Placing his hand on Louis' bare chest, a musical little settling of his fingers. "I have no hesitations."
His other hand, folded between them, covers Louis' where it's wandered up to that bruising. In the slanted firelight, a little smile as he presses the other man's fingers against the discolouration, drawing in a breath at the throb of pain, and otherwise, that it inspires.
But—
"I might have made some amendments for the conditions, had I felt the court would hear them."
A rippling of tension, wholly separate from the flush of heat that comes from the pressure of fingertips over tender skin.
"I'll hear 'em."
Better Louis than Claudia, who would hear no amendments, who would give no quarter.
Louis can be the fool, listen to how Lestat would nudge and bend their demands. And acquiesce, perhaps. His armor is in tatters, washed away in the river. Lestat is touching him, inviting him closer. Louis feels it, the way he wants to meet him there. The way he wants things to go back to the way they were. To have him, again.
That edge in Lestat's manner softens, and he flicks a glance down between them, a silent consideration (and a silent reconsideration) of all he might say, now that the opportunity has been so easily welcomed.
(Maybe, some small part of him asking: truly? You will make your demands of him now?)
Finally, "Rule number seven," as he locks eyes once more. "You do not threaten me again with abandonment. You do not get to say I will be alone if I do not do this or that. We cannot do this, together, with your foot out the door. I promised you eternity, so," so, and some flicker of feeling shivers through him, a twitch shrug.
"So you promise me eternity's promise, if you cannot do the same."
So Claudia needn't be in the room for this after all. This is an amendment for Louis alone, a stipulation spoken into the warm slip of space between them.
It should be easy to give. It should be. But Louis is still quiet, meeting Lestat's eyes without straying. (Thinking of an altar, Lestat's hand on his chest. The first time he'd tasted blood in Lestat's mouth as they'd kissed.)
"I never wanna smell her on you again," Louis tells him. "I want you to take care of it before the week is out."
Does this fix everything? It feels as if it might, in the moment. It's easier to think of Antoinette's mingling with Lestat's on that record than it is to think of the rest. The imprint of a head on the glossy wood of his own casket. Lestat's fingers hooked into his jaw, dragging his body along the pavement stones. The long years of simmering resentment and ever widening distance between them.
Even in the scant light, Lestat's eyes are so very blue. His skin is warming under Louis' fingers, and if Louis pressed down, he know Lestat would wince, or tense. Some sign of reaction that Louis doesn't know whether or not he wants again.
Anger—just a spark of it, the way it makes Lestat's lip twitch, the beginnings of showing his fangs. His fangs are put away and he doesn't, but maybe in here, the air feels thinner on his next breath in. Eased out, slow.
They won't survive a fight. He has already agreed to this thing. Louis is being even-handed, not spiteful.
The hand against his lover's chest curls, save for one finger, which he taps once.
"I wasn't finished. If you may hold your specifications for the moment, mon cher."
Not unnoticed, that frisson of temper. The careful breath come after.
See, he's trying, Louis remarks to no one at all. Claudia wouldn't welcome it. There is no one else to hear it, this thing Louis takes as a positive sign.
"Go on," comes after a moment, a long breath of study. The tap of finger to chest reverberates, sensation lingering. But Louis makes this invitation. He'll hear the rest. What comes after this first amendment.
But Lestat pauses, gathering words, mouth set tense as he considers this last condition. How well it will be received, how much it can be monitored, how much leeway he can give.
Finally, "I cannot forbid your whisperings with our sister," and he delivers this word obediently, if a little overly enunciated, "but there are limitations I would like to impose. When we three are altogether, you should discourage her from not speaking her discontent out loud. And when it is only you and I," his hand flattens, a gentle pressure against Louis' chest, "you should bar her altogether. It isn't fair. We said no secrets, ah?
"Those are my conditions," tipping his chin up. "I think they will inspire vast improvements in morale."
And he is no unaware that the reluctance that seizes around his chest is in no small part born of his own hurt. His own wounds, still stinging after years of separation, that drown out Louis' more charitable instincts.
But Louis is equally aware that a fight now would devastate them. Lestat had come so willingly up out of that bed, yielded gleefully as Louis had flung him about the room. He wore those bruises now, without complaint. Perhaps that too had been a kind of demonstration. See, is he not trustworthy? Is he not capable of yielding the upper hand?
