The absence of touches prickles his skin, as if in need of soothing. Craves the flat of Louis' hand against him, where even these minor touches have already replaced the shadow sensation of Noah's handling. Lestat tips his head in the other direction as if getting a better angle of Louis' expression will offer insight into what he is thinking.
Or wanting. Lestat's hand falls off the doorframe, and he catches himself on his heel in step backwards into the slightly chaotic dressing room. A low table, a mirror, the trace evidence of white powder, an abandoned cowboy hat on the setee. A guitar, a ravaged costume rack, the messy spill of hair products and makeup along the long surface under a wide mirror. And flowers, as per his rider, flowers everywhere.
Maybe Louis comes in. Lestat says, "You need none," as he wanders backwards. "All my doors are open to you."
The door clicks closed. A deafening sound. Feels like it taps into his blood stream, drains straight down to his cock, Lestat pacing backwards and stopping when his thighs find the arm of the setee.
He is pretty sure they're not supposed to be doing anything. They are friends. Talk of distance, of healing.
"They can wait," he says, and shows his teeth again in a smile. Perching, half-sitting, watching Louis with unnerving focus. An invisible crackle of energy, at least, one Lestat can feel, between their bodies. Poised to close it, to receive its closure. "Would that please you to know? If they were all waiting on me because I wished to see you."
His hands brace on the arm of the setee, painted fingernails digging into the weave of upholstery.
Here he is again, some unimportant voice in the back of his mind is saying. Making shameless offerings. Someone will knock on the door, and maybe it won't matter, or it will. Maybe someone knock, and the same questions apply.
The rest of him says, here is Louis, who said he had to go, and who keeps coming back around. He feels his skin has burned where Louis has touched him, like the fans think crosses would.
"Do you want to know what he was doing to me when you arrived?" Lestat asks.
Nothing right away. He looks at Lestat. The marks on his body stand out. Or maybe Louis is just hyperaware of them. In New Orleans, Lestat had never come home with any marks from Antoinette after a time. The lingering traces had vanished. He had been careful. Not careful enough, but careful.
Louis lets himself think back to the mortal opening the door. Broad, so broad. Big hands. He might have tasted like earth, rich as soil. Lestat had chosen him, brought him back here, and he had bitten those marks into him.
In Vegas, Lestat had brought Louis into his dressing room, and offered him his throat. It feels like an unflattering comparison.
Slowly, Louis asks, "Are you playing a game with me, Lestat?"
Not a no. Not a yes. Only an attempt to steady himself. Find their footing.
He is just saying things. Provocation. But why not. Perhaps he knew Louis was coming after all. Perhaps he picked the kind of mortal that Louis might have favoured, once, or perhaps still does. Perhaps he timed it all perfectly. At least at one time in his life, Louis thought Lestat to be quite the schemer.
Also, he is enjoying himself, in some odd, reckless way. That's game enough.
"But there are not many rules," he says. "None, I admit."
Louis had touched him. The prickle of sensation has yet to leave his fingers.
He could touch Lestat again. Louis has observed the fabric of what Lestat is presently passing off as a top. It would apart easy, Louis is reasonably certain. They could just—
They could be reckless.
Louis is still trying to decide just how reckless he is prepared to be when he tells Lestat, "I already know what you were doing."
Tacit admission: Louis has given it some thought. Perhaps he was thinking on it when he was touching Lestat's chest, knuckling over each mark in turn.
"Do you think I need you to explain yourself to me?"
A flinch, nearly, if not against what Louis says, against Lestat's own reaction to it.
"Certainly not," gentle, taking on a familiar ash-soft tone of voice, the kind still capable of carrying a touch of stinging venom. "But I thought you might like to know the details, the configurations. That you might have use for such knowledge."
He is not sure what is expression his face is doing any longer, feeling a shade out of body as blood zaps around his veins, nervous system alight. He, a professional, can appreciate a little humiliation in the preamble—
Louis has a sudden awareness of this. Maybe it's not a certainty. Maybe it's only the sense of treading across familiar territory. Maybe it's Louis, eaten up with jealousy. The old habit, to punish, to lash out.
