The promise that matters most. The thing Lestat promised once too.
"And we will not have to make do with what has been given. We'll go anywhere we want. Down the street, across the ocean." Coaxing Louis, and coaxing himself as well. Away from fraught conversations, the various messes, the arguments. And isn't it nice, that coming to Louis should be the peaceful thing?
It hasn't always been that way, for them. "Sheet music, cassettes, radio. The movie theatre. Cars, traffic, sirens. A world larger than a teacup and its tempest."
Louis had wandered all over the world with Armand. He wants that again, with Lestat.
He slides hands up his back, cups his face. Lestat, still. Lestat, human. Lestat, with his monster clawing out from beneath the skin. Louis' heart knows him. Their hearts recognize each other anywhere.
A soft kiss, first to his mouth, and then his cheek, his temple, his forehead. See how he is not afraid. See how they can have this still.
It's calming to imagine these outcomes—to let himself do it, after going through the motions of carving out a sustainable existence in this place. Lestat has spoken before to Louis about his thoughts about breeding his dogs, his plans that would have spanned months. Longer. It had been—
Well. Helpful. And now it is all uncertain again, so he must think of the way the river smells after a big storm, the way the city breathes in those grey hours before the sun rises. And Louis, with him.
And, as he is kissed, the clutch of certainty and anxiety both that he does not want to take the monster back with him.
This admission as his fingers run up and down Lestat's back. Yes, Louis spoke to her. Yes, Louis managed to avoid interjecting in Lestat's conversation, baring his teeth, warning her away.
"She's slippery," Louis admits. Nothing they haven't already discussed, nothing Lestat doesn't already know. "But we know that. We ain't walking into it blind, dealing with her."
And powers beyond comprehension. But doubting feels like chasing one's own tail. Of course they doubt. It would be easy to distrust oneself into complete paralysis.
Lestat tugs Louis' weight into him a little, or makes the attempt. Up to Louis if he wishes to be swayed.
"Lie down with me," he invites. "Tell me what was said."
An appealing request. Louis is still carrying tension from the entire conversation, all that had been said, all that it might mean for their future, but Lestat pulls and Louis sways into him easy. Noses in close, brushes a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
"Yeah, okay," He agrees. "Come on."
The bed is still small, but they fit. They tangle close. Louis coaxes him close, gets fingers in his hair, toying with the loose locks.
"I made some requests of my own," he admits. "While you were working on her."
Yes, this is where he wants to be. Maybe if they had one of their parlours like the old days, they might strike dignified postures on lovely upholstery, but they don't, so they don't. Like this, they can enjoy the way they fit together, so well practiced at it now that when Lestat lays with another, he can note every difference. But then, he never quite lays like this with anyone else.
He settles his knuckles into the dip of Louis' spine, watching him in close proximity.
"Oh?" he says. "A carriage and four horses, to take us back to America?"
"Nah," Louis answers. "Though maybe I gotta go back and ask about a carrier for all your dogs."
And then what will they do with all those dogs back in New Orleans, in the middle of a hurricane? Louis spent a lot of money on that hotel room, but he can't imagine it won't be remarked upon to return with a soggy vampire and a pack of dogs.
They'll figure it out.
Quietly, Louis tells him, "I asked her to let us take someone back with us."
But then, how beyond, when he knows so immediately who Louis means?
Lestat is still, quiet, a subtle tension creeping back into his expression, the way a guard comes up against the inevitability of hurt feelings more to prevent them escaping containment than the other way around. No withdrawal, settled into close and comfortable, but his hand curls a little tighter there at Louis' back.
They're so close that Louis can feel it as the tension pulls through Lestat's body.
His fingers lift, cup Lestat's jaw. Runs a thumb along his cheek. Soothing. Staying there, close. Eyes moving over Lestat's face, observing the play of expression there.
