A fresh washcloth fetched, soaked in soap and water. Lestat's own movements are slow, careful, letting each second trickle by. Steps a little aside as he goes to touch Louis' back, holding the cloth high at his back and letting gathered water stream. Still in his peripheral view, as if conscious to the way Louis had urged him near.
Eyes down, attention on this task. Perceiving Louis in fragments, the curve of his spine, the expanse of smooth skin that feels warm from their shared shower. Finding forgotten but familiar spots here and there, memories of kissing them on his way down or up. Memories of biting planes of muscle. Of blood running like soapy water does now.
Of other things that Lestat firmly shoves aside, rinsing the cloth, rinsing Louis' back. All tender, careful, more so where bruising leeches down the shoulder. Louis had asked to help with his back, and Lestat instinctively doesn't stray beyond those lines.
Not very characteristic of him. But it's a strange night.
As gentle as Lestat is, the bruises are already tender. The slight pressure makes itself known. Not unbearable, but still a deep ache exacerbated when Louis raises arms overhead to begin the process of washing his hair.
In Dubai, he had indulged. It had been a ritual, as most things were. Louis can remember Armand's hand at the nape of his neck, present, sometimes. (Is Louis thinking of San Francisco? Is he thinking of something he barely knows, but is beginning to remember?) Tonight, there is Lestat, an overwhelming presence at his back. Louis' whole focus is eaten up by him, the complicated leap of feeling each time Lestat speaks, or touches him, or draws a breath. Reminds Louis that he is fully present, and not a dream.
"Do you want to stay here?"
Is this an easy question? Maybe, maybe not. Does Lestat love New Orleans? Louis remembers him describing his affection for it, once, but what is left of that?
But it is a distraction, gives Louis a little room to breath as he rinses his hair. Considers his body, Lestat's hands at his back. How little he wants Lestat tending to him beyond what he is doing now, but cannot abide Lestat doing anything but touching him.
At least in part because the task is done, but also the question, disorienting for its enormity. Stay here? In the shower, the hotel room, the city? The country? And what does this imply for Louis' movements throughout the world? Lestat watches him for a moment, Louis rinsing out his hair.
Winnows it out to the easiest thing. "As you say, the water will get cold," has a little humour to it, like he is, indeed, aware this is not what Louis meant, but answers as such anyway. "Seems like a waste of a good shower to let it."
Wringing out the cloth, turning aside to hang it up.
Vanished, this sole bit of contact. It feels like a misstep, asking.
Louis turns to look at Lestat over his shoulder, lowering one arm to alleviate the twinge of bruises and tender joints.
"Okay," comes after a brief study, this glimpse of Lestat over his shoulder. Turns after, facing him more fully.
Leaving this topic in favor of twisting off the tap. Water beads across Lestat's skin, clings to Louis' body. Looking at him, Louis can't help the thought of the last time they saw each other. Lestat, watching him in the dark of that dungeon, that pit, that tower.
"I'll get you a towel," Louis offers. "Just wait for me."
Lestat pulls his hair around to squeeze it of water, and flicks a discreet look up and down when Louis must inevitably turn away from him and leave the shower. He's a depressed vampire, not dead, et cetera. He wanders across the generous tiled proportions to stop at the glass door, curling his fingers around the edge of it.
Questions. He has a great deal of them, all beginning to vie and jostle for attention. But, of this Lestat is certain, they have all night at least. They have the next day. After that—
They have tonight, tomorrow. A little bit of time where the world does not exist at all. Nothing but the two of them in this room.
Louis can't think of it. Not yet. He collects a towel, a glass jar of oil for his own sodden hair. Leaves one untouched for himself when he emerges properly, returns to the tub to wrap the other around Lestat.
"You can stay. I just have to finish," Louis tells him quietly.
A change. Louis had worn his hair so differently when they had been together in New Orleans, even in Paris. Lestat had been far away as styles had changed, and Louis had changed with them.
He touches Lestat's cheek. Steps past him back into the shower, naked still.
Lestat glances after Louis, but doesn't question this. Clutches at the towel that's been put around him and steps out of the way, padding along the heated tile. The mirror hasn't fogged up, and he lets his attention linger this time. Not so bad, maybe.