He is aware too, of the white powder. Of what Lestat has access to. Was that part of it? It had been one of the tricks Louis used, back when he was careening through San Francisco, alive and trying to dull himself to it.
Slowly, Louis steps forward. Crosses the room. Takes Lestat's face in his hands. Since they're crossing lines, Louis will cross this one too.
"Tell me," Louis invites. "Tell me how you're keeping time here."
Bites down on without me. Unfair. Louis can flirt but he won't instigate a real fight, if he can help it.
The part of him that wants to claw and bite, that wants to be clawed and bit, finds itself held still between Louis' hands. Some of the aroused state he had opened the door with has lessened, but not all of it, not enough of it. Louis' scent, a closer thing. Heart beat. Warmth, emanating.
Shifts where he perches, a knee angling in that touches his thigh. His body anticipates while his brain dissolves into question marks. This gentle handling of their conversation. Lestat can do nothing but answer him.
"I took him and some others back to my room after the show last night," he says. "But he was my favourite one. We all drank and spoke and fucked around. Then it was time to come back here again. He kept his blood warm for me. Sulked about something so I let him fuck me. Right here. Then you arrived and I threw him out."
This all rattles out, lacking some of that precise lancing that he might have applied to it. He adds, "I didn't know what night it was," which is halfway to apology.
Such a minor thing, the brush of Lestat's knee at his thigh. But Louis feels it like a spark of electricity.
They've touched each other before. But it would be a lie to say before was anything like now. Lestat's face held in his hands, skin bitten, so much bare skin, and what's covered is hardly concealed and Louis wants him. Louis always wants him. Spent eighty years wanting him, and hating himself.
And now, here, Louis just wants.
Louis wants to do everything right.
Louis wants to bite him everywhere.
He asked, so he listens to Lestat tell him these things that Louis had guessed at. Feels the twisting jealousy in his chest at some mortal, at Lestat letting him—
"Do you lose track often?" Louis murmurs, thumbs soothing at Lestat's cheeks. Burns still with his envy, chooses not to indulge it.
Lestat has caught up to what feels like a fact that Louis is not going to have sex with him. Perhaps ever.
Maybe this will be more devastating later, and for now feels a little like observing the demolition of a building from a safe or at least indifferent distance. Provocation fails, and Louis asks him if he loses track of time often, touches his face so gently, little soothing strokes.
He wants to fold inwards against his chest. He wants to shove him away.
"Louis," feels and sounds a little helpless. Hands coming up, covering Louis'. Not pushing him away, not yet, can't gather the necessary strength in his arms to do so. "I have a show."
The struggle is so clear on his face. Maybe familiar, maybe not.
Not so long ago, recounting that last night in New Orleans to Daniel, admitting: I wanted him dead. I wanted him all to myself.
The impulse to say to Lestat now, Make them all wait. Make them wait hours for you until I can bear to part with you.
And Louis never would. If he gave himself that permission, he would want to keep Lestat for days, weeks. It would be a disaster. It would harm them both, in the long run. The distance is the healthy thing, Louis is so convinced of it.
Struggles in the long stretch of quiet with the things he wants to say. The creature in his belly that wants to dig in claws and never let go.
"You do," Louis says finally. Slowly. "You need to be alone to finish getting ready?"
Making Lestat tell him to go. It's weakness, unwillingness to stop touching him now that he's given himself permission to start up again.
Lestat can see it, conflict in Louis' face. Helplessly patient in waiting him out, imagining he knows what conclusions will be struggled towards. Is unsurprised by the words that come next.
He brings his hands up, covers Louis', more direct than that nudge of his knee. Pulls them down off his face but doesn't push them away, fingers closing around knuckles, keeping them near. Uses the edge of his thumb to fiddle with one of Louis' rings, giving a little 'hm' of amusement, approval, before looking back up at him.
