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.
What Louis must do, must teach himself to do, is to take a thing at face value and trust it to be true.
Trust these things Lestat says to him, even when it is in Louis' nature to doubt. To be the man in the courtyard of their home, feeling cut apart by the understanding that he was never enough.
His fingers brush Lestat's skin. A fleeting thought that Lestat feels cool to the touch, though that runs so counter to what Louis remembers. Lestat, a furnace. A coal fire. Lestat who had warmed him so completely for so long.
Louis lifts his eyes to the mirror, watching Lestat's bowed head.
The buckles fall open. Louis runs a thumb over newly bared skin.
"I'll try to remember," Louis promises. To put his own uncertainty aside, and let these words take root. Admits softly, "I ain't trying to ruin your good time."
All the words of his apology running beneath this murmur. He'd punished Lestat for years, before. He doesn't want to do that again.
Lestat twists around enough to shoot a coy look past his shoulder. "And how could you do that?" The hairs on the back of his neck, still standing to attention under the passing glance of Louis' fingers.
He brings his hands up to peel away the latex, down his arms and away, flicked aside. Oddly feels less naked this way, less vulnerable, as though the cloth had been framing the fading marks on his chest and torso. Probably the intended effect to begin with, now unwanted. He starts at the white belt keeping his pants lashed around his hips, wandering a step away.
"You can help me with doing up the suit," he says, a nod to the temporarily discarded mesh. A skinny zipper that closes up the back. "Unless taking off my clothing is where your expertise ends."
A passing impulse to run his palm down Lestat's bare back. To pin him up against the mirror, kiss him until someone bangs on the door to fetch Lestat for the crowd assembled solely to lavish adoration on him.
But no. Louis holds that desire in check, pushes it down even as Lestat says this thing, undoes his belt.
"I think I can handle a zipper," Louis says, steady in spite of the way his whole body flushes hot at what Lestat is offering. Temptation, laid out as casually as the mirror on the dressing table, the bare skin just a fingers breadth away.
Louis permits him his step away. All the better to catch his breath, remind himself of all the things they promised each other, the things Louis owes to Lestat, to himself.
And Lestat strips down out of his pants. There is nothing underneath, as it would be impossible to do so without interrupting smooth shiny white material with crinkling. He is pale all over, cooler than the peachier flush that comes with regular feeding, but denser in musculature than he had seemed in New Orleans, all that time ago.
Unself-conscious in his movements, nudging aside the abandoned latex as he turns to collect the mesh, but not moving in a manner of a man putting himself on deliberate display as he might have done. He is not as obscenely hard as he'd been when he'd first opened the door, but still a little blood-flushed, half-hard in a way he has taken to ignoring. Other evidence of the encounter he had described, shiny slick clinging to the inside of a thigh, and higher—
All ignored as he goes to step into the chosen article of clothing, as easy as if rhinestone mesh bodysuits were as regular to him as a pair of slacks, a shirt.
Suppose Louis throws Lestat down on the couch. Suppose Louis bites over every place hat mortal put his teeth, fucks him better than that mortal could have. Suppose—
Louis' fangs itch at his gums. He has to swallow, look away. If he lets his eyes linger over these traces, this evidence of how Lestat had been spending his time, Louis will do something inadvisable. Will shatter all his self control and fling Lestat all around the dressing room.
Instead, he observes how pale Lestat is now. Pale, but muscular again. Not so diminished as Louis recalls from New Orleans, but something that reads to Louis as fragile still.
"Come here," Louis summons, pushing away all these different thoughts. Lestat, bare beneath the spangled bodysuit. Lestat, marked all over by a stranger, perhaps by others Louis will never know.
The way Louis wants him still, wanting to take him away from all of this. Knowing he cannot.
Arms through the sleeves, bringing the fabric in tight against his torso and holding it in place while it gapes along his back. Another raking aside of his hair as he steps back to Louis, turns in place. The zipper begins just beneath the small of his back, carries all the way up to his nape where an additional button tightens the collar.
The fabric itself is even more sheer with only one layer layered closely over his skin, but creates a pleasing, glittery effect. And it fits him perfectly, of course, each seam tailored to the millimetre.
Lestat, meanwhile, is not sure what they are proving to each other. Proving an ability for restraint, perhaps. That Louis can look at him and touch him just fine without pursuing more, wanting more. That Lestat is no longer tempting, even in this condition, even allowing him this near. He feels too far gone to weep over it, too tired, too awake. Besides, Louis cares still, does he not?
