A moment in which they are both weak, maybe. Where Louis should be more level-headed, unaffected. Should make a good decision for both of them, maintain the boundaries they'd drawn.
Lestat says please with his fingers tightening on Louis' shoulders, and Louis—
Wants him.
Always. Endlessly. (Even when it had been killing him, destroying him, when he hadn't known anything but what Armand explained to him and that understanding hadn't been enough to excise the deep desire, the love he had for Lestat.) Wants him now, even knowing it is a terrible idea.
"Lestat," comes out a little strained, more so than Louis would like, had intended. His fingers are already there at the high point of Lestat's throat. Louis' thumb presses down at the hinge of Lestat's jaw. He feels his own fangs heavy in his mouth, sharpening into sight in spite of himself.
Can't bring himself to say no outright. (Playing their old game, in a way. Letting Lestat coax him into doing something they both want.)
It would be a problem, how hot this might make him, if he wasn't already at an 11.
Still. A unique and long awaited twinge when he feels Louis lay his hand on his throat, apply pressure enough for Lestat to tip his head aside. On a more sober day, he might think this is foolish, perhaps pathetic, stealing scraps. For now, the hunger he tempts in Louis is matched only with his own.
"Louis," he echoes, a broad smile. "Take it. A gift for you. My number one fan."
Perhaps untrue, given the screaming masses, and Louis' reviews of I liked it, but consider the flipside: Louis, the only fan that matters.
That assertion prompts a small smile, amused. Thumb sliding along Lestat's throat, delaying what feels inevitable as Louis reminds him, "Not sure that's me. I got no poster saying so. Didn't make a t-shirt."
All those mortals, screaming so loudly for Lestat. The look Louis had seen on that girl's face, clambering onto the stage, eagerly yielding into Lestat's arms. He understands it all. Felt some similar, complicated thing in his body watching Lestat onstage. Devotion and desire tangling together as Louis had watched Lestat put his teeth into a swooning mortal's throat while the crowd roared, eager and envious.
"Didn't bring you a gift," Louis says, accent thicker as his voice dips lower. As his grip on Lestat's hip tightens.
No poster, no T-shirt, no gift. But this bit of criticism is delivered in a husky tone, with Lestat half-swooning between these points of contact. No better, he thinks, than his mortal girl on the stage, and this thought settles inside of him in a way he may not like, at some point, but for now appeals to him strongly.
And then, interruption in the form of a brisk but polite knock on the door. Mild, but it comes at Louis' back through the wood, seems to pierce the odd isolation they've cultivated in the room, the outside world asserting itself.
Lestat doesn't respond immediately, beyond a twitch of his hands, a shift of his focus.
Reality. The world beyond them. Lestat's fame, fans, the demands of both.
Louis' breath catches, tensing. The drag of his thumb continues, steady strokes up and down Lestat's throat. A flicker of embarrassment at how shallow his breath had gone, how unsteady he feels in his own resolve.
"Mr. Lioncourt?" is similarly brisk, a voice Louis immediately recognizes as his clip-board wielding chaperone.
Louis' eyes lift from his study of Lestat's throat, his mouth, the streaks of blood, drips of red, remnants of his display tempting Louis closer. He watches Lestat's eyes instead. Finds himself unable to quite predict whether Lestat will entertain the interruption, or cast it aside.
Lestat, watching Louis back. Will he accept this invitation, or take the excuse?
The voice on the other side is swift to remind him about his meet-and-greet, and Lestat may ask Christine to fire this person, whoever they are, tipping his gaze up to the ceiling as he gently pushes aside Louis' hands. They were playing a silly game, of course.
"A moment," he says, at volume, and quieter, "Whoever you are," as he pivots away, headed for the dressing table. A huff of a laugh at the sight of himself, stealing up some wipes to blot away the blood on his face.
Not all of it. Where it runs down his throat can be left, can be wondered at. "You can rest in here, if you like," he is saying. "There's a party afterwards, once all is wrapped up. To that, you're also welcome."
Feels gone, even as Lestat moves only across the room and leaves Louis leaned up against the door with his heart thudding hard in his chest. Painful. Louis' fangs are still sharp enough to cut his tongue, his lip, if he isn't careful.
And he is embarrassed, maybe. Embarrassed at his teetering. Embarrassed at what he feels now, frustrated, rejected. A game they were playing that felt very real, and now feels as if something has been lost. His fingers had dug in at Lestat's hip, a tell, though Lestat is generously pretending otherwise. Moment slipped away, just as Lestat had cautioned, and Louis can tell himself it is for the best, but there is no diverting the wretched feeling left in its wake.
Louis might eat this person, this interruption. Perhaps it will help.
In this moment, he levers himself up off the door to follow along after. Pleased to find himself steady, despite his palms stinging at the recent loss of Lestat. Indulges himself by laying a hand onto Lestat's back, centered between his shoulders, as Louis seeks his eyes in the mirror.
"Not invited to your meet and greet," has the tenor of a joke. "Makes sense, without the shirt. Sure I should be at the party?"