It's a relief, maybe, that Lestat guesses so quickly. They know each other still. They are transparent to each other. In this moment, Louis feels like it will make this easier. Hopes Lestat will understand.
"I don't wanna leave him here," Louis explains. "I can't do it."
His eyes flicker as Louis touches his face, like a ripple. Soothing, yes, steadying (a reminder, us, a greater force), but in danger of encouraging more vulnerable feelings to the surface.
They have never been good with thirds. They have been at their happiest with thirds.
Lestat tips his head against the mattress, letting his gaze wander off Louis' eyes. Nose, lips, the dip of his shirt, the low light curling off one high cheekbone. A nameless, anxious feeling, growing through him like rapid weeds, tangling through rib cage, reaching for his heart.
"He is so lonely," he murmurs, quiet, a whisper. "And believes himself so doomed. We spoke a little. Maybe you heard."
He doesn't quite remember when they started speaking privately, but he is sure some of it wasn't.
Tacit admission that Louis had been listening to it all. All those conversations, seeking Lestat's voice among the flurry of responses. They'd argued about it before. Louis had tried to keep hi distance.
Failed. Again.
His fingers span Lestat's face. Cup his cheek. Fingers curl at the hinge of his jaw.
"You ain't gotta tell me about it."
Tenuous, difficult terrain. He wants Lestat to have his privacy. To respect what it is that passes between him and Wrench.
But he wants to know everything. He wants to know everything.
It is nice that Louis listens. It is nice that he wants to know more, Lestat suspects, permission to keep it to himself aside.
He continues, "He was glad I had you and a place to go home to. He spoke of how he had nothing such as that, really. I argued the point a little, but not too much. Not when he was so far away." Lestat feels at his most convincing when he is close, when he has all methods of persuasion at his disposal.
And he did want to persuade. "So I made him promise me to teach me some of his signing," comes with a hint of a fond, amused little smile. "I remember I knew something like it in our dream."
Not touching the thing Louis has spoken of yet. Too hot and bright to behold too quickly.
But it's one thing to save a mortal they're fond of. Louis says he has been meaning to ask, to learn a language. It makes him think—well. It makes him think a rush of several things, like dogs let loose from captivity to run wild, and he must take a breath even if he can feel his eyes grow glossy, blurry.
Oh, if only it was Lestat telling Louis he wanted to rescue Wrench, and Louis speaking cautious questions and managing his feelings.
It's good they're lying down, tangled together, Louis touching him carefully, Lestat holding him near. The words come a little too quick to be completely devoid of feeling, but by necessity, they are quiet, soft. Maybe it would all start coming out of him too loud if they were sitting primly in a parlour. Find a fight he can put all of this into.
He doesn't want that. Very much not. He does not even want to press Louis into taking all of this back. He does not want Wrench to die. It is just—
"You would want to keep him close, wouldn't you?"
Not enough, Lestat thinks, to set Wrench loose and alone into their world.
Isn't it? About what Louis wants? What Louis chooses? Whom?
But Lestat lets the sentiment settle, the intent behind it. The question hidden within it.
Quiet for a time. In truth, he has already entertained these feelings that rise up now. Swallowed them when he suggested to Louis they take Wrench to bed together. Trying to make room, find a way through, make it something pleasurable. And it was pleasurable. The night had ended and Lestat wanted to do it again.
"All of these things we speak of," he says, finally. "How it will be for us when we go home. I don't want it to change. To break. I'm scared—"
A fracture in his voice, and he is immediately annoyed with himself, a little peevish sigh leaving him, a shift in his body like he might roll aside.
It comes back now, the familiar dimensions of this wavering quality in Lestat's voice, the way his words break, the expression on his face. He shifts and Louis moves with him, sliding his hand along Lestat's cheek to demand eye contact. Demand closeness, Louis already leaning to maintain this intimacy.
"What are you scared of?"
Louis can guess. He doesn't think he's forgotten enough not to know.
