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.
Feels some anxious snarl of something, beneath constricting layers of velvet and lace, each of these mild mannered words like an irritant. If he allowed it, Lestat could follow that spiral, down into the depths where he can imagine Louis only ever liking his music, enjoying his career, a passing amusement of some non-serious nature that doesn't really pertain to him at all.
Well, the night is young.
"You will cross paths with your friend," he says, a hair toss, a casual look away. "Your vampiric biographer. He has agreed to direct the documentary."
The casual hair toss does not, actually, soften the absolute shock of this revelation.
And while Louis manages to blunt and contain most of the emotion, some fraction of it touches his expression. Surprise, eyebrows lifting as Louis turns more fully towards Lestat.
It would be absolutely absurd if this were a joke. Louis doesn't bother entertaining the possibility that Lestat is only kidding with him. Instead, he spends a moment trying to recall if it had ever been mentioned that Lestat intends to make a documentary. Had they spoken of it? Surely not. Surely Louis would have remembered?
"Daniel?" he questions, as if there's some other vampiric biographer in Louis' rolodex. "I hadn't realized you were in contact."
Lestat, behaving a little like he does not relish the ability to surprise Louis, like he did not notice. But maybe something knowing, once he looks back at him, in the smile that follows. "It is more of a, you know, my people contacting his people kind of arrangement. But it seems appropriate, doesn't it?"
There has been no talk of the documentary. Lestat had not been planning to share it with Louis, or anyone, this evening. But good plans never survive contact with the enemy.
"And as you have made a point to emphasise to the world entire, books aren't really my style."
Circling back to the book, which they should have a conversation about, Louis knows. Just not tonight, when Lestat is meant to be celebrating. It seems a poor moment to delve into the book, the circumstances in which Louis had spoken of all the things within it. That he hadn't read it, and why he doesn't wish to do so.
Which parts he regrets, and which parts he doesn't.
And he sees it, in Lestat's face. That he has been caught out in his reaction, and cannot quite begrudge Lestat whatever satisfaction he takes from it.
"I didn't know you wished to be interviewed," Louis says, and then amends, "To be interviewed so extensively."
Finding his footing by degrees. Admitting, "But there is no one better than Daniel, if you are set on the idea. And capable of convincing him to do his work on camera."
Which clearly has already been settled, so why is Louis even bothering rambling about it?
"He is, apparently, amenable to whatever form I feel my life story must take. And it is my preference that no one write it for me."
Lestat, once again, setting his focus on Louis. Piercing, drilling. Beneath them, the party continues. It will continue well into the night. They have all the time in the world. Secretly, of course, Lestat would stay here until sunrise.
"When you told yours," he says, "did you know what you would say? Or did he guide you down those paths?"
But more difficult to answer than Lestat maybe means it to be. Louis had changed within the course of the interview. His intentions, his hopes for the outcome, all of it evolving as he and Daniel sat together and sifted through what Louis could remember, how he remembered.
Excavated what he did not.
"I had an idea of what I would say, at the beginning," Louis answers, breaking the silence stretching out between them before Lestat could repeat himself, take offense at Louis' delay. This long moment where his focus turns inward, disappearing from this castle, drawn back to past days in Dubai. "I felt I knew what I was presenting to him, and that relaying all of it aloud would...order it, in my mind."
Would make it real. Would validate the meaning Louis had been guessing at, soothe the growing disquiet at the sense he was adrift, tucked away in his tower.
Though also: a small breath of laughter for guide.
Yes, Daniel had guided, but not so gently as the word might imply.
"Daniel saw beyond me. He pushed us into avenues I would not have considered on my own. I imagine he will do the same for you, if you let him."
Lestat is listening, including during the momentary silence where Louis is considering his answer. He has asked him a question as if seeking advice. He has asked him a question that will only give him a fragment of what he wants to know, when answered.
Aware of the plot twist. Of Armand's lies unveiled over the course of the story, of the kind of avenues Molloy has assisted in exploring. Aware that he owes the newly made fledgling some debt for his own personal reemergence into the world, for Louis' freedom of the things he did not know, could not remember.