Fishing, a little bit. Wanting to be asked now, wrong-footed by the way Lestat drew away so easy, as if he had not just bared his throat for Louis.
Maybe it's for the best. Maybe Louis will find something steadying in that thought, once he's had a little time to clear his head.
It's a petty move, tempting at Louis' ever-raging hunger. At any vampire's hunger. Lestat can tell himself it's for the best, perhaps he can enjoy a rare moment of self-respect while the going is good, and pretend he does not feel the ache from where Louis' fingers had dug into his hip.
His hands are fast and practiced in front of a mirror, moving with skills cultivated over two hundred years ago, even if the tools have changed, the product at hand. Laughs meanwhile, and says, "You can come to the meet and greet," obviously, "if you think you can tolerate it."
Blood and streaky makeup wiped away. His skin burning beneath Louis' hand on his back, and there is both warmth and appraisal in the mirror where he catches his eye.
"And I don't know anything about what you should be doing. But I would like it."
Can Louis tolerate the inevitable fawning of mortals a meet and greet most definitely entails?
He can feel Lestat's laugh beneath his fingers. Has to wrestle with the urge to drape along his back, put his face into Lestat's throat. (Thinks of New Orleans, those last weeks, how he would distract Lestat at his mirror, from his fittings, desire unchecked.) Instead, Louis contents himself with this: his palm on Lestat's back, fingers just grazing bare skin, the loose fall of his hair over his shoulders.
"I'll come to your party," Louis decides. "But I'll be generous, and leave you to your adoring public. I've already had the pleasure of meeting you."
Begrudging generosity. It's Louis' impulse to push some heavy furniture up against the door and simply stay here.
But no. Louis didn't come here to be selfish with Lestat.
"And to tell you that I thought it was incredible," Louis volunteers quietly. Does not invoke his own complicated feelings, the questions he has about the finale, about why. Presses on to tell him, "You were incredible."
No hardship to admit. Of course Lestat was incredible. It's no surprise he paralleled his musical ability into something that might captivate modern audiences. He brought no gift other than himself, offers this compliment to Lestat over his shoulder, looking at him in the mirror. A small truth, before Lestat is summoned away again.
A small truth, a quietly said thing, and it hooks somewhere low and vital in Lestat, an unguarded glance up from his own face to Louis' reflection. There is simply no chance that Louis would say such a thing with any irony, and so reading him for truth is more of an indulgence than a necessary thing.
"Mm," stands in for a response, words otherwise lost to him in the moment. A glance aside, trying to moderate the way pleasure fills him to the brim. A lot of mortals say nice things about his music, of course. About his performing of it. It all fades to a vague fog in light of Louis telling him his show, himself, was incredible.
Fidgets with an eyeliner pen. Looks back at him, attempting to give him a smile that isn't completely unhinged and foolish, and probably failing. "Thank you," he says. A little hint of humour as he says, "You were a wonderful audience."
But really, the only one that mattered. An empty theatre save for Louis would have been just fine.
Temptation to lean in, drape across Lestat's back, pull the hair away from his throat and take what had been offered. What he'd hesitated over not so ong ago.
But no. Louis limits himself to this point of contact: his palm on Lestat's back, his fingers teasing between the edge of fabric and bare skin beneath it.
Lestat smiles at him, and Louis can't help but smile back. Helplessly fond.
"Even without the posters and the t-shirt?" he teases, watching Lestat in the mirror. Beautiful, beautiful. Beautiful even with traces of smeared make up and blood splattered on his skin. Murmurs to him, "I missed hearing you sing."
Even songs that are seemingly designed to needle Louis.
Refreshing his makeup is hastily done, filling out where eyeliner has been smeared away, a patting in of foundation where cleaning his mouth of blood had removed it. And he is obliged to do it all with Louis observing him, touching him, which is a thrill in several different senses of the word. More intimate, nearly, than offering his throat. More familiar. As if they were together, as if this were routine.
"I'm sure you will be tired of it by the time the tour is out," light, as he picks up up a stick of red-purple lip gloss. Unnecessary. Maybe he is lingering, now, despite the brisk way he goes about it all. Who could blame him?
The high of the concert, leaving him. He will need something to replace it. (Not Louis' fangs. Not Louis' blood. Sober enough to remember, those don't belong to him anymore. They barely had while they were together, after a time.)
"But I will accept adulations until then," a sigh. A glance back at the mirror. Hm. The lip colour is a lot.
It is not as if Louis needs any prompting to consider Lestat's mouth, his gaze catching there and moved onwards and catching again all through the process of the painting. His eyes stay there now, letting himself lean a little closer, a little nearer. Inhale him, his scent familiar beneath the distraction of all the trappings that come along with rock stardom.
"Impossible," Louis dismisses. "You've been so many things, but never boring."
Tender terrain, perhaps. A lot. Imperfect.
He'd meant them so fondly, even then.
"And never boring when you're making music," moves briskly onwards. Louis' thumb tracks the wing of one shoulder blade. "You're going to keep knocking your audience flat. Me included."
