
And Louis encourages him there, keeps Lestat draped close while Louis touches fading red marks on pale, sweat-cooled skin and drags his fingers through Lestat's hair. Thinks on what he says now. Lestat has denied nothing. Not eating, not properly. Not enough.
A number of things plucked up and cast aside. Louis, starving himself and starving himself and starving himself. Lestat's confusion, and frustration, and anger. It would serve no one to invoke those days.
"Is it because you'd rather hunt for yourself?" sidesteps the question; Louis has yet to decide if it would be productive to explain Cookie's text messages. Instead, a guess. Feeling out the causes, uncertain. Worried.
no subject
An agreeable sound. He doesn't enjoy the little blood bags, dead-tasting, entirely removed from the vein, the life it came from. It's easier to eschew them than a bare throat.
"And I have not been receiving visitors," Lestat says, letting his weight settle heavy over Louis' thighs, letting some of his energy burn itself out as Louis' fingers work through his hair, the familiar and comforting tug at his scalp. "Not since our disagreement."
He doesn't mind saying so. It is no secret, that he's been unhappy, but a specific kind of unhappy. Easily irritable, throwing guests out before anything could come of it, or simply shutting himself away, preferring hunger and self-pity than distraction and satiation.
no subject
But they've come to their agreements. Lestat has been lonely, and now Lestat is not eating. Louis' nails scrape lightly across his scalp, pull again slowly through Lestat's hair. Marks a shimmering of glitter in the fall of gold locks before Louis repeats the motion.
"I thought you would have been."
Neutral. Just a statement. Louis had thought he'd continue on as Louis had assumed he already was.
"Making it challenging for yourself to take a little drink each night, if you keep yourself hungry this way."
Practicality. Practical on the way to a more heartfelt appeal, the kind that would lay bare the depth of Louis' worries.
no subject
They have not communicated very well. This, Lestat will concede. He draws in a long breath, letting this ripple of misgiving become soothed beneath the gentle pressure of Louis' fingers.
"My appetite is not as it was a century ago," he says, a small rub of his chin against Louis' thigh. "But of course you're right. Are you worried about me?"
Teasing.
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Frank.
He'd been worried before. Worried after the first show, after the party, carried the fretful sense that he was leaving Lestat unmoored there in the riotous celebration meant for him.
He's worried now, even with this profession about diminished appetites. Louis has no one but Armand to test this against, and there is a few hundred years difference. (Never mind the instinctive recoil away from direct comparisons, from looking too closely at Armand and Lestat side by side.)
Falters a little at exactly what should follow the admission. What Louis has a right to say.
His fingers sweep through Lestat's hair. Watches the slice of his profile. Feels the clench of tenderness in his chest. His beloved, their love as difficult now as it had been then. Louis is no better at navigating it a century later.
no subject
He does not want that. How badly he has wanted, instead, to be seen as himself once more, desirable for it, coveted. He has lost sight of this, when it had been so clear to him when he'd invited Louis to Auvergne.
Or he does want that. This worry has brought Louis back to him.
A silence, then. He wants to ask: would you be here if you weren't? Except he doesn't want the answer, or to make Louis produce it.
"Well," Lestat says, after too much quiet. "I feel better now that we've spoken."
no subject
Louis doesn't break it. As long as they are quiet together, Louis can be doing this. Touching his hair. Holding him across his thighs. Lestat can stay close and they can leave the most complicated aspects of that closeness outside the door.
Yes, Louis had come because he had been worried. They hadn't had to find out if Louis were strong enough to stay away for any extended period of time. Maybe Louis will struggle with that tomorrow, the day after. Right now, it is only simple fact: Louis worried for him.
"So do I."
Say nothing of how Louis had passed the time after their fight.
"Will you eat again?" he asks, soft.
no subject
Finally, Lestat eases to kneel up, still with an arm draped across Louis' thighs, and slow enough not to disrupt, too much, the way Louis is touching him. Bloodshot eyes now come across as sleeper rather than manic, a soft fondness to the way he looks up at him.
"Perhaps after Tennessee," he says, "there will be time for hunting."
no subject
Lestat tips his face up and Louis cups his cheek. Thumbs over the familiar scar at the corner of his mouth once more.
"I don't ever want you to be hungry," Louis says quietly. "Don't wanna hear you're denying yourself."
Is it too long to wait, this maybe hunt after Tennessee? (Is it rich of Louis to lever this, after long years together in which Lestat begged and raged trying to get Louis to eat?)
"You promise me you're gonna eat, and I'll eat too."
This too, fraught. Louis struggling, unmoored from long decades of ascetic ritual and trying to find what is comfortable, what is good, in this new future he has found for himself.
no subject
He is not even aiming to assert these experiences when it comes time for his interview, not really. But he thinks of it now, a flicker, sees it reflected back at him.
"I promise," Lestat says. Head tipping into that touch to his face, the claim is makes. "And you promise me back."
no subject
"I promise."
Only a brief kiss. Near to chaste, as chaste as anything can ever be for them.
Louis will eat. Lestat will eat. In the midst of all the fractures and complications between them, this at least can be settled.
Lingering, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, Louis almost asks, What happened to you?
Long years, unaccounted for. What befell Lestat, in all the years he languished in his banishment and neglect?
Not tonight. Not a question for tonight.
"Okay?" Like a question, nudged to Lestat with a graze of Louis' nose to his own.
no subject
So it is upsetting to think he may never have it again, but, they've made promises tonight. Louis has said he will come back for him. Lestat will hold him to it.
"Okay," he says, whispered even quieter. Warm.
no subject
Still, Louis lingers. They breathe together. Their pulse beats together.
And outside are legions of fans clamoring for Lestat, and an entire slew of vampires that wish for Louis' blood, and all the wreckage of the past they have not quite sorted through. Little and less incentive to break apart.
Still.
Louis offers, "You want me to leave you to it?"
The tub, the array of little soaps and shampoos. The task of washing away the evening's work.
Unearned (or dangerous) intimacies. Louis has little claim to them.
no subject
Hush, still, but now a smile in his tone, and now shifting backwards, sinking lower, so that they can make eye contact. "But I think you should."
He hopes Louis can catch his meaning. How much he would like it, touching one another, sharing in it. Ushering themselves so close to the line they have drawn that they are more or less past it despite everything. He would want it to last forever. Funny, for Louis to tell him not to deny himself, and yet here they are.
Turns his head, brushing a kiss to Louis' wrist. One last little transgression.
no subject
His lips burn hot at Louis' wrist. He turns his hand, catches Lestat's lower lip with his thumb. A last small touch, a harsh exhale.
Then he stands.
"Alright."
Shades of Thank you, in it, this acceptance.
"I'll wait for you outside."
Louis has a book. He can occupy himself with more than just wishing to have stayed here, wishing to have tempted himself past tolerance.