There is a part of him that feels these requests, however reasonable, as imposition. As an exertion of influence.
This is an uncharitable musing, Louis knows.
Lestat has tilted his chin up and so Louis simply takes advantage of it. Kisses him, teeth catching his lower lip.
"I'll talk to Claudia," and make himself a bridge, the conduit through which this latter request might flow. His lips brush Lestat's, the suggestion of a kiss, the mingling of breath. "I will."
This is not all that's been requested. (Louis does not think of the open sky, of Lestat growing smaller against the clouds.)
I'll talk to Claudia, and Lestat has to decide if that's enough. Reckoning with the fact that tonight, it has to be, whether he believes it or not.
Reservations already predisposed to crumbling under a kiss, and then doing so under the pressure of I swear. Lestat's eyes hood, and his touches to Louis yield, an arm sliding around him, cosying into this proximity and knowing a snarl of gratitude for it, deep in his chest. How he has missed him.
Rule nine. Forgive me everything.
He presses a following kiss to Louis' mouth, a sealing of a pact. It's a sweet kiss, and not without desire, because nothing he feels towards Louis is without desire. And when it breaks, he says, "Before the week is out," at a murmur. "I promise."
"Good," has real bite behind it, tone darkening even as the sickening twist of guilt tangles behind his ribs.
Kill Antoinette, and he had protested. Louis has been thinking on it, over and over. How they had asked. How Lestat had demurred, at first.
Louis has to stop, has to leave it, and take this promise offered. By this time next week, she'll be gone. And Louis can measure out how guilty he feels for it, demanding this.
"Don't care about the gifts," Louis murmurs against Lestat's mouth. "Just keep your word."
And he must decide what to do about Antoinette. There's no denying his own natural resistance, something between an affection for a woman he's enjoyed an affair with for so many years, the promises he's made to her, and also contrary defiance at being given such an absurd request. As if seeking comfort with her while they were in the throes of misery were some great sin.
But he makes a promise, and here, kisses traded, believes it is true. There is a small protesting sound for don't care about the gifts, his gifts were beautiful.
"Let me sing it to you," he says, a sharp smile now turning the corners of his mouth. "Tomorrow, on the piano."
The record is shattered, all in pieces across Antoinette's bedroom floor. (Along with the splinters of her bed, the shattered planks of her door. All the other detritus left behind after their reunion.) Louis hadn't had a moment to think fully about what he was doing, only furious impulse. Of knowing the record contained the mingling of their voices and wanting to break it apart.
But now, it is easier to soften to the idea. Acquiesce, lean closer to kiss the corner of Lestat's mouth.
"Alright," Louis says. "Tomorrow."
As he lays another kiss to Lestat's mouth.
"Or you could sing it now. Without the piano. Just us."
Lestat's smile spread wider for that under the next kiss, pleased in a way he hadn't expected to be. He wouldn't have been too surprised if Louis wanted none of the song at all, given the givens.
"Well, if you do not hold the poor acoustics against me—"
And that he is laying on his side, terrible for breathing, but he's very talented and a vampire and hardly needs to project, so he can make do.
So he sings. It's a gentle, quiet song anyway, fragile in delivery, in lyric, and it's easy enough to scale it down into a tender little lullaby between them. Unselfconscious, finding Louis' hand to twine his fingers through his as he serenades him.
Maybe it is a miracle to have held out so many years, to have maintained stony silence while Lestat's barrage of gifts and appeals sought cracks and weak points.
This composition, it does make Louis weak.
Lestat sings to him, and Louis closes that last, judiciously preserved slip of space between them, until they are laid flush from knee to hip, hip to chest. Louis' hand comes to rest at Lestat's waist, listening, until the song winds to a close.
"It's better with just your voice," Louis tells him. "Forget the other one."
This too, a kind of banishment. The record is in pieces. What else need there be, but the version Lestat offers up to him in the absolute privacy of this shared casket?
The last of the song is sung, and Lestat gives a hummed sound of pleasure for the press of Louis' body to his own, the flimsy barrier of his own clothing between them, even as he says this thing. The brightness that had lit up, pleased to be asked to perform, dims a little at the reminder, but—the smile doesn't leave, just changes.