That isn't nothing. "You're a natural," is his judgment.
Too much contact involved in the management of this zipper. Louis' palm flattening against Lestat's ribs, knuckles dragging up Lestat's back as Louis carefully tugs the zipper upwards. Fastens the button, thumbs along the nape of Lestat's neck between collar and skin to test the fit.
Louis burns with it, the way he wants him. Worse, the thing beneath it. Wanting to lean in and rest his forehead against Lestat's shoulders. He sways in, fails to make contact, the impulse narrowly averted as Lestat turns.
"Not quite like when I'd do up your tie," Louis admits. "But you don't lose the knack."
In which the knack is tending to Lestat.
"It's very pretty," he says, quieter. "I like it on you."
A pleased sound, despite the confused tangle of feeling beneath it all, the sense memory of getting ready together tugged at. An understated kind of pleasure, considering the depths he would have sunk to if Louis did not, in fact, like it on him. Lestat angles enough to view himself in the mirror. "It looks nice under the lights," he says. "I can be seen from far away."
Maybe a touch eighties ice dancer in vibe on its own, legs bare, too much hipbone on display, but that will be mitigated by the inclusion of leather pants, some accessorising, spraying life back into his hair.
But he isn't think of that so much as observing the sight of them together, smile twisting amused. Their fashions, their changes. "How aghast Louis circa 1918 would be," he says.
Safe, isn't it, to put his hand to the center of Lestat's back? Louis has done it before. He does it now, as they stand together. A kind of trade off, one indulgence to placate all the other desires tangled up in his body.
"Maybe," he relents. "Wouldn't have known it could ever be this way."
But doesn't the future always feel this way? Impossible to guess at in the moment.
"You'd teach me."
A little thread of connection between here and now, and the corset Louis had once helped lace Lestat into. At least, a connection in wardrobe. (In things gone unsaid?)
Friendly, this hand. The urge to lean in, press close, only indulged through the slight sway in Louis' direction, before Lestat turns his focus from the mirror to Louis' face.
"Well you taught me first," he says, a hand drifting up to playfully touch at Louis' chin. "The different plaids, the nailhead, the herringbone and pinstripe. Watch chains and wing-collars. This, after I dismissed the fashion of the era as all dull grey boxes, starched collars and sexual repression."
Moves away, over to the leather pants. Drawing them up, looking them over, a fond sound. "We can enjoy this era while it lasts. If history says anything, it will swing back again. Another war, another economic disaster, another plague."
Steps into the leather as he says so. Working them up bare legs. Not as much of a pain as the latex has been, but still.
Louis lets him go, lets him create this space between them. Lets himself look away as Lestat begins the process of drawing on the leather pants. All evidence of Lestat's evening so far will be obscured once Lestat is fully dressed, and a little distance will help Louis maintain his self control.
Lestat works his way into the leather, and Louis weighs the wisdom of attending any parties once the concert has finished. Should Louis take himself away, before there is any possibility of reaching the outer limits of his self-control.
Maybe.
"I intend to," he answers, though it seems Louis' approach to enjoying anything involves waging a very mobile war. "And it seems you are, in between your concerts."
Before this can be misconstrued, Louis tacks on, "I'm glad."
He even manages to sound sincere. He is sincere, in spite of all his jealousy. He is glad that Lestat has found some pleasure in the present moment after so long hidden away.
Lestat, back turned, chin tucked down to do up the fastenings of his trousers. Mouth pursing at this, trying to detect some note of displeasure. It seems you are and I'm glad. Is all of this easier, then, to know Lestat isn't miserable? A guiltless distance? What an indulgent imagining.
This thought doesn't travel far. Sparks, fails. If tonight proves anything, it's that he doesn't know what Louis wants, only what he doesn't.
"The interviews for my documentary are to begin in New Orleans," he says. A brisk change of topic, but also not: fun between concerts. He glances back at Louis as he moves to collect his choice of boots, tall heels, shining black, buckles. "I imagine you will wish to say hello to your friend."
A softening in Louis' face, in spite of all the tension, the little bits of hurt doled out over the course of their time in this room together. Daniel. Pleased, in spite of his own mixed feelings on the interviews, on what might come of them.
"I do," Louis answers. "It will be good to see him."