Aware, also, that he only understands a part of it.
"Perhaps," he agrees. "I'm glad it was good for you."
See how gracious he can be? Hopefully, Louis is noticing.
No burdens whatsoever. They can stay light and free of each other. They can drift in and out of each others' lives like clouds.
Lestat smiles across at him, a pursed kind of expression, before he says, "And you have no apprehensions? No fears of what truths or contradictions I may introduce to the narrative?"
More teasing. Caught between wishing to know, and knowing Louis does not care. No care for what mortals think of him, of them, of Lestat. An admirable quality in a vampire who has chosen to live his life in a fake city in a big tower, away from it all.
Louis has behaved. He is the one who imposed this distance, this space between them. He is the one now who flouts it, reaching to link his fingers with Lestat's, straightening from his graceful slouch.
"No," he answers. "Wouldn't be fair of me to influence yours, since you ain't influenced mine."
It goes unspoken, who had exerted influence over Louis' interview.
But it's not the point. Louis' grip tightens, the smile he slants over to Lestat soft-edged and fond.
"I want you to say whatever it is you need to say. All your truths, all your contradictions. Don't hold any part of it back, especially not on my account."
Knowing that maybe Lestat would withhold. He always had, keeping his past out of Louis' reach. How little Louis knew of him, outside of their lives together. Impossible to say whether or not Lestat intended to maintain that in his documentary work with Daniel. He could easily manage it, if the goal was only to speak of what Louis had already divulged.
Something like holding his breath when Louis takes his hand. It's been decades and decades and his body remembers the instinct: here, Lestat might draw Louis in, or here, he would drift closer, or bring that hand up to his chest, his mouth. Ghosts of things.
Receives it all the same, fingers hooking, keeping, while gazing across at him and absorbing these things he says. How petty he feels, all at once, in the face of this gentle generousity, this fondness, all suffused soft into the tone of Louis' voice.
"And will you be listening?" is also familiar, a little tug in his tone to politely request attention, validation, flattery.
A question that Louis feels is very fair, even if the possibility of being told no is agonizing. What a test of his resolve, being asked to never listen to whatever it is Lestat confides to Daniel in the course of their work.
"You are invited especially to my destination party with a specially pressed vinyl recording of my song, and given unlimited invitation to my American tour, and you imagine that there are things I have to say or do that I would not invite your attention?"
Lestat gives a little playful swing of their linked hands, before letting Louis' go, bringing his own behind himself to link together as he says, "Yes. Of course. Besides, it is only fair."
Useless, foolish impulse. Louis had left. Louis had imposed space between them. Louis is here now, measuring himself against all the people who touch Lestat freely and easily without decades of baggage and envying them all the privilege.
All his old jealousies, alive and well. Daniel would laugh to hear him.
So released, Louis makes a small gesture in the air, dismissive of the concept of fair. A little late, after Louis has unearthed their history already.
"Just wanna be sure you get what you need from it, without letting me be a distraction."
Or worse, a tempering influence. Interfering, when that is the last thing he wishes to do.
Strangely, the thought of its occurrence gives him no pleasure at all. One would imagine, camera and lights, a revenge fantasy, intensive attention, a global debut of his own story would appeal, and maybe it does, but there is something to it that feels like going to war. Maybe against Louis, but this feels far from likely in this moment.
But against the murmurings he hears in the world. The mortals with his name in their minds, their mouths. The vampires, murmuring their threats and schemes and plotting out into the ocean of the Many, giving them something to really talk about. Yes, something exciting about it, but more akin to the feeling one has the split second before caving to anger than the adoration he'd been stoking downstairs.
Maybe there will be something else to be gained. Clarity, redemption, revelation. He isn't banking on it.
But smiles across at Louis, enduring his graciousness, his kindness, the way it is all completely sincere. He wonders what it would do to them if they fucked. If they fought.
"Well," he says, a look tossed aside, as if distracted by some little sound somewhere, "we shall see how our schedules align. You are not obliged."
Discarding the topic, having not quite managed to bait what he'd wanted. But still, friendly, his step near, a hand to Louis' arm.
