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.
Unable to parse Louis' microexpressions, Alex is quick to agree, it's all rehearsing and interviews and travelling right now, he's on an art break, but it's like, painting opens up a whole other part of his mind, chills him out, because it doesn't have to be perfect, even though you're literally always forming the finished product, which is weird because music is ephemeral, like, when you're perfmorming, but you know the whole thing collapses if you're not on your game,
and on like that. A chatty individual, maybe, but one that has gotten accustomed to people being deeply interested in what it's like as the lead guitarist of The Vampire Lestat, and happy to provide each time.
The paintings are fine. Here's one of a penguin with sunglasses, rendered in bisexual lighting. Here's another naked woman, lactating rainbows, filling the back wall of a tattoo studio. Occasionally, pictures of the band, mainly Tough Cookie, cute shared selfies. A flash of Lestat, more elusive.
And Lestat watches Louis, because he feels he can get away with it, taking back the cigarette to smoke. A veil of it forming around him, a mild hit of marijuana putting a pleasant calm on his own mood. Wants to touch him. Wants to be on top of him, rub against him like a cat, share this feeling, pour it down his throat.
"How long as you in America for?" rather rudely elbows aside whatever Alex is saying. Lestat, blindly passing the cigarette back to Cookie.
Less interesting than the photographs Alex flicks carelessly past. Louis has some reckless impulse to take the phone from him to make a more thorough study of each one, little glimpses of this life Lestat has made completely independent of Louis. To look more closely at what Alex has captured of Lestat himself.
Lestat diverts him, before Louis can put some serious thought into how he might coax the phone out of Alex's hand.
"A week. Maybe more, if I find something I like at the gallery I been invited to visit."
And there is the tour. The dates Rachida has put into Louis' calendar.
There is a war. Vampires that will eventually realize that Louis has traveled into America, that he is once again orbiting Lestat.
Louis holds out a hand to reclaim the cigarette as Cookie blows a smoke ring.
Lestat remembers their initial reunion in New Orleans like a blur, but not completely. Small, treasured crystal-clear pieces in the midst of it, hoarded, kept safe, admired. The real blur comes when Lestat tries to remember specific things he himself said or was feeling at the time, but he does remember thinking: don't go. Don't leave me here.
Remembers, distinctly, choosing not to say it. How outrageously unfair it would be to ask Louis to do even more for him, how he had to gather up his own pieces himself before he could even contemplate more. He remembers it now because he is trying not to say: don't go. Come with me.
"Los Angeles," Louis admits. "Rachida lined up a few others for me up the coast."
In which the lining up involves all the travel arrangements necessary to shuttle a vampire around the country. (Has ghosts of the past, of how it was when it was him and Armand moving together around America.) There is some flexibility, a concession to the possibility that Louis' whims will require a few days moving in another direction. That a vampire might try to kill him and need to be put down.
He lifts the cigarette to his mouth. Louis takes a drag off it, speaks through a cloud of smoke when he offers a question in return:
"Where do you go from here?" can be misinterpreted as a question for anyone around this table, but Louis is looking only at Lestat.
If it's a misinterpretation that Cookie answers for him, it's one she doesn't mind making as she says, "Three more nights in Vegas, then we show in Phoenix."
"Tucson, El Paso," Alex chimes in.
"Dallas, Houston," Cookie, ticking off on her fingers.
"New Orleans," from Lestat, who feels as if this conversation is rushing away, just as his tour threatens to drag him in the opposite direction of these so-called galleries that are so interesting. Unable to stop watching Louis smoke, because he is in love with him, and also the patterns of the cinders and smoke and gestures of his fingers are particularly entrancing.
"Nashville," Cookie adds. "And then we get to go on a fucking plane for once."
"I like the bus," Alex protests. "It's cool."
"I'll check back in with you in a month."
Lestat reaches out a hand to take the cigarette. "Our west coast ventures are towards the end of the tour. I think your assistant has the details."
A flex of emotion in Louis' face, some tender ebb thinking of the place hat had been their home. Cookie and Alex continue speaking and Louis is looking at Lestat, their banter passing him by.
"She does," Louis agrees. "I had her add them into my calendar."
