"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.
Tempting to say the first thing, see if he can make Louis recite all the events and meetings and purchases that outstripped attending his New Orleans debut in importance. Maybe hurt his own feelings with it, maybe hurt Louis' feelings with it.
Well, if the show has been cancelled, there will be more than enough time for all of that.
"Why didn't you show up?" he says, an enunciated and accommodating amendment.
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."
I did a lot of things I shouldn't, and Lestat breaks his gaze from Louis' face with a few rapid blinks, feeling something like a bite deep in his chest.
He does not want to hurt Louis. He does not want to cause him shame. He always wants to get at him with claws and teeth and words, all the things they do when they are near, that feel near. Closer than polite interest. (Easier to bait than gentle touches, kind queries, generous compliments.)
"I had hoped you would come anyway," he admits. The admission, too, in his tone: that he knows it's foolish, to have fought as they had and expect—
Well, perhaps anything. "It seems you find it difficult enough to be near me even without our arguments."
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.
Lestat reaches to hook claws onto the top edge of his coffin, and draw himself into a slouched sit against the pillows. A fractional reemergence. Eyes still glossy with past and present tears and a defensive set to his expression, guarding against something—as likely to be the internal rush of feeling as anything Louis is saying, might say.
"I am a bad habit, then," he says. A little snippier, now, teeth showing between syllables. "An addiction. Have I been compromising your recovery?"
Louis, discovering himself out of the range of the black hole of his ex-husband. Or trying to. Unable to stop being drawn back in. Lestat, destructive, destroying. This must be the story they are in, the story Lestat has been doomed to repeat since he was drawn into it himself.
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.
Lestat keeps his arms loosely folded around himself once settled again, but closes his hands tighter. Like all he would like to do is reach for Louis in the wake of that little tense tic to his expression, of still soft words. Would like to pull him into his coffin, hold him, be held.
Aches for that. Like maybe it's at the core of all his stupid attempts for contact, for bites and fucking and whatever Louis might give him. Ugh, he can't stand himself.
"But I want you there," comes out anyway, thick with renewed feeling, renewed tears. "I don't know what I'm doing when I know you aren't watching."
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.
Misery reflected back at him from his own crumpled position and posture, no smiles, the bleary upset at the words too much, as if Louis is somehow applying them to Lestat as a mirror of his own longing, wanting what he should not, which,
well, maybe so.
There is a silence after, also miserable, before he offers, "I didn't sleep with the photographer," for what it's worth.
Rolls slightly in his position to skim a tearful gaze up at the ceiling, a hand drifting to rub along his forehead, hairline, and then flop there to rest as if the idea of engaging muscle to resettle himself is too much to ask of him. "I only said it," he says, trying to iron out the quiver in his voice, "because I thought you wanted me to."
Louis believes him. Remembers Lestat, tearful, snapping: Why do you make me say these things? and has had time to think on it.
That's an old game they play together. Old, old as their love. Louis baiting Lestat into the very worst behaviors, winding them both up to Louis can give in to him, give into wanting him.
Over a hundred years old, and there is still this defect in him, this shame. This part of Louis that wants to be wrestled into what he desires so he can absolve himself of all his shame. More complicated now, maybe, but not far removed from those early days. Looking at Lestat, feeling how desperately jealous he is now of anyone who had ever touched him, remembering the dizzying heights of desire he'd felt in the dressing room—
"I might've."
The right step in the game they were almost playing, before it became painful. Before Louis got too far into his head about all the realities of their situation.
"I didn't figure out I couldn't do it that way anymore until we started."
A strange combination of feeling. First, an internal sense of collapse, the remote viewing of yet another possibility between them being demolished. Second, something else. Like a muscle held tense, relaxing. Louis had begun something and then realised he did not want it and then did not pursue it. This is
a good thing, he thinks. Louis, protecting himself. Protecting them both. And also, not fucking with him for no reason. The ways it had felt like a strange punishment, and now doesn't.