"I want to get changed," he says, which is on its way to confirming he needs to be alone, but adds instead, "Will you help me choose, before you go?"
A little like New Orleans. Like home, like the life they had. Dressing together to go out. Lestat turning towards him with this suit or that, tutting about what flatters, what compliments. How he'd let Louis choose on those nights, and how pleasant it was when they came home and Louis could strip him out of the night's choice.
Louis' grip tightens on Lestat. He has to put these memories away, leave them for later. If he keeps thinking of them now he won't be any use.
"Show me which ones you been thinking about," Louis invites, without making a single move to let Lestat rise gracefully from his perch.
Lestat stands anyway, and finds them very close to one another. Eye contact feels like scrutiny, even a brief flicker of it. Unbearable. Casts aside his focus while his hands find Louis' hips, turning them both with a gently insistent pressure in his palms, and then they are free of each other. As much as that's possible, Lestat still feeling something like a ghostly sensation of Louis' presence up the insides of his thighs, across his chest, on his face.
Or that's the cocaine, the absence of sleep for the past thirty hours, both. He pads towards the rack of outfits, already half ransacked. Sequins, leather, shimmer, buckles, shine. Jittery, pushing his hands through them, but at least over here he can get a grip.
"This one," Lestat says, pulling free paired items on a hanger. "I don't like the colour as much for the stage, but the silhouette..."
Hooks it up to display, a cropped leather vest and matching pants in a dark purple, fringe cascading neatly off the shoulders, a foot in length. More digging, a soft laugh, pulls out a blue denim playsuit, spangled in rhinestones.
"A desperate CMA nominee on the same year as Taylor Swift's latest album. I am fond, I admit."
This is hung up too. Continues his hunt. Aware of Louis behind him.
Louis, left to roam. (His hips burn where Lestat had touched, seared by even that minor pressure.) He ranges away from the couch, lingers at Lestat's dressing table where he can examine the contents while he watches Lestat in the mirror.
Delicately, Louis draws his fingers across the surface of the mirror to collect what traces are left. He knows, he knows. (He is thinking of 1973, of Daniel bathed in yellow light as he leaned down to the tabletop.) It is better in the blood, like most all things are better in the blood. Louis remembers that too.
"I like you in purple."
Maybe the fringe would be striking, accentuate movement. Louis thinks this, analytical, forcing himself a step back from deep consideration of Lestat in these clothes. He draws his fingertips across his gums. Feels something less than euphoric at the way these little traces spark at him.
He might be biased. Louis had used drugs in all the most destructive ways. Maybe it isn't that for Lestat. Maybe it is a prop as if for a play.
"What else?" Louis questions into the mirror. Touches the assortment of scattered brushes and feels his chest tightens. Remembers Claudia, practicing, practicing, practicing in her mirror in their shared apartment.
The sound of rustling clothing, the skittering of metal hooks on metal racks. Rejected items pushed aside, left to fall to make room.
A glance back over his shoulder to see where Louis is in the room, catching his reflection. Taped along one side of the mirror are a few photographs of himself—reference images for various makeup looks, more elaborate and artistic than his current scruffy efforts. Recognisable, probably, from a couple of previous shows.
"This, maybe," as Lestat tugs free another set. Soft leather pants, tight fitting around the hips and thighs, looser beneath the knees, a silver-black. Paired with it, a long-sleeved body suit of mesh with spangled silver rhinestones, seams high enough (and the pants low slung enough) to expose slivers of bare hipbone on either side.
Turns back, holding it to himself to demonstrate, looking back up. "I wore it in El Paso, but only briefly."
Calmer, maybe, for the things he is saying, keeping on task—but his focus on Louis still sharp, apprehension, tension coursing through him. Some small yet intense belief that none of these things will please.
The photographs don't please. Louis has plucked one from the mirror, spent the duration of Lestat's rustling interlude studying it. Wishes for a photo of Lestat washed clean of the artistry, truthfully. Wants something of him to take away with him, when the man himself seems to be spinning out of reach.
