How difficult, curbing the instinct to touch. To dig in claws, hold on.
Louis contents himself with the lightness of their embrace. Of his hand briefly catching in Lestat's curls, just long enough to register the trace evidence of pampering and fuss, all that befits a rising star. An irregular stutter of his heart at their nearness, contained but inevitable.
Separates without lingering, as friends must. And they are. Friends. Bidden divert his attention more fully to—
Cookie?
Unfair. Scathing all the same.
"Louis de Pointe du Lac," he offers in turn, as he clasps her hand. His eyes flick between her and Lestat, smile maintaining. Warm still, polite. Louis can be petty later. "You sounded impressive. Both of you."
A pause, a breath while Louis sets aside the churn of competing emotion to question, "How'd you find your way into his company, Cookie?"
Cookie launches into the story with confident ease, a way of smiling askew as she speaks of her band with brothers Alex and Larry, of their frequent rehearsals in the garage of her ex's house, in the attic studio in Marigny. New Orleans natives, all three, who were not seeing very much success in the south, hadn't ever been beyond it,
and all the while, Lestat watches Louis and takes private amusement in his display of manners, in what is undoubtedly going through his head.
"I heard them from the grave," he adds, curling an arm around Cookie's waist, drawing her in, to land a kiss on her cheek. "Loud enough to wake the dead."
Turns his focus to Louis once more. "Would you like to meet the others?"
Noted, this closeness. This touch, the press of his mouth to her cheek.
Looking between them, a slight tip of the head as Louis makes his study. Maintains his pleasant smile. Reminds himself, they have their friendship. There are many reasons to cultivate it.
"Yes," Louis answers smoothly. "Please, I'd like to meet all your new companions."
Semi-pointed choice in words, a little needling as he observes some aspect of Lestat's amusement.
The change in Lestat's expression is subtle—still a smile, still fixed focus, but a fine tuned adjustment, of eyes shining brighter, everything a little sharper. More teeth than a moment ago. The laugh that follows, familiar too.
A precursor to an argument, perhaps, one of those where it was almost for fun. But there is no argument. Louis has said nothing objectionable.
"Go," Lestat says, a twitch of his head indicating he is speaking to Cookie, even with his eyes set on Louis. "Go be adored. I'll find you later." She slips away without trying to extract further acknowledgment from either of them, and Lestat reaches out to take Louis' hand.
"How long are you intending to linger?" he asks, as he steps back, intent to lead Louis through the space.
Fingers linking, old habit guiding the lacing of their hands as Louis falls into step.
I'll find you later, needling in the back of Louis' mind. A turn of his head to follow her as she vanishes, before his attention is inevitably drawn back to Lestat. Momentarily released from his observation, Louis takes helpless note of the fall of his curls down his shoulders, the impossible cinch of the corset round his waist.
"A bit longer," Louis offers, vague. "Figure it's rude to monopolize your time when you got so many people clamoring for it."
Over his shoulder, back at Louis, as he pulls him along. The crowd around them seem to know better than to interrupt or impose themselves in this moment, but it's a strange thing, to be in a room full of people who are so single-minded in their focus, even scattered as they are into many separate conversations. Lestat can feel their awareness of him like he is wandering through cobwebs, catching glances, thoughts, fluttered hearts.
And yes, it all makes him very happy. "Over there," he says, drawing Louis alongside him, gesturing. They, along with Cookie, glimpsed in promotional material, in recordings of performances, in flickers in music videos, two like-looking men in bright colours, makeup, long hair.
Lestat, having abandoned his half-finished cocktail on a drifting server's platter, raises a hand to wave at them across the room, but says to Louis, "And do you really wish to meet them? When you are going to be here for such a short amount of time."
A crooked smile meets Lestat's backwards look. Of course Louis would hate to be rude. Of course.
There are some things they simply can't pretend away. They know each other too well, even near eighty years removed from each others company.
