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lestat de lioncourt. ([personal profile] damnedest) wrote2034-06-28 12:42 pm
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-20 04:48 pm (UTC)(link)
An answer like a great stone placed upon Louis' chest.

Did you?

"But you didn't."

Almost a question. Louis knows the answer. Knows that he was not enough. That he would have Lestat still, would have had him even if Antoinette still drew breath. That even now, Louis wishes to go to him.

"Couldn't part with her."

So Louis had done it for him. Cruel, cruel, cruel. And he feels nothing. Dead inside, the urge to claw his skin off, to throw himself back in the river. Antoinette had known instantly when she saw him. It solves nothing, changes nothing.

And there is no pleasure in watching Lestat crumple to the floor beside her corpse. A waste. It has been a waste.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-21 02:07 am (UTC)(link)
"She weren't ever for me."

Years have passed, but Louis has an acutely clear memory of Lestat looking at him from the curve of Antoinette's neck. Her squealed gasp of delight at Lestat's attention. How the room had smelled of her after, days and days until her perfume faded.

For Louis? No.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-21 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
"You brought her into our home and fucked her."

Old argument. A curl of heat stealing into Louis' dead tone. How it had felt, walking out. How it had felt, watching Lestat light up for someone else.

"Then you kept on, all this time."

Louis' had time to think on the promises made. To explore the edges of the deep wound he'd carried away from Antoinette's that night, all the nights after.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-21 04:04 am (UTC)(link)
The cigarette has long since cooled down to nothing. Just ash, inert and useless. Louis draws a finger through it, looking away from Lestat.

Senses the way Lestat is needling them towards familiar argument. Tries to decide before the decision is made for him, whether or not he cares to be led into a fight they've repeated time and again.

"How many times you promised me you'd do it?"

Over and over again. Louis, waiting, waiting, waiting.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-21 11:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Because Louis broods. Claudia snipes. And Lestat needed to be fortified against them.

Louis wishes he'd never heard any of it, had never stood in the dark and listened to their talk, to the sound of their kissing. Claudia had been so terribly still, watching him, and Louis had felt—

He'd thanked Lestat. He'd felt real relief, thinking they could all three move forward together. That something had shifted, when nothing had.

"Comfort," falls from Louis' mouth like a stone.

It's been difficult. But has it always been? Was it difficult at the start?
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-22 02:25 am (UTC)(link)
Maybe Louis should leave him. Evict Lestat once more from their home on the Rue Royale, bar the door, ignore his cries.

Would he be stronger this time? Hold out for ten years instead of six?

Louis leans forward in the chair, elbows on his knees. Watches Lestat over Antoinette's corpse.

"No," Louis admits. Why pretend otherwise? Why pretend he won't have Lestat, even now? "I ain't leaving."

So perhaps the question becomes:

"You gonna stay?"
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-22 05:41 am (UTC)(link)
Even now. Even after what Louis has done. What Lestat has done to him in turn. Lestat tells him this from his knees.

It is only Louis.

"You swear it," is quiet acknowledgement. Affirming it to himself, this thing Louis knows but had never quite settled.

He is hyperaware of Lestat's fingers, a light touch through the fabric of Louis' pant leg.

"I ain't as much fun as her," is an understatement. "But I need you."

Amends to, "I want you."

On the way to, "And I'll take you this way. Any way I can have you."
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-22 06:23 am (UTC)(link)
Lestat didn't love Antoinette.

Louis isn't sure he believes this. He had said it aloud to Claudia, asserted it as truth. Lestat has said it before, delineating between Louis and she as if it were so simple.

He does know that he believes the rest of what he had told Claudia that night. That Lestat had his own demons, even if Louis doesn't know their names. That Lestat would have killed Antoinette if he thought Louis would have him as he was.

Louis cannot look at her corpse.

Instead, he looks into Lestat's face.

Tells him, "I don't like sharing you."

Won't ask this time if he is enough. Everything is too fragile to broach the topic.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-22 03:09 pm (UTC)(link)
"Squandered," Louis repeats.

A little flush of emotion. Anger? Louis can't pin it down entirely.

"What's squandered?"

It goes hand in hand with the jabby I know you don't care to hear it Lestat had offered earlier, Louis knows. Some little hurt that Lestat has carried along with him, something Louis can guess at the shape of but pushes to hear him say aloud.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-23 12:41 am (UTC)(link)
Breath coming faster, heartbeat thudding.

Aware, maybe, of the utility of pressing the issue. That maybe if they have it out, they can leave it behind them.

But Louis is very aware of where they are too. Of Antoinette's body on the floor behind Lestat.

"When?" he invites. Doesn't attempt to flex his leg out of Lestat's grasp. "When did I throw you away?"

Long years locked inside together, Louis eaten up by grief over Claudia. Before, walking out, leaving Lestat to Antoinette. Louis' thoughts circle and skid away from these moments, away from guesses.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-23 01:14 am (UTC)(link)
Seven years.

"She was gone," comes almost without conscious intent. "Our daughter."

Sister tossed aside, the two of them alone in this room without daughter in question to object.

Louis had blamed Lestat. But the reality is—

"And it was me. She went running from me. You holding that against me?"

Side-stepping. But Louis doesn't know what else to say. He'd fallen into a black hole. He knows it. Couldn't find his way from it. That is still in him. Brooding, Lestat had said. Louis broods. Sorrow comes too easy.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-23 03:41 am (UTC)(link)
"You pushed her," bursts out of him. Retreading, falling back into the old argument. Lestat rises and Louis doesn't, held in place by some flinch of a thing in his body that hasn't quite fractured enough to forget—

There was a time when Louis met him where Lestat landed. Lestat pushed and Louis pushed back.

He'd stopped doing that, after the fall. Refrains from it now.

"You pushed me out too, when I wouldn't—I couldn't forget her."

Lestat, quick to suggest the dismantling of Claudia's room. Quicker to dismiss the possibility of her return. Stranded Louis alone with his grief.

Old hurts. Lestat's raised voice. Louis winding tenser, bracing unconsciously against it.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-09-23 04:38 am (UTC)(link)
"You didn't want to come near. You ran to her!"

Antoinette. Antoinette who is no more.

Maybe he hadn't noticed that first time, but he had noticed later. A terrible ugly resentment for Lestat's absence, for seeking amusements elsewhere when Louis could do nothing but hoard his miseries like pale gold.

The chair scrapes, shoved back as Louis stands. A defensive movement, getting to his feet. Refusing to look up any longer.

"You pushed. You wanted to push her out like she were never there."

Teetering away from the thing Louis knows they're meant to address. This is familiar ground. Easy swipes, easy wounds. Antoinette is dead and they are here, digging claws into each other again.

Louis had punished him. He knows this to be true. But Lestat had left. Had been bored of him before Claudia went, was bored of him while she was gone, was tired of him now. The question doesn't bear asking. Louis hadn't been enough. Maybe would never be.

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