Louis puts the photo in his pocket anyway as he turns. A little buzzy, but steady. He leans his hips back onto Lestat's dressing table to admire the option. He'd meant what he'd said. He likes Lestat in purple.
But he thinks he'd like Lestat in anything. In this, ostentatious and revealing as it is. Lestat holds up the option and Louis looks at him. The bite marks are ebbing away. Louis doesn't know what he feels about that. Maybe it doesn't matter. There will be another party, more mortals. Louis will get back on a plane and go. What true right does he have to this miserable scorch of feeling?
"Are you planning to change tonight?"
Sometimes, several outfits. Some nights, only one. Lestat, a hurricane still.
Louis pushes off the dressing table to cross to him. Reaches past Lestat to thumb over the leather, hum approvingly at the quality. He had been so particular when assisting Lestat with the purchase of a new wardrobe. Only the finest. Louis is pleased that whoeer is procuring these items is doing the same, to some degree.
"I like this," Louis admits, quieter. "We'd almost match."
A little bit of an overstatement. Louis' look is muted in comparison, but there are similar components. Louis likes that. Likes the reminder that in some ways their tastes are still aligned.
The items in general are each of high quality, some custom made, some purchased out of collections, high fashion thrown under garish lighting. His personal wardrobe, another matter, featuring a mismatched collection of items, some of them breaking containment, mingling with his stage clothes.
None of them being offered for Louis' present inspection, at least. A brief and understated smile for this assertion, a 'hm' as he angles aside to compare these items, Louis' own wardrobe.
"I have a silver number set aside after intermission. Over there," and he points, where a catsuit made of a fabric evocative of liquid steel and glitter is draped, sparkling silver boots set nearby. Likely a little beyond the alignment of his and Louis' tastes. "But you can choose my opener."
A minor shift: help Lestat choose, to putting it in Louis' hands. He doesn't really think about it before he says it. All he knows is he doesn't want to wear what he is wearing, not anymore.
"Wear this," is a selfish little decision, Louis lifting the spangled bodysuit, rhinestones shimmering under even the smallest movement. Maybe Louis should take the opportunity to drag options off the nearby rack groaning under the assembly of items, examine each of them and try to learn better who Lestat is now.
But Louis likes the overlap, Lestat in an exaggeration that bears only the thinnest threads to what Louis wears now. Likes the suggestion of bare skin, even if he has to reconcile himself to the inevitability of someone else putting hands there. There's nowhere to assign blame for indulging the beast in his body that wants to curl fingers and sink claws into Lestat, assert some possessiveness. Lay a claim that could be heeded by any of the mortals that flock to Lestat's side at the parties and backstage appearances.
His hand closes over Lestat's on the hanger, lifting the matched outfit and guiding it upwards. Louis lays it over his chest to admire the effect, his knuckles resting against Lestat's collarbones. Makes a soft sound, considering.
"The silver changes your eyes."
Makes them cooler, makes Lestat's gaze feel sharper. A benefit in this line of work, surely.
Lestat lifts his chin as the bodysuit is held to him, keeping his gaze on Louis' face, resigned to the reality that he will stay restless until the other man leaves the room. And beyond. Still does not wish him to do so. He lays a hand against the fabric to hold it closer, and his mouth twinges towards a smile at this concept.
"Does it," he says. Pleased, despite himself. The lingering dust in the air from collapsing possibility.
If he cannot have Louis' hands all over him, he will wear something to his taste that clings, itches, cinches. The strip of sheer mesh that fastens between his legs, the cling of leather around his hips. And it will flatter his eyes, apparently. A worthy choice. His curls his fingers around the hanger, stepping back to take it with him as he takes up the matching leather trousers.
Pivots away. A twirl, really, hair a little too tangled and fried to bounce pleasingly with the motion, but nevertheless, he moves to drop these items on the sofa, and then bring his hands up to start unbuckling the so-called top he is wearing where it fastens at the nape of his neck.