"Come. They'll start wondering what it is the Vampire Lestat has done with that handsome man he was seen with earlier. I will introduce you to the rest of the band." Larry and Alex, some of the other musicians, perhaps. Show Louis off to them, this vampire he made, who loved him once.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
Feels some anxious snarl of something, beneath constricting layers of velvet and lace, each of these mild mannered words like an irritant. If he allowed it, Lestat could follow that spiral, down into the depths where he can imagine Louis only ever liking his music, enjoying his career, a passing amusement of some non-serious nature that doesn't really pertain to him at all.
Well, the night is young.
"You will cross paths with your friend," he says, a hair toss, a casual look away. "Your vampiric biographer. He has agreed to direct the documentary."
no subject
And while Louis manages to blunt and contain most of the emotion, some fraction of it touches his expression. Surprise, eyebrows lifting as Louis turns more fully towards Lestat.
It would be absolutely absurd if this were a joke. Louis doesn't bother entertaining the possibility that Lestat is only kidding with him. Instead, he spends a moment trying to recall if it had ever been mentioned that Lestat intends to make a documentary. Had they spoken of it? Surely not. Surely Louis would have remembered?
"Daniel?" he questions, as if there's some other vampiric biographer in Louis' rolodex. "I hadn't realized you were in contact."
no subject
Lestat, behaving a little like he does not relish the ability to surprise Louis, like he did not notice. But maybe something knowing, once he looks back at him, in the smile that follows. "It is more of a, you know, my people contacting his people kind of arrangement. But it seems appropriate, doesn't it?"
There has been no talk of the documentary. Lestat had not been planning to share it with Louis, or anyone, this evening. But good plans never survive contact with the enemy.
"And as you have made a point to emphasise to the world entire, books aren't really my style."
no subject
Which parts he regrets, and which parts he doesn't.
And he sees it, in Lestat's face. That he has been caught out in his reaction, and cannot quite begrudge Lestat whatever satisfaction he takes from it.
"I didn't know you wished to be interviewed," Louis says, and then amends, "To be interviewed so extensively."
Finding his footing by degrees. Admitting, "But there is no one better than Daniel, if you are set on the idea. And capable of convincing him to do his work on camera."
Which clearly has already been settled, so why is Louis even bothering rambling about it?
no subject
"He is, apparently, amenable to whatever form I feel my life story must take. And it is my preference that no one write it for me."
Lestat, once again, setting his focus on Louis. Piercing, drilling. Beneath them, the party continues. It will continue well into the night. They have all the time in the world. Secretly, of course, Lestat would stay here until sunrise.
"When you told yours," he says, "did you know what you would say? Or did he guide you down those paths?"
no subject
But more difficult to answer than Lestat maybe means it to be. Louis had changed within the course of the interview. His intentions, his hopes for the outcome, all of it evolving as he and Daniel sat together and sifted through what Louis could remember, how he remembered.
Excavated what he did not.
"I had an idea of what I would say, at the beginning," Louis answers, breaking the silence stretching out between them before Lestat could repeat himself, take offense at Louis' delay. This long moment where his focus turns inward, disappearing from this castle, drawn back to past days in Dubai. "I felt I knew what I was presenting to him, and that relaying all of it aloud would...order it, in my mind."
Would make it real. Would validate the meaning Louis had been guessing at, soothe the growing disquiet at the sense he was adrift, tucked away in his tower.
Though also: a small breath of laughter for guide.
Yes, Daniel had guided, but not so gently as the word might imply.
"Daniel saw beyond me. He pushed us into avenues I would not have considered on my own. I imagine he will do the same for you, if you let him."
no subject
Aware of the plot twist. Of Armand's lies unveiled over the course of the story, of the kind of avenues Molloy has assisted in exploring. Aware that he owes the newly made fledgling some debt for his own personal reemergence into the world, for Louis' freedom of the things he did not know, could not remember.
Aware, also, that he only understands a part of it.
"Perhaps," he agrees. "I'm glad it was good for you."
