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?"
He feels his body doesn't believe it, really. Like any wrong word or misheard phrase from Louis would send it into a panicked state and he would be helpless behind it, unable to believe anything, only that he is unwanted and being lied to. But Lestat curls his hand in Louis' shirt, makes himself lie still against him.
Nods. He believes it. Capable of that, here, now. Louis has promised him that they will be a home to one another again, over and over, without any prompting.
Finally, shoving the focus off his own heart—
"And what did Monsieur Wrench have to say? To your offering."
Obviously, he accepted. Who wouldn't, when Louis du Lac offers a hand, bids them to come to him?
Louis hardly knows what his own life looks like anymore. He has a penthouse in Dubai, which Armand is vacating. He has a hotel suite.
He has Lestat.
Parts and pieces. Fragments and wreckage. Louis doesn't know what shape he can assemble them into.
And Lestat says, Tell me.
Louis leans up, better to meet Lestat's gaze. His fingers twirl a lock of hair between his fingers, watching his expression as Louis murmurs, "I'm not sure."
The strange dissonance between the things they've planned for themselves here. Now, abruptly, the necessity of shunting those dreams back to their home.
"I'm gonna keep my promises to you," Louis tells him softly. A home, space for them. "The rest, I still gotta work out."
Better that way, maybe. Feeling out something together, while the heart of it beats constant. Making a home. They had put too much in trying to make what they had imagined a home to be, perhaps.
Among all the other mistakes, granted.
"My slate is clean," Lestat says, a little levity. "Washed away by now, I think."
He was just waiting, he knows. Living, enduring, whatever—but waiting to be found, rescued, killed, something. Some kind of freedom.
He hasn't told Lestat much of anything about it, really. It's an odd time to start.
"When we get back I gotta figure out what's worth keeping."
A light tap of his thumb at the corner of his mouth, a ward against any doubts. This, he is keeping. Lestat will be kept, always.
"We can make something that works. That you can bear," Louis tells him, soft. He wants to make bigger promises. It's in Louis' nature. Promise happiness, luxury, comfort. But he's starting small. The promise to create a life. The promise that Lestat will find it good.
Lestat's mouth twists, one of those complicated little smiles, as his own wording comes out of Louis' mouth. How dramatic of himself, never mind how much he meant it.
"I had wondered if you'd want to forget everything of this place," he says. "Start from the beginning again."
Wrench complicates this. Lestat complicates this, his monster enmeshed as it is. But it could still be that way. Make their promises quieter things, pretend Lestat had never said companion first. Take it as slowly as Lestat suspects Louis would have taken things had they not been dragged here, being his own companion and all, and newly free from Armand's strange tyrannies.
Lestat is his own kind of tyrannical. It had been among Claudia's favourite words. He feels it now, possessive and demanding, wishing to coil all around Louis and keep him to himself.
Lestat tucks his chin in, kisses at Louis' hand, whatever part of it is nearest. Still feeling a little frantic, like he had for a time taken Louis and his affections for granted, of being his sole focus, but this last thing has not been so. An energy he isn't sure what to do with, an energy that won't be extinguished completely tonight.
But he can help it along. He can push even more into what space remains between them and kiss Louis' mouth, half-roll him back, tangle in tighter.
"Say you choose me," he bids him. He can't ask for the other thing, the words Louis isn't prepared to give him, but he can ask for that. For Louis to state that he chooses Lestat, not simply chosen by.
Warm, quiet. He does. (He does, he does.) Maybe it takes effort but he does, because not doing so would be obscene when Louis is looking at him this way, laying beneath him, touching him. Lestat lowers his head to kiss him back.
"You keep choosing me," is gentle instruction. Continue as they mean to go on. Don't fall so much in love with another, in whatever shape that love takes, that Lestat finds himself on the wrong side of the conversation. And because it is only fair, and he has some awareness of his own history to know better than to say nothing, he adds, "I'll keep choosing you."
