It is far ahead. Presumably so. But even beyond distance of time, it feels like the distance is one of possibility. Louis says 'when', and Lestat catches his eye as he considers it more so than the question at hand. It is an easy promise to make when it might amount to nothing.
Instead, he says, "Are you promising in return?" Keeps his focus even, his voice measured. "That you will come back to me?"
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."
The tone, the endearment, the promise itself all suffuse through him as warmth. So much so that Lestat could almost feel resentment for it. Is it possible that he can make Louis feel such a way about him? That he could make Louis promise the world, if he asked?
But he doesn't feel resentment for it. Can't, due to all the aforementioned warmth suffusing and such. It is only familiar, and has been missed. Lestat answers the grip to his hand with a returned hold, drawing his hand in nearer. Tension bleeding from him, slouching a little into the plush side of his coffin.
"I will," he says. "And it will be only us."
Maybe he can extract more promises. Say it won't be eighty years. Say it can be counted in months at most. He opts for an easier pitch.
"If you say you will go to a show while you are in town."
Lestat has already turned down Louis' offer to drink and dance with him. He thinks of that moment often with a sickly regret, as if he had done something profoundly against his own nature, and for no good reason at all. Now, it's the first thing he thinks of, and doesn't say it. A direct violation of the distance being asked for.
And won't he spend the whole time, thinking of it that way? Of violating Louis? Again? His gaze lowers, and finds that he doesn't want to decline the offer either, to extract a promise.
A little bit of comedy now, the two of them chronicled by Daniel.
Louis has been careful not to let himself think too much of what Lestat's interview will be. What shape it will take. What Lestat will tell Daniel, things he has never told Louis.
Jealousy is fast on track to outpace hunger as his constant companion, at this rate. Louis is trying not to think on that too deeply either.
Not a very auspicious beginning, his series of interviews. In the midst of his upset at Louis' silence, impatient, unforthcoming, untrusting. Lestat knows what would make it that little bit more tolerable.
"When you have the inclination," he allows, "I would like you there sometimes."
No inclination towards no only surprise that this is what Lestat chooses to ask.
His fingers sweep along the shell of Lestat's ear. Fusses, tucking a stray lock of hair back, touching his face. Working his way towards a question:
"You gonna be able to say all you need to say with me there?"
Would Lestat stop himself, for fear of hurting Louis with his truth?
And beyond that, Louis doesn't trust his covetous he is of all the pieces of Lestat's story that Lestat has never shared. Long years together where Lestat obscured, kept his past hidden away. Louis wants very badly to hear it. Leans back and away from that desire, worried that it will become an inclination to pry, to disrupt.
Nerves tingle in the wake of glancing fingertips, the subtle rearrangement of golden locks. This time, despite how aware he feels of that touch, Lestat manages not to tip into it like a touch-starved stray. A little dignity. Why not.
"Perhaps it won't work. Perhaps I will ask you to go away from it." A shrug. "Come anyway, and we'll see."
Lestat makes it sound easy. Come, listen while Lestat says all the things he may have never said to Louis. Go, if Lestat decides he does not wish for Louis to hear any of it after all.
Louis' thumb maps across his cheek. Grazes the scar at the corner of his mouth once more.
"Yeah," Louis says. A little helpless in the face of this request, of how he wants to give Lestat anything to make up for the distance Louis is creating between them. "Yeah, okay. I'll come sit with you while you and Daniel talk."
He thinks it's good. Louis' hand at his face is good, the little nudge across his scar, evidence of a history, evidence of a history undiscussed. The things he would like Louis to know. The things he would find difficult just saying to him.
All Lestat would like to do is reach out and grab Louis and pull him down into his plush coffin with him. They can listen to music and cuddle in the low violet lighting. But all of that, he knows, is in the too much category, so he draws in a breath, considers getting a grip for the first time since he lost it a little while ago.
"If you were a fan of me, would you mind very much waiting an hour past doors opening?"
The truth: Louis would like nothing more to join Lestat in his coffin, to fit themselves together, to hear whatever it was that Lestat was listening to. To hold him, and be held, maybe sleep, eventually.
But Lestat does not offer this, and Louis balks at the sense of imposing, contents himself with these minor touches. Lets himself linger, thumb resting there at the corner of Lestat's mouth as Louis tells him, "I would wait as long as you wanted."
Maybe a little absurd, considering their conversation. Considering it is Louis making Lestat wait and wait and wait.