Apology in this, maybe. Things said that didn't make it into the book, but were still said aloud, once.
Louis speaking to him so fondly, and Lestat tries to remember if it was always like this. He thinks, it was sometimes like this, but he hasn't been certain if he remembered it, still remembers it, as being so much more. He has read the book, of course, Louis knows this, little jabs or less precise comments that tell him as such.
Does he know how much Lestat has read it? Did he imagine the anguish that came over him, the first time he did so, tearing Alex's copy to pieces and leaving the room by way of thoughtlessly broken window. Everyone in the world would read this book and say, of course Louis loved Lestat, and likely still does.
It is not his interpretation, not when years he recalls as being full of love and life are rendered in such miserly summary, leaping from one bad thing to the next.
None of this he thinks in great detail, but explains the slight twist of misgiving as Louis says kind things, warm things, having been greedy in pawing after praise and now finding it sours on the tongue, some. Lestat has been so many things. Never boring. Perhaps, had he been a little more boring—
He tosses aside the lip gloss, shifting to face Louis.
"Exhausting," he proposes. "Overwhelming. There are many ways to tire of something."
Minor shifts, putting them face to face. Louis' hand falls back to Lestat's hip, a forcibly loose hold. Manners. Louis is meant to be minding his manners.
He is looking at Lestat's mouth. Has a wild impulse to drag his thumb across Lestat's lips and smear the newly-applied cosmetic.
"Maybe," gives a little ground, only to counter stubbornly, "But unlikely."
Unlikely like a nudge, playful and unyielding both.
"Check back with me next year, we can see how it's played out."
Lestat's hands find places to catch onto Louis' shirt, resting against his chest as he banters back. Smiles, laughs, a sunny break of good cheer that shows blunt human teeth, barely blood flecked anymore.
"A whole year," he says, "of guaranteed grace."
'Manners' is probably not how Lestat would frame his own behaviour, not when in this next moment, he gets a hand hooked around the back of Louis' neck, a hasty grapple that is more intrusively horseplay-adjacent than romantic so that he can impose himself, taller in these boots, and press a hard kiss to Louis' cheek. Mwah.
Not lingering. He does not want to smear too much the print left behind, which he will admire before tossing a look back to the mirror, tilting that way to confirm that, yes, the colour looks better now that half of it's been kissed away.
Louis feels it like a match touched to bone dry kindling. All these sensations in tandem: Lestat's height advantage, the clutch of his fingers, the force of his kiss. It punches the breath out of him, leaves him reeling once released.
A whole year, Louis promises him. Surely after a year they'll have a better grasp on what they are to each other.
Louis does not pretend to himself that a year will diminish anything he feels for Lestat. Eighty years had not done that.
"Go," Louis tells him, though he still has hold of Lestat's hip. Clinging on. "Go see your adoring public. I'm sure your people will get me where I need to be."
They part. Lestat, content to let Louis shoo him away, because something about that also feels near and familiar, just as much as a hand lingering on his body as he sees about himself in the mirror.
And without him—
It's fine, of course. The Vampire Lestat is known to be prickly, including with regards to his fans. A celebrity kind of aloofness, absence of eye contact, scrawled autographs and a disinterest in how far they flew to be here, how much they loved this or that song. But then, something else, a snaring moment of eye contact that these humans, flush with love and blood, might feel like a cold wind through them. A sharp smile, suddenly, a fond touch. Disorienting, always.
They might leave the meet and greet thinking, he really isn't human, while they attempt to shake that sense of fight or flight that had trickled into their nervous system.
Christine had been clear: no drinking from these ones. It's too high profile. Then what's the fucking point, he had said, of any of this?
Hungry, by the time it's time to go. There is a white limousine waiting for them, Lestat, his band, other auxiliary performers and dancers, a cluster of hangers-on. One of his assistants is hastily arranging more transport, and fortunately, there is no absence of quickly hireable limousines in Las Vegas, and this is not a task with which he is personally concerned with save for—
Rachida has been shown back to Lestat's dressing room, where Louis remains. The mark from Lestat's kiss has proved durable, faded only slightly by Louis' ministrations. She tsks over this, over the limousine they've been offered, the absence of information about the venue other than Its been managed on your behalf. It is her job to be aggrieved, so Louis can be a little lost, involved with his own thoughts. Dismissive of security risk, dipping lightly into the flow of conversation among the Many to test the temperature and finding no frenzy.
Maybe tomorrow there will be an uproar.
For the moment, there is only the immediate problem of transportation and venue and Louis' eventual disentangling from both when the night draws from a close. Louis is hungry, but this is not Rachida's problem at this exact moment. (He is always hungry. It was not urgent until Lestat offered his throat.)
Eventually, they go. A lavish car, a flask of cool, fresh poured blood, and soft music through speakers while Rachida flips her tablet to Louis so he might look at this and that, odds and ends of business that might be completed in the short journey from venue to party.
Louis can leave whenever he pleases. He is reminded of this. Reminds himself of this, as the limousine door is opened for him.
