Whatever they are doing, whatever this game has become, however it has fallen apart, they should stop.
Louis should stop.
But it has been eighty years, maybe a little longer give or take some months, since they have been this near to each other. It is difficult to give up. Easier with Lestat's hands frozen up and away from his skin, some tension building between them that Louis knows to be dangerous, painful. Likely to break in a destructive way.
"For me?" is sharp, the way pain has always sharpened Louis' voice. Pain where he is holding too tightly to it, locking it into his body rather than letting it flow out of him. "For me like your record was for me?"
A record with Antoinette's voice. Lestat photographed with another woman's blood on his mouth. Lestat opening the door bitten all over, smelling of arousal and another man. These recollections, winding Louis up again. Worse now, with no clear path to direct the energy towards. He is obliged to hold fast to it, try to contain it. Take his pain and hurt and compress it down to a stone that might sight in his chest, weigh silently down.
This summoning of the far away past, Louis' sharp tone, gets at somewhere tender. Like saying it out loud is a betrayal of the game that Louis has said he doesn't want to play, and now, on top of all else he is feeling, Lestat must also feel foolish. And then angry.
"Yes, well," he says, a twinge at his mouth, like a dog ready to bite. "You knew what you wanted back then. You knew how to take it."
A shift. Elbow pushing into the couch, drawing himself back and up. Flustered, or at least, as near as Lestat is physically able to get to such a thing. "I won't anymore," he is saying as he does so, voice all at once sober, no longer husky with want, with raw needed. Like a steel thing closing in his throat. "I'll spare you the trouble, and me the many indignities of throwing myself at you over and over,"
and so on. All the while, hands off Louis. Refusing to push him, to throw him, to scratch or grapple.
If Louis keeps pushing, will Lestat bite? Will he snap in a way that breaks the tension between them, this misalignment that neither of them can seem to break from?
Lestat is leaving. Lestat is slipping away, and Louis is so—
"Me and how many others?"
A moot point. Louis had been the one to ask for space and for distance and for time. Louis had needed it. Louis is all apart, ripping up his life at the root and shaking loose all things that had grown up around him.
But there is no way to tear Lestat out of him. He had loved him endlessly, desperately, for so long. Even when Louis believed the worst of him, believed he had participated in the worst betrayal of his life, that he had seen Claudia killed and wanted it, Louis had still loved him.
He loves him now. Wants him now. He just doesn't want to be—
"Me tonight, someone else tomorrow? Don't play like it's about what I want or what I'm gonna take."
Lestat, spinning away from him. Louis, weight bearing briefly down as if to hold him close before the thought of pinning Lestat to him sickens Louis. Can't make Lestat do anything, can't bear to try and keep him if he's trying to go.
Lestat is speaking before he can really catch up with himself,
"Someone else tomorrow," snapped. "Someone who can give of themselves. Someone who won't fuck around."
A traitorous thrill when he feels Louis press him back can't be listened to. Listening to that desire, the promise of what he can evoke, has gotten him nowhere. And maybe there is something wrong with him, something wrong with him and not Louis, something that believes in the love that the wolf has for the deer, for the wanting that closes jaws and tears flesh, but it cannot be detangled in the moment.
They can be, though, Lestat insisting himself out from beneath Louis when no further resistance is brought to bear. Boots on, still, flesh pale save for where grabbing hands has reddened him.
Moving for where a robe is hanging, and still speaking as he yanks it off the hook, flips it around his body. "Call me spoiled, or a slut, or whatever it is you're saying," he says, a furious clip to his tone, the movements of his hand. "But when I am on stage, there are a thousand people yearning for me. Hands reaching as if they could take me down into the midst of them all. It is my name in their mouths, in their blood. So I partake.
"Six years of begging," if they are going to reference the past. He thinks he is shouting, and can't stop. "Eighty years of exile, untouched. And now you are going to whine and withhold in equal measure because I take some comfort for myself."
Louis feels it like a slap. Words that ring in his ears, even as he comes up off the couch. Lestat is already remote, disappearing, swathed in a robe. No one has come knocking, perhaps wisely avoiding a room with two volatile vampires rattling around inside. Louis is looking at him and is a little shocked, both at how hurt he is and how angry he is.