Alongside all the other necessities of running his modest empire, the business of making money that Louis has always taken such pleasure in ticking smoothly along in spite of so much upheaval. It is a point of quiet pride that he has maintained, lost nothing.
Takes a last drag off the cigarette for passing it into Lestat's custody, still defenseless against the lurch of his heart at the slightest brush between their fingers. It's worse now, maybe, after their closeness in his dressing room. After Lestat offered up his throat and Louis hesitated too long.
"Three more shows here?" he questions, before tacking on with some amusement to Lestat directly, "Will you be on the bus as well?"
Yes, three more shows, indicated by the tip of his head, before pursing his lips after this sign of amusement for his bus. "Oui," Lestat says, a slightly defensive shake of his hair. "It is quite luxurious. My compartment is blocked of all sun, with a coffin, aircon, some music. We travel by day mostly, so, I expect to sleep through it all."
"Which is why I've been saying," Alex says, a broad smile at Louis, "we should just toss him in with the gear, not like he's gonna even notice either way—"
Flash of temper noted, Louis' attention sharpening through the stream of smoke he exhales.
And observed too, how Cookie soothes. All the dimensions of the three of them, so much that Louis doesn't see and maybe won't ever see. Lestat with a new life, pieces of it simply out of Louis' reach now.
Louis tips the cigarette to Alex, who perhaps doesn't need any more drugs.
"He would notice," Louis assures Alex, alongside Cookie's placations.
There are other questions Louis could ask, but doesn't want to speak of Lestat's volunteers from the audience in front of these two. What they think of it, if they feel any fear watching Lestat sink fangs into a bared throat—
Maybe he could ask them, someday. Not tonight.
"How will it go, these three nights? All the same? A party after?"
Dragging them all back. Here are these questions. Here is an invitation to speak of the music, the spectacle, the celebration after.
Lestat can feel where Cookie is petting at the back of his shoulder, can feel his own swoop of ill-temper, something about Alex shying back from it making it worse. He watches as Louis passes along the cigarette, as Alex takes it with a quick and thankful smile, an agreeable nod at this assurance. His heart, rabbit quick.
Thumping music up through the floor. Mortals everywhere, drinking and imbibing, money burned into material burned into excess and energy. Louis is trying to smooth the conversation along. Lestat should laugh, and say of course.
But now he feels quite bad. No longer having fun.
"Always," he tells Louis. A faint smile. "All the same. Excuse me."
Gracefully getting to his feet up off the table, forming no reason or excuse for why he must turn and begin moving away.
Maybe Louis should let him go. A part of him petulantly wonders if Cookie is the one who goes after Lestat, if she is the one to right his poor moods.
But Louis cannot bring himself to wait and find out.
He makes no excuses. Simply stands up, steps around the table, Alex's discarded champagne bottle, and follows after Lestat. Says his name, a useless stall against reaching for him, because Louis inevitably snags his arm to slow his passing.
"You leaving?"
Leaving Alex and Cookie, leaving the party? Or leaving Louis?
Lestat is already pondering the prospect of Louis not chasing after him, how delicious that agony will be, how it will be a hideously perfect way to end his night. But then his name is said, and his arm is caught, somewhere at the end of the balcony where he was going to careen through the emergency exit, and this is terrible, because his eyes are stinging.
So he only half-turns, but puts no pressure on the grip to his arm. "I felt I wanted to get some air," he says, even though he is certain his trajectory was his own hotel room, the interior of his coffin, done with partying, this endless evening, the endless tour stretching out in front of him.
"Don't let me drag you away. I'm very fond of them."
Complicated, hearing this. Louis hadn't doubted Lestat felt something for these humans, but can't avoid the way he resents—
Something about it. It's ugly, resenting anything that makes Lestat happy after he's been unhappy for so long. Louis feels shame over it but can't quite cut the feeling out of himself.
Louis had wanted the space. Lestat shouldn't have to endure alone. And still.
Still, he is here. Chasing after Lestat. Holding on to him as he assures, "You ain't dragging me."
If anything, Louis is dragging him.
"We could get some air," is maybe a little desperate, a little intrusive. Louis says it anyway. "Could stick around, buy me a drink. Dance, before I go."