Lestat nods his understanding. A little like defeat, but an acceptance of it.
Pointless to try to hold back tears when he is already in them, but he does his best at sounding reasonable when he asks, "Are you going to stay away for the rest?" The shows in New Orleans. The tour entire. Their lifetimes. Louis can take his pick.
All those tour dates. All that lies beyond his tour, the kind of stardom that is already glowing around Lestat each time he steps on stage.
"I don't want to."
A starting point. Maybe the most important thing, yes? Saying that he wants to be here. Saying aloud what Louis had thought they both knew.
"But I think I'm fucking it up for you," Louis says softly. "And I don't wanna do that."
Lestat deserves all of this. Louis knows how much Lestat loves music, and remembers how he had thrived on a stage. He'd been right to be angry at Louis, in his dressing room, starting things, wanting too much.
Near whispered, this protest. Another renewed grip to the edge of the coffin, Lestat finally pulling himself up to sit. A leaning forwards without permitting himself to actually make contact, hands anchored to the coffin edge, to the side of his own knee.
"It's mine to fuck up," he says, a little tinge of watery humour. "But even if it were you, there isn't—" His voice hitching, some exasperation in the way he catches his breath. "There isn't any purpose to it if you're not there. At least when you can be. When I know you will be waiting for me, that night or the next."
Maybe it's the same show over and over and Louis would not wish to attend it all the time. Not quite, at least. Different sets, songs swapped in and out, little spontaneous happenings, but it's the same tour, certainly. But if Louis were to quietly read a book in a backstage lounge to meet him after, that would be fine too.
It matters to Louis that they stand apart from each other. Painful, but important.
But Lestat sits up, eyes wet, and tells Louis these things, gives him this mirror of his own longing. Wanting, and wanting, and wanting. And then beyond that, here is the very core of what Louis misses, yearns for: the link between them, the meaning it brings to every part of their lives.
Louis says nothing right away. The words settle between them. Tears slip down Lestat's face.
Slowly, slowly, Louis lifts a hand to lightly knuckle away a fresh spill of red from his cheek. And this small touch slips from the barest contact to Louis cupping his face, fingertips along the line of his jaw as his thumb strokes the cut of Lestat's cheekbone.
Some sound, strangled, in his throat, and Lestat leans into that touch, hand coming up to press against Louis', keep it there.
Louis is going to tell him that they part ways properly. And Lestat will have to figure it out. Will have to test the truth of his statement, and find that there is at least one other purpose to the tour, to continue to piss off the vampiric world, to split its focus. That, at least, might sustain them for the east coast leg, maybe beyond it.
Or he could beg him not to go. There's still time. Still some pride to burn, against all odds. For now, settles in the silence rather than give into the urge to trample all over it.
They could stay here, and Louis could touch him this way, and they can toss aside every other complicated part of this conversation. Of what they are trying to reason their way through. Of what Louis is trying to work his way towards.
But Louis owes him an answer. It's almost a foregone conclusion. How could Louis stay away? Another eighty years in exile? No. Neither of them could withstand it.
Lestat says nothing. Only makes a shattering sort of sound. Louis feels it under his palm.
It draws Louis in to him. He leans their foreheads together. Noses bump, brush. Louis exhales, inhales a deep breath, inhales Lestat, washed clean of arenas and stadiums and strange mortals.
The kiss is almost an exhale when it comes, a feather-light brush of lips to Lestat's mouth. Giving in. Choosing. Uncertain of exactly what, only that they have tried other options and they haven't worked.
Wholly unexpected, that gentle brush of a kiss. Lestat going still, turning his chin down from it for a moment where he tries to see what is in Louis' eyes, his expression.
Doesn't matter too much, when there is only one thing he can and wants to do, which is slip back into that fractional space and kiss him in return. Still gentle and soft, tentative, as if asking: did Louis mean to do so? Is it good and allowed, that Lestat do it again?
He'd been so clumsy, in retrospect, whenever Louis permitted intimacy. Grasping, grabbing, desperate. Determined, in this moment, to be patient. Maybe it will last.