Even before he steps out, he is aware of Lestat. A humming thrill running up his spine, stealing his breath. He's here, punching through Louis' chest, a shivery awareness that Louis can only temper, not extinguish, as he moves down the red carpet towards the party.
What does an afterparty for a vampire rockstar look like?
Just like this.
It is dark and flashy, projections of music video clips glinting here and there, lights that gleam red, decor that gleams golden. Louis, waved through and coat taken, being given some gentle VIP treatment with directions to the open bar on the elevated section he finds himself on. From there, one can look out at the circling balconies fitted with lounge sections, and then down to the dancefloor, where a live DJ funnels energy into the warm air.
Finding Lestat is easy enough. Almost directly across from the bar area, on the opposite balcony, a lavish little set up where he and his bandmates are holding court. Lestat is wearing, in a violent clash with the decadence of the reds and golds around him, a bright metallic suit of shining purple, black glittering mesh clinging to his torso beneath. Powdery blue shines off his eyelids, and the remaining layer of lipstick has clung and lasted just as it has on Louis' cheek, if by now a little smeared in the corner.
He has his arms stretched out along the back of the seating, favouring Tough Cookie and Alex on either side of them, the beautiful young humans he has taken under his wings that Louis had gotten to know last time. Cookie with a hand resting on Lestat's knee, and Alex, loose limbed, leaning back against him as he chats to someone just at an angle from them.
But in all the noise and light, Lestat can sense it: he's here. Lifting his gaze, craning his neck to see.
No, it is not difficult to locate Lestat. Even in all the cacophony and noise, all the mortals spilling into the space, Lestat still alters gravity. The sense of him within this space is the pull which orients Louis' steps as he moves deeper into the party.
What does he expect to find?
A question Louis asks himself when the mortals milling between them part, and Louis sees Lestat. Observes him, the sprawl of his body on the couch, the mortals leaning into him. Cookie's hand on his knee.
And Lestat is looking at him. Louis meets his eyes, crushing down the reaction that is by turns akin to being doused by cold water, like a fire catching in his belly. Jealous over nothing, because they are not companions. Because Lestat was playing, herding Louis up against his dressing room door, and see how many here clamor to keep him company. Louis arriving here with the remnants of Lestat's kiss on his face, looking back at him from within the bracket of lovely mortals he has already chosen as his own.
The passing urge to turn and leave. To break several expensive bottles. The dichotomy in Louis between depressive spiral and infuriated rage ever-present, stronger now for having been suppressed so long.
But he's been seen, so cannot indulge either. He is obligated to collect the drink Rachida has procured for him, and cross the floor to the couch upon which Lestat holds court.
"Lestat," isn't raised to any particular volume. Louis will be heard, regardless of the thudding crescendo of song rising up to them from below. "This is impressive."
What else can he say? A compliment, polite, to smooth what feels like an interruption. A smile for Tough Cookie, a nod for Alex. Foolishly envious of them, and crushing that emotion down to nothing before it explodes into a fight Louis simply isn't entitled to have.
Likewise, a conversational volume, while the mortals clustered about have to raise their voices to hear each other. Cookie smiles up at Louis, bleary and wired all at once, pupils blown wide. Alex's face is flush, seems to realise on a delay about the mutual shift in focus, peeling his attention off whoever he was talking to look up at Louis.
Lestat, standing, sort of playfully pushes Alex back into his previous space, where Cookie reaches out to drag him nearer. There is a low table separating Lestat and Louis, and cramped space with which to navigate around, so he steps up onto it with the same focus one might pay to balancing along a fence. The table it low, flat, stable. His heels are precarious. He is also wasted.
"Leave the theming to another," he is saying as he does this, a hand out to balance against Louis' shoulder once in range, "at the behest of a vampire, and they make everything," jumps down, "red."
Maybe 'wasted' is a strong word. It hasn't been that long. Long enough to finish up at the theatre, to get dressed again in his room. But then, drinking blood, depending on the source, has a way of rocketing a vampire from zero to the moon in a few strong gulps.
So they are a happy trio, Louis surmises. Feels some envious, covetous twist in his chest, overshadowed more immediately by Lestat stepping up onto the table.
Louis catches him round the waist. Habit. Years since Louis was grabbing Lestat up by the waist, yes, but Louis knows better than most how a thing can live in the body. How the ways in which he loves Lestat, the ways in which Louis had cared for him once, still exist in him.
"Red ain't the problem," but the point is taken. Louis had dismissed an interior designer with similar inclinations, too much Dracula to understand what the client standing in front of him.
Lestat is gripping his shoulder. Louis looks up into his face, draws some conclusions as to the state of him. Lestat, already indulging. He and his two humans, perhaps by way of his two human companions.
"Gonna have your Christine make sure it's more to your taste next time?" Louis asks, discarding his untouched drink on a passing tray so he might use a light sweep of fingers to brush the hair from Lestat's face. Acknowledge that Lestat will have more parties, more mortals hanging off him, all that he desires and more.
