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lestat de lioncourt. ([personal profile] damnedest) wrote2024-10-19 07:25 pm
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-14 04:14 am (UTC)(link)
Difficult, being so fashionable.

Louis is not suffering in such a way. His tunic is slouching down off one shoulder still when he lands on the appropriate roof, harness twitched back into place with two fingers as Louis strides towards the rooftop door. The handle breaks with very little effort applied.

There's still time to reroute, but no. Louis leads Lestat down a single flight of stairs to the penthouse suite booked under Rachida's alias, layers on layers of discretion insulating Louis from enthusiastic book readers. One wall comprised entirely of windows, curtains tied neatly back. French doors opening onto a balcony. Vintage furniture arranged stylishly around this living room. There is a door ajar, revealing a slice of a bed, the edge of a coffin. Louis sees it, leaves it. Lestat has been invited in.

"Come here," is what he says instead, having kicked off his own shoes beside the door before treading deeper into the room.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-14 04:54 am (UTC)(link)
How close.

Louis turns the question aside, leaves it unanswered in favor of reaching out and snagging Lestat by the corset ribbons. Draws him in.

How close? This close.

And then light pressure at his hip, fingers suggesting a turn, reaching for lacing.

"You done being mad?"

More teasing than needling, but only just.

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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-14 10:23 am (UTC)(link)
Louis would love to say this. He'd like it better if he could convince Lestat of it.

But it's late for it now, considering what Lestat has been up to. Louis isn't sure he can walk any of it back.

"I'm still deciding what I'm going to tell you."

Leave it to me, isn't off the table.

"Turn for me," he instructs quietly, palming the fabric.

Indulgent, wanting Lestat out of these clothes, these outfits. He had liked it so much when he'd come to Lestat and found him in all soft things, washed clean of glitter and eye liner. He is beautiful in these garments, yes. Louis simply wants to see him without the performance.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-14 02:37 pm (UTC)(link)
A humming acknowledgement. Lestat has said this thing. Louis is weighing it, deciding what he will do with it.

They hid themselves, once. Louis remembers. Louis might not have understood to what extent they were hiding, how the ways in which Lestat was keeping him and Claudia a secret. But they had hidden from mortals, once.

It was a different era.

Daniel hadn't done what he'd done with the book.

Louis' sweeps Lestat's hair to one side, over his shoulder. Fingers trail skin, an indulgence that stalls against the desire to drag his fingers through Lestat's curls, ruin the styling and the product.

"Why aren't these healing?"

Fingertips mapping bruises, skimming evidence of claws digging after Lestat's spine, the vital organs beneath.

Lestat is older than Louis. (An inescapable truth.) The marks shouldn't linger on him the way they sometimes do on Louis.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-14 11:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Louis hums his disapproval, as if he has never made similar plays, taken similar risks.

It's different, with Lestat. This had never needed to be Lestat's problem.

"I ain't forgotten you haven't been eating like you should."

Maybe it had been just that once. Cookie had imparted signs of a particular kind of breakdown and maybe that's all it was.

And yet.

Louis hooks fingers into the laced ribbons, begins gently working them free to loosen the corset. He's taking his time. There's some disorientating echo of the past: their room in New Orleans, those rare evenings when Louis would let himself bend enough to put Lestat's cuff links on.

They've come far from there.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-15 12:14 am (UTC)(link)
It is unkind.

Louis feels the sting. Such a specific sore spot to dig a claw into.

He has to decide in the moment how much temper he wishes to allot to it, this sideswipe that Lestat follows in a more conciliatory tone.

"You been taking little sips, haven't you?"

Even toned, knuckles skimming skin, following the healing injuries downwards. Maybe a little needling in return, calmer than he feels.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-15 11:47 am (UTC)(link)
Reflexive wrinkle of Louis' nose for pineapple vodka, diminished as Lestat touches him.

All things felt more manageable when Louis was touching Lestat. Controlled contact, in which Louis directed each place their skin met. It was made easier by Lestat giving Louis his back, a little distance even as they stood centimeters apart.