It's a near thing, contained this time to a sharp exhale, teeth stinging his bottom lip. A sort of nervous-despairing alchemy and maybe he will cackle about it later. For now, he holds his breath and stops, then draws his hair aside to grant access to the twinned buckles at the back of his neck. He does, technically, have artists and assistants on hand to help him get dressed.
And sometimes he uses them. Otherwise, they're deployed to tend to the rest of the band, made to wait on tenterhooks about whether the lead singer will have them dragged in to his room down the hallway. He does, a little, like to do things himself, when he has the presence of mind.
And now Louis.
Lestat ducks his head forward to allow this assistance. Says, "I did mean it," after a moment. "Any door. Any room I am in, you are welcome in." Contrary, when he has the sense that Louis is waiting for him to tell him to go.
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no subject
Or wanting. Lestat's hand falls off the doorframe, and he catches himself on his heel in step backwards into the slightly chaotic dressing room. A low table, a mirror, the trace evidence of white powder, an abandoned cowboy hat on the setee. A guitar, a ravaged costume rack, the messy spill of hair products and makeup along the long surface under a wide mirror. And flowers, as per his rider, flowers everywhere.
Maybe Louis comes in. Lestat says, "You need none," as he wanders backwards. "All my doors are open to you."
no subject
But Lestat is a lure. Louis hasn't seen him in almost a week. He was attacked and he has had too much time to think on what might come in the future.
And he is worried for Lestat.
So Louis comes in. He closes the door behind them.
"How much time do you have?"
A little amusement finally making its way onto Louis' face. Yes, he is aware that this is a foolish thing to ask Lestat of all people.
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He is pretty sure they're not supposed to be doing anything. They are friends. Talk of distance, of healing.
"They can wait," he says, and shows his teeth again in a smile. Perching, half-sitting, watching Louis with unnerving focus. An invisible crackle of energy, at least, one Lestat can feel, between their bodies. Poised to close it, to receive its closure. "Would that please you to know? If they were all waiting on me because I wished to see you."
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It had been Louis. Louis who said, I gotta go. Louis who said, I need to figure myself out.
And here he is. Looking at Lestat perched just so, and admitting, "Yes. It would."
But Lestat says if. A dream of a question. Louis holds this thought close, an anchor against the tension in the air between them.
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Here he is again, some unimportant voice in the back of his mind is saying. Making shameless offerings. Someone will knock on the door, and maybe it won't matter, or it will. Maybe someone knock, and the same questions apply.
The rest of him says, here is Louis, who said he had to go, and who keeps coming back around. He feels his skin has burned where Louis has touched him, like the fans think crosses would.
"Do you want to know what he was doing to me when you arrived?" Lestat asks.
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Nothing right away. He looks at Lestat. The marks on his body stand out. Or maybe Louis is just hyperaware of them. In New Orleans, Lestat had never come home with any marks from Antoinette after a time. The lingering traces had vanished. He had been careful. Not careful enough, but careful.
Louis lets himself think back to the mortal opening the door. Broad, so broad. Big hands. He might have tasted like earth, rich as soil. Lestat had chosen him, brought him back here, and he had bitten those marks into him.
In Vegas, Lestat had brought Louis into his dressing room, and offered him his throat. It feels like an unflattering comparison.
Slowly, Louis asks, "Are you playing a game with me, Lestat?"
Not a no. Not a yes. Only an attempt to steady himself. Find their footing.
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He is just saying things. Provocation. But why not. Perhaps he knew Louis was coming after all. Perhaps he picked the kind of mortal that Louis might have favoured, once, or perhaps still does. Perhaps he timed it all perfectly. At least at one time in his life, Louis thought Lestat to be quite the schemer.
Also, he is enjoying himself, in some odd, reckless way. That's game enough.
"But there are not many rules," he says. "None, I admit."
Louis touched him. He should know.
no subject
He could touch Lestat again. Louis has observed the fabric of what Lestat is presently passing off as a top. It would apart easy, Louis is reasonably certain. They could just—
They could be reckless.
