Mr. du Lac has an exceptionally busy schedule, and cannot guarantee attendance. He offers his sincere apologies.
There is nothing in Louis' schedule that would not move if he wished it. Louis has spent a few decades amassing the kind of power and wealth that ensures such deference.
However, in the wake of the disastrous Oklahoma concert, Louis has been finding ways to keep himself busy.
Louis has toured galleries. He has met with museum boards. He has acquired no less than five properties, two of which he believes he can flip for a substantial profit within six months. He'd set himself that challenge while swiping past a tablet screen illuminated by Lestat. Lestat, cradling a swooning woman on a stage. Lestat with fangs fully elongated and bloody. Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
Louis shouldn't have done what he did. He is ashamed. He is so jealous he feels like he might do something stupid.
He has channeled that energy into his real estate portfolio.
He has missed several concerts. The passes, merchandise and tickets languish, toted dutifully from hotel to hotel.
Rachida has not asked. Louis doesn't volunteer.
Daniel sends a single text: Yikes.
It is an invitation for Louis to ask more questions. Daniel is so annoying. (Louis misses him.) Louis has been delaying the question, but suspects he has just inside twelve hours before Daniel resorts to beaming his retorts into Louis' heads.
Christine doesn't reply, of course. No need. She counts her value in seconds, in letters, and doesn't require further clarification for bad news parceled politely.
The second concert goes on ahead. The songs are sung, which is what most of everyone is here for. Notably, no audience member is dragged on stage. Notably, at least one ballad is performed from a crossed legged sit off-centre on the stage. The intensity does not diminish, but becomes sporadic, spiky, deeper lows and higher highs. The audience is satisfied. The band is annoyed.
The next day, Louis' personal device is texted directly by an unknown number.
this is TC are you in NOLA?? Lestat would like it if you came to the show 2night
He and Daniel have had a winding conversation. Daniel is still in New Orleans and Daniel is annoyed and fascinated in equal measure. He has a list of complaints. Louis has admitted some portion of responsibility for them.
Louis has declined Daniel's invitation, despite the reckless, yearning desire to head to New Orleans. Walk around with Daniel. See Lestat from a safe distance.
Be home. Louis wants that, the uncomplicated ease of existing in New Orleans.
Louis prods Daniel, who has nothing to say about it. Nothing to say at all, silent for the moment as Louis turns over these pieces of information in his head.
A pause as Louis' message lingers unread in Cookie's phone. In a different hotel room, a bristly conversation occurring—are they canceling? how long until they have to say?
A few minutes later, harried;
not talking not eating not cooperating wants to cancel the whole thing but ??? don't know how srs you guys were meant to meet up in NO correct? so can you come?
This is sent, after she deletes 'or are you bUsY'.
He would like to feel less like he will spin out of control the moment he steps into a room with Lestat.
He would like to feel less hurt. Less like he has been wounded. Less aware that he has wounded Lestat in turn.
But now he has this. This litany of incidents and worries.
And now it becomes Rachid's problem, arranging transit for Louis. And rearranging all the rest of the things Louis had insisted they pack his schedule with.
Certain that he probably won't back out now that he's committed, Cookie replies with a long and obnoxious line of thumbs up emojis.
New Orleans in the early evening is a hive of activity, colour and light. The traffic could be better, as could the humidity. The hotel itself, however, is nice, peaceful, air conditioned, and Rachida has coordinated enough with Lestat's people to provide Louis with the directions necessary that he doesn't have to stop when he gets through the doors.
Into the corridor that leads into the various suites, and down one end, the figures of Cookie and Larry loitering in the hallway and bickering. They pause whatever they're saying when they see Louis, Larry giving him neutral appraisal and Cookie grabbing Larry's arm, steering them both away.
But that's something for Rachida to arrange and Louis to sign off on later. Tomorrow.
Lestat's bandmates scatter like malevolent birds. Louis had questions but he's spared the conversation. For the best.
He had come so quickly from the airport that there had been no time for the simple pleasure of existing in New Orleans to settle his anxiety. Louis had been near enough that he has arrived within the same night, past midnight, yes, but still, an expeditious arrival. He's dressed down, joggers, a hoodie. Gleaming white sneakers, bare ankles. Distressed denim jacket tugged over all of it, artfully frayed and battered.
Louis runs fingers down the door. Sets fingertips over the knob.
"Lestat."
Carefully steady. Keeps the tangled fray of emotion from his voice.
"You have to open it for me. I don't have the key."
Louis can get the key, if it comes to that. He would prefer Lestat opened the door.
