He is still comfortably aroused, holding his breath while Louis' fingers trace down his cheek to mark. The tangling hold he has of Louis briefly tightens in satisfaction, a non-urgent but all the same pressing need to be close, to have that contact, muffled through winter layers though it is.
A thump from a room upstairs, a smattering of conversation down the hallway outside.
"I had an apartment in Paris that sounded like this," Lestat tells Louis. "At all hours. Certainly, sometimes it was me. I would not choose it again," to be clear, a fingertip touching exposed skin past Louis' collar. "But it felt like the best of all worlds, for a time."
Until a townhouse in New Orleans. Until art on the walls, abandoning a coffin to sleep crowded in the other.
Louis is quiet. Torn. Here is Lestat, offering up easy what Louis had once wanted. What Claudia had pried after.
Claudia. Claudia and her little dressing table, her mirror, her coffin with its pink satin lining. Claudia in Paris, scratching at the confines of the body she'd been bound in. Their apartment together. It had sounded sometimes like this too.
(Spare no words for San Francisco. Sausalito. New York. Apartments and houses, places where Louis had made a home without either of them.)
It is hard to remember. It would be difficult to speak aloud.
Louis turns his head, ducks to place lips to the untouched stretch of skin at Lestat's throat opposite the bite he'd left. Kiss there, testing his own self-control.
"I wish you'd been with us," Louis says, there against the skin. Hush, treading over painful territory. "When we were there."
We. Louis, Claudia.
It's a complicated wish. It could never have been. Louis had dreamed Lestat there a thousand ways, but the reality was that Claudia wouldn't have tolerated it. Louis couldn't have let himself have it.
But everything would have been different if he had been with them. Everything.
Lestat closes his eyes as the other side of his throat is kissed. Spoken against. An internal pause at this invocation, us, that wrenches his heart around, and he is quiet.
Tender territory. What little he knows of Louis and Claudia's adventures in Paris nevertheless paint a picture of a period of happiness, of a life built without him. Free of him. Louis, who has missed him, has said so, wishes he was there, and Lestat can only say—
"Me too."
And try not to laden his voice with the weight of it, the hurt and the sorrow, and maybe come out successful.
It feels like a precipice, a nickname of old like a hand tugging him back from the edge of it. A sharp drop, otherwise, into some cold place.
It is warm here, held closer, kissed, murmured to. Maybe if Lestat was not counting on Louis to taste his blood again, he would say nothing, let it all evaporate into the warmth around him.
But he will taste, Lestat is sure, so he says, "What has changed?" A thicker quality to his voice, eyes now glossy but kept concealed where he closes them, tucked in so closely to Louis. "You escaped me. Why come back?"
The answer is all tangled up in their circumstances. Trapped in a place with no way out, with only each other to lean on. Louis knows it has changed things.
He knows Lestat isn't asking about how they live here.
The question is about New Orleans. The water-logged cottage. The hurricane. Their embrace in the middle of it all.
"Everything changed," Louis says quietly. "It all changed after I found out what was true about that night."
He slides a hand up between them, fingertips finding the edge of Louis' jaw. Brushing his thumb down his cheek, down to his chin, a gesture that perhaps Louis' nerve endings know well from a thousand times Lestat has touched him this way before.
"If I am the same thing I was when you left," he presses. A crooked little smile, all affection beneath the rest. "You know me anywhere."
Remembering the waiver signed as a hurricane bore down on the city. Private humor in that moment, the acceptance of true risk for the first time in so many years.
"But it ain't gonna be the same."
It will be something else. New. Different.
They are both of them changed. If the passing years have changed Louis, they have changed Lestat too. They've spoken not at all about it, but Louis is certain of it.
"It ain't gonna be perfect. But I don't want that."
Seventy-seven years of serenity, of all discord smoothed away. Louis can't abide it again.
It won't be the same, and it's taken as the assurance it's intended to be. Louis entering his shack and speaking such insight, reflection, wisdom, as though he had not spent decades hating and hating after all.
Lestat nods, barely, and it only needs to be that much with how close they are. Then, he noses in closer still so he can kiss Louis' mouth, like he had not been able to do for so long, like he had felt was a transgression even before that, when all things fell apart.
Gentle, sweet, brief.
"We visit Paris," he tells him. "When we leave this place."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
A thump from a room upstairs, a smattering of conversation down the hallway outside.