Louis is as aware as Lestat of the room's attention, the way all eyes seem to hang upon him. The way stray thoughts flick over Louis without sticking, dismissing and uninterested, for the moment. Louis doesn't crave their admiration. He does harbor a quiet urge to curl lips back off his fangs, redirect their focus elsewhere.
But no. This is Lestat's party, his design. He will be touring and he will be the object of adoration at each stop. Louis can pick and choose the locales in which he observes this phenomenon.
A moment of scrutiny for the pair of musicians. Perhaps they have similarly absurd names, Louis considers privately, before letting his eyes drift back to Lestat.
"I'd like to know who you're traveling with," is true enough, however: "But I won't complain if you got other subjects to occupy our time."
Unspoken: Louis won't mind having Lestat all to himself.
"Perhaps you can introduce yourself to them when I'm done with you."
Teasing, listing in closer on his way to stepping around Louis, redirecting them both by the drag of their linked hands. It isn't a clean exit, although Lestat could surely make it be one—brief interruptions, a few brave souls slipping into his path to offer congratulations on the upcoming tour, and wishes to speak with him later. It's permitted, rewarded with a touch to the chest or the waist, an air kiss to the cheek, a warm clasp at the elbow, a laugh.
Keeping Louis tethered with his other hand while he mingles warmly with mortals, but all the while leading him away, out of this room, into a hallway. A feeling of backstage, here, a table used for servers to leave and exchange platters, a roll of carpeting leading guests off to where the bathrooms are set up.
They take another corner, and Lestat gives a satisfied, relieved sounding sigh when they find themselves alone beneath stone, medieval archways. He unlinks their hands as he approaches a staircase that has been cordoned off with a velvet rope, undoing it without hesitation.
All noted, because how can it not be noted? It is their last night in New Orleans again, and people are flocking to Lestat, eager for his attention. And Louis is wrestling with the same sensation of jealousy, possessiveness. Of wanting Lestat to himself.
All the separation, the reality that they are no longer companions and only newly renewed friends, hasn't diminished this feeling in him.
Breathes a little easier when they pass out of the crowd's eye. All is quieter, goes quieter still as Lestat leads them past the velvet cordon.
"You get the run of the place?" Louis questions, a smile spreading across his face. Slow, knowing. What velvet rope would really keep Lestat contained if he wished otherwise?
"Why'd you pick it?" Is the more relevant question, perhaps. Some interest, prickling thought that perhaps there is some tangible connection to the past Lestat is honoring.
A look back at Louis as he fusses with the rope that says not quite, but truly, who can stop him. If the authorities that oversee these places find out about an impulsive rockstar snooping around the floors he'd contractually agreed not to tread, then that will be a task for Ms. Clare. Call that enrichment in her enclosure.
"Well, it's quite lovely," Lestat says, as he leads the way up the wide stone spiral staircase. Quickly impossibly dark, if not for their ability to see perfectly well, moonlight struggle through the narrow notches of windows. There are fixtures in the walls where sconces would have been.
He thinks he remembers the air always tasting a little like smoke and flame. Runs his nails along the stone wall as they go, up and up.
"Even if it's not quite like I remembered it," showing his hand, as they ascend. A sturdy wooden door awaits, the top of the tower, the ramparts.
Even now, all this time, Louis feels his chest tighten. Some long held eagerness, wanting to know this man moving alongside him, this man he has shared a bed, a home, a coffin with.
Shares a heart with. Even now.
"It is lovely," Louis agreed. Easy. Louis has always had an eye for beauty, for architecture and promising spaces. But this runs separate from that instinct. Isn't followed by queries about the structure itself, but instead:
"When were you here last?"
An open door. Inviting. Lestat might deflect. Louis will accept if he does. He has even less standing from which to make demands than he once did.
Up and out, onto the castle wall, the chest high crenelations to one side, a lower wall facing inwards to the courtyard. Sounds of people, music, laughter. And beyond, mountains, forest, moonlight shapes and rolling countryside. Lestat steps aside so that they can wander together, folding his hands behind himself.