No word on when Louis has last seen Daniel. Unnecessary.
Unlike the addition of:
"But I would be in New Orleans regardless," is something Lestat should know, and Louis tells him to be certain he understands. "I made certain I'd be available to meet you there."
Again, a quiet kind of pleasure, far less weighty than how he is sure he would feel if Louis deemed it something he could miss. But these are the warm, little things that are fewer and far apart, and Lestat feels himself hold it close, this assurance. Something to look forward to, regardless of all else: a return to New Orleans, with Louis in it to make it whole again.
The sharp sounds of zippers, and Lestat stands up, a decent four inches taller than usual, encased in figure hugging tones of silver, glitter and shine. "Happy?" he asks, a sort of shorthand question the band tosses around to each other during recording. Applies it now to Louis, indicating himself.
In need of polish, but the chosen outfit fits nicely.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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?"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Trust these things Lestat says to him, even when it is in Louis' nature to doubt. To be the man in the courtyard of their home, feeling cut apart by the understanding that he was never enough.
His fingers brush Lestat's skin. A fleeting thought that Lestat feels cool to the touch, though that runs so counter to what Louis remembers. Lestat, a furnace. A coal fire. Lestat who had warmed him so completely for so long.
Louis lifts his eyes to the mirror, watching Lestat's bowed head.
The buckles fall open. Louis runs a thumb over newly bared skin.
"I'll try to remember," Louis promises. To put his own uncertainty aside, and let these words take root. Admits softly, "I ain't trying to ruin your good time."
All the words of his apology running beneath this murmur. He'd punished Lestat for years, before. He doesn't want to do that again.
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Lestat twists around enough to shoot a coy look past his shoulder. "And how could you do that?" The hairs on the back of his neck, still standing to attention under the passing glance of Louis' fingers.
He brings his hands up to peel away the latex, down his arms and away, flicked aside. Oddly feels less naked this way, less vulnerable, as though the cloth had been framing the fading marks on his chest and torso. Probably the intended effect to begin with, now unwanted. He starts at the white belt keeping his pants lashed around his hips, wandering a step away.
"You can help me with doing up the suit," he says, a nod to the temporarily discarded mesh. A skinny zipper that closes up the back. "Unless taking off my clothing is where your expertise ends."
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But no. Louis holds that desire in check, pushes it down even as Lestat says this thing, undoes his belt.
"I think I can handle a zipper," Louis says, steady in spite of the way his whole body flushes hot at what Lestat is offering. Temptation, laid out as casually as the mirror on the dressing table, the bare skin just a fingers breadth away.
Louis permits him his step away. All the better to catch his breath, remind himself of all the things they promised each other, the things Louis owes to Lestat, to himself.
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And Lestat strips down out of his pants. There is nothing underneath, as it would be impossible to do so without interrupting smooth shiny white material with crinkling. He is pale all over, cooler than the peachier flush that comes with regular feeding, but denser in musculature than he had seemed in New Orleans, all that time ago.
Unself-conscious in his movements, nudging aside the abandoned latex as he turns to collect the mesh, but not moving in a manner of a man putting himself on deliberate display as he might have done. He is not as obscenely hard as he'd been when he'd first opened the door, but still a little blood-flushed, half-hard in a way he has taken to ignoring. Other evidence of the encounter he had described, shiny slick clinging to the inside of a thigh, and higher—
All ignored as he goes to step into the chosen article of clothing, as easy as if rhinestone mesh bodysuits were as regular to him as a pair of slacks, a shirt.
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Louis' fangs itch at his gums. He has to swallow, look away. If he lets his eyes linger over these traces, this evidence of how Lestat had been spending his time, Louis will do something inadvisable. Will shatter all his self control and fling Lestat all around the dressing room.
Instead, he observes how pale Lestat is now. Pale, but muscular again. Not so diminished as Louis recalls from New Orleans, but something that reads to Louis as fragile still.
"Come here," Louis summons, pushing away all these different thoughts. Lestat, bare beneath the spangled bodysuit. Lestat, marked all over by a stranger, perhaps by others Louis will never know.
The way Louis wants him still, wanting to take him away from all of this. Knowing he cannot.
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The fabric itself is even more sheer with only one layer layered closely over his skin, but creates a pleasing, glittery effect. And it fits him perfectly, of course, each seam tailored to the millimetre.