Now Lestat has turned. Louis feels that sense of control slipping, the world tilting under his feet. Feels some urge to grab Lestat by the hips, steady himself by the only fixed point in the room.

"You think I don't know enough?"

Louis has not yet stepped away.

"I ain't on TikTok, but everyone else is."

And tabloids tend to embed videos.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-15 01:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Louis has observed it all and found it—

Familiar.

Shades of San Francisco. Merriment as self destruction.

Or maybe he is only seeing what he wants to see.

"Why you putting targets on your chest," Louis says, voice low. Fingers coming to rest at the center of Lestat's chest, over his heart. "Why you drawing fire."

Well, none tonight. But how much has gone unseen? Louis isn't certain whether or not there have been many skirmishes or just a few. Lestat is not Louis. He is older, less likely to be mistaken as an easy target.

"Why you making yourself part of something that's my problem."

Quieter, but no less intense for it.
Edited (refining that dialogue) 2025-08-15 14:46 (UTC)
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-15 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Lestat is cooler to the touch than Louis recalls. Skin warms beneath his palm, fingers and thumb coming to rest in familiar arrangement, and Louis thinks of this and of Lestat dismissing his own hunger.

A reversal of roles, though to what extent Louis cannot truly say.

Louis holds behind his teeth the truth: he hadn't wanted the book. He had meant to take it all back, erase it.

But it would remove any possibility of Lestat reconciling with Daniel. So Louis does not say this.

"It ain't just your story."

Their story. Louis' story.

Claudia's story.

"It ain't you they wanted to punish before. I wanted it kept that way."

Lestat is touching him. Louis' heartbeat is too fast, uneven. Reacting even if Louis' face is studiously schooled into neutrality.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-16 01:08 am (UTC)(link)
"Don't," falls out of his mouth, almost involuntarily. A flinch.

Old habits. Daniel would scoff.

But it is still painful. Painful to remember, made more so by the realization of what it was he endured. How foolish he'd been. How much time he'd lost afterwards, living with the architect of his daughter's death.

A breath. His fingers curl in slightly at Lestat's chest.

"I'm asking you not to allow this."

A slide of his hands. Fingers crest the edge of red markings, injuries healing shockingly slowly.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-16 01:49 am (UTC)(link)
A span of a breath, seconds, where Louis could have asked, where did you go?

But then Lestat is gone.

An impossibility to simply ignore Lestat's fingers, but Louis refuses to let it draw his focus. Keeps his eyes on Lestat's face, the wet gleam of his eyes.

Not quite arguing, not yet, but something unyielding in Lestat feels as if it will tilt them in that direction. Louis deciding how much he wishes to indulge, to permit this.

"What are you asking of me?"

A starting point. Circling back, trying to find some kind of equilibrium once more.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-16 04:17 am (UTC)(link)
Nothing.

Louis no longer finds it very convincing. And it is fraying his own resolve, his own understanding of what he needs, the push and pull of it set against Lestat as he exists now, as he has been existing now.

"We did."

Swaying into that tug, permitting it. A moment of indulgence, before Louis says, "You asked me what I was doing before. Now I'm asking you. What're you doing, Lestat? What're you doing with this tour?"
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-08-16 11:10 am (UTC)(link)
Lofty goals.

Some connective tissue to Louis standing on a dark balcony, saying The vampire is bored. To the quiet revulsion in his voice explaining the Conversion.

Louis doesn't want such a thing to come to pass.

But he is less willing to see Lestat put himself in the way of it. His once-companion, trying to alter the tides.

(Say nothing of what Louis has been doing.)

Louis cups his cheek, his jaw, fingers curling familiar there.

"Lestat," comes soft, exasperated, fond. "I liked it better when it was just about the Grammy."

It was never about just the Grammy, Louis guesses.

"But you ain't gonna stop. There ain't nothing I can say."

Also funny, considering the reverse. How unyielding Louis is and always has been.

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