It's perfect, these offerings. Everything he thought he wanted when he asked if Louis would like to come to his party.
And Lestat, instead, can feel something like panic rising in him. The desperate, wanting thing that would, if it could, launch him back into Louis' arms, that snaps after these offerings with slavering desire. He's so stupid, he knows. Knows because Cookie did call him this, after the time in France, after getting a little drunk and sad. Uncalled for.
And true. Also, if he stands here in indecisive, wanting silence any longer, he's going to burst into tears and embarrass himself properly.
"No," slips out of his mouth, and then cannot recall it back when regret seizes fast and cold in him. Pupils still large, eyes red rimmed, as he looks back at Louis properly. Regret, all the sharper upon looking into his face. "I think I am tired. I'm sorry."
Absurd, but Louis can't talk himself out of how stung he feels by Lestat's refusal. Chasing after him, hanging on his arm, and Lestat—
Lestat's eyes are red and Louis wavers between the idea that Lestat is upset and the idea that Lestat is only tired and has smoked quite a bit, clearly imbibed something before Louis arrived, and is tired. Done with the party he already expressed dislike for.
Louis lets go of his arm. Stiff-backed, braced against his own hurt. Misplaced hurt.
"You're allowed to be tired."
Did Lestat have to wake very early to prepare? Louis hadn't asked. He should have.
"I shouldn't keep you," Louis admits. Rests his hand on the balcony railing to keep from reaching back, shoves the other in a pocket. He can behave. "Just wanna make sure you're alright."
And the reality is: say good-bye.
Louis shouldn't linger, shouldn't remain to be an imposition on Lestat's good time. Rachida is somewhere in this place dancing. Louis can collect her, and then go. He is not afraid of being transparent about what's drawn him here to the party, and it has never been Lestat's band mates.
Perversely, he relaxes as Louis allows this excuse. Lets go of him. It is not what he wants, of course, but he doesn't want what he wants.
"Thank you," says Lestat. It's an awkward thing to say, even if he means it, and he gives a breath of a laugh. "Yes, I am. And I'm glad that you are here. That you came to the show."
And will Louis come to the next one? And if not, which one next, if at all? This, Lestat can't bring himself to say, trying as hard as he is not to dig his claws into Louis' arm, wrap his arms around his leg, beg him not to go to Los Angeles. Or to go to Los Angeles and say he can visit the gallery too in between things. He can fly, after all. Any number of insane, inappropriate things. Like asking if he wants to drink from him.
Stupid. Lestat steps in to deliver a hasty hug, fluttery and urgent. Do they hug? Why not. They should, if they don't.
Louis understands the intention, that Lestat means for this to be a minor gesture. But he steps in close and Louis simply—
Louis doesn't let go.
Lestat hugs him and Louis folds him into his arms, coaxing him down into an embrace. Louis holds him so tightly, hand sweeping down his back, tucking up beneath Lestat's hair. He should stop himself. But he thinks of Lestat's red-rimmed eyes and the expression on his face and has the sense of leaving him unmoored, stranding him in the wilderness.
"I wanted to be here," Louis whispers. Just for Lestat, beneath the pulse of music and patter of mortals yelling over it. "I'll be in Phoenix, if you want me there."
Rachida will make it work. Louis can be anywhere he pleases. Maybe it's even advisable, to be so constantly in motion, given the vampires seeking his death.
Lingers for a moment, hands hovered light on Louis' arms, before he gives in. Leans, arms wrapping around him, and the garish red lights and the repetitious electronic music and the clamour of many voices he doesn't recognise all go dim. A breath out, a relaxing, and he doesn't think it's just the MDMA-laced blood that has him feel so light.
Nods against Louis' shoulder, hasty. "I do," he says. Confessional, in the moment. The truth is, of course, he wants Louis there every night. Backstage waiting for him, waiting with him. Telling him he is incredible. Smiling.
Undeserving. But he waits for Louis to be the one to loosen the embrace, takes that time to ensure he won't look shattered with relief when they part.
They cannot stand here forever. (Louis would have held him through a hurricane, if survival instincts hadn't won out.) But Louis wants to stand here forever, running his palm up and down Lestat's back, fingers bunched in the collar of Lestat's suit under the curtain of his hair. Nothing is complicated when they are wrapped up in each other this way. It is easy still.
