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.
An interesting word to put to Louis in this moment.
Happy. Is he happy?
Louis has to reign himself back in, narrow his thought down to just this moment, just Lestat's hands sweeping up and down to frame their combined handiwork. Is Louis happy with Lestat, as he appears now?
Yes. No. (He wants to strip the outfit back off. He wants to pin Lestat down onto the floor.) Louis crosses to him, touches the high collar, draws fingers down the spangled bodysuit, skims fingertips across exposed hipbones. Breathes out. Lestat, taller than him now. Beautiful.
Lestat might issue some complaint about all of this touching, what it does to him, if he did not desperately want Louis to continue to feel free to do so.
Holds his breath under the skimming of fingers down his chest, around to his hips. Head tilting briefly back to accuse the ceiling of some offense before Louis pulls back into focus. "Merci," he says, for Louis saying the only thing there is to say.
Hands coming up, fingers dancing lightly down Louis' jaw on either side. "In what section will you be watching me from?"
Despite 30 hours of no sleep at all, the various mood altering chemicals keeping his brain active enough to stay on his feet, the internal collapse of feeling himself being held at homoerotic arm's length from the love of his unlife, only half-fucked and running about twenty-five minutes behind schedule, Louis says he will be on the floor and Lestat's expression lights up.
Amusement, yes, for Louis to want to wade into the indignity of the mass audience, but also honest delight, and even more so. Louis close, Louis dancing, Louis having dressed up for the occasion, he sees now.
"Really," he says, hands settling warmer where his fingers had lingered. "Then I shall remember to look for you."
How had Louis forgotten the way Lestat tended to light up for even the littlest things? Familiar now, but Louis doesn't know if he would have remembered it before this moment.
He doesn't want to make Lestat tell him to leave.
Louis takes his face in his hands, smiling a little in response to the look on Lestat's face. Draws him in to kiss his cheek, a stolen liberty before their parting.
"Give me your best," Louis tells him, a minor challenge. Inconsequential. Louis doesn't think Lestat gives anything less than his best any time he is performing. "I came for a show."
He came for Lestat. The show is just—
It is the means by which Louis can excuse his presence. Wedge himself into the sphere of Lestat's life for a night or two. His fingers stroke lightly across Lestat's cheeks before Louis lets go, steps backwards towards the door.
Perhaps one day when they come together again like this, Lestat will feel something less than thirty thousand different emotions over the course of the meeting, each one as intense as the other. But it is nice that as they part, it is something like elation, affection. The drugs help, probably, as this warmth flushes out of his system the tangled, fretful feelings he'd been tending to prior.
Finally, they part. A man with a clipboard will guide Louis away. Lestat hauls his assistants in from the band's room so they can make something of his hair and makeup. A rare occurrence, but he has little time left, and he wishes to give Louis his best.
Forty minutes past when the show was set to begin—
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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?)
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
An interesting word to put to Louis in this moment.
Happy. Is he happy?
Louis has to reign himself back in, narrow his thought down to just this moment, just Lestat's hands sweeping up and down to frame their combined handiwork. Is Louis happy with Lestat, as he appears now?
Yes. No. (He wants to strip the outfit back off. He wants to pin Lestat down onto the floor.) Louis crosses to him, touches the high collar, draws fingers down the spangled bodysuit, skims fingertips across exposed hipbones. Breathes out. Lestat, taller than him now. Beautiful.
"Yes," Louis tells him. "Lovely."
The right thing to say. The only thing to say.
no subject
Holds his breath under the skimming of fingers down his chest, around to his hips. Head tilting briefly back to accuse the ceiling of some offense before Louis pulls back into focus. "Merci," he says, for Louis saying the only thing there is to say.
Hands coming up, fingers dancing lightly down Louis' jaw on either side. "In what section will you be watching me from?"
no subject
"I'll be on the floor," he admits. There is a lovely private VIP section Louis has access too. Maybe he'll eventually retreat there, but to start—
"I want to be close, and feel how much they adore you. Your fans."
Louis wants to dance. He hasn't done so much dancing in the fifty years since San Francisco.
no subject
Amusement, yes, for Louis to want to wade into the indignity of the mass audience, but also honest delight, and even more so. Louis close, Louis dancing, Louis having dressed up for the occasion, he sees now.
"Really," he says, hands settling warmer where his fingers had lingered. "Then I shall remember to look for you."
no subject
He doesn't want to make Lestat tell him to leave.
Louis takes his face in his hands, smiling a little in response to the look on Lestat's face. Draws him in to kiss his cheek, a stolen liberty before their parting.
"Give me your best," Louis tells him, a minor challenge. Inconsequential. Louis doesn't think Lestat gives anything less than his best any time he is performing. "I came for a show."
He came for Lestat. The show is just—
It is the means by which Louis can excuse his presence. Wedge himself into the sphere of Lestat's life for a night or two. His fingers stroke lightly across Lestat's cheeks before Louis lets go, steps backwards towards the door.
no subject
Finally, they part. A man with a clipboard will guide Louis away. Lestat hauls his assistants in from the band's room so they can make something of his hair and makeup. A rare occurrence, but he has little time left, and he wishes to give Louis his best.
Forty minutes past when the show was set to begin—
Well, he can make it worth the wait.