"The song is for you," he says. "So. Whatever you say."
I don't want to smell her on you, and for all of his displeasure around the arrangement—isn't it good, to be possessed by the one you want never to leave you? How glad he was to be thrown across the room, and pinned in place, and had? He kisses Louis again, a hand slipping around to the small of his back, and a thigh nudging between both of his.
A playfully shallow kiss as he says, "Louis," and another, adding, "You're very underdressed."
Whatever you say prickles some suspicion, a little fretful spark of worry.
But it doesn't outlast the way Lestat kisses him, doesn't survive past the grazing suggestion of Lestat's thigh. Louis touches his cheek, skims a thumb along the corner of his mouth.
"Is that a complaint?" Louis questions, light as if they hadn't gone years hardly touching each other. As if Louis hadn't vanished into the confines of this very coffin, silent and remote. As if the force of their reunion hadn't been a kind of revelation. This. Louis has been so very absent from this.
"I can change," he offers, following the crinkle of Lestat's smile with his thumb. "I still got those silk pajamas you gave me a while back."
A kiss, first, pressed to the flat of Louis' thumb.
"Don't you dare."
Unbidden, some aching twist beneath his ribcage. There is coming back together again, and then there is the sense that in doing so, maybe things can be as they should. Nice, playful, desirous. They can enjoy these moments of time where only they exist and all they want to do is please one another, in every conceivable way, and Lestat can imagine snapping the neck of his favourite songbird for that.
He insists himself as if to physically prevent Louis from doing as he's offered, using the confines of the casket to his advantage to get the other man beneath him, capturing his mouth in a kiss as he does.
Kissing Lestat is good. It is always good, near to an intoxicant. There will always be some part of him that yields the way he once had, downstairs, Lily asleep on the sofa and Lestat's hands straining in his grip. Lestat kisses him, and Louis softens into it, hand at his cheek, encouraging.
The break, the hitched breath, comes as Lestat's weight settles. The coffin is not closed. For a moment, only a moment, Louis' memories tilt away from him. (Lestat's eyes cold with rage, his fingers digging in hard, the cold slice of wind and the useless, flailing kick of his legs.) His fingers tighten at Lestat's shoulders; no passion, just a flex of instinct, the jerk of movement belonging to a falling man.
It passes.
Louis tips his head breathlessly up to him, insistent, pushing past the hiccup of memory. Nips his lower lip, sinks fingers into his hair. They are alright. They are going to be alright.
How can it not be alright, when they are together?
Pleased with himself, with Louis beneath him, pliant and giving at the same time. He gives a quiet, appreciative sound for the feeling of Louis' hands back in his hair (gentle, this time), the grazing of blunt teeth. The way this contact twinges the bruising marks next to his mouth, and he doesn't care.
Lifts his head to look down at him with hooded eyes, and his broad smile shows fangs, just a hint, ignorant to the way this might, too, render a certain night in vivid hindbrain memory, simply a familiar show of want. Looking at him in the firelight that makes it into the open casket, and the angles of shadows where it doesn't.
"You've been so heartless," he says, knowing this is a ridiculous thing to say, mischief clear and present. "These years I've been denied, gazing on your beautiful face this closely. I should keep you here until I am satisfied."
And it does. It does drag something out of Louis' head, a thudding hitch of apprehension that is entirely at odds with the warmth in Lestat's voice. Irrational. Uncontrollable, this thing that cannot be shaken, cannot be buried. Cannot be sat outside of the coffin, will not respect the confines of this intimate space.
But it can be pushed aside. It ebbs, as Louis' thighs shift accommodatingly to bracket Lestat's hips. If Louis allows, the world will reorient itself around Lestat, and the way they touch each other. The way their hearts fall into sync, the way they draw breath in time. The bond between them has survived, grows all the stronger in proximity.
"How long do you figure, until you're satisfied?" Louis asks, mock serious in the face of Lestat's mischief. "A couple hours?"
Is this not akin to muscle memory? Is this not familiar, and easy to fall into?
Louis twines a lock of his hair around his finger, questions, "A couple days?"