The sound of the lock tumbling over. The twist of the knob, and the door swings open a couple of inches, as if it had been nudged by a feather. A little bit of showing off. There are ways a vampire can open a door.
Or it's not showing off, and it's just how this vampire opens the door. Within, the suite is messy but not in the sense that there's been a party at any point. Some clothes strewn about, some luggage left abandoned and unopened. A jacket flung over some furniture. The doors to a balcony flung open wide.
No sight of Lestat.
But some detective work and supersenses might draw Louis to the location of a coffin tucked near the bed, an ornate object of pale polished wood, silver trim. It is closed, but Lestat is most certainly inside of it. The sounds of a heart beat. The faint noise of music, muffled, likely transmitted through speakers.
Admittedly, a moment of panicky exasperation that Lestat went out the window comes and goes.
Brat that he is, he might have flown away. But after the door is closed, and Louis is stood in the middle of the room, listening, he can make an educated guess as to Lestat's location.
Ostentatious, this coffin.
Louis looks around the room. An unearned glimpse at Lestat's life, the space in which he retreats, perhaps this a more reflective sanctuary than the dressing room.
But it's only a brief study. He's been asked here for a reason.
Louis runs his fingers along the polished wood. Drums a little, deliberately off beat rhythm.
An odd prickle of a feeling on top of—whatever else. There is a pause, and then his voice, as low as usual, hush, but audible to Louis for virtue of what he is.
Does Lestat know Tough Cookie summoned him? Broke into his phone, retrieved Louis' number, annoyed him and scared him and battered him into changing all his plans?
"I'm here now," Louis says instead to the glossy lid of the coffin.
And then, quieter, realizing it is a wrench as he tells Lestat, "I'll go if you want me to."
Some amount of thinking, maybe, in the quiet that follows. Impossible to say when confronted with an inexpressive shiny wooden surface.
A little click, a small locking mechanism within the coffin released, and the lid is pushed open. A plush interior of deep purple silk, some kind of light installation that casts a subtle glow from the edges of the lid. Little silver speaker insets. A glamourous coffin for a rockstar vampire.
The rockstar vampire in question is wearing nothing fancy—no corsets or buckles or mesh or glitter or leather, as he has always been dressed in since that night in Auvergne when meeting Louis. A large soft T-shirt with vintage Ziggy Stardust imagery looks like it is routinely slept in rather than worn outside, as with the athleisure sweatpants of pale grey, as with the cream, fur-lined slippers on his feet.
No makeup, either, not even streaky eyeliner, although it may take a second to tell because Lestat has, incidentally, been crying off and on for hours and done a lazy job of dealing with blood drying in place. He would feel self-conscious if he felt it mattered what he looked like.
All the wreckage between them, and Louis still feels his heartbeat stutter at the sight of Lestat. This, the most recognizable Lestat has been since the tour began. Beautiful still, in spite of the evidence of tears.
Louis crouches, rests elbows on the edge of the coffin.
"I think so."
Tonight, at least. Louis isn't certain what's been decided beyond that.
Lestat stays laying where he is, especially as Louis does the courtesy of crouching down lower, of leaning against the padded edge of the coffin. Here to see him, or, more likely, summoned, a dim awareness of people making a fuss. Christine passing along messages, Cookie rifling around his things to find his oft neglected cellphone.
It's a kind question that Louis asks, and so of course fresh tears well, crimson thickening around his lashline.
"Perhaps," he says, with a damp little laugh. Shifting onto his side, still facing Louis, but at least half-huddled against plush coffin interior. Under the soft violet glow of light, bleached highlights comes up even brighter platinum. "I didn't feel like it."
Easy for Louis to say, sure. Not his money, not his ticket sales, not his headache.
But no one told him to be here to talk Lestat into caring about logistics.
Louis slouches further, chin on the back of his wrist. A movement a little like pinning his hands, like a guard against impulse. He wants to take Lestat's face in his hands. Wants say, There you are and kiss the tears from his cheeks.
Instead, a question:
"What do you feel like?"
Not eating, not talking, not cooperating, apparently. It's the first that Louis finds most alarming. He had found Lestat and there had been no sign of his prior healthy appetite. Whether or not his band knows of it; Louis knows of it. Worries about what it means that Lestat is forgoing meals now.
He had never been Louis. Louis who starved. Louis who ate only the smallest amounts. Louis who grew so weak back then, trying to subsist on rats. Louis who lives with hunger as an ever present companion, hollowing out his body.
But Lestat had always eaten. Had now his own little Blood Sabbath, gone neglected last night.
Worrisome. But Louis does not voice these worries just yet.