"1790," he says, a sideways look. Surprise. "I stole away in the night, down that same road that runs to Clermont-Ferrand. Told myself I would never see it again, but look. Here we are."
Looks away from Louis, nods in a direction past the walls. "That way was once acres of apple orchard. I suppose it is technically still there, tangled up amongst the forest. You know, I think that's the only human food I can recall with any clarity."
Louis falls out of pace, allows Lestat to read slightly ahead. Observes him in his finery, cinched in a lovely corset, draped in gossamer fabric, loose curls falling over his shoulders as he walks along the stone, against this backdrop.
1790. Lestat leaving, alone. The memory of apples, grown nearby.
"Was this home?" Louis asks, softly. A little startled by the possibility that they could be. That the building has been preserved as it was.
Once a little ways ahead, Lestat pivots back to face him, a characteristically smooth twirl of motion. "Yes," simply, and clearly pleased with himself. For startling Louis, perhaps, for surprising him, for luring him. Gifting him, he would like to think. No one else will know this thing. Not even the ones who believe in his being a vampire.
Even for them, there's a certain amount of cognizant dissonance that would need to be overcome. Two and a half centuries ago is a long time, for mortals. He is, personally, older than the legal presence of the United States of America. And you would imagine that castles would have crumbled.
But what's two and a half centuries to a castle that has stood since the 7th century? The stone is sure, the foundations deep. According to this castle, it has been barely any time at all since he left.
"Miserable, isn't it? In all its loveliness. I assure you it was just as dour then as it is now."
He's not mortal, Louis had cautioned Claudia, a mere three decades of vampiric life to his name. You threaten a life which will endure till the end of the world.
On this high wall, watching Lestat spin to face him, Louis considers their respective ages. Lestat, old enough to have walked through this place and called it home. This castle, ancient even then. Time, moving around them, flowing onwards and onwards while they stand still.
"Was it home?" carries a different meaning as Louis closes the distance between them.
Lestat had lived here, yes. But home is bigger than a building. Needs more than four walls, a roof overhead. Needs something Louis suspects might have been absent.
Lestat has a hand resting on the wall's edge, an angled lean, as if ever constantly aware of the shape and silhouette he makes when being looked at. Because he is, probably, on some instinctive level. And finds that flitting around a party, leading the way through stone halls, allowing his bandmate to intervene, has been a good armor up until this point.
Here, he finds himself more aware than ever of Louis. His presence, his heart beat, his gaze. The lovely things he is wearing, the way he does his hair now. The texture of his voice.
He would like to ask him what he sees, now. If Lestat is now someone considerably changed since he found him in New Orleans. An improvement.
A little gesture from his free hand, before bringing it up to toy with one of the many pearl strands dangling off his neck. "It was all there was," is partways a no. "It was my world, first, before I discovered all that lay beyond it."
It's not a home when you find yourself trapped there. Louis, Lestat is sure, would know.
"But, I wanted to come and pay my respects. A new beginning, for a third time."
Yes, Lestat looks very good. Impossibly good. A temptation to do something foolish, like put his hand on Lestat's absurdly cinched waist, comes and goes. Nudged away, adhering to all the sensible things Louis has resolved as he comes to a stop alongside Lestat.
His study doesn't ease. He is looking. Admiring, even as his eyes search Lestat's face. Takes up all these pieces Lestat offers him, holding them close to the chest.
A moment's consideration, before Louis permits them to be drawn towards the present. The music, the tour. A third new beginning, Lestat reintroducing himself to the world. The fretful twist in his chest at all things a new beginning may well bring. (Beautiful bandmates, adoring mortals.)
"Third times the charm," is meant to lighten the conversation, even though Louis is still thinking of Lestat in this place. Lestat, who remembers the taste of apples. "You ready for it all? Your tour?"
The gold Louis is wearing is tempting. Tempting to slip his fingers beneath the buckle of his belt. To stroke the embroidery, or kiss his eyelids so that gold shimmer comes away on his lips. These thoughts, fleeting, impulsive, perfectly ordinary. Of course Louis is beautiful. Of course Lestat wants him.