So Lestat has been told, anyway, of how expensive his tickets are. He brings up a hand to catch Louis', not wishing to dissuade him with a thoughtless dismissal—presses a kiss to his knuckles, for the touch, for the sentiment, for being near enough to do so. Perhaps he shouldn't ask the multi-millionaire immortal who is so beholden to him, his opinion on these things.
Well, he will sing to the janitor if everyone has gone. Lestat gathers himself, knees bending. He will need to get dressed. He will need to do his hair. He will, probably most pressingly, need to eat something.
Stay here, Louis wants to say. The appeal is on the tip of his tongue, so close to being spoken aloud.
Here, in all soft things, in low light, no gleaming costumes or meticulously applied cosmetics. All things feel so much easier without the trappings of Lestat's new life. Stay here, close the coffin, be together.
Would that be enough?
In spite of all that's been said, Louis isn't sure. Doesn't ask that, doesn't ask him to stay. He remains, watching Lestat collect himself, make movements towards rising.
"They'll wait for you," Louis tells him. Certain.
And then, searching, "You want me to wait somewhere else while you get yourself ready?"
Not apathetic, exactly, about where Louis might choose to be, but perhaps more resigned than anything else. As he'd said, every door is open, every room is welcoming, and it isn't up to Lestat to take this back. He doesn't feel like it. But it's a little bit of a mercy as he adds, "But we can arrange something for you, I'm sure. Here or at the venue."
Standing, stepping out of his coffin with a passing flutter of a touch, and moving to the small kitchenette. "It was quite short notice, your being here." Perhaps Louis doesn't even have any reservations yet, although his people seem responsive.
Anyway. Here is the fridge. Here is the polystyrene case inside of it.
Surprising, seeing the case. Understanding what it means.
Louis had thought Lestat was hunting. There was certainly opportunity enough, wasn't there? Crowds upon crowds of people, transient, easily lost in the shuffle. Louis had thought—
Well, he'd been wrong.
Louis rises, straightening gracefully into a turn towards Lestat. There is no masking his relief at seeing Lestat preparing to eat. A good sign, Louis thinks.
"Rachida has my passes," telegraphs some intent. Louis can observe the show from the VIP section, above the crush of people on the arena floor. Beyond that: "The hotel is immovably booked up, but she'll find some arrangement for me."
Or there is always the plane. Annoying, being unable to evict someone from a hotel room on a whim.
Regardless, Louis intends to stay. To be present for this show, for the third. Whatever comes after, Louis will decide after he's certain Lestat is back on track.
He has very little appetite for the cold pouches inside, but still wishes to mind his manners. Tempting to lazily pierce the plastic with his fangs and empty its contents in one swoop. No, he will not be so disgusting while in Louis' company. There must be cups and things in this little kitchen. He goes through the cupboards.
Pauses at that, glancing over, before taking out a ceramic cup. "Well," Lestat says. "I have all this room, if you have your coffin on hand."
That seems fine, doesn't it? That offer? An offer a friend would make, to share the expansive suite. Lestat isn't even using either bedroom. He pivots to the kitchen island, sets about emptying small packets of blood into the cup.
An admission, as good as taking Lestat up on the offer to share. He would have realized it anyway, once dawn came and Louis retreated nowhere but perhaps to the as yet untouched bed.
"Got out of the habit, mostly."
A thorny subject. Louis has been considering it on and off. He has had a lovely new coffin commissioned, one that would strike Lestat as familiar. Maybe by the time it arrives Louis will have achieved some clarity, figured out his own feelings on how he might keep himself during the day.
The blood flows thick and settles heavy in the cup. Immediately, he wishes to summon Larry or Cookie, who will certainly have something he could cut into it to make the evening more bearable, make him feel a little less frayed apart. Odd, maybe, for the way he doesn't wish to do so in front of Louis. He isn't sure what it is, that impulse. Manners, perhaps.
Anyway: Louis didn't bring a coffin, and calls it a habit. Lestat hesitates over his cup before turning to put it into the microwave, a careless closing of the door and a thoughtless couple minutes dialed into the timer. Something about this information makes him want to freak out, he thinks. Why, he also can't identify in the moment.
"In a bed, most days. Rafters ain't always comfortable."
Ha, ha.
Louis straightening, casting his eyes around the room. It's not truly a home, only a temporary place in which Lestat has landed. He will leave in a few days. How much can truly be gleaned from this space?
Attention drawn to the microwave, to Lestat. Louis circles around the opulence of Lestat's coffin to perch at the edge of the mattress. Observe him in his preparations.
Maybe glean his reaction. Louis has lived over a century, much of it apart from Lestat, but still, part of him seeks Lestat's opinion.