Louis is still trying to decide just how reckless he is prepared to be when he tells Lestat, "I already know what you were doing."
Tacit admission: Louis has given it some thought. Perhaps he was thinking on it when he was touching Lestat's chest, knuckling over each mark in turn.
"Do you think I need you to explain yourself to me?"
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"Certainly not," gentle, taking on a familiar ash-soft tone of voice, the kind still capable of carrying a touch of stinging venom. "But I thought you might like to know the details, the configurations. That you might have use for such knowledge."
He is not sure what is expression his face is doing any longer, feeling a shade out of body as blood zaps around his veins, nervous system alight. He, a professional, can appreciate a little humiliation in the preamble—
But this requires, you know. Amble.
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Louis has a sudden awareness of this. Maybe it's not a certainty. Maybe it's only the sense of treading across familiar territory. Maybe it's Louis, eaten up with jealousy. The old habit, to punish, to lash out.
He is aware too, of the white powder. Of what Lestat has access to. Was that part of it? It had been one of the tricks Louis used, back when he was careening through San Francisco, alive and trying to dull himself to it.
Slowly, Louis steps forward. Crosses the room. Takes Lestat's face in his hands. Since they're crossing lines, Louis will cross this one too.
"Tell me," Louis invites. "Tell me how you're keeping time here."
Bites down on without me. Unfair. Louis can flirt but he won't instigate a real fight, if he can help it.
no subject
Shifts where he perches, a knee angling in that touches his thigh. His body anticipates while his brain dissolves into question marks. This gentle handling of their conversation. Lestat can do nothing but answer him.
"I took him and some others back to my room after the show last night," he says. "But he was my favourite one. We all drank and spoke and fucked around. Then it was time to come back here again. He kept his blood warm for me. Sulked about something so I let him fuck me. Right here. Then you arrived and I threw him out."
This all rattles out, lacking some of that precise lancing that he might have applied to it. He adds, "I didn't know what night it was," which is halfway to apology.
no subject
They've touched each other before. But it would be a lie to say before was anything like now. Lestat's face held in his hands, skin bitten, so much bare skin, and what's covered is hardly concealed and Louis wants him. Louis always wants him. Spent eighty years wanting him, and hating himself.
And now, here, Louis just wants.
Louis wants to do everything right.
Louis wants to bite him everywhere.
He asked, so he listens to Lestat tell him these things that Louis had guessed at. Feels the twisting jealousy in his chest at some mortal, at Lestat letting him—
"Do you lose track often?" Louis murmurs, thumbs soothing at Lestat's cheeks. Burns still with his envy, chooses not to indulge it.
no subject
Maybe this will be more devastating later, and for now feels a little like observing the demolition of a building from a safe or at least indifferent distance. Provocation fails, and Louis asks him if he loses track of time often, touches his face so gently, little soothing strokes.
He wants to fold inwards against his chest. He wants to shove him away.
"Louis," feels and sounds a little helpless. Hands coming up, covering Louis'. Not pushing him away, not yet, can't gather the necessary strength in his arms to do so. "I have a show."
no subject
Not so long ago, recounting that last night in New Orleans to Daniel, admitting: I wanted him dead. I wanted him all to myself.
The impulse to say to Lestat now, Make them all wait. Make them wait hours for you until I can bear to part with you.
And Louis never would. If he gave himself that permission, he would want to keep Lestat for days, weeks. It would be a disaster. It would harm them both, in the long run. The distance is the healthy thing, Louis is so convinced of it.
Struggles in the long stretch of quiet with the things he wants to say. The creature in his belly that wants to dig in claws and never let go.
"You do," Louis says finally. Slowly. "You need to be alone to finish getting ready?"