And does not deserve him. At third time's a charm, it's kind of an awful twist of humour, and Lestat's eyes wrinkle with mirth for it. A new life, a new opportunity to make a mess of it. He is certain he will. He is determined to enjoy it, this time.
"Yes," he says, a little hair toss following his look off past Louis' shoulder. "I feel decades too late, really, but. At least the world doesn't know what it wants anymore. Easier to give them whatever it is you have."
A little shrug, ruffled sleeves shivering with the movement. "The book has been a wonderful help, of course. You know, by the time we descend, everyone here will know who you are."
"How you figure that?" Louis says, a little teasing, as he rests elbows on the stone. Eyes still angled towards Lestat, mouth slanting into a smile. "They not gonna assume I'm just one of your favorites for the night?"
Maybe skirting a little away from discussion of the book. Avoiding the reality that Louis has not read it. Isn't certain he ever will.
Louis, having gone so long with a complete absence of presence in the world. A whisper, conducting business through comfortable intermediaries. Now, his name. His story. Their story. Daniel's book a bestseller, bringing with it more immediate things to deal with than mortal attention, but behind response of the vampire world there is still the overly invested mortals to consider. Comfortable anonymity is perhaps beyond him now.
Lestat considers him, considers whether this is a play at avoidance. They have acknowledged the book and have not discussed the book. It has gone noticed.
"When I met Cookie and her band," he says, "it's true I was drawn to their music. I wanted to learn the things they could teach me. We played together that same night. I told them what I was. I told them who I was. And did you know what they said?"
A tip of his head.
"Oh, Lestat, from that vampire book," a little flare of playacting. "How original, to pretend to be him. Dracula is so passé. And of course, I had no idea what they meant, and Alex gave me his copy. I read it in an evening. I vanished from them for a month. So yes, Louis de Pointe du Lac, Cookie knows who you are and will be sure to tell anyone who wishes to know where I am right now."
Is he angry? Hard to say. Anger does not snap at his tone, coldness doesn't ice his words, but there is a needling kind of sharpness to all this recounting, a prideful way of standing.
"They will know you are a vampire. That you were the love of my life."
Louis feels the way it lands, how it wedges behind the ribs. How it interrupts the steady thud of his heart. Pain blooms there, though maybe Louis has no right to it. No right to feel stung, when they are maintaining their friendship, their new acquaintance. When they are eighty years apart and companions no longer.
Still.
Were becomes splintered bone, a blossoming bruise. Nothing to do but feel it, and contain it.
A flex of a smile, before Louis looks away. Out into the distance, where apple trees once grew, where the idle conversation of those milling about far beneath them on the ground drifts up, indistinguishable murmurs.
"I see."
Measured in tone, these two words. Aware of the ground they tread towards. Lestat, inscrutable but sharp-toned. Louis, hurt. A combination that could very well teeter towards disaster.
Lestat makes a hasty study of Louis' profile. Shame, perhaps. Discomfort. None of it he sees, all of it he imagines. He shifts his posture as well, leaning to gaze out at the wilderness. Yes, still apple trees out there, he can scent it on the wind, fallen fruit, rotting on the forest floor. The grounds had fallen to disuse well before the wilds reclaimed it, well before Lestat left this place. The vineyards, untended, in need of replanting.
He will wander these halls and reflect on his beginnings and try to recall these things so that when Daniel Molloy sits across from him, camera and all, he won't be making any of it up. He thinks he should ask if Louis would like to accompany him, if he would listen. Thinks he has asked enough of him already.
Asks, instead, "Did you like my song?" A glance aside, a little smile. "The record I sent to you."
And so they step back from the edge of some kind of disaster.
Louis' gaze slants back. The hurt is still there, a second heartbeat in his chest, contained. Suppressed, pushed far enough aside that Louis can recover a fond smile. Offer it up, no hesitation.
"I did."