He towels himself down as Louis finishes up (the occasional glance to the hazy shape of him through the glass), and then wraps it around his waist. Spies an item hanging up near the mirror.
The discovery of the hairdryer announces itself with the sound of it whirring to life. A short, testing blast, and then a more sustained roar. Not completely alien to him. They had these in the sixties, and he'd still been halfway active. Still, there is very little technique to his attempts to dry his hair, which is sure to frizz a little under harsh heat, a scattershot approach.
A twinge of hesitation, in which Lestat must ask himself: is he tired of Louis tending to him already?
The answer is an uncomplicated: never.
He clicks off the device, offers it out with a turn of his wrist. Considers Louis in the mirror, his hair longer, he thinks, than it had been when they had a routine that resembled this. Wearing it longer, at least. Shared mirrors, shared grooming, shared dressing. The quiet ways two lives can fall into one.
The quiet ways they cared for each other. Still do, it seems. "I forgot to say," he says, "as there was quite a lot happening at the time, but you look nice."
Nice clothing, nice style. It is just like Louis to emerge from a burgeoning hurricane in beautiful things, beautifully.
He'd never. The ways in which they had touched and attended to each other had been so—
Specific.
Few and farther between.
The way Louis cared for him in little ways, tenderness cultivated and deepend in those long years together, fraught upon Lestat's return.
Complex now, as Louis stands naked in this room with Lestat and looks at him and thinks of the ways in which all Louis' drawn lines hadn't saved them. How his awareness of the ways they moved through the world in public had never quite been able to be barred from Louis' mind when they were in private. How some awareness lingers even now, the two of them together for the first time in so long.
"I been making some changes," Louis tells him, setting the hair dryer onto the countertop so he might use both hands to bind the towel about his waist. "Glad that you like them."
No need to speak of what Louis is shaking free of. He threads fingers into Lestat's hair, testing the length. Somewhere between his memories, but still lovely, gleaming gold even in the low lights.
And by nice, Lestat should elaborate, you looked like heaven's most fuckable angel.
Just absurd. Impossible beauty, so changed and yet so familiar in his modern apparel and fashion. Praise he would give in another life but finds himself stuffing back down his throat as Louis' fingers tease through his hair. Is his hair alright? It's just been cleaned, so he expects so. Tipping his head slightly as if he can glean information from Louis' expression.
Back down to the marble top he is standing at, absently drawing his fingertips along the edge. "You're doing well for yourself?" is a small in the scheme of things, like getting a fingernail beneath a flagstone. He does mean money, that sort of well, but any answer is a good answer, an enlightening answer.
Still, Louis can't contain the prickling defensiveness that sparks up as Lestat asks him this. The last time they saw each other, Louis had what? When Louis left New Orleans, what had remained in his wake?
And then in Paris, living off Lestat for some months, money draw from Roget's while Lestat was where? Alive, maybe in New Orleans, maybe in Paris already. Louis feels shame for it, for what he'd taken.
Says nothing right away while he wrestles with the immediate reaction. Lestat made a little cluster of product, and Louis selects one bottle to tip a pool of glossy, sweet-smelling mixture into his own palm. He chooses to work his first into Lestat's half-damp locks, then into his own wet hair, letting the quiet stretch out.
A drifting memory, Lestat smiling at him across a card table, asking: Do you not know your value?
"I'm doing real well," comes eventually, as Louis watches Lestat in the mirror. "I've got investments, bonds, real estate. I've got more money that I'll ever spend. I got a hobby, dealing art. Built up a nice collection too, things of my own."
Important, suddenly, that Lestat hears this. Whatever else Louis' life has been, there is still this. Success. Power. That Louis has rebuilt what he once gaze up.
The chosen bottle is picked up, looked over. His working knowledge of men's hair and grooming products a trifle out of date, this sleek thing in his hands compared to the little cans of pomade or glass tonic bottles he'd come to know. The specific, little ways he feels he has lagged behind the era.
Well, it happens, doesn't it? It all moves very fast, really.