The mug spins slow behind shaded glass, and Lestat watches this while he senses Louis watch him.
"I suppose a multi-million dollar enterprise affords you some trust in your curtains," he says. He twists enough to glance backwards at him, and then the large windows of his suite, calculating the integrity of their furnishings. Ill at ease at the thought. "And the people who might twitch them aside without thought."
Back to the microwave, tugging the door open long before the beeping. Blood doesn't need to be boiling to be tolerable.
"You can stay here, if it suits you." It may not. Louis has expensive taste of a different kind of echelon.
It had never mattered with Armand, had not mattered in their bedroom in Dubai. It is something else now, Louis thinks.
It matters, like any lightly self-destructive thing does.
Lestat makes this offer, and Louis saying nothing immediately. He is aware of how it appeals. How much he wants to remain near, how many worries he carries still. Lestat still strikes him as fragile, unsteady.
And Louis wants him back as he found him, washed clean of make up and stage wear, in soft clothes, familiar.
"With you?" Louis questions, drawing himself up short before the dream runs away with him. Lestat has other admirers. Louis has given him permission to indulge any whim he pleases.
He fishes the mug from out of the microwave, now wandering nearer. Stops short of inviting himself to sit down near him. No, he has things to do if he wishes to achieve the impossible and perform tonight. And, oh yes, speaking of Cookie—
Lestat looks to the ceiling, the wandering look of him reaching out with his mind, delivering a message. Then, bringing his cup up to sip.
"I'm not using my bed," he says. "And I recall your hospitality, during the hurricane."
And of course, he wants Louis near, always, hungers for it, wants to crawl into his arms or pick him up in his own and run away. But borderlands have been reaffirmed. If Louis is to share his room, it will be because it is the most sensible thing. And if there is hunger in the direction of his gaze over his cup as he drinks, well. He is hungry.
What if Lestat flung his cup of blood at Louis' head and resumed having a breakdown?
Louis does not want to stay with him, anywhere he'll have him. Or he does, but can't. Has asked him for time, has all but promised him he would come back to him. And yes, perhaps now they are only talking about this one night, but what does that matter? One night becomes one eternity. He stands stock still to guard against these impulses, watching Louis' hand fondle his coffin, and considers that ketamine would probably help him out right now.
But. He had himself made this offer, and it's insane of him not to be grateful for its acceptance. To notice that Louis is here in the room with him, when Lestat had just been spiralling, convincing himself they would never see each other again. He takes a breath. Don't be insane.
"Of course," he says. Comes nearer, fluttering a touch at Louis' shoulder. "You're most welcome."
There. The sleeping arrangement logistics can be deferred to a later time.
"I'm glad you could make it after all," he adds. Coy, playing at as if Louis had merely shuffled around arrangements at a whim. As if Lestat does not look like he's been in a depressive collapse for the past twelve hours, tear streaked and uncombed.
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Instead, he says, "Are you promising in return?" Keeps his focus even, his voice measured. "That you will come back to me?"
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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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But he doesn't feel resentment for it. Can't, due to all the aforementioned warmth suffusing and such. It is only familiar, and has been missed. Lestat answers the grip to his hand with a returned hold, drawing his hand in nearer. Tension bleeding from him, slouching a little into the plush side of his coffin.
"I will," he says. "And it will be only us."
Maybe he can extract more promises. Say it won't be eighty years. Say it can be counted in months at most. He opts for an easier pitch.
"If you say you will go to a show while you are in town."
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Maybe it'll be painful, watching Lestat from within a crowd or a private box. Maybe.
But Lestat needs him there. Louis needs to be there. He twitches a smile, head tipping a little as he watches Lestat relax.
"Could ask for something else, while you're trying to twist my arm. I'm here. I'll come."
A small offering.
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And won't he spend the whole time, thinking of it that way? Of violating Louis? Again? His gaze lowers, and finds that he doesn't want to decline the offer either, to extract a promise.
"The interview, then," he says.
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A little bit of comedy now, the two of them chronicled by Daniel.
Louis has been careful not to let himself think too much of what Lestat's interview will be. What shape it will take. What Lestat will tell Daniel, things he has never told Louis.
Jealousy is fast on track to outpace hunger as his constant companion, at this rate. Louis is trying not to think on that too deeply either.
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Not a very auspicious beginning, his series of interviews. In the midst of his upset at Louis' silence, impatient, unforthcoming, untrusting. Lestat knows what would make it that little bit more tolerable.