Probably not a sign of a returning appetite, given the small curl of a smile that comes and goes. Still blurrily, listlessly unfocused where his gaze wanders over the interior side of the coffin. He doesn't need to look at Louis to be deeply aware of him. To feel the exact ways he is near, the ways he is far away.
"Eat the band, explore Kisatchie, go into the ground. Try again in another century."
And why not? It wouldn't be the first time. Overwhelmed with the world, the sense of ruin, the hideous loneliness that can only be numbed by a vampiric unconsciousness, buried like a hibernating seed.
He would also like to cry some more, but there is a reflex in him to hold it together by a fractional amount while Louis is here. Which perhaps seems absurd, when you consider all the ways Lestat does not. And yet.
Not a joke. It might have been a joke under different circumstances, but Lestat says it with the barest smile. A vanishing bit of amusement, not enough to soften what's being said.
"Could do."
Lestat can do anything. Anything he pleases.
"Be a waste though," Louis muses. Lestat has stopped looking at him. Louis' eyes trail over his profile, the glow of light on his skin. "You made a real good start with this set. Been selling out everywhere you go, I hear. No guarantees for next century."
"I wasn't," Louis concedes. But invites, "Can't imagine you putting on a bad show though."
Tough Cookie had drawn some indistinct picture of things going wrong. Louis' cursory skim of social media hadn't revealed any evidence of a major gaffe, but there's something. Something amiss.
Louis leans a little further, asks, "Gonna tell me what was less than good about it?"
"Will you tell me what was so important that you couldn't make it?"
A counter. Quick but not sharp—at least not in tone. There isn't much about his posture laying prone in his coffin, or the sound of his voice, that seems ready for a fight, but this question is offered up anyway.
Maybe Louis will say the true thing, that he was angry with him. But Louis is so calm now, and Lestat must content with the possibility that Louis being angry with him only led to a genuine shift in priority.
The question prompts a minor straightening. Having leaned just slightly in, Louis rocks back. Doesn't disengage, remains perched with chin propped on his arm, but the forward tilt
How long could they really avoid it? The mess of how they parted. The things they'd said. Louis' absence. All that Lestat has done in the meantime.
"You asking what I was doing, or why I didn't show up?"
Because the reality is that there is nothing so important it could not be moved to accommodate Lestat. Important is negligible. Louis can make most everything about his business bend to his whims.
He could tell Lestat all that he'd acquired, all the money he'd made since they'd seen each other last. It's not the actual answer to the question.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Mr. du Lac has an exceptionally busy schedule, and cannot guarantee attendance. He offers his sincere apologies.
There is nothing in Louis' schedule that would not move if he wished it. Louis has spent a few decades amassing the kind of power and wealth that ensures such deference.
However, in the wake of the disastrous Oklahoma concert, Louis has been finding ways to keep himself busy.
Louis has toured galleries. He has met with museum boards. He has acquired no less than five properties, two of which he believes he can flip for a substantial profit within six months. He'd set himself that challenge while swiping past a tablet screen illuminated by Lestat. Lestat, cradling a swooning woman on a stage. Lestat with fangs fully elongated and bloody. Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
Louis shouldn't have done what he did. He is ashamed. He is so jealous he feels like he might do something stupid.
He has channeled that energy into his real estate portfolio.
He has missed several concerts. The passes, merchandise and tickets languish, toted dutifully from hotel to hotel.
Rachida has not asked. Louis doesn't volunteer.
Daniel sends a single text: Yikes.
It is an invitation for Louis to ask more questions. Daniel is so annoying. (Louis misses him.) Louis has been delaying the question, but suspects he has just inside twelve hours before Daniel resorts to beaming his retorts into Louis' heads.
Rachida asks, and Louis simply says, No.
Withholding. His specialty.
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The second concert goes on ahead. The songs are sung, which is what most of everyone is here for. Notably, no audience member is dragged on stage. Notably, at least one ballad is performed from a crossed legged sit off-centre on the stage. The intensity does not diminish, but becomes sporadic, spiky, deeper lows and higher highs. The audience is satisfied. The band is annoyed.
The next day, Louis' personal device is texted directly by an unknown number.
this is TC
are you in NOLA??
Lestat would like it if you came to the show 2night
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Is what Louis thinks but doesn't say.
Louis lets the message sit.
He and Daniel have had a winding conversation. Daniel is still in New Orleans and Daniel is annoyed and fascinated in equal measure. He has a list of complaints. Louis has admitted some portion of responsibility for them.
Louis has declined Daniel's invitation, despite the reckless, yearning desire to head to New Orleans. Walk around with Daniel. See Lestat from a safe distance.
Be home. Louis wants that, the uncomplicated ease of existing in New Orleans.