Happily, Lestat settles between Louis' accommodating thighs, aware of all the ways they fit or don't fit together. He enjoys that he is taller, and enjoys when that matters not at all, and enjoys when it does. When the comfortable strength of them both means he can sprawl over the other man like so, and how used to it they are, all the ways two men can fit inside this small space that it's second nature to find those positions for their own comfort.
His chuckle is a deep toned thing, felt through his chest, against Louis'.
"Cancel your plans," he suggests. "Let's stay here, making love until we're half-starved. Like the old days."
Wishful, maybe, and a little exaggerated as far as how often Lestat could ever pull Louis off the streets for their mutual amusements—but all the same, a nostalgic little challenge. Kisses the corner of Louis' mouth, his chin, and ducking his head to land another on his chest.
Easier to shake the flutter of fear when they are laid so close. Easier to think of nothing but this moment when Lestat is easy and charming, when they are play-acting something out of the very beginning of their affections.
Even if Louis remembers the old days too. Struggling to keep his hunger in check. Lestat's exasperation, the clear sense that Louis was vexing him each time they had to consider a meal.
Louis puts that away too, as Lestat makes use of what little space can be afforded to them. Squirms downwards, puts his mouth to Louis' chest. Louis hums a low note, encouraging. Interested.
"Till you get bored," has the same teasing lilt, but it brings some little hurt with it. Some small pain.
Warm breath, first, spreading across Louis' skin, and then Lestat lifting his head to gaze up at him that small unit of distance he had managed. "Bored," he repeats, but the note of incredulity, wavering at its centre, departs from the playfulness they'd been maintaining. It would be easy to pivot again, melt words into his skin like I could never be bored with you, mon cher, but the word—
Like a sharp thing, under the skin. He, bored with Louis. The unfairness of the joke's premise hardens his expression, despite the twitched shape of a smile at his mouth. Not quite. "Do you think that at any time, I have ever been bored of you? That this is something that would separate us?"
Defensiveness, coiling like a snake beneath his ribcage, full of unspent venom. He'd made his case of variety, and they are flirting about silly things like fucking in a coffin for a week, and yet.
A misstep in the way Louis missteps, accidentally on purpose. Needling quietly, so quietly.
They have done their negotiating. Louis has been unable to keep away from him, unable to shut Lestat out. Algiers had been too far and too close all at once. Was there anywhere far enough to keep Lestat from him? Louis might have swam the Atlantic, after listening to the voices on that record.
Kill Antoinette, they'd said. But some small part of Louis is still stood in their courtyard, asking: Aren't I enough?
They won't survive the argument. (And Louis is laid out beneath him, at a disadvantage, if they ever—) Louis knows this, and it mitigates his answer, only just.
"We just ain't talked about whether or not you're still going to want for that variety. That's all."
Yes, he is on top of Louis, who is bare beneath him, who he has hurt immensely, who had trusted him with sharing his coffin when even Lestat might not have been too resentful if consigned to finding a place to sleep in the open. His nails don't bite skin and his fangs have already retracted, mostly not to get in the way of the slithery accusation he murmurs across that space now—
But also, purposeful. Some sense that he needs to be careful in his handling. That same sense that thinks he should let this go but cannot. So when he shows teeth, it's not with fangs, but all the same.
"You barely looked at me for years before that night, much less touched me. Bored?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Placing his hand on Louis' bare chest, a musical little settling of his fingers. "I have no hesitations."
His other hand, folded between them, covers Louis' where it's wandered up to that bruising. In the slanted firelight, a little smile as he presses the other man's fingers against the discolouration, drawing in a breath at the throb of pain, and otherwise, that it inspires.
But—
"I might have made some amendments for the conditions, had I felt the court would hear them."
no subject
"I'll hear 'em."
Better Louis than Claudia, who would hear no amendments, who would give no quarter.
Louis can be the fool, listen to how Lestat would nudge and bend their demands. And acquiesce, perhaps. His armor is in tatters, washed away in the river. Lestat is touching him, inviting him closer. Louis feels it, the way he wants to meet him there. The way he wants things to go back to the way they were. To have him, again.
no subject
(Maybe, some small part of him asking: truly? You will make your demands of him now?)