Lestat, meanwhile, is not sure what they are proving to each other. Proving an ability for restraint, perhaps. That Louis can look at him and touch him just fine without pursuing more, wanting more. That Lestat is no longer tempting, even in this condition, even allowing him this near. He feels too far gone to weep over it, too tired, too awake. Besides, Louis cares still, does he not?
That isn't nothing. "You're a natural," is his judgment.
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Louis burns with it, the way he wants him. Worse, the thing beneath it. Wanting to lean in and rest his forehead against Lestat's shoulders. He sways in, fails to make contact, the impulse narrowly averted as Lestat turns.
"Not quite like when I'd do up your tie," Louis admits. "But you don't lose the knack."
In which the knack is tending to Lestat.
"It's very pretty," he says, quieter. "I like it on you."
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A pleased sound, despite the confused tangle of feeling beneath it all, the sense memory of getting ready together tugged at. An understated kind of pleasure, considering the depths he would have sunk to if Louis did not, in fact, like it on him. Lestat angles enough to view himself in the mirror. "It looks nice under the lights," he says. "I can be seen from far away."
Maybe a touch eighties ice dancer in vibe on its own, legs bare, too much hipbone on display, but that will be mitigated by the inclusion of leather pants, some accessorising, spraying life back into his hair.
But he isn't think of that so much as observing the sight of them together, smile twisting amused. Their fashions, their changes. "How aghast Louis circa 1918 would be," he says.
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"Maybe," he relents. "Wouldn't have known it could ever be this way."
But doesn't the future always feel this way? Impossible to guess at in the moment.
"You'd teach me."
A little thread of connection between here and now, and the corset Louis had once helped lace Lestat into. At least, a connection in wardrobe. (In things gone unsaid?)
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"Well you taught me first," he says, a hand drifting up to playfully touch at Louis' chin. "The different plaids, the nailhead, the herringbone and pinstripe. Watch chains and wing-collars. This, after I dismissed the fashion of the era as all dull grey boxes, starched collars and sexual repression."
Moves away, over to the leather pants. Drawing them up, looking them over, a fond sound. "We can enjoy this era while it lasts. If history says anything, it will swing back again. Another war, another economic disaster, another plague."
Steps into the leather as he says so. Working them up bare legs. Not as much of a pain as the latex has been, but still.
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Lestat works his way into the leather, and Louis weighs the wisdom of attending any parties once the concert has finished. Should Louis take himself away, before there is any possibility of reaching the outer limits of his self-control.
Maybe.
"I intend to," he answers, though it seems Louis' approach to enjoying anything involves waging a very mobile war. "And it seems you are, in between your concerts."
Before this can be misconstrued, Louis tacks on, "I'm glad."
He even manages to sound sincere. He is sincere, in spite of all his jealousy. He is glad that Lestat has found some pleasure in the present moment after so long hidden away.
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Lestat, back turned, chin tucked down to do up the fastenings of his trousers. Mouth pursing at this, trying to detect some note of displeasure. It seems you are and I'm glad. Is all of this easier, then, to know Lestat isn't miserable? A guiltless distance? What an indulgent imagining.
This thought doesn't travel far. Sparks, fails. If tonight proves anything, it's that he doesn't know what Louis wants, only what he doesn't.
"The interviews for my documentary are to begin in New Orleans," he says. A brisk change of topic, but also not: fun between concerts. He glances back at Louis as he moves to collect his choice of boots, tall heels, shining black, buckles. "I imagine you will wish to say hello to your friend."
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"I do," Louis answers. "It will be good to see him."
No word on when Louis has last seen Daniel. Unnecessary.
Unlike the addition of:
"But I would be in New Orleans regardless," is something Lestat should know, and Louis tells him to be certain he understands. "I made certain I'd be available to meet you there."
Their home. Of course Louis meant to be present.
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Again, a quiet kind of pleasure, far less weighty than how he is sure he would feel if Louis deemed it something he could miss. But these are the warm, little things that are fewer and far apart, and Lestat feels himself hold it close, this assurance. Something to look forward to, regardless of all else: a return to New Orleans, with Louis in it to make it whole again.
The sharp sounds of zippers, and Lestat stands up, a decent four inches taller than usual, encased in figure hugging tones of silver, glitter and shine. "Happy?" he asks, a sort of shorthand question the band tosses around to each other during recording. Applies it now to Louis, indicating himself.
In need of polish, but the chosen outfit fits nicely.
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