"When you have the inclination," he allows, "I would like you there sometimes."
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His fingers sweep along the shell of Lestat's ear. Fusses, tucking a stray lock of hair back, touching his face. Working his way towards a question:
"You gonna be able to say all you need to say with me there?"
Would Lestat stop himself, for fear of hurting Louis with his truth?
And beyond that, Louis doesn't trust his covetous he is of all the pieces of Lestat's story that Lestat has never shared. Long years together where Lestat obscured, kept his past hidden away. Louis wants very badly to hear it. Leans back and away from that desire, worried that it will become an inclination to pry, to disrupt.
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Nerves tingle in the wake of glancing fingertips, the subtle rearrangement of golden locks. This time, despite how aware he feels of that touch, Lestat manages not to tip into it like a touch-starved stray. A little dignity. Why not.
"Perhaps it won't work. Perhaps I will ask you to go away from it." A shrug. "Come anyway, and we'll see."
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Louis' thumb maps across his cheek. Grazes the scar at the corner of his mouth once more.
"Yeah," Louis says. A little helpless in the face of this request, of how he wants to give Lestat anything to make up for the distance Louis is creating between them. "Yeah, okay. I'll come sit with you while you and Daniel talk."
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He thinks it's good. Louis' hand at his face is good, the little nudge across his scar, evidence of a history, evidence of a history undiscussed. The things he would like Louis to know. The things he would find difficult just saying to him.
All Lestat would like to do is reach out and grab Louis and pull him down into his plush coffin with him. They can listen to music and cuddle in the low violet lighting. But all of that, he knows, is in the too much category, so he draws in a breath, considers getting a grip for the first time since he lost it a little while ago.
"If you were a fan of me, would you mind very much waiting an hour past doors opening?"
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But Lestat does not offer this, and Louis balks at the sense of imposing, contents himself with these minor touches. Lets himself linger, thumb resting there at the corner of Lestat's mouth as Louis tells him, "I would wait as long as you wanted."
Maybe a little absurd, considering their conversation. Considering it is Louis making Lestat wait and wait and wait.
But he says it. Means it.
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So Lestat has been told, anyway, of how expensive his tickets are. He brings up a hand to catch Louis', not wishing to dissuade him with a thoughtless dismissal—presses a kiss to his knuckles, for the touch, for the sentiment, for being near enough to do so. Perhaps he shouldn't ask the multi-millionaire immortal who is so beholden to him, his opinion on these things.
Well, he will sing to the janitor if everyone has gone. Lestat gathers himself, knees bending. He will need to get dressed. He will need to do his hair. He will, probably most pressingly, need to eat something.
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Here, in all soft things, in low light, no gleaming costumes or meticulously applied cosmetics. All things feel so much easier without the trappings of Lestat's new life. Stay here, close the coffin, be together.
Would that be enough?
In spite of all that's been said, Louis isn't sure. Doesn't ask that, doesn't ask him to stay. He remains, watching Lestat collect himself, make movements towards rising.
"They'll wait for you," Louis tells him. Certain.
And then, searching, "You want me to wait somewhere else while you get yourself ready?"
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Not apathetic, exactly, about where Louis might choose to be, but perhaps more resigned than anything else. As he'd said, every door is open, every room is welcoming, and it isn't up to Lestat to take this back. He doesn't feel like it. But it's a little bit of a mercy as he adds, "But we can arrange something for you, I'm sure. Here or at the venue."
Standing, stepping out of his coffin with a passing flutter of a touch, and moving to the small kitchenette. "It was quite short notice, your being here." Perhaps Louis doesn't even have any reservations yet, although his people seem responsive.
Anyway. Here is the fridge. Here is the polystyrene case inside of it.
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Louis had thought Lestat was hunting. There was certainly opportunity enough, wasn't there? Crowds upon crowds of people, transient, easily lost in the shuffle. Louis had thought—
Well, he'd been wrong.
Louis rises, straightening gracefully into a turn towards Lestat. There is no masking his relief at seeing Lestat preparing to eat. A good sign, Louis thinks.
"Rachida has my passes," telegraphs some intent. Louis can observe the show from the VIP section, above the crush of people on the arena floor. Beyond that: "The hotel is immovably booked up, but she'll find some arrangement for me."
Or there is always the plane. Annoying, being unable to evict someone from a hotel room on a whim.
Regardless, Louis intends to stay. To be present for this show, for the third. Whatever comes after, Louis will decide after he's certain Lestat is back on track.
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Pauses at that, glancing over, before taking out a ceramic cup. "Well," Lestat says. "I have all this room, if you have your coffin on hand."