He wants to say a thousand things, ask a thousand questions. For now—
Hesitance mellowing into familiar ease. They had spent so much time kissing, Louis remembers. Still remembers how it had led all things with them, how Louis had chosen him without any words at all, only by taking his face into his hands and kissing Lestat. This moment feels like an echo, like a continuation. Louis kisses him, hand gentle over Lestat's cheek as the kiss deepens.
They should have done this first. (Louis wasn't ready. He might still not be ready.) Maybe it would have been easier to throw Lestat around the room, touch him, fuck him, if they had something tender first.
Lestat is easily led. Louis coaxes his mouth open. Keeps his hand there caught beneath Lestat's. Kisses him for an eternity. For who knows how long.
And stays there, forehead resting against his, breathing together. Listening to twinned heartbeats, still keeping perfect time together after so long apart, so much discord, so much misalignment.
Lestat is easily led, parting his mouth. Receptive to the careful tasting it invites, and gently returns it. And they could be anywhere, in the distant past when they were happiest, or an unnamed future where they manage it again, or in a church full of blood and fire, or a decorated ballroom and knowing it could be the last time, and then it was true.
And now it isn't. The hand keeping Louis' in place slips further down, resting light at his wrist, encouraging without demand. His other has found a place to rest at Louis' other arm, fingers more yielding than grabbing. Like holding a butterfly, where nothing you can do will stop it from flying away without destroying it.
Relaxes a little, at least bodily. Listing into the side of his coffin, resting there against Louis, soaking in these moments of gentle contact with the same relief he had felt when Louis had found him, taken him into his arms.
A last light peck, a kiss brushed to the corner of his mouth. Can't help it. Old habit, that little kiss. Attention paid to the scar, one of the few blemishes carried over from Lestat's mortal life.
Louis used to thumb over it. Each time he cradled Lestat's face, he'd set his thumb there, guide him into a kiss.
A passing urge to do only that. Kiss him until someone came to fetch Lestat, and Louis had to—
Go?
It's the question he must decide. That Lestat had been asking.
"I can't stay away from you," he whispers. Amends to, "I don't want to. But I gotta spend a little time on my own. I ain't good for you this way. I'm still trying to figure out what's mine and what I gotta throw away."
He should say, no one else kisses his scar. Touches it. They ignore it, like to do otherwise might offend him. He has noticed.
But Louis is talking and Lestat is listening, which he hopes is the correct thing to do, even as he does it with big glittering wet eyes that betray a propensity to hurt his own feelings on something. When Louis finishes his part, Lestat lowers his gaze to absorb it better. Can't stay away, don't want to, gotta.
Shifts aside, resting his jaw and cheek on Louis' shoulder, looking out unseeing at the room. The unpacked luggage, the fluttering curtain. A little time on his own, Louis says. Lestat feels as though his heart is bleeding out into his chest, blood settling in his belly.
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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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Well, if the show has been cancelled, there will be more than enough time for all of that.
"Why didn't you show up?" he says, an enunciated and accommodating amendment.
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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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He does not want to hurt Louis. He does not want to cause him shame. He always wants to get at him with claws and teeth and words, all the things they do when they are near, that feel near. Closer than polite interest. (Easier to bait than gentle touches, kind queries, generous compliments.)
"I had hoped you would come anyway," he admits. The admission, too, in his tone: that he knows it's foolish, to have fought as they had and expect—
Well, perhaps anything. "It seems you find it difficult enough to be near me even without our arguments."
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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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"I am a bad habit, then," he says. A little snippier, now, teeth showing between syllables. "An addiction. Have I been compromising your recovery?"
Louis, discovering himself out of the range of the black hole of his ex-husband. Or trying to. Unable to stop being drawn back in. Lestat, destructive, destroying. This must be the story they are in, the story Lestat has been doomed to repeat since he was drawn into it himself.