He looks back up at the mirror once Louis begins to talk, studying his reflection. Feels a painful kind of affection, like the soreness that comes with the exercising of an unused muscle. Louis the businessman, who Lestat remembers also having an eye for artwork, superior to his own. Strange, the kinds of memories one hoards, one allows to fade.
He did not, really, attach himself to the enterprising side of his former companion. A biased view, preferring to think of their domestic evenings at home, of nights out at the opera. But it's easily recalled now, precious for being so.
"Of course," he says, quiet affection. Of course, a pile of gold, a hoard of art, doing real well. Of course Louis has not been idle. "And a building in Dubai to put it in."
"Some of it," Louis answers, fingers working through his own hair. Restoring shape, twisting here and there. "Some of what I have is in Dubai."
Not all of it. A collection housed in carefully controlled conditions elsewhere, warehoused and waiting for Louis to select from.
Some to be culled, because Louis bought it for what he was with Armand. Some for the man he'd been then, and some for Armand himself, gifts. Things that flattered their shared tastes, which Louis must now wonder: did they share tastes, even in art?
He lifts the dryer, makes a little face. Lacking, this piece of hotel provided equipment. Louis flicks it on at the lowest setting, goes to work carefully drawing the wet out of Lestat's hair.
The whine from the dryer is substantially quieter than the hectic roar of the max setting he'd tried some moments ago, but noisy enough that Lestat takes the excuse to fall silent. He had not meant to provoke more tending when a proper bathing was more than enough to warm and clean him, but finds himself absorbing the exchange greedily, as hungry for it as blood.
But Louis is companion enough for himself. He does not know what's happened. Something has. He does not know what's happening, not completely, and suspects Louis is only half sure himself. A rescuing, perhaps.
Where his hair has dried, Lestat raises a hand to fidget with a lock of it. Soft from the pampering, remembering its own natural wavy texture. It gets tucked behind an ear, a gesture that comes close to preening.
Dryer discarded, Louis looks at both of them in the mirror. Storm washed from their skin, recognizable in some ways, alien in others.
"Come on," Louis says softly, to Lestat's reflection. "We should get you something to wear."
And then fed, a thing Louis hasn't considered but must now. Will they need to hunt rats? Does Lestat still feed from the vein? Would he drink from a blood bag?
Questions for after. Here and now, Louis lets his hand fall from Lestat's hair. Turns from the steamy mirror, the warmth of this room, to walk into the next. Lestat will follow, or he won't.
It feels almost like a missed step when Louis doesn't take his hand first. As if this is some habit formed of decades, when it was only ever indulged at home and only ever when they were talking to each other properly, and certainly never anywhere else. As if one frantic escape from the hurricane and one crossing an apartment suite makes a pattern.
Good, maybe. Maybe he strikes Louis as a steadier thing than before, even if he feels a little like if he were to stop concentrating, he might collapse into his component pieces.
But he follows, of course. The cool, dry air of the next room is pleasant.
"There was an auction," he offers. On a delay. "The pieces in the Rue Royale place." A little easier, to refer to the building more than its meaning. "I only knew of it after. I had some documentation drawn up to track the buyers."
A passing amusement. Like, perhaps, ten years after Paris, Louis might come back, and they could put it all back together.
The muscles in Louis' back betray him, flexing tense at the thought of their home all dismantled, sent to auction. Over eighty years later, resenting how all their lovely things must have been scattered, snapped up and separated.
It's not that he hadn't known. It's only that it bothers him more now, that he has given himself permission to think of it clearly in a way he hasn't for a very long time.
"I could find them now," Louis says slowly. "I look for particular pieces,from time to time."
But he hadn't let himself look for any of the things that had hung in their home. All those things chosen together, arranged with such care in their home. They'd made it together. It's a loss Louis feels all over again, a knife in his chest.
He lowers himself into a crouch, unlatching a suitcase.
"If you want."
If Lestat wants. If Louis could bear it, hunting down the fragments of their old life.
"I may need to consider some renovations before paying proper respects to interior design."