Maybe in due time he will stop inviting Louis, who is so much less fun than the others circulating through Lestat's space.
Lestat finds himself looping his arms over Louis' shoulders, and later, with a clearer mind, might berate himself for instinctively clinging to him at every interaction this night. But who can blame him? Louis is here, so easily summoned after decades and decades of impossible distance, impossible silence.
There is also the clinging scent of some amount of intimacy, which could simply be from lounging around on the couch. His humans, their perfumes, mingled with cigarette smoke, clinging to his skin, his clothing. Not sex, but some other organic thing. Blood drinking, warm with it.
"Christine is easily distracted," by, probably, goalkeeping against the consequences of criminal acts and other infractions, to her credit, but anyway, "and besides, you would do better. You would know what I like."
The scent on him stirs up old, bad habits. The urge to swing Lestat around by his waist, pin him down, bite him, rub all over him. Possessive, even though Louis has no right to it. No right to be irritated about these pretty humans, about Lestat drinking from them and sparing them, keeping them so close.
Distracting, all of this. Distracting, his arm around Lestat's waist, hands steadying him still. (Unnecessary, now that he's descended the table.)
Lestat is speaking. Says this thing and startles a grin out of Louis, a fond little chuckle punched out of him.
"Me? Maybe if you're looking for some pieces to fill out the walls."
Does he still know what Lestat likes? Louis is warmed by the assertion, holds onto the way Lestat says this as fact rather than the flutter of doubt. Lestat is changed. Different than Louis remembers. All the trappings of his life, different. There's every chance what he likes is far from what Louis could even guess at.
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Lestat says please with his fingers tightening on Louis' shoulders, and Louis—
Wants him.
Always. Endlessly. (Even when it had been killing him, destroying him, when he hadn't known anything but what Armand explained to him and that understanding hadn't been enough to excise the deep desire, the love he had for Lestat.) Wants him now, even knowing it is a terrible idea.
"Lestat," comes out a little strained, more so than Louis would like, had intended. His fingers are already there at the high point of Lestat's throat. Louis' thumb presses down at the hinge of Lestat's jaw. He feels his own fangs heavy in his mouth, sharpening into sight in spite of himself.
Can't bring himself to say no outright. (Playing their old game, in a way. Letting Lestat coax him into doing something they both want.)
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Still. A unique and long awaited twinge when he feels Louis lay his hand on his throat, apply pressure enough for Lestat to tip his head aside. On a more sober day, he might think this is foolish, perhaps pathetic, stealing scraps. For now, the hunger he tempts in Louis is matched only with his own.
"Louis," he echoes, a broad smile. "Take it. A gift for you. My number one fan."
Perhaps untrue, given the screaming masses, and Louis' reviews of I liked it, but consider the flipside: Louis, the only fan that matters.
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All those mortals, screaming so loudly for Lestat. The look Louis had seen on that girl's face, clambering onto the stage, eagerly yielding into Lestat's arms. He understands it all. Felt some similar, complicated thing in his body watching Lestat onstage. Devotion and desire tangling together as Louis had watched Lestat put his teeth into a swooning mortal's throat while the crowd roared, eager and envious.
"Didn't bring you a gift," Louis says, accent thicker as his voice dips lower. As his grip on Lestat's hip tightens.
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No poster, no T-shirt, no gift. But this bit of criticism is delivered in a husky tone, with Lestat half-swooning between these points of contact. No better, he thinks, than his mortal girl on the stage, and this thought settles inside of him in a way he may not like, at some point, but for now appeals to him strongly.
And then, interruption in the form of a brisk but polite knock on the door. Mild, but it comes at Louis' back through the wood, seems to pierce the odd isolation they've cultivated in the room, the outside world asserting itself.
Lestat doesn't respond immediately, beyond a twitch of his hands, a shift of his focus.
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Louis' breath catches, tensing. The drag of his thumb continues, steady strokes up and down Lestat's throat. A flicker of embarrassment at how shallow his breath had gone, how unsteady he feels in his own resolve.
"Mr. Lioncourt?" is similarly brisk, a voice Louis immediately recognizes as his clip-board wielding chaperone.
Louis' eyes lift from his study of Lestat's throat, his mouth, the streaks of blood, drips of red, remnants of his display tempting Louis closer. He watches Lestat's eyes instead. Finds himself unable to quite predict whether Lestat will entertain the interruption, or cast it aside.
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The voice on the other side is swift to remind him about his meet-and-greet, and Lestat may ask Christine to fire this person, whoever they are, tipping his gaze up to the ceiling as he gently pushes aside Louis' hands. They were playing a silly game, of course.
"A moment," he says, at volume, and quieter, "Whoever you are," as he pivots away, headed for the dressing table. A huff of a laugh at the sight of himself, stealing up some wipes to blot away the blood on his face.
Not all of it. Where it runs down his throat can be left, can be wondered at. "You can rest in here, if you like," he is saying. "There's a party afterwards, once all is wrapped up. To that, you're also welcome."