Maybe it would have been different before, if they could talk this way. If Louis could have tolerated it, had the ability to hear Lestat, to speak to him in return.
But it hadn't been possible. It had taken Louis a long time to learn.
It is a little different, this, compared to how often Louis would let him move away, leave the room, end the argument. How often Louis would not follow him, return to his book or his silent conversation with Claudia, and Lestat would have to find his own way back. Or not.
Now Louis is present and close, nearly pinning him down. His heart rabbits in his chest but his hands resettle, finding a place on his waist.
"That it will end before we can begin again," he tells him. "That you will choose another who you envision easier centuries with."
He thinks of the moments before he found himself kneeling on the floor of their boudoir, ready to drain a little girl of all her blood. Louis' promises and pleas had not been why he had given in, not really, he had done it because he was fairly certain that not doing it would kill Louis. But he thinks of those promises and pleas now. Falsehoods.
He thinks how this is not that. So gently certain, sober, sanity in pale green eyes and conviction in attentive hands.
"I could not bear it," Lestat tells him with a tearful shake of his head, of this thing Louis promises it won't be. The way Lestat would ruin things, and he knows he would. It feels like an especially pampered circle of hell, to live an eternity as Louis' second favourite, eventually discarded entirely.
A little room to wonder what Wrench could bear. Tolerate.
But for the moment: he leans in past Louis' hands, presses their foreheads together.
It's hard to know what kind of balance they'd strike, the two of them and Wrench. Louis has his own fears, held quietly to his chest.
But they can find a balance. Louis is sure of that. They can manage to be three in the world as it exists now, limitless and open and filled with possibility.
And even if there cannot be three, Wrench would be there. A new life. Anything he wished to make of it. Eternity, if he wished it. Louis would give that to him.
"I ain't asking you to bear that. You believe me?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Picking up where they left off, no interruption. Just this time spent away, an interlude. A dream they both wake from at the same time.
Louis turns his head, kisses Lestat's temple.
"I made you some promises here. I'll keep 'em, even if I gotta do it when we get back."
A house, for them both. A life together.
no subject
The promise that matters most. The thing Lestat promised once too.
"And we will not have to make do with what has been given. We'll go anywhere we want. Down the street, across the ocean." Coaxing Louis, and coaxing himself as well. Away from fraught conversations, the various messes, the arguments. And isn't it nice, that coming to Louis should be the peaceful thing?
It hasn't always been that way, for them. "Sheet music, cassettes, radio. The movie theatre. Cars, traffic, sirens. A world larger than a teacup and its tempest."
no subject
Louis had wandered all over the world with Armand. He wants that again, with Lestat.
He slides hands up his back, cups his face. Lestat, still. Lestat, human. Lestat, with his monster clawing out from beneath the skin. Louis' heart knows him. Their hearts recognize each other anywhere.
A soft kiss, first to his mouth, and then his cheek, his temple, his forehead. See how he is not afraid. See how they can have this still.
"We gonna get ourselves out."
A promise.
no subject
Well. Helpful. And now it is all uncertain again, so he must think of the way the river smells after a big storm, the way the city breathes in those grey hours before the sun rises. And Louis, with him.
And, as he is kissed, the clutch of certainty and anxiety both that he does not want to take the monster back with him.
"Did you speak to her?"
no subject
This admission as his fingers run up and down Lestat's back. Yes, Louis spoke to her. Yes, Louis managed to avoid interjecting in Lestat's conversation, baring his teeth, warning her away.
"She's slippery," Louis admits. Nothing they haven't already discussed, nothing Lestat doesn't already know. "But we know that. We ain't walking into it blind, dealing with her."
no subject
And powers beyond comprehension. But doubting feels like chasing one's own tail. Of course they doubt. It would be easy to distrust oneself into complete paralysis.
Lestat tugs Louis' weight into him a little, or makes the attempt. Up to Louis if he wishes to be swayed.