But no. He's decided already.
And now this.
Louis' response is very measured.
I'm afraid I cannot attend.
And then:
How did you get this number?
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It is only about half an hour later than a reply is forthcoming after all—
from Lestat
listen, show is canceled maybe so forget that
can you come to the hotel?
dk dc what happened with you guys but it's fucking everything up
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Louis prods Daniel, who has nothing to say about it. Nothing to say at all, silent for the moment as Louis turns over these pieces of information in his head.
Eventually:
Did he ask you to send these messages?
[ Doubt ]
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no
This message sent after some indecisive dithering, and a second fired off soon after.
I haven't seen him like this before
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Like what? Can you explain what's happening?
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A few minutes later, harried;
not talking not eating not cooperating
wants to cancel the whole thing but ??? don't know how srs
you guys were meant to meet up in NO correct?
so can you come?
This is sent, after she deletes 'or are you bUsY'.
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He would like to feel less like he will spin out of control the moment he steps into a room with Lestat.
He would like to feel less hurt. Less like he has been wounded. Less aware that he has wounded Lestat in turn.
But now he has this. This litany of incidents and worries.
And now it becomes Rachid's problem, arranging transit for Louis. And rearranging all the rest of the things Louis had insisted they pack his schedule with.
I'll make the necessary arrangements.
So like, yes.
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New Orleans in the early evening is a hive of activity, colour and light. The traffic could be better, as could the humidity. The hotel itself, however, is nice, peaceful, air conditioned, and Rachida has coordinated enough with Lestat's people to provide Louis with the directions necessary that he doesn't have to stop when he gets through the doors.
Into the corridor that leads into the various suites, and down one end, the figures of Cookie and Larry loitering in the hallway and bickering. They pause whatever they're saying when they see Louis, Larry giving him neutral appraisal and Cookie grabbing Larry's arm, steering them both away.
No obstacles. Just a door.
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But that's something for Rachida to arrange and Louis to sign off on later. Tomorrow.
Lestat's bandmates scatter like malevolent birds. Louis had questions but he's spared the conversation. For the best.
He had come so quickly from the airport that there had been no time for the simple pleasure of existing in New Orleans to settle his anxiety. Louis had been near enough that he has arrived within the same night, past midnight, yes, but still, an expeditious arrival. He's dressed down, joggers, a hoodie. Gleaming white sneakers, bare ankles. Distressed denim jacket tugged over all of it, artfully frayed and battered.
Louis runs fingers down the door. Sets fingertips over the knob.
"Lestat."
Carefully steady. Keeps the tangled fray of emotion from his voice.
"You have to open it for me. I don't have the key."
Louis can get the key, if it comes to that. He would prefer Lestat opened the door.
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The sound of the lock tumbling over. The twist of the knob, and the door swings open a couple of inches, as if it had been nudged by a feather. A little bit of showing off. There are ways a vampire can open a door.
Or it's not showing off, and it's just how this vampire opens the door. Within, the suite is messy but not in the sense that there's been a party at any point. Some clothes strewn about, some luggage left abandoned and unopened. A jacket flung over some furniture. The doors to a balcony flung open wide.
No sight of Lestat.
But some detective work and supersenses might draw Louis to the location of a coffin tucked near the bed, an ornate object of pale polished wood, silver trim. It is closed, but Lestat is most certainly inside of it. The sounds of a heart beat. The faint noise of music, muffled, likely transmitted through speakers.
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Brat that he is, he might have flown away. But after the door is closed, and Louis is stood in the middle of the room, listening, he can make an educated guess as to Lestat's location.
Ostentatious, this coffin.
Louis looks around the room. An unearned glimpse at Lestat's life, the space in which he retreats, perhaps this a more reflective sanctuary than the dressing room.
But it's only a brief study. He's been asked here for a reason.
Louis runs his fingers along the polished wood. Drums a little, deliberately off beat rhythm.
"Will you come out?"
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An odd prickle of a feeling on top of—whatever else. There is a pause, and then his voice, as low as usual, hush, but audible to Louis for virtue of what he is.
"I was told you were busy."
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"I was."
Does Lestat know Tough Cookie summoned him? Broke into his phone, retrieved Louis' number, annoyed him and scared him and battered him into changing all his plans?
"I'm here now," Louis says instead to the glossy lid of the coffin.
And then, quieter, realizing it is a wrench as he tells Lestat, "I'll go if you want me to."
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Some amount of thinking, maybe, in the quiet that follows. Impossible to say when confronted with an inexpressive shiny wooden surface.