A neat little sidestep, Lestat drifting further into the room. The windows have been boarded against the howling storm beyond, plywood affixed outside the glass, but Lestat moves in this direction anyway to better hear the chaos outside. It sounds and feels further way than it is, but then, they'd already waded through the worst of it.
Wood rattling slightly. He touches his fingertips to the glass, which is cool. What does he want? The paintings that were theirs, identified, perhaps acquired and stowed away in a warehouse until a home is found for them again?
They aren't his. They aren't Lestat's. They're theirs. Louis doesn't know what to do with that right now. He barely knows what he and Lestat are doing. Louis is putting one foot in front of the other. One necessity at a time. Lestat floats through the room swathed in terry cloth and Louis picks through silky loungewear and comfortable sweatpants trying to think what would suit Lestat.
Refrains from asking again if Lestat intends to stay. Not yet. The question can wait, at least until after the storm.
"We'll see what survives the wind," Louis says absently. A little like before, hunkered down in their home while a storm blew through. "Come over here. I got a few things that'll suit you."
Louis doesn't let himself linger on Lestat as he is now. Gaunter, paler. More capable of fitting into some of Louis' clothes, which is convenient in the moment, but worrisome overall.
So summoned, Lestat moves to review the offerings, standing a measure away. Head tipped before reaching out to touch. Soft cotton, softer silk.
Chooses a pair of grey bamboo sweatpants that tie at the waist, and the matching T-shirt with a tasteful V-neck, loose sleeves. Humble on paper, luxurious in practice, in cut, in fit. Lestat moves off a little ways away to shed his towel, to dry off the last of the damp clinging to his skin, and then tug these items on, brushing his hands over them once settled. He has not exactly been enduring his penance in hairshirts and chains, but still.
Nice to feel normal. Human, as one would say. Easiest to move at this pace, one step at a time. A shower, and then grooming, and now comfortable clothes to pass the night and the day.
As if to come at the thing the opposite way—
"You've been eating human," he says. "I can tell."
A slight pause, fabric catching around Louis' shoulders before he finishes the motion, tugs the loose tunic into place. Smoothes a hand down his chest, steadying himself before he nods.
"Yeah, some."
Is there any other way for this topic to be other than fraught? Louis tells him this, and cannot do anything other than think of all the times Lestat had tried to coax him, pressure him, drag him towards blood. How Armand had retread similar ground, trying to coax Louis to eat.
And Louis, reluctant. Denying himself. Taking the least, the smallest sips. Always just enough to sustain himself, and no more.
What would it be now? Louis doesn't know. Hasn't decided.
"And you aren't, I think," he counters. Not quite a question.
Hope can be fraught. Lestat hopes, now, that Louis is eating human, that he'd discovered some form of peace with his nature, that he is as whole as he seems.
Some is half-hopeful, and he nods to this, even if it invites more questions than answers. Imagines that even the smallest of follow up questions will tug free a thread, begin an unravelling, and they are still shower-warm, still smoothing out the clothes they've dressed into, and it all still feels only half-real.
"Oh," in reply to this observation. "Yes."
A beat. Is there an explanation?
"I have been inattentive to the hunt," is a fair admission, he thinks. "When you stay in the same place, it can be difficult."
And Lestat has been here how long? Almost eighty years?
Louis is looking back at him so, so steadily. Lestat, speaking of losing interest in the hunt. Gaunter than Louis remembers him.
"Yeah," Louis agrees quietly. "I get that."
Pretend that is what Louis has been doing for the past twenty or so years. Losing interest.
Pretend that there weren't long years where Louis barely ate. Pretend he is not still there, sitting most days with his hunger. His hunger; it's been with him longer than Armand, longer than Lestat.
"Difficult to hunt in a hurricane anyway," saves them both from speaking of it too deeply. "You think you could make do with whats on hand?"
A toss up: would Lestat drink blood from a bag? Would he take a little sip from the other hotel guests? Would they descend to hunt rats in the basement of this place?
He thinks first of the hotel guests. The married couple in the room below them, flown in from Germany, whispering to each other about the storm. The musicians the floor further down, some awake, some asleep, one on a phone to a loved one in another state. An assemblage of executives from a construction company, one of them awake, on his computer, nursing a whiskey. Tourists, people passing through.