Less of a summoning of Antoinette than a summoning of Louis' feelings about her, Lestat would say. But no need to go into the particulars.
A different sort of vow they're making, this time. Very direct, not much poetry. But that's what they've needed, since they came back to each other. Since they've been here.
"My companion," as a reminder, hooking back to that altar anyway. What they'd promised each other. What they'd found so difficult to manage, as the years went on. Louis draws his knuckles gently down Lestat's cheek, watching his eyes. Delicately, carefully, Louis asks, "You say it too."
Yes, it feels particularly artless. Simple trades. Honest ones. Endearing.
The promise of companionship had felt so easy, once. They had spent a year this way, sharing evenings, talking for hours, learning one another, creating a shared language of references, little affections, hidden flatteries. And even then, Lestat withholding what he felt he could not share, and Louis denying what he felt he could not express.
It doesn't feel difficult now, only much harder won than he ever would have imagined when he had finally lured Louis into friendship. Into romance. Now, he raises a hand to press Louis' to his cheek, turning his head to kiss into his palm. Something that says, yours, before the other thing is said.
"And you are mine, Louis," he says. "My companion."
He kisses him, a kiss that wanders a little ways to his cheek, jaw, where Lestat can whisper, "And I love you."
Lestat gives him more than he asked for. Gives him this declaration. He's been sparing with confessions of love, maybe a concession to Louis' tight rope walk, balancing distance with the demands of this place, pushing them together over and over.
Hearing it now, Louis is quiet. He takes Lestat's face in his hands, brings him back up to kiss.
Can't say it back. Still frozen, still locked away inside his body. But he kisses Lestat so, so softly.
"You and me," Louis repeats. "Ain't nothing going to change it."
Nothing had. All those long years apart, Louis had done nothing but love him. It is woven so deeply into his body, nothing could change it.
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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?
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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.
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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?"
no subject
Nods. He believes it. Capable of that, here, now. Louis has promised him that they will be a home to one another again, over and over, without any prompting.
Finally, shoving the focus off his own heart—
"And what did Monsieur Wrench have to say? To your offering."
Obviously, he accepted. Who wouldn't, when Louis du Lac offers a hand, bids them to come to him?
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Confirmation.
Louis relates this as a man who thought of the possibility of no, who feared receiving it.
"He said he'd come away with us."
This as Louis hooks a leg around Lestat's, leans his weight into him as he relays Wrench's response.
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A nod that says good.
"Tell me," he invites. "What you are imagining for us. What it would look like for you."
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It's only that Louis isn't sure of the answer.
Louis hardly knows what his own life looks like anymore. He has a penthouse in Dubai, which Armand is vacating. He has a hotel suite.
He has Lestat.
Parts and pieces. Fragments and wreckage. Louis doesn't know what shape he can assemble them into.
And Lestat says, Tell me.
Louis leans up, better to meet Lestat's gaze. His fingers twirl a lock of hair between his fingers, watching his expression as Louis murmurs, "I'm not sure."
The strange dissonance between the things they've planned for themselves here. Now, abruptly, the necessity of shunting those dreams back to their home.
"I'm gonna keep my promises to you," Louis tells him softly. A home, space for them. "The rest, I still gotta work out."
no subject
Among all the other mistakes, granted.
"My slate is clean," Lestat says, a little levity. "Washed away by now, I think."
He was just waiting, he knows. Living, enduring, whatever—but waiting to be found, rescued, killed, something. Some kind of freedom.
no subject
He hasn't told Lestat much of anything about it, really. It's an odd time to start.
"When we get back I gotta figure out what's worth keeping."
A light tap of his thumb at the corner of his mouth, a ward against any doubts. This, he is keeping. Lestat will be kept, always.
"We can make something that works. That you can bear," Louis tells him, soft. He wants to make bigger promises. It's in Louis' nature. Promise happiness, luxury, comfort. But he's starting small. The promise to create a life. The promise that Lestat will find it good.
