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.
"Maybe I am. You would despair at all the blank concrete in this place in Malibu. Alex," and Lestat pitches his voice a little louder, tipping his head back on arched spine to better hook his humans' attention, letting Louis help his balance, "continues to threaten to paint murals in the dining room."
Alex, who has half an idea of the subject at hand, raises the champagne bottle he is drinking directly from, points out that Lestat doesn't even use that room, so what's the harm. Cookie, rolling her eyes and rolling a cigarette.
"So what's the problem?" is to Louis, Lestat's standing back up straight, the hair that Louis had just fixed once again half in his face. Suddenly intent, this focus. "You said it wasn't the red."
Given the opportunity, Louis might say something as simple as: A mural could compliment the space, to this half-known human Lestat provokes with such familiarity.
His grip remains tight around Lestat's waist, a levering point upon which Lestat balances. Louis is looking past him, overly aware of the solid weigh of Lestat in his arms as he observes Alex and Cookie, and then—
Lestat, straightening upwards. Hair in his face. Eyes bright, all his attention narrowed down to Louis who can do nothing but lift fingers back up to sweep from forehead back to tame the mess of gold once more.
"Because it's a party for you," Louis tells him. "And you don't like it."
What other problem is there? So what if Louis liked the red? Lestat doesn't.
"Next time, this should all be what suits you. Purple and gold, maybe."
Louis doesn't remember a particular fondness for purple, but it's a brave new world. Lestat seems fond of it now.
Lestat can imagine Louis draped in purple and gold. Rich iterations of these tones, sparkling with it. His eyes catch on the remaining, barely perceptible smear of his kiss mark on Louis' cheek and knows a desire to plant more of them, all over him, visible on his throat and his knuckles, hidden beneath his clothes.
"Yes," he says, dreamily. Easy to see from across the room, let alone this intimately, the saucer-like dilation of his pupils. "I'd like that."
Maybe this would have been a better time to share his blood. They could roll together, see what happens. Maybe Lestat could ask him a second time, and not be refused (because, of course, looking back, he is certain he was rejected, Louis politely waiting him out to save his feelings), but only if he could stand to try again.
"You should come to the place in Malibu," he is saying, and catches up with himself. "I don't know what to do with it. It is built for the sun, you see."
A flicker of awareness as to what he is doing, fingers digging in at the small of Lestat's back, drawing him in closer as Lestat focuses in on him rather than the mortals on the couch behind them. Watching, Louis knows. Tough Cookie, at least, if not Alex.
His fingers linger at Lestat's temple, the shell of his ear. A touch that pretends at an absence of intimacy, despite how intoxicating it is to be touching him. Louis' own awareness winnowing down to Lestat, as if there is a door closed behind them. As if they are alone.
Doesn't think about houses built for sun. About Armand, standing in the light. Louis' windows coated in chemical to afford him the same privilege.
How long until Lestat needn't worry about the sun at all?
"I'd like to see it," Louis says anyway, heart tightening. "I can give you some names of designers. We could let your Alex paint his mural."
Because of course Louis likes the idea of a mural, interested in spite of himself.
Lestat's eyes. Louis wonders if he would remember any of this conversation by dawn.
Cookie is watching, little flicks of a look from beneath her false eyelashes as she finishes off making up her cigarette, setting flame to it with a heavy silver lighter. Alex is half-watching, more interested in finding a comfortable way to slide down, rest the back of his head on Cookie's thigh as well as try to continue to drink from the neck of his champagne bottle.
Lestat is both aware and unaware of them, caught as he is between these points of contact. Easy to slip into a world where they are the only two vampires in the world, the only two beings. Feels them still, his humans. A lifeline from drowning in the ocean of Louis du Lac.
And she's aware, Cookie. Obliged him, when he said he'd needed something, to tolerate the evening.
"Come," Lestat says. And not away, to some private alcove, or a peaceful rooftop. Tugs Louis towards the table. Arms loosening off Louis' shoulders, taking his shirt sleeve in hand to pull him properly over. "You can see some of his work first, then. Alex, your phone."
Some miscellaneous humans, perched on adjacent lounge seating, find themselves shooed away as Lestat makes to usher Louis towards it. Alex, sloth-slow moving to set his champagne bottle down and fish around for his phone, potentially not entirely sure why.