The usual fare, back in the day. But Lestat pulls back from this brief psychic wandering, focuses again on Louis. He feels hungry, yes, but he has become used to it. Like something splintered off in his flesh, worked around.
"What were you going to do?" he invites, a little gesture. Hungrier, in the soft way he asks, for an answer.
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A fresh washcloth fetched, soaked in soap and water. Lestat's own movements are slow, careful, letting each second trickle by. Steps a little aside as he goes to touch Louis' back, holding the cloth high at his back and letting gathered water stream. Still in his peripheral view, as if conscious to the way Louis had urged him near.
Eyes down, attention on this task. Perceiving Louis in fragments, the curve of his spine, the expanse of smooth skin that feels warm from their shared shower. Finding forgotten but familiar spots here and there, memories of kissing them on his way down or up. Memories of biting planes of muscle. Of blood running like soapy water does now.
Of other things that Lestat firmly shoves aside, rinsing the cloth, rinsing Louis' back. All tender, careful, more so where bruising leeches down the shoulder. Louis had asked to help with his back, and Lestat instinctively doesn't stray beyond those lines.
Not very characteristic of him. But it's a strange night.
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In Dubai, he had indulged. It had been a ritual, as most things were. Louis can remember Armand's hand at the nape of his neck, present, sometimes. (Is Louis thinking of San Francisco? Is he thinking of something he barely knows, but is beginning to remember?) Tonight, there is Lestat, an overwhelming presence at his back. Louis' whole focus is eaten up by him, the complicated leap of feeling each time Lestat speaks, or touches him, or draws a breath. Reminds Louis that he is fully present, and not a dream.
"Do you want to stay here?"
Is this an easy question? Maybe, maybe not. Does Lestat love New Orleans? Louis remembers him describing his affection for it, once, but what is left of that?
But it is a distraction, gives Louis a little room to breath as he rinses his hair. Considers his body, Lestat's hands at his back. How little he wants Lestat tending to him beyond what he is doing now, but cannot abide Lestat doing anything but touching him.
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At least in part because the task is done, but also the question, disorienting for its enormity. Stay here? In the shower, the hotel room, the city? The country? And what does this imply for Louis' movements throughout the world? Lestat watches him for a moment, Louis rinsing out his hair.
Winnows it out to the easiest thing. "As you say, the water will get cold," has a little humour to it, like he is, indeed, aware this is not what Louis meant, but answers as such anyway. "Seems like a waste of a good shower to let it."
Wringing out the cloth, turning aside to hang it up.
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Louis turns to look at Lestat over his shoulder, lowering one arm to alleviate the twinge of bruises and tender joints.
"Okay," comes after a brief study, this glimpse of Lestat over his shoulder. Turns after, facing him more fully.
Leaving this topic in favor of twisting off the tap. Water beads across Lestat's skin, clings to Louis' body. Looking at him, Louis can't help the thought of the last time they saw each other. Lestat, watching him in the dark of that dungeon, that pit, that tower.
"I'll get you a towel," Louis offers. "Just wait for me."
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Lestat pulls his hair around to squeeze it of water, and flicks a discreet look up and down when Louis must inevitably turn away from him and leave the shower. He's a depressed vampire, not dead, et cetera. He wanders across the generous tiled proportions to stop at the glass door, curling his fingers around the edge of it.
Questions. He has a great deal of them, all beginning to vie and jostle for attention. But, of this Lestat is certain, they have all night at least. They have the next day. After that—
Well. The hurricane will pass.
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They have tonight, tomorrow. A little bit of time where the world does not exist at all. Nothing but the two of them in this room.
Louis can't think of it. Not yet. He collects a towel, a glass jar of oil for his own sodden hair. Leaves one untouched for himself when he emerges properly, returns to the tub to wrap the other around Lestat.
"You can stay. I just have to finish," Louis tells him quietly.
A change. Louis had worn his hair so differently when they had been together in New Orleans, even in Paris. Lestat had been far away as styles had changed, and Louis had changed with them.