Making Lestat tell him to go. It's weakness, unwillingness to stop touching him now that he's given himself permission to start up again.
no subject
He brings his hands up, covers Louis', more direct than that nudge of his knee. Pulls them down off his face but doesn't push them away, fingers closing around knuckles, keeping them near. Uses the edge of his thumb to fiddle with one of Louis' rings, giving a little 'hm' of amusement, approval, before looking back up at him.
"I want to get changed," he says, which is on its way to confirming he needs to be alone, but adds instead, "Will you help me choose, before you go?"
no subject
A little like New Orleans. Like home, like the life they had. Dressing together to go out. Lestat turning towards him with this suit or that, tutting about what flatters, what compliments. How he'd let Louis choose on those nights, and how pleasant it was when they came home and Louis could strip him out of the night's choice.
Louis' grip tightens on Lestat. He has to put these memories away, leave them for later. If he keeps thinking of them now he won't be any use.
"Show me which ones you been thinking about," Louis invites, without making a single move to let Lestat rise gracefully from his perch.
no subject
Lestat stands anyway, and finds them very close to one another. Eye contact feels like scrutiny, even a brief flicker of it. Unbearable. Casts aside his focus while his hands find Louis' hips, turning them both with a gently insistent pressure in his palms, and then they are free of each other. As much as that's possible, Lestat still feeling something like a ghostly sensation of Louis' presence up the insides of his thighs, across his chest, on his face.
Or that's the cocaine, the absence of sleep for the past thirty hours, both. He pads towards the rack of outfits, already half ransacked. Sequins, leather, shimmer, buckles, shine. Jittery, pushing his hands through them, but at least over here he can get a grip.
"This one," Lestat says, pulling free paired items on a hanger. "I don't like the colour as much for the stage, but the silhouette..."
Hooks it up to display, a cropped leather vest and matching pants in a dark purple, fringe cascading neatly off the shoulders, a foot in length. More digging, a soft laugh, pulls out a blue denim playsuit, spangled in rhinestones.
"A desperate CMA nominee on the same year as Taylor Swift's latest album. I am fond, I admit."
This is hung up too. Continues his hunt. Aware of Louis behind him.
no subject
Delicately, Louis draws his fingers across the surface of the mirror to collect what traces are left. He knows, he knows. (He is thinking of 1973, of Daniel bathed in yellow light as he leaned down to the tabletop.) It is better in the blood, like most all things are better in the blood. Louis remembers that too.
"I like you in purple."
Maybe the fringe would be striking, accentuate movement. Louis thinks this, analytical, forcing himself a step back from deep consideration of Lestat in these clothes. He draws his fingertips across his gums. Feels something less than euphoric at the way these little traces spark at him.
He might be biased. Louis had used drugs in all the most destructive ways. Maybe it isn't that for Lestat. Maybe it is a prop as if for a play.
"What else?" Louis questions into the mirror. Touches the assortment of scattered brushes and feels his chest tightens. Remembers Claudia, practicing, practicing, practicing in her mirror in their shared apartment.
no subject
A glance back over his shoulder to see where Louis is in the room, catching his reflection. Taped along one side of the mirror are a few photographs of himself—reference images for various makeup looks, more elaborate and artistic than his current scruffy efforts. Recognisable, probably, from a couple of previous shows.
"This, maybe," as Lestat tugs free another set. Soft leather pants, tight fitting around the hips and thighs, looser beneath the knees, a silver-black. Paired with it, a long-sleeved body suit of mesh with spangled silver rhinestones, seams high enough (and the pants low slung enough) to expose slivers of bare hipbone on either side.
Turns back, holding it to himself to demonstrate, looking back up. "I wore it in El Paso, but only briefly."
Calmer, maybe, for the things he is saying, keeping on task—but his focus on Louis still sharp, apprehension, tension coursing through him. Some small yet intense belief that none of these things will please.
no subject
Louis puts the photo in his pocket anyway as he turns. A little buzzy, but steady. He leans his hips back onto Lestat's dressing table to admire the option. He'd meant what he'd said. He likes Lestat in purple.