Unchanging, this. Louis' love of music, yes, but Lestat's in particular. He'd listened to it so many times, tracing the threads of the song back to their salon in New Orleans. The pieces of it that were intrinsically Lestat, even mingled and transformed by the progression of time.
"Liked the video too," Louis tells him, because of course he had sought it out. Sought that like he had unearthed the band's website, the series of articles announcing the tour. Louis doing his own research, to Daniel's great amusement.
Lestat can't help a smile for that, teeth set to bottom lip, a flash of affection that catches him off-guard. Presses it down again.
Good, that Louis liked it. And the video. This is what friends feel for each other's accomplishments. And he has spoken of it with Cookie, when she was in a mood to grant her limited human wisdom, that if he would like Louis in his life, happy and stable, than the rest way to do it is to maintain a friendship.
Had he imaginings of something like New Orleans again, dripping with water from the Mississippi, come to make good on the audacity of the gift? Perhaps. Little, petty, misbehaving imaginings. Ones that die like time lapsed flowers, withering.
But it is cute of Louis to have looked up the video.
"Good," he says. "You could hardly be expected to enjoy the tour if you hated it."
Talk of the book delayed, deferred, in favor of this.
Is it an easier topic? In some ways, yes. In others, Louis finds it extremely difficult.
But the difficulty doesn't matter. Lestat has been speaking of the tour since Louis found him. Louis is so pleased to see him, lucid and healthy, making good on what Louis had feared was only a delusion.
"Got that too," Louis tells him. "Your very kind arrangements for me."
Likes that. Likes Lestat's smile. Likes arrangements made for him, space in which Louis might fit himself into Lestat's new life.
"You know I've never hated anything you've composed."
Admittedly, they're a long ways from their companionship, and the kind of music Lestat had been playing then. But it's still his music.
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Louis contents himself with the lightness of their embrace. Of his hand briefly catching in Lestat's curls, just long enough to register the trace evidence of pampering and fuss, all that befits a rising star. An irregular stutter of his heart at their nearness, contained but inevitable.
Separates without lingering, as friends must. And they are. Friends. Bidden divert his attention more fully to—
Cookie?
Unfair. Scathing all the same.
"Louis de Pointe du Lac," he offers in turn, as he clasps her hand. His eyes flick between her and Lestat, smile maintaining. Warm still, polite. Louis can be petty later. "You sounded impressive. Both of you."
A pause, a breath while Louis sets aside the churn of competing emotion to question, "How'd you find your way into his company, Cookie?"
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and all the while, Lestat watches Louis and takes private amusement in his display of manners, in what is undoubtedly going through his head.
"I heard them from the grave," he adds, curling an arm around Cookie's waist, drawing her in, to land a kiss on her cheek. "Loud enough to wake the dead."
Turns his focus to Louis once more. "Would you like to meet the others?"
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Looking between them, a slight tip of the head as Louis makes his study. Maintains his pleasant smile. Reminds himself, they have their friendship. There are many reasons to cultivate it.
"Yes," Louis answers smoothly. "Please, I'd like to meet all your new companions."
Semi-pointed choice in words, a little needling as he observes some aspect of Lestat's amusement.
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A precursor to an argument, perhaps, one of those where it was almost for fun. But there is no argument. Louis has said nothing objectionable.
"Go," Lestat says, a twitch of his head indicating he is speaking to Cookie, even with his eyes set on Louis. "Go be adored. I'll find you later." She slips away without trying to extract further acknowledgment from either of them, and Lestat reaches out to take Louis' hand.
"How long are you intending to linger?" he asks, as he steps back, intent to lead Louis through the space.
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I'll find you later, needling in the back of Louis' mind. A turn of his head to follow her as she vanishes, before his attention is inevitably drawn back to Lestat. Momentarily released from his observation, Louis takes helpless note of the fall of his curls down his shoulders, the impossible cinch of the corset round his waist.
"A bit longer," Louis offers, vague. "Figure it's rude to monopolize your time when you got so many people clamoring for it."
A reminder to himself, really.