Long minutes of just Louis holding him. Stolen time, swaying together, before Louis takes a deep breath. His fingers nudge up along Lestat's hairline, then sweep back down to his shoulders.
"I'll be there," Louis promises, face turned in to say this words against Lestat's temple. Dare to press a kiss there, a little stolen brush of lips, before Louis unravels them. Catches Lestat by his arms before he can draw away and press, "You got a cell phone? Your lawyer get you set up with one of your own?"
He feels there is a hurricane. That they are in his old shack. That he never truly left it.
Something similar in the way Lestat looks at Louis as the hug releases him and his arms are caught. Maybe obscured from the brushstrokes of eyeshadow, the blur of colour on his mouth, the random shimmer of sparkle, platinum tones in curled hair, the scent of cosmetics and cigarettes. Maybe not. His hands catch at Louis' elbows as he registers what is being said to him.
Shakes his head, first, then stops, and before Louis can responds, corrects himself, "Yes, I have one." Battery dead, abandoned in his room, many unread texts. Not lost like the last one, or broken like the one before that, so, it's an improvement. "Do you want my number?
"I don't know it," hasty amendment. "But I can find out."
"Get your girl to send it to me," Louis tells him. "I already had Rashida send her all the ways she can contact me."
Which can be put into Lestat's phone, if they haven't already. Louis had almost thought Lestat would have no phone at all, aware that neither of the earlier attempts have stuck. It had been a bleak contemplation of alternate possibilities, of having to text Cookie to get ahold of Lestat.
Louis reaches a hand up, tucks Lestat's hair back from his face. It is like how they had parted in New Orleans. Worse than that, maybe. At least in New Orleans, he'd had some sense that Lestat was on his feet. Now, he is less certain. It feels agonizing.
"You'll call?" he invites, a wild gambit given Lestat's track record with phones.
Later, he may reflect on this exchange being the worst of things that could have happened. The way Louis is speaking to him, touching him, looking at him all gesturing to how Lestat must seem to him. How he hasn't wanted to seem to him. It had been his own task to heal, to get himself together, ensure that he become something—
Something else.
No room for that in the moment, as he feels some heartache ease. His own stipulations to himself, of what he could or could not bear as Louis' friend, becoming murky. Becomes conscious to the way he using Louis for balance, and refocuses. Doesn't move his hands, but lets his grip become a more conscious, reassuring squeeze.
Exceptions, maybe, for time zones. For Louis closed up in a coffin while Lestat ranges across the world.
Louis senses the way Lestat is gathering himself. Senses the moment slipping away, that he will have to let go. Release Lestat back to his party, his fame. His tour. Contain the fact that he doesn't want to let go of Lestat.
He will have to learn how to use his phone for more than just making it play music.
"Yes," Lestat says, with a steadier smile now. A hand fluttering up, palm laying against Louis' chest. A little patter of his fingers settling. Wants to say, he will feel better then. That they can have a drink and dance together and all those things he feels he is incapable of doing in this moment without feeling the desperation of wanting more.
Skip the drugs, maybe. Skip a party, even. But there, there it is again, and he draws in a breath to say none of these things.
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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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and on like that. A chatty individual, maybe, but one that has gotten accustomed to people being deeply interested in what it's like as the lead guitarist of The Vampire Lestat, and happy to provide each time.
The paintings are fine. Here's one of a penguin with sunglasses, rendered in bisexual lighting. Here's another naked woman, lactating rainbows, filling the back wall of a tattoo studio. Occasionally, pictures of the band, mainly Tough Cookie, cute shared selfies. A flash of Lestat, more elusive.
And Lestat watches Louis, because he feels he can get away with it, taking back the cigarette to smoke. A veil of it forming around him, a mild hit of marijuana putting a pleasant calm on his own mood. Wants to touch him. Wants to be on top of him, rub against him like a cat, share this feeling, pour it down his throat.
"How long as you in America for?" rather rudely elbows aside whatever Alex is saying. Lestat, blindly passing the cigarette back to Cookie.