Embarrassing, the way Louis feels his heart seize up in his chest when Lestat says Come, eager for those few moments before realizing they are going no further than the couches in front of them.
Foolish. Foolish to assume Lestat would leave his own party every time Louis appeared.
So he sits where he is bidden, crossing one leg over the other. Old habit. Retreating a little into familiar poise to hide this private embarrassment at misplaced hopes. In this slip of time between settling himself alongside Lestat and Alex's hunt for his phone, Louis resolves to be polite, even if the work is nothing noteworthy.
And reminds himself not to be so handsy, to touch what is no longer his even if his palms itch to catch hold of Lestat again, even in some small way.
"Do you have another of those?" is a polite aside to Cookie, while Alex draws out his phone from one pocket. Nearly drops it.
They are all three of them comfortably altered. Louis observes this and feels some kind of way about it, chest clenching at these humans, Lestat's place among them. A new family, maybe. A happier one. No dreams materializing now to reassure Louis that they too were happy, once.
They're merely mortals, he knows. Maybe one day he will eat them properly when he decides to be done with all of this, vanish from view, retreat into vampiric reclusivity. But it's a little like having cherished pets, ones you can sleep with. He loves them, of course, for what they are to him (and knows deep down that Cookie would kick him out of bed and perhaps the planet if the words 'cherished pet' entered her awareness), and perhaps it would be nice if Louis had a fondness for them as well?
Would it make this whole arrangement more bearable? Lestat doesn't know. He is not, at this moment, thinking very deeply about it. Instructs Alex that Louis wishes to see his paintings. Alex, who perhaps remembers something about Lestat's ex being a big time art dealer, gets on board.
Flushes red a little as he navigates his phone, asks Louis, are you on Insta?
Cookie turns her lit cigarette in hand, and just sort of offers it out. Lestat moves, pushes aside a few errant liquor bottles on the table to kneel onto it. They laugh together at these antics, Lestat retrieving the cigarette from her hand with his mouth, before he resettles on the table, at least physically the centre of attention, takes a drag and offers it back to Louis. Weed and nicotine, sharp and sweet scents winding together.
Alex's paintings are abstractions made of primary colours. A bent towards naked women, such as the first in his gallery being one with a galaxy for a vagina.
But Rachida is, and will most likely be obliged to follow Alex on Louis' behalf.
Alex, who presents Louis with a bold opening example. Louis is very practiced at taking in all types of artwork without any trace of reaction, studies these offerings with polite neutrality, casual interest as Alex is obliged to scroll from one to the next. But Lestat knows Louis. Might see something of a familiar reaction in the lines of Louis' expression.
Their fingers catch, Louis' over Lestat's, as Louis takes the cigarette from him. Old days, this. Smoking together. Louis hasn't smoked in years. He inhales deeply, looks past Alex to Lestat as he exhales a stream of smoke.
"There's a market for abstracts," he offers, magnanimous. Absently tips the cigarette towards Lestat, offering. "I imagine it's challenging to keep up your work with the demands of your tour."
Eyes moving from Alex to Lestat, to Cookie. Surreal, engaging in this. Maybe he is a fool.
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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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Alex, who has half an idea of the subject at hand, raises the champagne bottle he is drinking directly from, points out that Lestat doesn't even use that room, so what's the harm. Cookie, rolling her eyes and rolling a cigarette.
"So what's the problem?" is to Louis, Lestat's standing back up straight, the hair that Louis had just fixed once again half in his face. Suddenly intent, this focus. "You said it wasn't the red."
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His grip remains tight around Lestat's waist, a levering point upon which Lestat balances. Louis is looking past him, overly aware of the solid weigh of Lestat in his arms as he observes Alex and Cookie, and then—
Lestat, straightening upwards. Hair in his face. Eyes bright, all his attention narrowed down to Louis who can do nothing but lift fingers back up to sweep from forehead back to tame the mess of gold once more.
"Because it's a party for you," Louis tells him. "And you don't like it."
What other problem is there? So what if Louis liked the red? Lestat doesn't.
"Next time, this should all be what suits you. Purple and gold, maybe."
Louis doesn't remember a particular fondness for purple, but it's a brave new world. Lestat seems fond of it now.
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"Yes," he says, dreamily. Easy to see from across the room, let alone this intimately, the saucer-like dilation of his pupils. "I'd like that."