"Lie down with me," he invites. "Tell me what was said."
no subject
"Yeah, okay," He agrees. "Come on."
The bed is still small, but they fit. They tangle close. Louis coaxes him close, gets fingers in his hair, toying with the loose locks.
"I made some requests of my own," he admits. "While you were working on her."
no subject
He settles his knuckles into the dip of Louis' spine, watching him in close proximity.
"Oh?" he says. "A carriage and four horses, to take us back to America?"
no subject
And then what will they do with all those dogs back in New Orleans, in the middle of a hurricane? Louis spent a lot of money on that hotel room, but he can't imagine it won't be remarked upon to return with a soggy vampire and a pack of dogs.
They'll figure it out.
Quietly, Louis tells him, "I asked her to let us take someone back with us."
no subject
But then, how beyond, when he knows so immediately who Louis means?
Lestat is still, quiet, a subtle tension creeping back into his expression, the way a guard comes up against the inevitability of hurt feelings more to prevent them escaping containment than the other way around. No withdrawal, settled into close and comfortable, but his hand curls a little tighter there at Louis' back.
"Wrench," he says.
no subject
His fingers lift, cup Lestat's jaw. Runs a thumb along his cheek. Soothing. Staying there, close. Eyes moving over Lestat's face, observing the play of expression there.
It's a relief, maybe, that Lestat guesses so quickly. They know each other still. They are transparent to each other. In this moment, Louis feels like it will make this easier. Hopes Lestat will understand.
"I don't wanna leave him here," Louis explains. "I can't do it."
no subject
They have never been good with thirds. They have been at their happiest with thirds.
Lestat tips his head against the mattress, letting his gaze wander off Louis' eyes. Nose, lips, the dip of his shirt, the low light curling off one high cheekbone. A nameless, anxious feeling, growing through him like rapid weeds, tangling through rib cage, reaching for his heart.
"He is so lonely," he murmurs, quiet, a whisper. "And believes himself so doomed. We spoke a little. Maybe you heard."
He doesn't quite remember when they started speaking privately, but he is sure some of it wasn't.
no subject
Tacit admission that Louis had been listening to it all. All those conversations, seeking Lestat's voice among the flurry of responses. They'd argued about it before. Louis had tried to keep hi distance.
Failed. Again.
His fingers span Lestat's face. Cup his cheek. Fingers curl at the hinge of his jaw.
"You ain't gotta tell me about it."
Tenuous, difficult terrain. He wants Lestat to have his privacy. To respect what it is that passes between him and Wrench.
But he wants to know everything. He wants to know everything.
no subject
He continues, "He was glad I had you and a place to go home to. He spoke of how he had nothing such as that, really. I argued the point a little, but not too much. Not when he was so far away." Lestat feels at his most convincing when he is close, when he has all methods of persuasion at his disposal.
And he did want to persuade. "So I made him promise me to teach me some of his signing," comes with a hint of a fond, amused little smile. "I remember I knew something like it in our dream."
Not touching the thing Louis has spoken of yet. Too hot and bright to behold too quickly.
cw suicide ideation, etc.
Would the medium through which they spoke make a difference? Was Louis better with his hands than he had been otherwise?
Claudia had taken to it all easy. Louis had needed decades. Decades after her to accomplish what Claudia had taught herself in a handful of years.
Memories of her have been close since the dream. Closer since he spoke to Wrench, made his offer.
"He ain't gonna last if he stays here."
And maybe Louis speaks from experience. From certainty that he would have been ash several times over had it not been for Lestat, or for Claudia.
For Armand.
Louis can't back away from that truth.
If he'd been alone, he would have died. He would have walked into the sun, without anyone present to stop him.
no subject
But it's one thing to save a mortal they're fond of. Louis says he has been meaning to ask, to learn a language. It makes him think—well. It makes him think a rush of several things, like dogs let loose from captivity to run wild, and he must take a breath even if he can feel his eyes grow glossy, blurry.