He touches Lestat's cheek. Steps past him back into the shower, naked still.
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He towels himself down as Louis finishes up (the occasional glance to the hazy shape of him through the glass), and then wraps it around his waist. Spies an item hanging up near the mirror.
The discovery of the hairdryer announces itself with the sound of it whirring to life. A short, testing blast, and then a more sustained roar. Not completely alien to him. They had these in the sixties, and he'd still been halfway active. Still, there is very little technique to his attempts to dry his hair, which is sure to frizz a little under harsh heat, a scattershot approach.
But it's something to do.
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Motionless for long minutes, watching Lestat as water puddles around his own feet. Louis' heart tightens in his chest.
"Let me."
With a towel hanging loosely from his fingers, hand outstretched.
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The answer is an uncomplicated: never.
He clicks off the device, offers it out with a turn of his wrist. Considers Louis in the mirror, his hair longer, he thinks, than it had been when they had a routine that resembled this. Wearing it longer, at least. Shared mirrors, shared grooming, shared dressing. The quiet ways two lives can fall into one.
The quiet ways they cared for each other. Still do, it seems. "I forgot to say," he says, "as there was quite a lot happening at the time, but you look nice."
Nice clothing, nice style. It is just like Louis to emerge from a burgeoning hurricane in beautiful things, beautifully.
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He'd never. The ways in which they had touched and attended to each other had been so—
Specific.
Few and farther between.
The way Louis cared for him in little ways, tenderness cultivated and deepend in those long years together, fraught upon Lestat's return.
Complex now, as Louis stands naked in this room with Lestat and looks at him and thinks of the ways in which all Louis' drawn lines hadn't saved them. How his awareness of the ways they moved through the world in public had never quite been able to be barred from Louis' mind when they were in private. How some awareness lingers even now, the two of them together for the first time in so long.
"I been making some changes," Louis tells him, setting the hair dryer onto the countertop so he might use both hands to bind the towel about his waist. "Glad that you like them."
No need to speak of what Louis is shaking free of. He threads fingers into Lestat's hair, testing the length. Somewhere between his memories, but still lovely, gleaming gold even in the low lights.
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Just absurd. Impossible beauty, so changed and yet so familiar in his modern apparel and fashion. Praise he would give in another life but finds himself stuffing back down his throat as Louis' fingers tease through his hair. Is his hair alright? It's just been cleaned, so he expects so. Tipping his head slightly as if he can glean information from Louis' expression.
Back down to the marble top he is standing at, absently drawing his fingertips along the edge. "You're doing well for yourself?" is a small in the scheme of things, like getting a fingernail beneath a flagstone. He does mean money, that sort of well, but any answer is a good answer, an enlightening answer.
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Still, Louis can't contain the prickling defensiveness that sparks up as Lestat asks him this. The last time they saw each other, Louis had what? When Louis left New Orleans, what had remained in his wake?
And then in Paris, living off Lestat for some months, money draw from Roget's while Lestat was where? Alive, maybe in New Orleans, maybe in Paris already. Louis feels shame for it, for what he'd taken.
Says nothing right away while he wrestles with the immediate reaction. Lestat made a little cluster of product, and Louis selects one bottle to tip a pool of glossy, sweet-smelling mixture into his own palm. He chooses to work his first into Lestat's half-damp locks, then into his own wet hair, letting the quiet stretch out.
A drifting memory, Lestat smiling at him across a card table, asking: Do you not know your value?
"I'm doing real well," comes eventually, as Louis watches Lestat in the mirror. "I've got investments, bonds, real estate. I've got more money that I'll ever spend. I got a hobby, dealing art. Built up a nice collection too, things of my own."
Important, suddenly, that Lestat hears this. Whatever else Louis' life has been, there is still this. Success. Power. That Louis has rebuilt what he once gaze up.
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Well, it happens, doesn't it? It all moves very fast, really.
He looks back up at the mirror once Louis begins to talk, studying his reflection. Feels a painful kind of affection, like the soreness that comes with the exercising of an unused muscle. Louis the businessman, who Lestat remembers also having an eye for artwork, superior to his own. Strange, the kinds of memories one hoards, one allows to fade.