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Over his shoulder, back at Louis, as he pulls him along. The crowd around them seem to know better than to interrupt or impose themselves in this moment, but it's a strange thing, to be in a room full of people who are so single-minded in their focus, even scattered as they are into many separate conversations. Lestat can feel their awareness of him like he is wandering through cobwebs, catching glances, thoughts, fluttered hearts.
And yes, it all makes him very happy. "Over there," he says, drawing Louis alongside him, gesturing. They, along with Cookie, glimpsed in promotional material, in recordings of performances, in flickers in music videos, two like-looking men in bright colours, makeup, long hair.
Lestat, having abandoned his half-finished cocktail on a drifting server's platter, raises a hand to wave at them across the room, but says to Louis, "And do you really wish to meet them? When you are going to be here for such a short amount of time."
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There are some things they simply can't pretend away. They know each other too well, even near eighty years removed from each others company.
Louis is as aware as Lestat of the room's attention, the way all eyes seem to hang upon him. The way stray thoughts flick over Louis without sticking, dismissing and uninterested, for the moment. Louis doesn't crave their admiration. He does harbor a quiet urge to curl lips back off his fangs, redirect their focus elsewhere.
But no. This is Lestat's party, his design. He will be touring and he will be the object of adoration at each stop. Louis can pick and choose the locales in which he observes this phenomenon.
A moment of scrutiny for the pair of musicians. Perhaps they have similarly absurd names, Louis considers privately, before letting his eyes drift back to Lestat.
"I'd like to know who you're traveling with," is true enough, however: "But I won't complain if you got other subjects to occupy our time."
Unspoken: Louis won't mind having Lestat all to himself.
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Teasing, listing in closer on his way to stepping around Louis, redirecting them both by the drag of their linked hands. It isn't a clean exit, although Lestat could surely make it be one—brief interruptions, a few brave souls slipping into his path to offer congratulations on the upcoming tour, and wishes to speak with him later. It's permitted, rewarded with a touch to the chest or the waist, an air kiss to the cheek, a warm clasp at the elbow, a laugh.
Keeping Louis tethered with his other hand while he mingles warmly with mortals, but all the while leading him away, out of this room, into a hallway. A feeling of backstage, here, a table used for servers to leave and exchange platters, a roll of carpeting leading guests off to where the bathrooms are set up.
They take another corner, and Lestat gives a satisfied, relieved sounding sigh when they find themselves alone beneath stone, medieval archways. He unlinks their hands as he approaches a staircase that has been cordoned off with a velvet rope, undoing it without hesitation.
"Come, I wanted to show you around at least."
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All the separation, the reality that they are no longer companions and only newly renewed friends, hasn't diminished this feeling in him.
Breathes a little easier when they pass out of the crowd's eye. All is quieter, goes quieter still as Lestat leads them past the velvet cordon.
"You get the run of the place?" Louis questions, a smile spreading across his face. Slow, knowing. What velvet rope would really keep Lestat contained if he wished otherwise?
"Why'd you pick it?" Is the more relevant question, perhaps. Some interest, prickling thought that perhaps there is some tangible connection to the past Lestat is honoring.
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"Well, it's quite lovely," Lestat says, as he leads the way up the wide stone spiral staircase. Quickly impossibly dark, if not for their ability to see perfectly well, moonlight struggle through the narrow notches of windows. There are fixtures in the walls where sconces would have been.
He thinks he remembers the air always tasting a little like smoke and flame. Runs his nails along the stone wall as they go, up and up.
"Even if it's not quite like I remembered it," showing his hand, as they ascend. A sturdy wooden door awaits, the top of the tower, the ramparts.
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Shares a heart with. Even now.
"It is lovely," Louis agreed. Easy. Louis has always had an eye for beauty, for architecture and promising spaces. But this runs separate from that instinct. Isn't followed by queries about the structure itself, but instead:
"When were you here last?"
An open door. Inviting. Lestat might deflect. Louis will accept if he does. He has even less standing from which to make demands than he once did.