"I had an apartment in Paris that sounded like this," Lestat tells Louis. "At all hours. Certainly, sometimes it was me. I would not choose it again," to be clear, a fingertip touching exposed skin past Louis' collar. "But it felt like the best of all worlds, for a time."
Until a townhouse in New Orleans. Until art on the walls, abandoning a coffin to sleep crowded in the other.
no subject
Louis is quiet. Torn. Here is Lestat, offering up easy what Louis had once wanted. What Claudia had pried after.
Claudia. Claudia and her little dressing table, her mirror, her coffin with its pink satin lining. Claudia in Paris, scratching at the confines of the body she'd been bound in. Their apartment together. It had sounded sometimes like this too.
(Spare no words for San Francisco. Sausalito. New York. Apartments and houses, places where Louis had made a home without either of them.)
It is hard to remember. It would be difficult to speak aloud.
Louis turns his head, ducks to place lips to the untouched stretch of skin at Lestat's throat opposite the bite he'd left. Kiss there, testing his own self-control.
"I wish you'd been with us," Louis says, there against the skin. Hush, treading over painful territory. "When we were there."
We. Louis, Claudia.
It's a complicated wish. It could never have been. Louis had dreamed Lestat there a thousand ways, but the reality was that Claudia wouldn't have tolerated it. Louis couldn't have let himself have it.
But everything would have been different if he had been with them. Everything.
no subject
Tender territory. What little he knows of Louis and Claudia's adventures in Paris nevertheless paint a picture of a period of happiness, of a life built without him. Free of him. Louis, who has missed him, has said so, wishes he was there, and Lestat can only say—
"Me too."
And try not to laden his voice with the weight of it, the hurt and the sorrow, and maybe come out successful.
no subject
Louis can't be certain it isn't just pain, pain for them both over what came of Louis and Claudia in Paris. If they had gone anywhere else—
The thought is simply stopped.
Louis has weighed it all out before. If they'd done this, gone there. It had nearly killed him. And it changes nothing. Claudia is still dead.
A pause, quiet, while Louis continues kissing at Lestat's throat. Sucks over his pulse. Tightens an arm about his waist.
Entreats, soft: "Les."
Old nicknames. It still comes easy.
no subject
It is warm here, held closer, kissed, murmured to. Maybe if Lestat was not counting on Louis to taste his blood again, he would say nothing, let it all evaporate into the warmth around him.
But he will taste, Lestat is sure, so he says, "What has changed?" A thicker quality to his voice, eyes now glossy but kept concealed where he closes them, tucked in so closely to Louis. "You escaped me. Why come back?"
no subject
He knows Lestat isn't asking about how they live here.
The question is about New Orleans. The water-logged cottage. The hurricane. Their embrace in the middle of it all.
"Everything changed," Louis says quietly. "It all changed after I found out what was true about that night."
What Lestat had done. What Armand had attempted.
Now Louis knew all of it.
no subject
He slides a hand up between them, fingertips finding the edge of Louis' jaw. Brushing his thumb down his cheek, down to his chin, a gesture that perhaps Louis' nerve endings know well from a thousand times Lestat has touched him this way before.
"If I am the same thing I was when you left," he presses. A crooked little smile, all affection beneath the rest. "You know me anywhere."
no subject
Remembering the waiver signed as a hurricane bore down on the city. Private humor in that moment, the acceptance of true risk for the first time in so many years.
"But it ain't gonna be the same."
It will be something else. New. Different.
They are both of them changed. If the passing years have changed Louis, they have changed Lestat too. They've spoken not at all about it, but Louis is certain of it.
"It ain't gonna be perfect. But I don't want that."
Seventy-seven years of serenity, of all discord smoothed away. Louis can't abide it again.
no subject
Lestat nods, barely, and it only needs to be that much with how close they are. Then, he noses in closer still so he can kiss Louis' mouth, like he had not been able to do for so long, like he had felt was a transgression even before that, when all things fell apart.
Gentle, sweet, brief.
"We visit Paris," he tells him. "When we leave this place."
is this how territory
To go together to Paris. To walk streets together. See what changed. See what remains.
To do it all without Claudia.
Louis kisses his mouth once more. Murmurs, "Yeah. We go to Paris."
And remember her. Their daughter. Claudia.