That seems fine, doesn't it? That offer? An offer a friend would make, to share the expansive suite. Lestat isn't even using either bedroom. He pivots to the kitchen island, sets about emptying small packets of blood into the cup.
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An admission, as good as taking Lestat up on the offer to share. He would have realized it anyway, once dawn came and Louis retreated nowhere but perhaps to the as yet untouched bed.
"Got out of the habit, mostly."
A thorny subject. Louis has been considering it on and off. He has had a lovely new coffin commissioned, one that would strike Lestat as familiar. Maybe by the time it arrives Louis will have achieved some clarity, figured out his own feelings on how he might keep himself during the day.
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Anyway: Louis didn't bring a coffin, and calls it a habit. Lestat hesitates over his cup before turning to put it into the microwave, a careless closing of the door and a thoughtless couple minutes dialed into the timer. Something about this information makes him want to freak out, he thinks. Why, he also can't identify in the moment.
"You sleep upside down from the rafters instead?"
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Ha, ha.
Louis straightening, casting his eyes around the room. It's not truly a home, only a temporary place in which Lestat has landed. He will leave in a few days. How much can truly be gleaned from this space?
Attention drawn to the microwave, to Lestat. Louis circles around the opulence of Lestat's coffin to perch at the edge of the mattress. Observe him in his preparations.
Maybe glean his reaction. Louis has lived over a century, much of it apart from Lestat, but still, part of him seeks Lestat's opinion.
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"I suppose a multi-million dollar enterprise affords you some trust in your curtains," he says. He twists enough to glance backwards at him, and then the large windows of his suite, calculating the integrity of their furnishings. Ill at ease at the thought. "And the people who might twitch them aside without thought."
Back to the microwave, tugging the door open long before the beeping. Blood doesn't need to be boiling to be tolerable.
"You can stay here, if it suits you." It may not. Louis has expensive taste of a different kind of echelon.
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It had never mattered with Armand, had not mattered in their bedroom in Dubai. It is something else now, Louis thinks.
It matters, like any lightly self-destructive thing does.
Lestat makes this offer, and Louis saying nothing immediately. He is aware of how it appeals. How much he wants to remain near, how many worries he carries still. Lestat still strikes him as fragile, unsteady.
And Louis wants him back as he found him, washed clean of make up and stage wear, in soft clothes, familiar.
"With you?" Louis questions, drawing himself up short before the dream runs away with him. Lestat has other admirers. Louis has given him permission to indulge any whim he pleases.
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He fishes the mug from out of the microwave, now wandering nearer. Stops short of inviting himself to sit down near him. No, he has things to do if he wishes to achieve the impossible and perform tonight. And, oh yes, speaking of Cookie—
Lestat looks to the ceiling, the wandering look of him reaching out with his mind, delivering a message. Then, bringing his cup up to sip.
"I'm not using my bed," he says. "And I recall your hospitality, during the hurricane."
And of course, he wants Louis near, always, hungers for it, wants to crawl into his arms or pick him up in his own and run away. But borderlands have been reaffirmed. If Louis is to share his room, it will be because it is the most sensible thing. And if there is hunger in the direction of his gaze over his cup as he drinks, well. He is hungry.
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Waking up the morning after the storm with Lestat. Everything that had felt easy, until it simply wasn't anymore.
Louis draws fingertips along the open coffin lid. Struggles with the urge to say, Let me share it with you.
"I want to stay with you."
A clear preference. Not a last resort.
"Anywhere you'll have me."
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Louis does not want to stay with him, anywhere he'll have him. Or he does, but can't. Has asked him for time, has all but promised him he would come back to him. And yes, perhaps now they are only talking about this one night, but what does that matter? One night becomes one eternity. He stands stock still to guard against these impulses, watching Louis' hand fondle his coffin, and considers that ketamine would probably help him out right now.
But. He had himself made this offer, and it's insane of him not to be grateful for its acceptance. To notice that Louis is here in the room with him, when Lestat had just been spiralling, convincing himself they would never see each other again. He takes a breath. Don't be insane.
"Of course," he says. Comes nearer, fluttering a touch at Louis' shoulder. "You're most welcome."
There. The sleeping arrangement logistics can be deferred to a later time.
"I'm glad you could make it after all," he adds. Coy, playing at as if Louis had merely shuffled around arrangements at a whim. As if Lestat does not look like he's been in a depressive collapse for the past twelve hours, tear streaked and uncombed.
What he means: it is nice to be rescued.
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