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"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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Lestat keeps his arms loosely folded around himself once settled again, but closes his hands tighter. Like all he would like to do is reach for Louis in the wake of that little tense tic to his expression, of still soft words. Would like to pull him into his coffin, hold him, be held.
Aches for that. Like maybe it's at the core of all his stupid attempts for contact, for bites and fucking and whatever Louis might give him. Ugh, he can't stand himself.
"But I want you there," comes out anyway, thick with renewed feeling, renewed tears. "I don't know what I'm doing when I know you aren't watching."
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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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well, maybe so.
There is a silence after, also miserable, before he offers, "I didn't sleep with the photographer," for what it's worth.
Rolls slightly in his position to skim a tearful gaze up at the ceiling, a hand drifting to rub along his forehead, hairline, and then flop there to rest as if the idea of engaging muscle to resettle himself is too much to ask of him. "I only said it," he says, trying to iron out the quiver in his voice, "because I thought you wanted me to."
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That's an old game they play together. Old, old as their love. Louis baiting Lestat into the very worst behaviors, winding them both up to Louis can give in to him, give into wanting him.
Over a hundred years old, and there is still this defect in him, this shame. This part of Louis that wants to be wrestled into what he desires so he can absolve himself of all his shame. More complicated now, maybe, but not far removed from those early days. Looking at Lestat, feeling how desperately jealous he is now of anyone who had ever touched him, remembering the dizzying heights of desire he'd felt in the dressing room—
"I might've."
The right step in the game they were almost playing, before it became painful. Before Louis got too far into his head about all the realities of their situation.
"I didn't figure out I couldn't do it that way anymore until we started."
For a night, meaning nothing at all.
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a good thing, he thinks. Louis, protecting himself. Protecting them both. And also, not fucking with him for no reason. The ways it had felt like a strange punishment, and now doesn't.
Lestat nods his understanding. A little like defeat, but an acceptance of it.
Pointless to try to hold back tears when he is already in them, but he does his best at sounding reasonable when he asks, "Are you going to stay away for the rest?" The shows in New Orleans. The tour entire. Their lifetimes. Louis can take his pick.
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All those tour dates. All that lies beyond his tour, the kind of stardom that is already glowing around Lestat each time he steps on stage.
"I don't want to."
A starting point. Maybe the most important thing, yes? Saying that he wants to be here. Saying aloud what Louis had thought they both knew.
"But I think I'm fucking it up for you," Louis says softly. "And I don't wanna do that."
Lestat deserves all of this. Louis knows how much Lestat loves music, and remembers how he had thrived on a stage. He'd been right to be angry at Louis, in his dressing room, starting things, wanting too much.
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Near whispered, this protest. Another renewed grip to the edge of the coffin, Lestat finally pulling himself up to sit. A leaning forwards without permitting himself to actually make contact, hands anchored to the coffin edge, to the side of his own knee.
"It's mine to fuck up," he says, a little tinge of watery humour. "But even if it were you, there isn't—" His voice hitching, some exasperation in the way he catches his breath. "There isn't any purpose to it if you're not there. At least when you can be. When I know you will be waiting for me, that night or the next."
Maybe it's the same show over and over and Louis would not wish to attend it all the time. Not quite, at least. Different sets, songs swapped in and out, little spontaneous happenings, but it's the same tour, certainly. But if Louis were to quietly read a book in a backstage lounge to meet him after, that would be fine too.
Anything, after these past few days.
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But Lestat sits up, eyes wet, and tells Louis these things, gives him this mirror of his own longing. Wanting, and wanting, and wanting. And then beyond that, here is the very core of what Louis misses, yearns for: the link between them, the meaning it brings to every part of their lives.
Louis says nothing right away. The words settle between them. Tears slip down Lestat's face.
Slowly, slowly, Louis lifts a hand to lightly knuckle away a fresh spill of red from his cheek. And this small touch slips from the barest contact to Louis cupping his face, fingertips along the line of his jaw as his thumb strokes the cut of Lestat's cheekbone.
