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lestat de lioncourt. ([personal profile] damnedest) wrote2024-10-19 07:25 pm
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-05 05:37 am (UTC)(link)
Louis would like to remain stubbornly 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.

I'll make the necessary arrangements.

So like, yes.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-05 06:02 am (UTC)(link)
Louis is going to change his number.

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-05 06:24 am (UTC)(link)
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.

"Will you come out?"
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-05 06:31 am (UTC)(link)
Well.

"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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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-05 06:59 am (UTC)(link)
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.

Feels his chest tighten, looking at Lestat.

"That what you wanted?"
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-05 01:50 pm (UTC)(link)
"Okay."

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.
Edited (minor change ) 2025-01-05 13:51 (UTC)
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-07 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
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."

Pragmatic. Coaxing.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-07 03:29 am (UTC)(link)
"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?"
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-07 04:29 am (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-09 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
Despite making the distinction, Louis still pauses for a moment to study Lestat and try to discern if he is being baited. To try and parse out whether or not he wants to be baited, wants to try to fight again and tell himself that will fix things between them.

Slowly, finds his way past the initial impulse to bite, the easiest, nearest thing to hand.

Louis exhales slowly.

"I was hurt."

Careful choice of words. Reaching towards honesty, unsure if that will help either of them or just hurt Lestat in the process.

"And ashamed. Ashamed of how I left it in Oklahoma."

Instigating. Breaking their fragile peace apart, too jealous to contain himself.

"I did a lot of things I shouldn't. I couldn't be near you just then."
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-09 03:16 am (UTC)(link)
"I been thinking on it."

A hushed admission. Maybe a mistake. Louis knows how they dig claws into each other, grab for what hurts most any time their tempers get the better of them. Louis isn't blameless. He instigates. Lestat reacts.

It was easier at the beginning of their love. Even so many years after their worst fight, after Louis' fall, it is still so terribly fraught when they argue. When they have to try and align their old habits with newer wounds.

"It's hard to be near you," Louis admits. "But it isn't—it ain't easy to stay away. Feels harder, most of the time."

Whispering these things, watching Lestat from the edge of his casket while he wrestles with his own shame, his own longing. The parts of him that flinch away from vulnerability, the parts of him that offer it now and invite the dig of claws, if it steadies Lestat in turn.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-09 04:00 am (UTC)(link)
The movement sparks tension in his body, a coiling of muscle even as Louis holds his place. Still here, body at rest, as Lestat says this thing and Louis feels his own defensiveness rising in return.

"Not saying that," Louis answers. Thinking about how they might hurt each other, again.

Is a fight going to heal what Louis fractured? Doubtful. Louis suspects it will tear a jagged wound into them both, too deep to stitch up properly.

Louis looks away, briefly. Jaw tightening, flexing around the first angry thing he wants to say.

"I'm compromising you. Fucking up your tour."
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-09 04:52 am (UTC)(link)
Weeks spent being so, so angry. Being resentful and aching and miserable, all of these things at once, and then Lestat gives a little, just a little, and Louis can feel himself relenting.

Or at least, leaning into the space this easing creates between them to give a little back.

"I wanna be here."

What else can he say? This is the truth.

"I want it too much."

A miserable flex of expression, almost a smile. Louis wants too much. Lestat of all people knows how that's liable to become something Louis shies away from. Something that becomes a thing he blames himself for.

He thought he could have it both ways. Have his distance, and have Lestat near too. But it feels impossible now, knowing what he knows. Knowing that it's just so easy to reach out and touch Lestat, to pin him down again.

Knowing that it would be temporary, when Louis wants it to be anything else.

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