See how gracious he can be? Hopefully, Louis is noticing.
no subject
Louis has had some time to consider how seamless Armand's work to be. How Daniel, as skilled as he is, is not all-seeing.
But these are not the kinds of existential fears to burden Lestat with.
Louis tips his head back to him, a private little smile, rueful and tender both.
"I hope it is good for you," is what he offers. "I hope it is what you wish it to be."
And if he is envious of Daniel for receiving all that Lestat might say of his past—
That too is not something to burden Lestat with.
no subject
Lestat smiles across at him, a pursed kind of expression, before he says, "And you have no apprehensions? No fears of what truths or contradictions I may introduce to the narrative?"
More teasing. Caught between wishing to know, and knowing Louis does not care. No care for what mortals think of him, of them, of Lestat. An admirable quality in a vampire who has chosen to live his life in a fake city in a big tower, away from it all.
Must be nice.
no subject
"No," he answers. "Wouldn't be fair of me to influence yours, since you ain't influenced mine."
It goes unspoken, who had exerted influence over Louis' interview.
But it's not the point. Louis' grip tightens, the smile he slants over to Lestat soft-edged and fond.
"I want you to say whatever it is you need to say. All your truths, all your contradictions. Don't hold any part of it back, especially not on my account."
Knowing that maybe Lestat would withhold. He always had, keeping his past out of Louis' reach. How little Louis knew of him, outside of their lives together. Impossible to say whether or not Lestat intended to maintain that in his documentary work with Daniel. He could easily manage it, if the goal was only to speak of what Louis had already divulged.
no subject
Receives it all the same, fingers hooking, keeping, while gazing across at him and absorbing these things he says. How petty he feels, all at once, in the face of this gentle generousity, this fondness, all suffused soft into the tone of Louis' voice.
"And will you be listening?" is also familiar, a little tug in his tone to politely request attention, validation, flattery.
no subject
A question that Louis feels is very fair, even if the possibility of being told no is agonizing. What a test of his resolve, being asked to never listen to whatever it is Lestat confides to Daniel in the course of their work.
no subject
Lestat gives a little playful swing of their linked hands, before letting Louis' go, bringing his own behind himself to link together as he says, "Yes. Of course. Besides, it is only fair."
no subject
Louis cannot help but note it.
Useless, foolish impulse. Louis had left. Louis had imposed space between them. Louis is here now, measuring himself against all the people who touch Lestat freely and easily without decades of baggage and envying them all the privilege.
All his old jealousies, alive and well. Daniel would laugh to hear him.
So released, Louis makes a small gesture in the air, dismissive of the concept of fair. A little late, after Louis has unearthed their history already.
"Just wanna be sure you get what you need from it, without letting me be a distraction."
Or worse, a tempering influence. Interfering, when that is the last thing he wishes to do.
no subject
Strangely, the thought of its occurrence gives him no pleasure at all. One would imagine, camera and lights, a revenge fantasy, intensive attention, a global debut of his own story would appeal, and maybe it does, but there is something to it that feels like going to war. Maybe against Louis, but this feels far from likely in this moment.
But against the murmurings he hears in the world. The mortals with his name in their minds, their mouths. The vampires, murmuring their threats and schemes and plotting out into the ocean of the Many, giving them something to really talk about. Yes, something exciting about it, but more akin to the feeling one has the split second before caving to anger than the adoration he'd been stoking downstairs.
Maybe there will be something else to be gained. Clarity, redemption, revelation. He isn't banking on it.
But smiles across at Louis, enduring his graciousness, his kindness, the way it is all completely sincere. He wonders what it would do to them if they fucked. If they fought.
"Well," he says, a look tossed aside, as if distracted by some little sound somewhere, "we shall see how our schedules align. You are not obliged."
Discarding the topic, having not quite managed to bait what he'd wanted. But still, friendly, his step near, a hand to Louis' arm.
"Come. They'll start wondering what it is the Vampire Lestat has done with that handsome man he was seen with earlier. I will introduce you to the rest of the band." Larry and Alex, some of the other musicians, perhaps. Show Louis off to them, this vampire he made, who loved him once.