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Feels gone, even as Lestat moves only across the room and leaves Louis leaned up against the door with his heart thudding hard in his chest. Painful. Louis' fangs are still sharp enough to cut his tongue, his lip, if he isn't careful.
And he is embarrassed, maybe. Embarrassed at his teetering. Embarrassed at what he feels now, frustrated, rejected. A game they were playing that felt very real, and now feels as if something has been lost. His fingers had dug in at Lestat's hip, a tell, though Lestat is generously pretending otherwise. Moment slipped away, just as Lestat had cautioned, and Louis can tell himself it is for the best, but there is no diverting the wretched feeling left in its wake.
Louis might eat this person, this interruption. Perhaps it will help.
In this moment, he levers himself up off the door to follow along after. Pleased to find himself steady, despite his palms stinging at the recent loss of Lestat. Indulges himself by laying a hand onto Lestat's back, centered between his shoulders, as Louis seeks his eyes in the mirror.
"Not invited to your meet and greet," has the tenor of a joke. "Makes sense, without the shirt. Sure I should be at the party?"
Fishing, a little bit. Wanting to be asked now, wrong-footed by the way Lestat drew away so easy, as if he had not just bared his throat for Louis.
Maybe it's for the best. Maybe Louis will find something steadying in that thought, once he's had a little time to clear his head.
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His hands are fast and practiced in front of a mirror, moving with skills cultivated over two hundred years ago, even if the tools have changed, the product at hand. Laughs meanwhile, and says, "You can come to the meet and greet," obviously, "if you think you can tolerate it."
Blood and streaky makeup wiped away. His skin burning beneath Louis' hand on his back, and there is both warmth and appraisal in the mirror where he catches his eye.
"And I don't know anything about what you should be doing. But I would like it."
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He can feel Lestat's laugh beneath his fingers. Has to wrestle with the urge to drape along his back, put his face into Lestat's throat. (Thinks of New Orleans, those last weeks, how he would distract Lestat at his mirror, from his fittings, desire unchecked.) Instead, Louis contents himself with this: his palm on Lestat's back, fingers just grazing bare skin, the loose fall of his hair over his shoulders.
"I'll come to your party," Louis decides. "But I'll be generous, and leave you to your adoring public. I've already had the pleasure of meeting you."
Begrudging generosity. It's Louis' impulse to push some heavy furniture up against the door and simply stay here.
But no. Louis didn't come here to be selfish with Lestat.
"And to tell you that I thought it was incredible," Louis volunteers quietly. Does not invoke his own complicated feelings, the questions he has about the finale, about why. Presses on to tell him, "You were incredible."
No hardship to admit. Of course Lestat was incredible. It's no surprise he paralleled his musical ability into something that might captivate modern audiences. He brought no gift other than himself, offers this compliment to Lestat over his shoulder, looking at him in the mirror. A small truth, before Lestat is summoned away again.
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"Mm," stands in for a response, words otherwise lost to him in the moment. A glance aside, trying to moderate the way pleasure fills him to the brim. A lot of mortals say nice things about his music, of course. About his performing of it. It all fades to a vague fog in light of Louis telling him his show, himself, was incredible.
Fidgets with an eyeliner pen. Looks back at him, attempting to give him a smile that isn't completely unhinged and foolish, and probably failing. "Thank you," he says. A little hint of humour as he says, "You were a wonderful audience."
But really, the only one that mattered. An empty theatre save for Louis would have been just fine.
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But no. Louis limits himself to this point of contact: his palm on Lestat's back, his fingers teasing between the edge of fabric and bare skin beneath it.
Lestat smiles at him, and Louis can't help but smile back. Helplessly fond.
"Even without the posters and the t-shirt?" he teases, watching Lestat in the mirror. Beautiful, beautiful. Beautiful even with traces of smeared make up and blood splattered on his skin. Murmurs to him, "I missed hearing you sing."
Even songs that are seemingly designed to needle Louis.
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"I'm sure you will be tired of it by the time the tour is out," light, as he picks up up a stick of red-purple lip gloss. Unnecessary. Maybe he is lingering, now, despite the brisk way he goes about it all. Who could blame him?
The high of the concert, leaving him. He will need something to replace it. (Not Louis' fangs. Not Louis' blood. Sober enough to remember, those don't belong to him anymore. They barely had while they were together, after a time.)
"But I will accept adulations until then," a sigh. A glance back at the mirror. Hm. The lip colour is a lot.
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It is not as if Louis needs any prompting to consider Lestat's mouth, his gaze catching there and moved onwards and catching again all through the process of the painting. His eyes stay there now, letting himself lean a little closer, a little nearer. Inhale him, his scent familiar beneath the distraction of all the trappings that come along with rock stardom.
"Impossible," Louis dismisses. "You've been so many things, but never boring."
Tender terrain, perhaps. A lot. Imperfect.
He'd meant them so fondly, even then.
"And never boring when you're making music," moves briskly onwards. Louis' thumb tracks the wing of one shoulder blade. "You're going to keep knocking your audience flat. Me included."
Apology in this, maybe. Things said that didn't make it into the book, but were still said aloud, once.