Finally, "Rule number seven," as he locks eyes once more. "You do not threaten me again with abandonment. You do not get to say I will be alone if I do not do this or that. We cannot do this, together, with your foot out the door. I promised you eternity, so," so, and some flicker of feeling shivers through him, a twitch shrug.
"So you promise me eternity's promise, if you cannot do the same."
no subject
It should be easy to give. It should be. But Louis is still quiet, meeting Lestat's eyes without straying. (Thinking of an altar, Lestat's hand on his chest. The first time he'd tasted blood in Lestat's mouth as they'd kissed.)
"I never wanna smell her on you again," Louis tells him. "I want you to take care of it before the week is out."
Does this fix everything? It feels as if it might, in the moment. It's easier to think of Antoinette's mingling with Lestat's on that record than it is to think of the rest. The imprint of a head on the glossy wood of his own casket. Lestat's fingers hooked into his jaw, dragging his body along the pavement stones. The long years of simmering resentment and ever widening distance between them.
Even in the scant light, Lestat's eyes are so very blue. His skin is warming under Louis' fingers, and if Louis pressed down, he know Lestat would wince, or tense. Some sign of reaction that Louis doesn't know whether or not he wants again.
"Tell me she's nothing to you."
no subject
They won't survive a fight. He has already agreed to this thing. Louis is being even-handed, not spiteful.
The hand against his lover's chest curls, save for one finger, which he taps once.
"I wasn't finished. If you may hold your specifications for the moment, mon cher."
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See, he's trying, Louis remarks to no one at all. Claudia wouldn't welcome it. There is no one else to hear it, this thing Louis takes as a positive sign.
"Go on," comes after a moment, a long breath of study. The tap of finger to chest reverberates, sensation lingering. But Louis makes this invitation. He'll hear the rest. What comes after this first amendment.
no subject
But Lestat pauses, gathering words, mouth set tense as he considers this last condition. How well it will be received, how much it can be monitored, how much leeway he can give.
Finally, "I cannot forbid your whisperings with our sister," and he delivers this word obediently, if a little overly enunciated, "but there are limitations I would like to impose. When we three are altogether, you should discourage her from not speaking her discontent out loud. And when it is only you and I," his hand flattens, a gentle pressure against Louis' chest, "you should bar her altogether. It isn't fair. We said no secrets, ah?
"Those are my conditions," tipping his chin up. "I think they will inspire vast improvements in morale."
no subject
And he is no unaware that the reluctance that seizes around his chest is in no small part born of his own hurt. His own wounds, still stinging after years of separation, that drown out Louis' more charitable instincts.
But Louis is equally aware that a fight now would devastate them. Lestat had come so willingly up out of that bed, yielded gleefully as Louis had flung him about the room. He wore those bruises now, without complaint. Perhaps that too had been a kind of demonstration. See, is he not trustworthy? Is he not capable of yielding the upper hand?
There is a part of him that feels these requests, however reasonable, as imposition. As an exertion of influence.
This is an uncharitable musing, Louis knows.
Lestat has tilted his chin up and so Louis simply takes advantage of it. Kisses him, teeth catching his lower lip.
"I'll talk to Claudia," and make himself a bridge, the conduit through which this latter request might flow. His lips brush Lestat's, the suggestion of a kiss, the mingling of breath. "I will."
This is not all that's been requested. (Louis does not think of the open sky, of Lestat growing smaller against the clouds.)
"And eternity's promise. I swear."
no subject
Reservations already predisposed to crumbling under a kiss, and then doing so under the pressure of I swear. Lestat's eyes hood, and his touches to Louis yield, an arm sliding around him, cosying into this proximity and knowing a snarl of gratitude for it, deep in his chest. How he has missed him.
Rule nine. Forgive me everything.
He presses a following kiss to Louis' mouth, a sealing of a pact. It's a sweet kiss, and not without desire, because nothing he feels towards Louis is without desire. And when it breaks, he says, "Before the week is out," at a murmur. "I promise."
no subject
Kill Antoinette, and he had protested. Louis has been thinking on it, over and over. How they had asked. How Lestat had demurred, at first.