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"I had wondered if you'd want to forget everything of this place," he says. "Start from the beginning again."
Wrench complicates this. Lestat complicates this, his monster enmeshed as it is. But it could still be that way. Make their promises quieter things, pretend Lestat had never said companion first. Take it as slowly as Lestat suspects Louis would have taken things had they not been dragged here, being his own companion and all, and newly free from Armand's strange tyrannies.
Lestat is his own kind of tyrannical. It had been among Claudia's favourite words. He feels it now, possessive and demanding, wishing to coil all around Louis and keep him to himself.
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He runs the backs of his knuckles along Lestat's cheek, thumbs soft at his chin. Shakes his head.
"I been forgetting long enough."
Carefully chosen words. Stepping around what he'd forgotten. What he'd been made to forget.
He wouldn't give any of this up. Not their reunion here. Not the worst parts of their time together in this place. He'll keep it all. Every part.
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Lestat tucks his chin in, kisses at Louis' hand, whatever part of it is nearest. Still feeling a little frantic, like he had for a time taken Louis and his affections for granted, of being his sole focus, but this last thing has not been so. An energy he isn't sure what to do with, an energy that won't be extinguished completely tonight.
But he can help it along. He can push even more into what space remains between them and kiss Louis' mouth, half-roll him back, tangle in tighter.
"Say you choose me," he bids him. He can't ask for the other thing, the words Louis isn't prepared to give him, but he can ask for that. For Louis to state that he chooses Lestat, not simply chosen by.
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"You and me," Louis reminds him. "You remember? It's gonna be you and me always."
It had been even when they had been separate. Even when Louis had hated him, blamed him. Nothing had truly changed.
He tips his head up, brushes his lips to Lestat's. Repeats back to him: "I choose you."
And then, asks him, "You believe me?"
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Warm, quiet. He does. (He does, he does.) Maybe it takes effort but he does, because not doing so would be obscene when Louis is looking at him this way, laying beneath him, touching him. Lestat lowers his head to kiss him back.
"You keep choosing me," is gentle instruction. Continue as they mean to go on. Don't fall so much in love with another, in whatever shape that love takes, that Lestat finds himself on the wrong side of the conversation. And because it is only fair, and he has some awareness of his own history to know better than to say nothing, he adds, "I'll keep choosing you."
Less of a summoning of Antoinette than a summoning of Louis' feelings about her, Lestat would say. But no need to go into the particulars.
no subject
A different sort of vow they're making, this time. Very direct, not much poetry. But that's what they've needed, since they came back to each other. Since they've been here.
"My companion," as a reminder, hooking back to that altar anyway. What they'd promised each other. What they'd found so difficult to manage, as the years went on. Louis draws his knuckles gently down Lestat's cheek, watching his eyes. Delicately, carefully, Louis asks, "You say it too."
no subject
The promise of companionship had felt so easy, once. They had spent a year this way, sharing evenings, talking for hours, learning one another, creating a shared language of references, little affections, hidden flatteries. And even then, Lestat withholding what he felt he could not share, and Louis denying what he felt he could not express.
It doesn't feel difficult now, only much harder won than he ever would have imagined when he had finally lured Louis into friendship. Into romance. Now, he raises a hand to press Louis' to his cheek, turning his head to kiss into his palm. Something that says, yours, before the other thing is said.
"And you are mine, Louis," he says. "My companion."
He kisses him, a kiss that wanders a little ways to his cheek, jaw, where Lestat can whisper, "And I love you."
no subject
Hearing it now, Louis is quiet. He takes Lestat's face in his hands, brings him back up to kiss.
Can't say it back. Still frozen, still locked away inside his body. But he kisses Lestat so, so softly.
"You and me," Louis repeats. "Ain't nothing going to change it."
Nothing had. All those long years apart, Louis had done nothing but love him. It is woven so deeply into his body, nothing could change it.