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Does he know how much Lestat has read it? Did he imagine the anguish that came over him, the first time he did so, tearing Alex's copy to pieces and leaving the room by way of thoughtlessly broken window. Everyone in the world would read this book and say, of course Louis loved Lestat, and likely still does.
It is not his interpretation, not when years he recalls as being full of love and life are rendered in such miserly summary, leaping from one bad thing to the next.
None of this he thinks in great detail, but explains the slight twist of misgiving as Louis says kind things, warm things, having been greedy in pawing after praise and now finding it sours on the tongue, some. Lestat has been so many things. Never boring. Perhaps, had he been a little more boring—
He tosses aside the lip gloss, shifting to face Louis.
"Exhausting," he proposes. "Overwhelming. There are many ways to tire of something."
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He is looking at Lestat's mouth. Has a wild impulse to drag his thumb across Lestat's lips and smear the newly-applied cosmetic.
"Maybe," gives a little ground, only to counter stubbornly, "But unlikely."
Unlikely like a nudge, playful and unyielding both.
"Check back with me next year, we can see how it's played out."
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"A whole year," he says, "of guaranteed grace."
'Manners' is probably not how Lestat would frame his own behaviour, not when in this next moment, he gets a hand hooked around the back of Louis' neck, a hasty grapple that is more intrusively horseplay-adjacent than romantic so that he can impose himself, taller in these boots, and press a hard kiss to Louis' cheek. Mwah.
Not lingering. He does not want to smear too much the print left behind, which he will admire before tossing a look back to the mirror, tilting that way to confirm that, yes, the colour looks better now that half of it's been kissed away.
"Merveilleux, I'll take it."
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Louis feels it like a match touched to bone dry kindling. All these sensations in tandem: Lestat's height advantage, the clutch of his fingers, the force of his kiss. It punches the breath out of him, leaves him reeling once released.
A whole year, Louis promises him. Surely after a year they'll have a better grasp on what they are to each other.
Louis does not pretend to himself that a year will diminish anything he feels for Lestat. Eighty years had not done that.
"Go," Louis tells him, though he still has hold of Lestat's hip. Clinging on. "Go see your adoring public. I'm sure your people will get me where I need to be."
He has been efficiently herded thus far.
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And without him—
It's fine, of course. The Vampire Lestat is known to be prickly, including with regards to his fans. A celebrity kind of aloofness, absence of eye contact, scrawled autographs and a disinterest in how far they flew to be here, how much they loved this or that song. But then, something else, a snaring moment of eye contact that these humans, flush with love and blood, might feel like a cold wind through them. A sharp smile, suddenly, a fond touch. Disorienting, always.
They might leave the meet and greet thinking, he really isn't human, while they attempt to shake that sense of fight or flight that had trickled into their nervous system.
Christine had been clear: no drinking from these ones. It's too high profile. Then what's the fucking point, he had said, of any of this?
Hungry, by the time it's time to go. There is a white limousine waiting for them, Lestat, his band, other auxiliary performers and dancers, a cluster of hangers-on. One of his assistants is hastily arranging more transport, and fortunately, there is no absence of quickly hireable limousines in Las Vegas, and this is not a task with which he is personally concerned with save for—
Louis is coming, yes?
give me party decor pls
Rachida has been shown back to Lestat's dressing room, where Louis remains. The mark from Lestat's kiss has proved durable, faded only slightly by Louis' ministrations. She tsks over this, over the limousine they've been offered, the absence of information about the venue other than Its been managed on your behalf. It is her job to be aggrieved, so Louis can be a little lost, involved with his own thoughts. Dismissive of security risk, dipping lightly into the flow of conversation among the Many to test the temperature and finding no frenzy.
Maybe tomorrow there will be an uproar.
For the moment, there is only the immediate problem of transportation and venue and Louis' eventual disentangling from both when the night draws from a close. Louis is hungry, but this is not Rachida's problem at this exact moment. (He is always hungry. It was not urgent until Lestat offered his throat.)
Eventually, they go. A lavish car, a flask of cool, fresh poured blood, and soft music through speakers while Rachida flips her tablet to Louis so he might look at this and that, odds and ends of business that might be completed in the short journey from venue to party.
Louis can leave whenever he pleases. He is reminded of this. Reminds himself of this, as the limousine door is opened for him.
Even before he steps out, he is aware of Lestat. A humming thrill running up his spine, stealing his breath. He's here, punching through Louis' chest, a shivery awareness that Louis can only temper, not extinguish, as he moves down the red carpet towards the party.
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Just like this.
It is dark and flashy, projections of music video clips glinting here and there, lights that gleam red, decor that gleams golden. Louis, waved through and coat taken, being given some gentle VIP treatment with directions to the open bar on the elevated section he finds himself on. From there, one can look out at the circling balconies fitted with lounge sections, and then down to the dancefloor, where a live DJ funnels energy into the warm air.