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Less interesting than the photographs Alex flicks carelessly past. Louis has some reckless impulse to take the phone from him to make a more thorough study of each one, little glimpses of this life Lestat has made completely independent of Louis. To look more closely at what Alex has captured of Lestat himself.
Lestat diverts him, before Louis can put some serious thought into how he might coax the phone out of Alex's hand.
"A week. Maybe more, if I find something I like at the gallery I been invited to visit."
And there is the tour. The dates Rachida has put into Louis' calendar.
There is a war. Vampires that will eventually realize that Louis has traveled into America, that he is once again orbiting Lestat.
Louis holds out a hand to reclaim the cigarette as Cookie blows a smoke ring.
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Remembers, distinctly, choosing not to say it. How outrageously unfair it would be to ask Louis to do even more for him, how he had to gather up his own pieces himself before he could even contemplate more. He remembers it now because he is trying not to say: don't go. Come with me.
A week. Maybe more.
"In Vegas?" he asks, of this gallery.
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In which the lining up involves all the travel arrangements necessary to shuttle a vampire around the country. (Has ghosts of the past, of how it was when it was him and Armand moving together around America.) There is some flexibility, a concession to the possibility that Louis' whims will require a few days moving in another direction. That a vampire might try to kill him and need to be put down.
He lifts the cigarette to his mouth. Louis takes a drag off it, speaks through a cloud of smoke when he offers a question in return:
"Where do you go from here?" can be misinterpreted as a question for anyone around this table, but Louis is looking only at Lestat.
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"Tucson, El Paso," Alex chimes in.
"Dallas, Houston," Cookie, ticking off on her fingers.
"New Orleans," from Lestat, who feels as if this conversation is rushing away, just as his tour threatens to drag him in the opposite direction of these so-called galleries that are so interesting. Unable to stop watching Louis smoke, because he is in love with him, and also the patterns of the cinders and smoke and gestures of his fingers are particularly entrancing.
"Nashville," Cookie adds. "And then we get to go on a fucking plane for once."
"I like the bus," Alex protests. "It's cool."
"I'll check back in with you in a month."
Lestat reaches out a hand to take the cigarette. "Our west coast ventures are towards the end of the tour. I think your assistant has the details."
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A flex of emotion in Louis' face, some tender ebb thinking of the place hat had been their home. Cookie and Alex continue speaking and Louis is looking at Lestat, their banter passing him by.
"She does," Louis agrees. "I had her add them into my calendar."
Alongside all the other necessities of running his modest empire, the business of making money that Louis has always taken such pleasure in ticking smoothly along in spite of so much upheaval. It is a point of quiet pride that he has maintained, lost nothing.
Takes a last drag off the cigarette for passing it into Lestat's custody, still defenseless against the lurch of his heart at the slightest brush between their fingers. It's worse now, maybe, after their closeness in his dressing room. After Lestat offered up his throat and Louis hesitated too long.
"Three more shows here?" he questions, before tacking on with some amusement to Lestat directly, "Will you be on the bus as well?"
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"Which is why I've been saying," Alex says, a broad smile at Louis, "we should just toss him in with the gear, not like he's gonna even notice either way—"
"Ça suffit," Lestat snaps, dreamy bliss suddenly throw aside with whipcrack speed, teeth bared.
Alex goes redder, smile vanishing. "Sorry, sorry, I was just—"
"Being disrespectful," Lestat hisses, while Cookie leans over, placing a hand on his arm, peacekeeping noises and fluttery assurance.
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And observed too, how Cookie soothes. All the dimensions of the three of them, so much that Louis doesn't see and maybe won't ever see. Lestat with a new life, pieces of it simply out of Louis' reach now.
Louis tips the cigarette to Alex, who perhaps doesn't need any more drugs.
"He would notice," Louis assures Alex, alongside Cookie's placations.
There are other questions Louis could ask, but doesn't want to speak of Lestat's volunteers from the audience in front of these two. What they think of it, if they feel any fear watching Lestat sink fangs into a bared throat—
Maybe he could ask them, someday. Not tonight.
"How will it go, these three nights? All the same? A party after?"
Dragging them all back. Here are these questions. Here is an invitation to speak of the music, the spectacle, the celebration after.