Louis has to stop, has to leave it, and take this promise offered. By this time next week, she'll be gone. And Louis can measure out how guilty he feels for it, demanding this.
"Don't care about the gifts," Louis murmurs against Lestat's mouth. "Just keep your word."
And then they can (try) to forget the rest.
no subject
And he must decide what to do about Antoinette. There's no denying his own natural resistance, something between an affection for a woman he's enjoyed an affair with for so many years, the promises he's made to her, and also contrary defiance at being given such an absurd request. As if seeking comfort with her while they were in the throes of misery were some great sin.
But he makes a promise, and here, kisses traded, believes it is true. There is a small protesting sound for don't care about the gifts, his gifts were beautiful.
"Let me sing it to you," he says, a sharp smile now turning the corners of his mouth. "Tomorrow, on the piano."
While Claudia glares daggers, he's sure.
no subject
But now, it is easier to soften to the idea. Acquiesce, lean closer to kiss the corner of Lestat's mouth.
"Alright," Louis says. "Tomorrow."
As he lays another kiss to Lestat's mouth.
"Or you could sing it now. Without the piano. Just us."
no subject
"Well, if you do not hold the poor acoustics against me—"
And that he is laying on his side, terrible for breathing, but he's very talented and a vampire and hardly needs to project, so he can make do.
So he sings. It's a gentle, quiet song anyway, fragile in delivery, in lyric, and it's easy enough to scale it down into a tender little lullaby between them. Unselfconscious, finding Louis' hand to twine his fingers through his as he serenades him.
no subject
Maybe it is a miracle to have held out so many years, to have maintained stony silence while Lestat's barrage of gifts and appeals sought cracks and weak points.
This composition, it does make Louis weak.
Lestat sings to him, and Louis closes that last, judiciously preserved slip of space between them, until they are laid flush from knee to hip, hip to chest. Louis' hand comes to rest at Lestat's waist, listening, until the song winds to a close.
"It's better with just your voice," Louis tells him. "Forget the other one."
This too, a kind of banishment. The record is in pieces. What else need there be, but the version Lestat offers up to him in the absolute privacy of this shared casket?
no subject
"The song is for you," he says. "So. Whatever you say."
I don't want to smell her on you, and for all of his displeasure around the arrangement—isn't it good, to be possessed by the one you want never to leave you? How glad he was to be thrown across the room, and pinned in place, and had? He kisses Louis again, a hand slipping around to the small of his back, and a thigh nudging between both of his.
A playfully shallow kiss as he says, "Louis," and another, adding, "You're very underdressed."
no subject
But it doesn't outlast the way Lestat kisses him, doesn't survive past the grazing suggestion of Lestat's thigh. Louis touches his cheek, skims a thumb along the corner of his mouth.
"Is that a complaint?" Louis questions, light as if they hadn't gone years hardly touching each other. As if Louis hadn't vanished into the confines of this very coffin, silent and remote. As if the force of their reunion hadn't been a kind of revelation. This. Louis has been so very absent from this.
"I can change," he offers, following the crinkle of Lestat's smile with his thumb. "I still got those silk pajamas you gave me a while back."
no subject
"Don't you dare."
Unbidden, some aching twist beneath his ribcage. There is coming back together again, and then there is the sense that in doing so, maybe things can be as they should. Nice, playful, desirous. They can enjoy these moments of time where only they exist and all they want to do is please one another, in every conceivable way, and Lestat can imagine snapping the neck of his favourite songbird for that.
He insists himself as if to physically prevent Louis from doing as he's offered, using the confines of the casket to his advantage to get the other man beneath him, capturing his mouth in a kiss as he does.
no subject
The break, the hitched breath, comes as Lestat's weight settles. The coffin is not closed. For a moment, only a moment, Louis' memories tilt away from him. (Lestat's eyes cold with rage, his fingers digging in hard, the cold slice of wind and the useless, flailing kick of his legs.) His fingers tighten at Lestat's shoulders; no passion, just a flex of instinct, the jerk of movement belonging to a falling man.
It passes.