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"1790," he says, a sideways look. Surprise. "I stole away in the night, down that same road that runs to Clermont-Ferrand. Told myself I would never see it again, but look. Here we are."
Looks away from Louis, nods in a direction past the walls. "That way was once acres of apple orchard. I suppose it is technically still there, tangled up amongst the forest. You know, I think that's the only human food I can recall with any clarity."
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1790. Lestat leaving, alone. The memory of apples, grown nearby.
"Was this home?" Louis asks, softly. A little startled by the possibility that they could be. That the building has been preserved as it was.
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Even for them, there's a certain amount of cognizant dissonance that would need to be overcome. Two and a half centuries ago is a long time, for mortals. He is, personally, older than the legal presence of the United States of America. And you would imagine that castles would have crumbled.
But what's two and a half centuries to a castle that has stood since the 7th century? The stone is sure, the foundations deep. According to this castle, it has been barely any time at all since he left.
"Miserable, isn't it? In all its loveliness. I assure you it was just as dour then as it is now."
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On this high wall, watching Lestat spin to face him, Louis considers their respective ages. Lestat, old enough to have walked through this place and called it home. This castle, ancient even then. Time, moving around them, flowing onwards and onwards while they stand still.
"Was it home?" carries a different meaning as Louis closes the distance between them.
Lestat had lived here, yes. But home is bigger than a building. Needs more than four walls, a roof overhead. Needs something Louis suspects might have been absent.
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Here, he finds himself more aware than ever of Louis. His presence, his heart beat, his gaze. The lovely things he is wearing, the way he does his hair now. The texture of his voice.
He would like to ask him what he sees, now. If Lestat is now someone considerably changed since he found him in New Orleans. An improvement.
A little gesture from his free hand, before bringing it up to toy with one of the many pearl strands dangling off his neck. "It was all there was," is partways a no. "It was my world, first, before I discovered all that lay beyond it."
It's not a home when you find yourself trapped there. Louis, Lestat is sure, would know.
"But, I wanted to come and pay my respects. A new beginning, for a third time."
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His study doesn't ease. He is looking. Admiring, even as his eyes search Lestat's face. Takes up all these pieces Lestat offers him, holding them close to the chest.
A moment's consideration, before Louis permits them to be drawn towards the present. The music, the tour. A third new beginning, Lestat reintroducing himself to the world. The fretful twist in his chest at all things a new beginning may well bring. (Beautiful bandmates, adoring mortals.)
"Third times the charm," is meant to lighten the conversation, even though Louis is still thinking of Lestat in this place. Lestat, who remembers the taste of apples. "You ready for it all? Your tour?"
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And does not deserve him. At third time's a charm, it's kind of an awful twist of humour, and Lestat's eyes wrinkle with mirth for it. A new life, a new opportunity to make a mess of it. He is certain he will. He is determined to enjoy it, this time.
"Yes," he says, a little hair toss following his look off past Louis' shoulder. "I feel decades too late, really, but. At least the world doesn't know what it wants anymore. Easier to give them whatever it is you have."
A little shrug, ruffled sleeves shivering with the movement. "The book has been a wonderful help, of course. You know, by the time we descend, everyone here will know who you are."
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Maybe skirting a little away from discussion of the book. Avoiding the reality that Louis has not read it. Isn't certain he ever will.
Louis, having gone so long with a complete absence of presence in the world. A whisper, conducting business through comfortable intermediaries. Now, his name. His story. Their story. Daniel's book a bestseller, bringing with it more immediate things to deal with than mortal attention, but behind response of the vampire world there is still the overly invested mortals to consider. Comfortable anonymity is perhaps beyond him now.
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Lestat considers him, considers whether this is a play at avoidance. They have acknowledged the book and have not discussed the book. It has gone noticed.
"When I met Cookie and her band," he says, "it's true I was drawn to their music. I wanted to learn the things they could teach me. We played together that same night. I told them what I was. I told them who I was. And did you know what they said?"