Finding Lestat is easy enough. Almost directly across from the bar area, on the opposite balcony, a lavish little set up where he and his bandmates are holding court. Lestat is wearing, in a violent clash with the decadence of the reds and golds around him, a bright metallic suit of shining purple, black glittering mesh clinging to his torso beneath. Powdery blue shines off his eyelids, and the remaining layer of lipstick has clung and lasted just as it has on Louis' cheek, if by now a little smeared in the corner.
He has his arms stretched out along the back of the seating, favouring Tough Cookie and Alex on either side of them, the beautiful young humans he has taken under his wings that Louis had gotten to know last time. Cookie with a hand resting on Lestat's knee, and Alex, loose limbed, leaning back against him as he chats to someone just at an angle from them.
But in all the noise and light, Lestat can sense it: he's here. Lifting his gaze, craning his neck to see.
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What does he expect to find?
A question Louis asks himself when the mortals milling between them part, and Louis sees Lestat. Observes him, the sprawl of his body on the couch, the mortals leaning into him. Cookie's hand on his knee.
And Lestat is looking at him. Louis meets his eyes, crushing down the reaction that is by turns akin to being doused by cold water, like a fire catching in his belly. Jealous over nothing, because they are not companions. Because Lestat was playing, herding Louis up against his dressing room door, and see how many here clamor to keep him company. Louis arriving here with the remnants of Lestat's kiss on his face, looking back at him from within the bracket of lovely mortals he has already chosen as his own.
The passing urge to turn and leave. To break several expensive bottles. The dichotomy in Louis between depressive spiral and infuriated rage ever-present, stronger now for having been suppressed so long.
But he's been seen, so cannot indulge either. He is obligated to collect the drink Rachida has procured for him, and cross the floor to the couch upon which Lestat holds court.
"Lestat," isn't raised to any particular volume. Louis will be heard, regardless of the thudding crescendo of song rising up to them from below. "This is impressive."
What else can he say? A compliment, polite, to smooth what feels like an interruption. A smile for Tough Cookie, a nod for Alex. Foolishly envious of them, and crushing that emotion down to nothing before it explodes into a fight Louis simply isn't entitled to have.
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Likewise, a conversational volume, while the mortals clustered about have to raise their voices to hear each other. Cookie smiles up at Louis, bleary and wired all at once, pupils blown wide. Alex's face is flush, seems to realise on a delay about the mutual shift in focus, peeling his attention off whoever he was talking to look up at Louis.
Lestat, standing, sort of playfully pushes Alex back into his previous space, where Cookie reaches out to drag him nearer. There is a low table separating Lestat and Louis, and cramped space with which to navigate around, so he steps up onto it with the same focus one might pay to balancing along a fence. The table it low, flat, stable. His heels are precarious. He is also wasted.
"Leave the theming to another," he is saying as he does this, a hand out to balance against Louis' shoulder once in range, "at the behest of a vampire, and they make everything," jumps down, "red."
Maybe 'wasted' is a strong word. It hasn't been that long. Long enough to finish up at the theatre, to get dressed again in his room. But then, drinking blood, depending on the source, has a way of rocketing a vampire from zero to the moon in a few strong gulps.
Something, anyway. Having a good time, obviously.
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Louis catches him round the waist. Habit. Years since Louis was grabbing Lestat up by the waist, yes, but Louis knows better than most how a thing can live in the body. How the ways in which he loves Lestat, the ways in which Louis had cared for him once, still exist in him.
"Red ain't the problem," but the point is taken. Louis had dismissed an interior designer with similar inclinations, too much Dracula to understand what the client standing in front of him.
Lestat is gripping his shoulder. Louis looks up into his face, draws some conclusions as to the state of him. Lestat, already indulging. He and his two humans, perhaps by way of his two human companions.
"Gonna have your Christine make sure it's more to your taste next time?" Louis asks, discarding his untouched drink on a passing tray so he might use a light sweep of fingers to brush the hair from Lestat's face. Acknowledge that Lestat will have more parties, more mortals hanging off him, all that he desires and more.
Maybe in due time he will stop inviting Louis, who is so much less fun than the others circulating through Lestat's space.
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There is also the clinging scent of some amount of intimacy, which could simply be from lounging around on the couch. His humans, their perfumes, mingled with cigarette smoke, clinging to his skin, his clothing. Not sex, but some other organic thing. Blood drinking, warm with it.
"Christine is easily distracted," by, probably, goalkeeping against the consequences of criminal acts and other infractions, to her credit, but anyway, "and besides, you would do better. You would know what I like."
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Distracting, all of this. Distracting, his arm around Lestat's waist, hands steadying him still. (Unnecessary, now that he's descended the table.)
Lestat is speaking. Says this thing and startles a grin out of Louis, a fond little chuckle punched out of him.
"Me? Maybe if you're looking for some pieces to fill out the walls."
Does he still know what Lestat likes? Louis is warmed by the assertion, holds onto the way Lestat says this as fact rather than the flutter of doubt. Lestat is changed. Different than Louis remembers. All the trappings of his life, different. There's every chance what he likes is far from what Louis could even guess at.
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lil bow