Maybe this would have been a better time to share his blood. They could roll together, see what happens. Maybe Lestat could ask him a second time, and not be refused (because, of course, looking back, he is certain he was rejected, Louis politely waiting him out to save his feelings), but only if he could stand to try again.
"You should come to the place in Malibu," he is saying, and catches up with himself. "I don't know what to do with it. It is built for the sun, you see."
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His fingers linger at Lestat's temple, the shell of his ear. A touch that pretends at an absence of intimacy, despite how intoxicating it is to be touching him. Louis' own awareness winnowing down to Lestat, as if there is a door closed behind them. As if they are alone.
Doesn't think about houses built for sun. About Armand, standing in the light. Louis' windows coated in chemical to afford him the same privilege.
How long until Lestat needn't worry about the sun at all?
"I'd like to see it," Louis says anyway, heart tightening. "I can give you some names of designers. We could let your Alex paint his mural."
Because of course Louis likes the idea of a mural, interested in spite of himself.
Lestat's eyes. Louis wonders if he would remember any of this conversation by dawn.
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Lestat is both aware and unaware of them, caught as he is between these points of contact. Easy to slip into a world where they are the only two vampires in the world, the only two beings. Feels them still, his humans. A lifeline from drowning in the ocean of Louis du Lac.
And she's aware, Cookie. Obliged him, when he said he'd needed something, to tolerate the evening.
"Come," Lestat says. And not away, to some private alcove, or a peaceful rooftop. Tugs Louis towards the table. Arms loosening off Louis' shoulders, taking his shirt sleeve in hand to pull him properly over. "You can see some of his work first, then. Alex, your phone."
Some miscellaneous humans, perched on adjacent lounge seating, find themselves shooed away as Lestat makes to usher Louis towards it. Alex, sloth-slow moving to set his champagne bottle down and fish around for his phone, potentially not entirely sure why.
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Foolish. Foolish to assume Lestat would leave his own party every time Louis appeared.
So he sits where he is bidden, crossing one leg over the other. Old habit. Retreating a little into familiar poise to hide this private embarrassment at misplaced hopes. In this slip of time between settling himself alongside Lestat and Alex's hunt for his phone, Louis resolves to be polite, even if the work is nothing noteworthy.
And reminds himself not to be so handsy, to touch what is no longer his even if his palms itch to catch hold of Lestat again, even in some small way.
"Do you have another of those?" is a polite aside to Cookie, while Alex draws out his phone from one pocket. Nearly drops it.
They are all three of them comfortably altered. Louis observes this and feels some kind of way about it, chest clenching at these humans, Lestat's place among them. A new family, maybe. A happier one. No dreams materializing now to reassure Louis that they too were happy, once.
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Would it make this whole arrangement more bearable? Lestat doesn't know. He is not, at this moment, thinking very deeply about it. Instructs Alex that Louis wishes to see his paintings. Alex, who perhaps remembers something about Lestat's ex being a big time art dealer, gets on board.
Flushes red a little as he navigates his phone, asks Louis, are you on Insta?
Cookie turns her lit cigarette in hand, and just sort of offers it out. Lestat moves, pushes aside a few errant liquor bottles on the table to kneel onto it. They laugh together at these antics, Lestat retrieving the cigarette from her hand with his mouth, before he resettles on the table, at least physically the centre of attention, takes a drag and offers it back to Louis. Weed and nicotine, sharp and sweet scents winding together.
Alex's paintings are abstractions made of primary colours. A bent towards naked women, such as the first in his gallery being one with a galaxy for a vagina.
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No.
But Rachida is, and will most likely be obliged to follow Alex on Louis' behalf.
Alex, who presents Louis with a bold opening example. Louis is very practiced at taking in all types of artwork without any trace of reaction, studies these offerings with polite neutrality, casual interest as Alex is obliged to scroll from one to the next. But Lestat knows Louis. Might see something of a familiar reaction in the lines of Louis' expression.
Their fingers catch, Louis' over Lestat's, as Louis takes the cigarette from him. Old days, this. Smoking together. Louis hasn't smoked in years. He inhales deeply, looks past Alex to Lestat as he exhales a stream of smoke.
"There's a market for abstracts," he offers, magnanimous. Absently tips the cigarette towards Lestat, offering. "I imagine it's challenging to keep up your work with the demands of your tour."
Eyes moving from Alex to Lestat, to Cookie. Surreal, engaging in this. Maybe he is a fool.
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lil bow