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Thumping music up through the floor. Mortals everywhere, drinking and imbibing, money burned into material burned into excess and energy. Louis is trying to smooth the conversation along. Lestat should laugh, and say of course.
But now he feels quite bad. No longer having fun.
"Always," he tells Louis. A faint smile. "All the same. Excuse me."
Gracefully getting to his feet up off the table, forming no reason or excuse for why he must turn and begin moving away.
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But Louis cannot bring himself to wait and find out.
He makes no excuses. Simply stands up, steps around the table, Alex's discarded champagne bottle, and follows after Lestat. Says his name, a useless stall against reaching for him, because Louis inevitably snags his arm to slow his passing.
"You leaving?"
Leaving Alex and Cookie, leaving the party? Or leaving Louis?
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So he only half-turns, but puts no pressure on the grip to his arm. "I felt I wanted to get some air," he says, even though he is certain his trajectory was his own hotel room, the interior of his coffin, done with partying, this endless evening, the endless tour stretching out in front of him.
"Don't let me drag you away. I'm very fond of them."
In case this little moment should say otherwise.
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Something about it. It's ugly, resenting anything that makes Lestat happy after he's been unhappy for so long. Louis feels shame over it but can't quite cut the feeling out of himself.
Louis had wanted the space. Lestat shouldn't have to endure alone. And still.
Still, he is here. Chasing after Lestat. Holding on to him as he assures, "You ain't dragging me."
If anything, Louis is dragging him.
"We could get some air," is maybe a little desperate, a little intrusive. Louis says it anyway. "Could stick around, buy me a drink. Dance, before I go."
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And Lestat, instead, can feel something like panic rising in him. The desperate, wanting thing that would, if it could, launch him back into Louis' arms, that snaps after these offerings with slavering desire. He's so stupid, he knows. Knows because Cookie did call him this, after the time in France, after getting a little drunk and sad. Uncalled for.
And true. Also, if he stands here in indecisive, wanting silence any longer, he's going to burst into tears and embarrass himself properly.
"No," slips out of his mouth, and then cannot recall it back when regret seizes fast and cold in him. Pupils still large, eyes red rimmed, as he looks back at Louis properly. Regret, all the sharper upon looking into his face. "I think I am tired. I'm sorry."
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Absurd, but Louis can't talk himself out of how stung he feels by Lestat's refusal. Chasing after him, hanging on his arm, and Lestat—
Lestat's eyes are red and Louis wavers between the idea that Lestat is upset and the idea that Lestat is only tired and has smoked quite a bit, clearly imbibed something before Louis arrived, and is tired. Done with the party he already expressed dislike for.
Louis lets go of his arm. Stiff-backed, braced against his own hurt. Misplaced hurt.
"You're allowed to be tired."
Did Lestat have to wake very early to prepare? Louis hadn't asked. He should have.
"I shouldn't keep you," Louis admits. Rests his hand on the balcony railing to keep from reaching back, shoves the other in a pocket. He can behave. "Just wanna make sure you're alright."
And the reality is: say good-bye.
Louis shouldn't linger, shouldn't remain to be an imposition on Lestat's good time. Rachida is somewhere in this place dancing. Louis can collect her, and then go. He is not afraid of being transparent about what's drawn him here to the party, and it has never been Lestat's band mates.
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"Thank you," says Lestat. It's an awkward thing to say, even if he means it, and he gives a breath of a laugh. "Yes, I am. And I'm glad that you are here. That you came to the show."
And will Louis come to the next one? And if not, which one next, if at all? This, Lestat can't bring himself to say, trying as hard as he is not to dig his claws into Louis' arm, wrap his arms around his leg, beg him not to go to Los Angeles. Or to go to Los Angeles and say he can visit the gallery too in between things. He can fly, after all. Any number of insane, inappropriate things. Like asking if he wants to drink from him.
Stupid. Lestat steps in to deliver a hasty hug, fluttery and urgent. Do they hug? Why not. They should, if they don't.
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Louis doesn't let go.
Lestat hugs him and Louis folds him into his arms, coaxing him down into an embrace. Louis holds him so tightly, hand sweeping down his back, tucking up beneath Lestat's hair. He should stop himself. But he thinks of Lestat's red-rimmed eyes and the expression on his face and has the sense of leaving him unmoored, stranding him in the wilderness.