A tip of his head.
"Oh, Lestat, from that vampire book," a little flare of playacting. "How original, to pretend to be him. Dracula is so passé. And of course, I had no idea what they meant, and Alex gave me his copy. I read it in an evening. I vanished from them for a month. So yes, Louis de Pointe du Lac, Cookie knows who you are and will be sure to tell anyone who wishes to know where I am right now."
Is he angry? Hard to say. Anger does not snap at his tone, coldness doesn't ice his words, but there is a needling kind of sharpness to all this recounting, a prideful way of standing.
"They will know you are a vampire. That you were the love of my life."
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A single word.
Were. Past tense.
Louis feels the way it lands, how it wedges behind the ribs. How it interrupts the steady thud of his heart. Pain blooms there, though maybe Louis has no right to it. No right to feel stung, when they are maintaining their friendship, their new acquaintance. When they are eighty years apart and companions no longer.
Still.
Were becomes splintered bone, a blossoming bruise. Nothing to do but feel it, and contain it.
A flex of a smile, before Louis looks away. Out into the distance, where apple trees once grew, where the idle conversation of those milling about far beneath them on the ground drifts up, indistinguishable murmurs.
"I see."
Measured in tone, these two words. Aware of the ground they tread towards. Lestat, inscrutable but sharp-toned. Louis, hurt. A combination that could very well teeter towards disaster.
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Lestat makes a hasty study of Louis' profile. Shame, perhaps. Discomfort. None of it he sees, all of it he imagines. He shifts his posture as well, leaning to gaze out at the wilderness. Yes, still apple trees out there, he can scent it on the wind, fallen fruit, rotting on the forest floor. The grounds had fallen to disuse well before the wilds reclaimed it, well before Lestat left this place. The vineyards, untended, in need of replanting.
He will wander these halls and reflect on his beginnings and try to recall these things so that when Daniel Molloy sits across from him, camera and all, he won't be making any of it up. He thinks he should ask if Louis would like to accompany him, if he would listen. Thinks he has asked enough of him already.
Asks, instead, "Did you like my song?" A glance aside, a little smile. "The record I sent to you."
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Louis' gaze slants back. The hurt is still there, a second heartbeat in his chest, contained. Suppressed, pushed far enough aside that Louis can recover a fond smile. Offer it up, no hesitation.
"I did."
Unchanging, this. Louis' love of music, yes, but Lestat's in particular. He'd listened to it so many times, tracing the threads of the song back to their salon in New Orleans. The pieces of it that were intrinsically Lestat, even mingled and transformed by the progression of time.
"Liked the video too," Louis tells him, because of course he had sought it out. Sought that like he had unearthed the band's website, the series of articles announcing the tour. Louis doing his own research, to Daniel's great amusement.
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Good, that Louis liked it. And the video. This is what friends feel for each other's accomplishments. And he has spoken of it with Cookie, when she was in a mood to grant her limited human wisdom, that if he would like Louis in his life, happy and stable, than the rest way to do it is to maintain a friendship.
Had he imaginings of something like New Orleans again, dripping with water from the Mississippi, come to make good on the audacity of the gift? Perhaps. Little, petty, misbehaving imaginings. Ones that die like time lapsed flowers, withering.
But it is cute of Louis to have looked up the video.
"Good," he says. "You could hardly be expected to enjoy the tour if you hated it."
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Is it an easier topic? In some ways, yes. In others, Louis finds it extremely difficult.
But the difficulty doesn't matter. Lestat has been speaking of the tour since Louis found him. Louis is so pleased to see him, lucid and healthy, making good on what Louis had feared was only a delusion.
"Got that too," Louis tells him. "Your very kind arrangements for me."
Likes that. Likes Lestat's smile. Likes arrangements made for him, space in which Louis might fit himself into Lestat's new life.
"You know I've never hated anything you've composed."
Admittedly, they're a long ways from their companionship, and the kind of music Lestat had been playing then. But it's still his music.
"I'm going to enjoy it. Your tour."
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