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lestat de lioncourt. ([personal profile] damnedest) wrote2024-10-19 07:25 pm
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-11 11:59 pm (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-12 03:39 am (UTC)(link)
"You see any part of me you'd pull out and burn?"

Feels like a fair question, even for all the ways Louis has withheld, veiled the extent to which Armand had—

Changed him. Louis has been changed. (Does not assign any other word to their life together.) Nearly eighty years, and what is left of Louis? What is his? What had been planted in him? What is a defect in Louis, one he came by honestly, and need excise?

Who is he without Armand? Without Lestat? Without either of them?

Hesitantly, Louis threads fingers into Lestat's hair. Strokes down his scalp to his nape and back again as Lestat rests his head. As Louis puts this question to him.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-12 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
It's the answer Louis expected.

It sparks such a complicated rush of feeling. Affection for how easy Lestat offers it. Misery, for how it confirms what Louis knows he needs.

If they lean into each other, Louis will take all of the wreckage and let it calcify. It'd be so easy to just be with Lestat, to be all broken pieces and grow into him, never excavate what eighty years away had made of him.

Here, now, Louis allows himself the luxury of his fingers in Lestat's hand. He can still taste him.

"I don't know myself anymore," Louis whispers. "I got back all these pieces of myself and I don't know where they fit."

The first time Louis has said this aloud in so many words. Has spun for fight to fight, amassing wealth, artwork, flexing his own power, but in the wake of it all there's this. Uncertainty. Wreckage.

"I just need time. Can't be anyone's companion this way."

Anyone's. Might as well say Lestat. Daniel would be exasperated, rolling his eyes about Louis leaving this open-ended as if there's anyone else.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-12 05:07 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah."

Quickly.

Indulges himself with fingers skimming Lestat's cheek, cupping his face. A trade, as Lestat sitting up requires Louis to cede his toying with Lestat's hair.

"Text me. Call me."

And then, relenting a little, "Between the times I come see your shows."

A blurry line Louis is drawing here. Not all the shows, but some. Appearances periodically because Louis doesn't know how to stay away. He was away so long. So much time lost and wasted away. He can't stomach losing more, being fully out of contact.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-12 05:48 am (UTC)(link)
They'd talked for hours in New Orleans. Well into the dark, hours and hours of winding conversation. Louis had spent eighty years missing it. Missing him. Dreaming Lestat because he couldn't bear the absence of him.

So it's no hardship to say, "Yeah, okay."

They'll talk.

Thumb runs lightly over the scar. A second pass sweeping Lestat's lower lip in the process.

"Will you wait for me?" Louis asks, hesitant. Quiet. "Not asking you to stop fucking anyone you want. Just..."

Be there. Not to forget him.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-12 06:22 am (UTC)(link)
This twitch of Lestat's mouth prompts a slightly firmer press of Louis' thumb. Reflexive. Indulging while they are here in this room, alone, all of Lestat's staff unlikely to bother them.

"Ask you to stop fucking other people?"

Clarifying. A little doubtful.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-12 06:36 am (UTC)(link)
It's alluring, this offer.

Louis is still as he was: he wants Lestat all to himself. Jealous. Covetous. He has to struggle with the knee jerk impulse to say yes, to press his thumb into Lestat's mouth.

Struggles past this initial desire to remind, "You been lonely."

As much as it scorches Louis to think of Lestat taking that loneliness to anyone else.

"You ain't gonna be lonely still?"

Focus on the now, not on the future.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-12 07:27 am (UTC)(link)
Laced fingers, looking into Lestat's face, Louis finds himself wavering.

Wavering in his resolve, wavering between two possibilities.

"I got jealous, before," Louis starts. Amends to, "You made me jealous."

Assuming Lestat is not going to deny this. That some of it had been deliberate provocation.

"I wouldn't mind being jealous, sometimes," is a concession because Louis is still thinking of Lestat talking about loneliness. Now, then in Paris during the trial, then in New Orleans in their opera box. Thinking too of how Lestat wound him up and how good it felt to give in after, reach a breaking point and fall into him.

Louis sighs, a little frustrated, a little tired.

"I don't wanna share you after," can't be any surprise. "But maybe I gotta live with sharing you now. While I'm away."

And yes, Louis isn't always going to be away. But it doesn't feel like enough to shift this offering.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-12 08:41 am (UTC)(link)
"I figured."

Something Lestat would have proven even if Louis didn't already have an inkling.

"I been jealous," Louis says again. "But it's been so long..."

Eighty years since they touched each other with that kind of intent. And it had been a wreck. Ugly. Louis regrets the mess he'd made of it.

"I didn't want it to be like that. It didn't feel good to me, to have you like that."

Among other worries, other fears.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-12 06:43 pm (UTC)(link)
A slight smile. Brat that he is, Louis can only assume that someday, eventually, Lestat will taunt him. It is in his nature. It is in their nature to needle each other. To hurt, and then find their way to some reconciliation.

Easier to consider that now than it had been then. Louis can at least appreciate the gesture, the aspiration.

"I do."

Saying this like handing Lestat a knife. Something transparently clear, an intrinsic fact about Louis, said aloud. Of course he wants Lestat.

"I want you all to myself," Louis tells him. Had Daniel written that into the book? Louis' recollection of the sentiment, delirious with hunger and desire as he looked across a ballroom at Lestat? The slight smile widens as Louis repeats back to him, "I don't like sharing."

It had been infuriating at the time. Galling. Louis remembers how angry he'd been as Lestat told him this, after proposing the very thing himself. Maybe they are far enough from it that Louis can invoke the argument, an eternity ago, without touching on all the rest.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-13 02:04 am (UTC)(link)
"Can't yet."

A whisper. Brings Lestat's hand to his mouth, breathes a kiss to his knuckles.

"But I think about you. Been thinking of you every night."

Every night can so easily mean every night of the tour, every night since the party. But Louis means every night, every night since they parted ways in New Orleans. Every night since he left Paris. Claudia had jabbed his chest, accused, and it was true: Louis carried Lestat in his heart, thought of him often, had summoned him as a dream because he couldn't stand their separation.

And now, their fraught reunion. This careful separation, a blurry distance that Louis finds equally hard to tolerate.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-13 05:40 pm (UTC)(link)
And Lestat will fuck who he wants.

It is not unlike the first time they attempted a similar arrangement. Louis feels a very familiar reticence, the urge to dig heels in and protest despite knowing how unfair it would be to deny Lestat his dalliances.

Still, very quietly, Louis asks, "It'll be just us? When I get myself figured out?"

When Louis can be good for Lestat, when they can be good for each other. The fans won't vanish. The fame won't vanish. There will still be stadiums of people begging for Lestat's attention. What will it mean for them then?

Jumping too far ahead. Presumptive. Louis can't help himself.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-14 02:29 am (UTC)(link)
Is it not a forgone conclusion?

Louis emerged from Dubai, and flew across the ocean to New Orleans. Home. The only home he'd ever known because it had been where he and Lestat made a life together, raised Claudia together.

Home, to Lestat.

Louis runs fingers lightly over his cheek, fingers tightening in Lestat's as Louis touches him. Thinks to kiss him again. Thinks of Lestat on their balcony, ornate wig discarded at his feet, the look on his face speaking of New Orleans as he lit Louis' cigarette.

"Give me a little time, baby," Louis says again. Honey-toned in spite of the way his voice strains, fraying around the way they're denying each other. Wanting Lestat running alongside the way Louis wants what he's been asking for, wants the space to find himself on his own. "I'm on my way."

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