Louis tips his head breathlessly up to him, insistent, pushing past the hiccup of memory. Nips his lower lip, sinks fingers into his hair. They are alright. They are going to be alright.
no subject
Pleased with himself, with Louis beneath him, pliant and giving at the same time. He gives a quiet, appreciative sound for the feeling of Louis' hands back in his hair (gentle, this time), the grazing of blunt teeth. The way this contact twinges the bruising marks next to his mouth, and he doesn't care.
Lifts his head to look down at him with hooded eyes, and his broad smile shows fangs, just a hint, ignorant to the way this might, too, render a certain night in vivid hindbrain memory, simply a familiar show of want. Looking at him in the firelight that makes it into the open casket, and the angles of shadows where it doesn't.
"You've been so heartless," he says, knowing this is a ridiculous thing to say, mischief clear and present. "These years I've been denied, gazing on your beautiful face this closely. I should keep you here until I am satisfied."
no subject
But it can be pushed aside. It ebbs, as Louis' thighs shift accommodatingly to bracket Lestat's hips. If Louis allows, the world will reorient itself around Lestat, and the way they touch each other. The way their hearts fall into sync, the way they draw breath in time. The bond between them has survived, grows all the stronger in proximity.
"How long do you figure, until you're satisfied?" Louis asks, mock serious in the face of Lestat's mischief. "A couple hours?"
Is this not akin to muscle memory? Is this not familiar, and easy to fall into?
Louis twines a lock of his hair around his finger, questions, "A couple days?"
no subject
His chuckle is a deep toned thing, felt through his chest, against Louis'.
"Cancel your plans," he suggests. "Let's stay here, making love until we're half-starved. Like the old days."
Wishful, maybe, and a little exaggerated as far as how often Lestat could ever pull Louis off the streets for their mutual amusements—but all the same, a nostalgic little challenge. Kisses the corner of Louis' mouth, his chin, and ducking his head to land another on his chest.
no subject
Even if Louis remembers the old days too. Struggling to keep his hunger in check. Lestat's exasperation, the clear sense that Louis was vexing him each time they had to consider a meal.
Louis puts that away too, as Lestat makes use of what little space can be afforded to them. Squirms downwards, puts his mouth to Louis' chest. Louis hums a low note, encouraging. Interested.
"Till you get bored," has the same teasing lilt, but it brings some little hurt with it. Some small pain.
A misstep. (A misstep?)
no subject
Warm breath, first, spreading across Louis' skin, and then Lestat lifting his head to gaze up at him that small unit of distance he had managed. "Bored," he repeats, but the note of incredulity, wavering at its centre, departs from the playfulness they'd been maintaining. It would be easy to pivot again, melt words into his skin like I could never be bored with you, mon cher, but the word—
Like a sharp thing, under the skin. He, bored with Louis. The unfairness of the joke's premise hardens his expression, despite the twitched shape of a smile at his mouth. Not quite. "Do you think that at any time, I have ever been bored of you? That this is something that would separate us?"
Defensiveness, coiling like a snake beneath his ribcage, full of unspent venom. He'd made his case of variety, and they are flirting about silly things like fucking in a coffin for a week, and yet.
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A misstep.
A misstep in the way Louis missteps, accidentally on purpose. Needling quietly, so quietly.
They have done their negotiating. Louis has been unable to keep away from him, unable to shut Lestat out. Algiers had been too far and too close all at once. Was there anywhere far enough to keep Lestat from him? Louis might have swam the Atlantic, after listening to the voices on that record.
Kill Antoinette, they'd said. But some small part of Louis is still stood in their courtyard, asking: Aren't I enough?
They won't survive the argument. (And Louis is laid out beneath him, at a disadvantage, if they ever—) Louis knows this, and it mitigates his answer, only just.
"We just ain't talked about whether or not you're still going to want for that variety. That's all."
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Yes, he is on top of Louis, who is bare beneath him, who he has hurt immensely, who had trusted him with sharing his coffin when even Lestat might not have been too resentful if consigned to finding a place to sleep in the open. His nails don't bite skin and his fangs have already retracted, mostly not to get in the way of the slithery accusation he murmurs across that space now—
But also, purposeful. Some sense that he needs to be careful in his handling. That same sense that thinks he should let this go but cannot. So when he shows teeth, it's not with fangs, but all the same.
"You barely looked at me for years before that night, much less touched me. Bored?"
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