A little click, a small locking mechanism within the coffin released, and the lid is pushed open. A plush interior of deep purple silk, some kind of light installation that casts a subtle glow from the edges of the lid. Little silver speaker insets. A glamourous coffin for a rockstar vampire.
The rockstar vampire in question is wearing nothing fancy—no corsets or buckles or mesh or glitter or leather, as he has always been dressed in since that night in Auvergne when meeting Louis. A large soft T-shirt with vintage Ziggy Stardust imagery looks like it is routinely slept in rather than worn outside, as with the athleisure sweatpants of pale grey, as with the cream, fur-lined slippers on his feet.
No makeup, either, not even streaky eyeliner, although it may take a second to tell because Lestat has, incidentally, been crying off and on for hours and done a lazy job of dealing with blood drying in place. He would feel self-conscious if he felt it mattered what he looked like.
"I think we cancelled," he says.
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Louis crouches, rests elbows on the edge of the coffin.
"I think so."
Tonight, at least. Louis isn't certain what's been decided beyond that.
Feels his chest tighten, looking at Lestat.
"That what you wanted?"
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It's a kind question that Louis asks, and so of course fresh tears well, crimson thickening around his lashline.
"Perhaps," he says, with a damp little laugh. Shifting onto his side, still facing Louis, but at least half-huddled against plush coffin interior. Under the soft violet glow of light, bleached highlights comes up even brighter platinum. "I didn't feel like it."
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Easy for Louis to say, sure. Not his money, not his ticket sales, not his headache.
But no one told him to be here to talk Lestat into caring about logistics.
Louis slouches further, chin on the back of his wrist. A movement a little like pinning his hands, like a guard against impulse. He wants to take Lestat's face in his hands. Wants say, There you are and kiss the tears from his cheeks.
Instead, a question:
"What do you feel like?"
Not eating, not talking, not cooperating, apparently. It's the first that Louis finds most alarming. He had found Lestat and there had been no sign of his prior healthy appetite. Whether or not his band knows of it; Louis knows of it. Worries about what it means that Lestat is forgoing meals now.
He had never been Louis. Louis who starved. Louis who ate only the smallest amounts. Louis who grew so weak back then, trying to subsist on rats. Louis who lives with hunger as an ever present companion, hollowing out his body.
But Lestat had always eaten. Had now his own little Blood Sabbath, gone neglected last night.
Worrisome. But Louis does not voice these worries just yet.
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Probably not a sign of a returning appetite, given the small curl of a smile that comes and goes. Still blurrily, listlessly unfocused where his gaze wanders over the interior side of the coffin. He doesn't need to look at Louis to be deeply aware of him. To feel the exact ways he is near, the ways he is far away.
"Eat the band, explore Kisatchie, go into the ground. Try again in another century."
And why not? It wouldn't be the first time. Overwhelmed with the world, the sense of ruin, the hideous loneliness that can only be numbed by a vampiric unconsciousness, buried like a hibernating seed.
He would also like to cry some more, but there is a reflex in him to hold it together by a fractional amount while Louis is here. Which perhaps seems absurd, when you consider all the ways Lestat does not. And yet.
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"Could do."
Lestat can do anything. Anything he pleases.
"Be a waste though," Louis muses. Lestat has stopped looking at him. Louis' eyes trail over his profile, the glow of light on his skin. "You made a real good start with this set. Been selling out everywhere you go, I hear. No guarantees for next century."
Pragmatic. Coaxing.
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Swallowing the click in his throat, arms winding about himself a little tighter.
"It wasn't very good, the show last night."
Now, a sidelong look up. "And you can't tell me it was. You weren't there."
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Tough Cookie had drawn some indistinct picture of things going wrong. Louis' cursory skim of social media hadn't revealed any evidence of a major gaffe, but there's something. Something amiss.
Louis leans a little further, asks, "Gonna tell me what was less than good about it?"
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A counter. Quick but not sharp—at least not in tone. There isn't much about his posture laying prone in his coffin, or the sound of his voice, that seems ready for a fight, but this question is offered up anyway.
Maybe Louis will say the true thing, that he was angry with him. But Louis is so calm now, and Lestat must content with the possibility that Louis being angry with him only led to a genuine shift in priority.
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How long could they really avoid it? The mess of how they parted. The things they'd said. Louis' absence. All that Lestat has done in the meantime.
"You asking what I was doing, or why I didn't show up?"
Because the reality is that there is nothing so important it could not be moved to accommodate Lestat. Important is negligible. Louis can make most everything about his business bend to his whims.
He could tell Lestat all that he'd acquired, all the money he'd made since they'd seen each other last. It's not the actual answer to the question.
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