But he thinks he'd like Lestat in anything. In this, ostentatious and revealing as it is. Lestat holds up the option and Louis looks at him. The bite marks are ebbing away. Louis doesn't know what he feels about that. Maybe it doesn't matter. There will be another party, more mortals. Louis will get back on a plane and go. What true right does he have to this miserable scorch of feeling?
"Are you planning to change tonight?"
Sometimes, several outfits. Some nights, only one. Lestat, a hurricane still.
Louis pushes off the dressing table to cross to him. Reaches past Lestat to thumb over the leather, hum approvingly at the quality. He had been so particular when assisting Lestat with the purchase of a new wardrobe. Only the finest. Louis is pleased that whoeer is procuring these items is doing the same, to some degree.
"I like this," Louis admits, quieter. "We'd almost match."
A little bit of an overstatement. Louis' look is muted in comparison, but there are similar components. Louis likes that. Likes the reminder that in some ways their tastes are still aligned.
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None of them being offered for Louis' present inspection, at least. A brief and understated smile for this assertion, a 'hm' as he angles aside to compare these items, Louis' own wardrobe.
"I have a silver number set aside after intermission. Over there," and he points, where a catsuit made of a fabric evocative of liquid steel and glitter is draped, sparkling silver boots set nearby. Likely a little beyond the alignment of his and Louis' tastes. "But you can choose my opener."
A minor shift: help Lestat choose, to putting it in Louis' hands. He doesn't really think about it before he says it. All he knows is he doesn't want to wear what he is wearing, not anymore.
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But Louis likes the overlap, Lestat in an exaggeration that bears only the thinnest threads to what Louis wears now. Likes the suggestion of bare skin, even if he has to reconcile himself to the inevitability of someone else putting hands there. There's nowhere to assign blame for indulging the beast in his body that wants to curl fingers and sink claws into Lestat, assert some possessiveness. Lay a claim that could be heeded by any of the mortals that flock to Lestat's side at the parties and backstage appearances.
His hand closes over Lestat's on the hanger, lifting the matched outfit and guiding it upwards. Louis lays it over his chest to admire the effect, his knuckles resting against Lestat's collarbones. Makes a soft sound, considering.
"The silver changes your eyes."
Makes them cooler, makes Lestat's gaze feel sharper. A benefit in this line of work, surely.
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"Does it," he says. Pleased, despite himself. The lingering dust in the air from collapsing possibility.
If he cannot have Louis' hands all over him, he will wear something to his taste that clings, itches, cinches. The strip of sheer mesh that fastens between his legs, the cling of leather around his hips. And it will flatter his eyes, apparently. A worthy choice. His curls his fingers around the hanger, stepping back to take it with him as he takes up the matching leather trousers.
Pivots away. A twirl, really, hair a little too tangled and fried to bounce pleasingly with the motion, but nevertheless, he moves to drop these items on the sofa, and then bring his hands up to start unbuckling the so-called top he is wearing where it fastens at the nape of his neck.
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Lestat will tell him to go. Louis will leave. This is the path laid out for him, already decided. All Louis is doing is stalling.
Still, here he is. A half-step away. Hands raised, brief buzz of the drugs already diminished.
There is probably someone employed for this task. It is probably absurd for Louis to envy them. He offers anyway.
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It's a near thing, contained this time to a sharp exhale, teeth stinging his bottom lip. A sort of nervous-despairing alchemy and maybe he will cackle about it later. For now, he holds his breath and stops, then draws his hair aside to grant access to the twinned buckles at the back of his neck. He does, technically, have artists and assistants on hand to help him get dressed.
And sometimes he uses them. Otherwise, they're deployed to tend to the rest of the band, made to wait on tenterhooks about whether the lead singer will have them dragged in to his room down the hallway. He does, a little, like to do things himself, when he has the presence of mind.
And now Louis.
Lestat ducks his head forward to allow this assistance. Says, "I did mean it," after a moment. "Any door. Any room I am in, you are welcome in." Contrary, when he has the sense that Louis is waiting for him to tell him to go.
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