So many years, decades of emotion soothed down to nothing. To feel everything at full force, it's dizzying. Louis is acclimating to it still.
Can only observe this at a distance as he looks back at Lestat and hates him. Loves him, still. Hates himself for that. Maybe for the fact that he's wavered, plunged both of them into this position.
"No," Louis tells him. Heated. Frustrated. The mesh of his top is ruined, and Louis reaches to rip it off, let it drop to the floor. The pants can be salvaged, will get him out the door. "Take whatever you want from them."
Six years of begging. Eighty years of exile. There's a good reason they aren't tallying past transgressions, trying to litigate past hurts. Louis slipped and he can't slip any further. Straightens up, abandoning his belt to whoever Lestat flung it as he does up the fastenings of his trousers.
"If we're all the same, it don't matter. Enjoy them."
Because what is Louis if not another body in the crowd? Wanting and wanting and wanting, yearning for him uselessly? As caught up as all those silly mortals, aching for someone who has moved past him.
Louis turns away. There is a door. He'll see himself out and away, before they do more harm than they've already managed.
A very loud What the fuck are you talking about? is close to exploding from his throat. Louis, the same as all the rest? A statement so far from reality that it stuns Lestat instead, and as he's done so many times before, he only watches as Louis storms out from the room, teeth bared, eyes blazing.
He will close the door if Louis doesn't. Either way, an angry snap of punctuation.
And perhaps this is where he collapses into tears and regret. He remembers—he had read the book so many times, lingered over their fights, why it always felt a little misaligned to him despite the words possessing fidelity to his recollections. Then, of course, it would occur to him, they can only be written from Louis' own memory. No recollection of Lestat's anguish in his wake, no word of his sense of panic, nauseous regret. Self-loathing, when it was bad, shame.
Why would it be there, anyway? Why would Louis know any of that? When Louis views him the way he does, remembers him as wholly selfish, because of the wholly selfish things he does? He can feel it now, the familiar gravity of such a spiral, but finds himself simply standing in place, floating in place.
Then he moves. Here is a bottle of vodka, unopened, on the low table. He grabs it and flings it against the closed door, where it explodes into glitter. A vase of his requested flowers, batted aside, breaking and spilling.
From beyond, the muted sound of crashing, breaking, thumping will carry on until there is nothing left worth breaking.
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no subject
Whatever they are doing, whatever this game has become, however it has fallen apart, they should stop.
Louis should stop.
But it has been eighty years, maybe a little longer give or take some months, since they have been this near to each other. It is difficult to give up. Easier with Lestat's hands frozen up and away from his skin, some tension building between them that Louis knows to be dangerous, painful. Likely to break in a destructive way.
"For me?" is sharp, the way pain has always sharpened Louis' voice. Pain where he is holding too tightly to it, locking it into his body rather than letting it flow out of him. "For me like your record was for me?"
A record with Antoinette's voice. Lestat photographed with another woman's blood on his mouth. Lestat opening the door bitten all over, smelling of arousal and another man. These recollections, winding Louis up again. Worse now, with no clear path to direct the energy towards. He is obliged to hold fast to it, try to contain it. Take his pain and hurt and compress it down to a stone that might sight in his chest, weigh silently down.
no subject
"Yes, well," he says, a twinge at his mouth, like a dog ready to bite. "You knew what you wanted back then. You knew how to take it."
A shift. Elbow pushing into the couch, drawing himself back and up. Flustered, or at least, as near as Lestat is physically able to get to such a thing. "I won't anymore," he is saying as he does so, voice all at once sober, no longer husky with want, with raw needed. Like a steel thing closing in his throat. "I'll spare you the trouble, and me the many indignities of throwing myself at you over and over,"
and so on. All the while, hands off Louis. Refusing to push him, to throw him, to scratch or grapple.
no subject
Lestat is leaving. Lestat is slipping away, and Louis is so—
"Me and how many others?"
A moot point. Louis had been the one to ask for space and for distance and for time. Louis had needed it. Louis is all apart, ripping up his life at the root and shaking loose all things that had grown up around him.