Oh, if only it was Lestat telling Louis he wanted to rescue Wrench, and Louis speaking cautious questions and managing his feelings.
"You've spoken to him?"
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Says, "Yeah. I talked to him."
Could leave it there. It's an honest answer.
But they are trying to be better, so Louis adds, "I asked him if he'd think on it. If he'd come if I could find a way."
no subject
It's good they're lying down, tangled together, Louis touching him carefully, Lestat holding him near. The words come a little too quick to be completely devoid of feeling, but by necessity, they are quiet, soft. Maybe it would all start coming out of him too loud if they were sitting primly in a parlour. Find a fight he can put all of this into.
He doesn't want that. Very much not. He does not even want to press Louis into taking all of this back. He does not want Wrench to die. It is just—
"You would want to keep him close, wouldn't you?"
Not enough, Lestat thinks, to set Wrench loose and alone into their world.
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His fingers are so gentle, catching the spill of salt water from Lestat's eyes. (Startling still, not to find red.)
"Yeah," Louis tells him. "But it ain't just about what I want."
What does Lestat want? What could Lestat tolerate?
What would Wrench want, when drawn into a world that isn't hunting him? When he could make himself there new?
no subject
But Lestat lets the sentiment settle, the intent behind it. The question hidden within it.
Quiet for a time. In truth, he has already entertained these feelings that rise up now. Swallowed them when he suggested to Louis they take Wrench to bed together. Trying to make room, find a way through, make it something pleasurable. And it was pleasurable. The night had ended and Lestat wanted to do it again.
"All of these things we speak of," he says, finally. "How it will be for us when we go home. I don't want it to change. To break. I'm scared—"
A fracture in his voice, and he is immediately annoyed with himself, a little peevish sigh leaving him, a shift in his body like he might roll aside.
no subject
How had he forgotten?
It comes back now, the familiar dimensions of this wavering quality in Lestat's voice, the way his words break, the expression on his face. He shifts and Louis moves with him, sliding his hand along Lestat's cheek to demand eye contact. Demand closeness, Louis already leaning to maintain this intimacy.
"What are you scared of?"
Louis can guess. He doesn't think he's forgotten enough not to know.
Maybe it would have been different before, if they could talk this way. If Louis could have tolerated it, had the ability to hear Lestat, to speak to him in return.
But it hadn't been possible. It had taken Louis a long time to learn.
no subject
Now Louis is present and close, nearly pinning him down. His heart rabbits in his chest but his hands resettle, finding a place on his waist.
"That it will end before we can begin again," he tells him. "That you will choose another who you envision easier centuries with."
For a third time.
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Louis does not let himself think of where.
He remains here, cradling Lestat's face. Listening to his voice, the words, but also the tremor of it. This old fear.
"You and me," Louis reminds. "It's gonna be you and me, always."
A promise.
Companions.
"It ain't supposed to be you or him. That ain't what I want."
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He thinks how this is not that. So gently certain, sober, sanity in pale green eyes and conviction in attentive hands.
"I could not bear it," Lestat tells him with a tearful shake of his head, of this thing Louis promises it won't be. The way Lestat would ruin things, and he knows he would. It feels like an especially pampered circle of hell, to live an eternity as Louis' second favourite, eventually discarded entirely.
A little room to wonder what Wrench could bear. Tolerate.
But for the moment: he leans in past Louis' hands, presses their foreheads together.
no subject
It's hard to know what kind of balance they'd strike, the two of them and Wrench. Louis has his own fears, held quietly to his chest.
But they can find a balance. Louis is sure of that. They can manage to be three in the world as it exists now, limitless and open and filled with possibility.
And even if there cannot be three, Wrench would be there. A new life. Anything he wished to make of it. Eternity, if he wished it. Louis would give that to him.
"I ain't asking you to bear that. You believe me?"
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