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Louis is going to tell him that they part ways properly. And Lestat will have to figure it out. Will have to test the truth of his statement, and find that there is at least one other purpose to the tour, to continue to piss off the vampiric world, to split its focus. That, at least, might sustain them for the east coast leg, maybe beyond it.
Or he could beg him not to go. There's still time. Still some pride to burn, against all odds. For now, settles in the silence rather than give into the urge to trample all over it.
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They could stay here, and Louis could touch him this way, and they can toss aside every other complicated part of this conversation. Of what they are trying to reason their way through. Of what Louis is trying to work his way towards.
But Louis owes him an answer. It's almost a foregone conclusion. How could Louis stay away? Another eighty years in exile? No. Neither of them could withstand it.
Lestat says nothing. Only makes a shattering sort of sound. Louis feels it under his palm.
It draws Louis in to him. He leans their foreheads together. Noses bump, brush. Louis exhales, inhales a deep breath, inhales Lestat, washed clean of arenas and stadiums and strange mortals.
The kiss is almost an exhale when it comes, a feather-light brush of lips to Lestat's mouth. Giving in. Choosing. Uncertain of exactly what, only that they have tried other options and they haven't worked.
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Doesn't matter too much, when there is only one thing he can and wants to do, which is slip back into that fractional space and kiss him in return. Still gentle and soft, tentative, as if asking: did Louis mean to do so? Is it good and allowed, that Lestat do it again?
He'd been so clumsy, in retrospect, whenever Louis permitted intimacy. Grasping, grabbing, desperate. Determined, in this moment, to be patient. Maybe it will last.
He wants to say a thousand things, ask a thousand questions. For now—
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Hesitance mellowing into familiar ease. They had spent so much time kissing, Louis remembers. Still remembers how it had led all things with them, how Louis had chosen him without any words at all, only by taking his face into his hands and kissing Lestat. This moment feels like an echo, like a continuation. Louis kisses him, hand gentle over Lestat's cheek as the kiss deepens.
They should have done this first. (Louis wasn't ready. He might still not be ready.) Maybe it would have been easier to throw Lestat around the room, touch him, fuck him, if they had something tender first.
Lestat is easily led. Louis coaxes his mouth open. Keeps his hand there caught beneath Lestat's. Kisses him for an eternity. For who knows how long.
And stays there, forehead resting against his, breathing together. Listening to twinned heartbeats, still keeping perfect time together after so long apart, so much discord, so much misalignment.
He'll say something. Soon.
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And now it isn't. The hand keeping Louis' in place slips further down, resting light at his wrist, encouraging without demand. His other has found a place to rest at Louis' other arm, fingers more yielding than grabbing. Like holding a butterfly, where nothing you can do will stop it from flying away without destroying it.
Relaxes a little, at least bodily. Listing into the side of his coffin, resting there against Louis, soaking in these moments of gentle contact with the same relief he had felt when Louis had found him, taken him into his arms.
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Louis used to thumb over it. Each time he cradled Lestat's face, he'd set his thumb there, guide him into a kiss.
A passing urge to do only that. Kiss him until someone came to fetch Lestat, and Louis had to—
Go?
It's the question he must decide. That Lestat had been asking.
"I can't stay away from you," he whispers. Amends to, "I don't want to. But I gotta spend a little time on my own. I ain't good for you this way. I'm still trying to figure out what's mine and what I gotta throw away."
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But Louis is talking and Lestat is listening, which he hopes is the correct thing to do, even as he does it with big glittering wet eyes that betray a propensity to hurt his own feelings on something. When Louis finishes his part, Lestat lowers his gaze to absorb it better. Can't stay away, don't want to, gotta.
Shifts aside, resting his jaw and cheek on Louis' shoulder, looking out unseeing at the room. The unpacked luggage, the fluttering curtain. A little time on his own, Louis says. Lestat feels as though his heart is bleeding out into his chest, blood settling in his belly.
"And you can't do that with me around?"
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