But there is no way to tear Lestat out of him. He had loved him endlessly, desperately, for so long. Even when Louis believed the worst of him, believed he had participated in the worst betrayal of his life, that he had seen Claudia killed and wanted it, Louis had still loved him.
He loves him now. Wants him now. He just doesn't want to be—
"Me tonight, someone else tomorrow? Don't play like it's about what I want or what I'm gonna take."
Lestat, spinning away from him. Louis, weight bearing briefly down as if to hold him close before the thought of pinning Lestat to him sickens Louis. Can't make Lestat do anything, can't bear to try and keep him if he's trying to go.
no subject
"Someone else tomorrow," snapped. "Someone who can give of themselves. Someone who won't fuck around."
A traitorous thrill when he feels Louis press him back can't be listened to. Listening to that desire, the promise of what he can evoke, has gotten him nowhere. And maybe there is something wrong with him, something wrong with him and not Louis, something that believes in the love that the wolf has for the deer, for the wanting that closes jaws and tears flesh, but it cannot be detangled in the moment.
They can be, though, Lestat insisting himself out from beneath Louis when no further resistance is brought to bear. Boots on, still, flesh pale save for where grabbing hands has reddened him.
Moving for where a robe is hanging, and still speaking as he yanks it off the hook, flips it around his body. "Call me spoiled, or a slut, or whatever it is you're saying," he says, a furious clip to his tone, the movements of his hand. "But when I am on stage, there are a thousand people yearning for me. Hands reaching as if they could take me down into the midst of them all. It is my name in their mouths, in their blood. So I partake.
"Six years of begging," if they are going to reference the past. He thinks he is shouting, and can't stop. "Eighty years of exile, untouched. And now you are going to whine and withhold in equal measure because I take some comfort for myself."
no subject
Louis feels it like a slap. Words that ring in his ears, even as he comes up off the couch. Lestat is already remote, disappearing, swathed in a robe. No one has come knocking, perhaps wisely avoiding a room with two volatile vampires rattling around inside. Louis is looking at him and is a little shocked, both at how hurt he is and how angry he is.
So many years, decades of emotion soothed down to nothing. To feel everything at full force, it's dizzying. Louis is acclimating to it still.
Can only observe this at a distance as he looks back at Lestat and hates him. Loves him, still. Hates himself for that. Maybe for the fact that he's wavered, plunged both of them into this position.
"No," Louis tells him. Heated. Frustrated. The mesh of his top is ruined, and Louis reaches to rip it off, let it drop to the floor. The pants can be salvaged, will get him out the door. "Take whatever you want from them."
Six years of begging. Eighty years of exile. There's a good reason they aren't tallying past transgressions, trying to litigate past hurts. Louis slipped and he can't slip any further. Straightens up, abandoning his belt to whoever Lestat flung it as he does up the fastenings of his trousers.
"If we're all the same, it don't matter. Enjoy them."
Because what is Louis if not another body in the crowd? Wanting and wanting and wanting, yearning for him uselessly? As caught up as all those silly mortals, aching for someone who has moved past him.
Louis turns away. There is a door. He'll see himself out and away, before they do more harm than they've already managed.
no subject
He will close the door if Louis doesn't. Either way, an angry snap of punctuation.
And perhaps this is where he collapses into tears and regret. He remembers—he had read the book so many times, lingered over their fights, why it always felt a little misaligned to him despite the words possessing fidelity to his recollections. Then, of course, it would occur to him, they can only be written from Louis' own memory. No recollection of Lestat's anguish in his wake, no word of his sense of panic, nauseous regret. Self-loathing, when it was bad, shame.
Why would it be there, anyway? Why would Louis know any of that? When Louis views him the way he does, remembers him as wholly selfish, because of the wholly selfish things he does? He can feel it now, the familiar gravity of such a spiral, but finds himself simply standing in place, floating in place.
Then he moves. Here is a bottle of vodka, unopened, on the low table. He grabs it and flings it against the closed door, where it explodes into glitter. A vase of his requested flowers, batted aside, breaking and spilling.
From beyond, the muted sound of crashing, breaking, thumping will carry on until there is nothing left worth breaking.