"I wanted to be here," Louis whispers. Just for Lestat, beneath the pulse of music and patter of mortals yelling over it. "I'll be in Phoenix, if you want me there."
Rachida will make it work. Louis can be anywhere he pleases. Maybe it's even advisable, to be so constantly in motion, given the vampires seeking his death.
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Lingers for a moment, hands hovered light on Louis' arms, before he gives in. Leans, arms wrapping around him, and the garish red lights and the repetitious electronic music and the clamour of many voices he doesn't recognise all go dim. A breath out, a relaxing, and he doesn't think it's just the MDMA-laced blood that has him feel so light.
Nods against Louis' shoulder, hasty. "I do," he says. Confessional, in the moment. The truth is, of course, he wants Louis there every night. Backstage waiting for him, waiting with him. Telling him he is incredible. Smiling.
Undeserving. But he waits for Louis to be the one to loosen the embrace, takes that time to ensure he won't look shattered with relief when they part.
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They cannot stand here forever. (Louis would have held him through a hurricane, if survival instincts hadn't won out.) But Louis wants to stand here forever, running his palm up and down Lestat's back, fingers bunched in the collar of Lestat's suit under the curtain of his hair. Nothing is complicated when they are wrapped up in each other this way. It is easy still.
Long minutes of just Louis holding him. Stolen time, swaying together, before Louis takes a deep breath. His fingers nudge up along Lestat's hairline, then sweep back down to his shoulders.
"I'll be there," Louis promises, face turned in to say this words against Lestat's temple. Dare to press a kiss there, a little stolen brush of lips, before Louis unravels them. Catches Lestat by his arms before he can draw away and press, "You got a cell phone? Your lawyer get you set up with one of your own?"
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Something similar in the way Lestat looks at Louis as the hug releases him and his arms are caught. Maybe obscured from the brushstrokes of eyeshadow, the blur of colour on his mouth, the random shimmer of sparkle, platinum tones in curled hair, the scent of cosmetics and cigarettes. Maybe not. His hands catch at Louis' elbows as he registers what is being said to him.
Shakes his head, first, then stops, and before Louis can responds, corrects himself, "Yes, I have one." Battery dead, abandoned in his room, many unread texts. Not lost like the last one, or broken like the one before that, so, it's an improvement. "Do you want my number?
"I don't know it," hasty amendment. "But I can find out."
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Which can be put into Lestat's phone, if they haven't already. Louis had almost thought Lestat would have no phone at all, aware that neither of the earlier attempts have stuck. It had been a bleak contemplation of alternate possibilities, of having to text Cookie to get ahold of Lestat.
Louis reaches a hand up, tucks Lestat's hair back from his face. It is like how they had parted in New Orleans. Worse than that, maybe. At least in New Orleans, he'd had some sense that Lestat was on his feet. Now, he is less certain. It feels agonizing.
"You'll call?" he invites, a wild gambit given Lestat's track record with phones.
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Something else.
No room for that in the moment, as he feels some heartache ease. His own stipulations to himself, of what he could or could not bear as Louis' friend, becoming murky. Becomes conscious to the way he using Louis for balance, and refocuses. Doesn't move his hands, but lets his grip become a more conscious, reassuring squeeze.
"You'll pick up?" he counters, a fleeting smile.
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Exceptions, maybe, for time zones. For Louis closed up in a coffin while Lestat ranges across the world.
Louis senses the way Lestat is gathering himself. Senses the moment slipping away, that he will have to let go. Release Lestat back to his party, his fame. His tour. Contain the fact that he doesn't want to let go of Lestat.
"And then I'll see you in Phoenix."
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"Yes," Lestat says, with a steadier smile now. A hand fluttering up, palm laying against Louis' chest. A little patter of his fingers settling. Wants to say, he will feel better then. That they can have a drink and dance together and all those things he feels he is incapable of doing in this moment without feeling the desperation of wanting more.
Skip the drugs, maybe. Skip a party, even. But there, there it is again, and he draws in a breath to say none of these things.
"And you can tell me about your galleries."
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lil bow