He did not, really, attach himself to the enterprising side of his former companion. A biased view, preferring to think of their domestic evenings at home, of nights out at the opera. But it's easily recalled now, precious for being so.
"Of course," he says, quiet affection. Of course, a pile of gold, a hoard of art, doing real well. Of course Louis has not been idle. "And a building in Dubai to put it in."
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Not all of it. A collection housed in carefully controlled conditions elsewhere, warehoused and waiting for Louis to select from.
Some to be culled, because Louis bought it for what he was with Armand. Some for the man he'd been then, and some for Armand himself, gifts. Things that flattered their shared tastes, which Louis must now wonder: did they share tastes, even in art?
He lifts the dryer, makes a little face. Lacking, this piece of hotel provided equipment. Louis flicks it on at the lowest setting, goes to work carefully drawing the wet out of Lestat's hair.
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But Louis is companion enough for himself. He does not know what's happened. Something has. He does not know what's happening, not completely, and suspects Louis is only half sure himself. A rescuing, perhaps.
Where his hair has dried, Lestat raises a hand to fidget with a lock of it. Soft from the pampering, remembering its own natural wavy texture. It gets tucked behind an ear, a gesture that comes close to preening.
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"Come on," Louis says softly, to Lestat's reflection. "We should get you something to wear."
And then fed, a thing Louis hasn't considered but must now. Will they need to hunt rats? Does Lestat still feed from the vein? Would he drink from a blood bag?
Questions for after. Here and now, Louis lets his hand fall from Lestat's hair. Turns from the steamy mirror, the warmth of this room, to walk into the next. Lestat will follow, or he won't.
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Good, maybe. Maybe he strikes Louis as a steadier thing than before, even if he feels a little like if he were to stop concentrating, he might collapse into his component pieces.
But he follows, of course. The cool, dry air of the next room is pleasant.
"There was an auction," he offers. On a delay. "The pieces in the Rue Royale place." A little easier, to refer to the building more than its meaning. "I only knew of it after. I had some documentation drawn up to track the buyers."
A passing amusement. Like, perhaps, ten years after Paris, Louis might come back, and they could put it all back together.
"Perhaps you know better than me, now."
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It's not that he hadn't known. It's only that it bothers him more now, that he has given himself permission to think of it clearly in a way he hasn't for a very long time.
"I could find them now," Louis says slowly. "I look for particular pieces,from time to time."
But he hadn't let himself look for any of the things that had hung in their home. All those things chosen together, arranged with such care in their home. They'd made it together. It's a loss Louis feels all over again, a knife in his chest.
He lowers himself into a crouch, unlatching a suitcase.
"If you want."
If Lestat wants. If Louis could bear it, hunting down the fragments of their old life.
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A neat little sidestep, Lestat drifting further into the room. The windows have been boarded against the howling storm beyond, plywood affixed outside the glass, but Lestat moves in this direction anyway to better hear the chaos outside. It sounds and feels further way than it is, but then, they'd already waded through the worst of it.
Wood rattling slightly. He touches his fingertips to the glass, which is cool. What does he want? The paintings that were theirs, identified, perhaps acquired and stowed away in a warehouse until a home is found for them again?
Maybe.
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Yes.
Does he want them in a warehouse?
No.
They aren't his. They aren't Lestat's. They're theirs. Louis doesn't know what to do with that right now. He barely knows what he and Lestat are doing. Louis is putting one foot in front of the other. One necessity at a time. Lestat floats through the room swathed in terry cloth and Louis picks through silky loungewear and comfortable sweatpants trying to think what would suit Lestat.
Refrains from asking again if Lestat intends to stay. Not yet. The question can wait, at least until after the storm.
"We'll see what survives the wind," Louis says absently. A little like before, hunkered down in their home while a storm blew through. "Come over here. I got a few things that'll suit you."
Louis doesn't let himself linger on Lestat as he is now. Gaunter, paler. More capable of fitting into some of Louis' clothes, which is convenient in the moment, but worrisome overall.
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Chooses a pair of grey bamboo sweatpants that tie at the waist, and the matching T-shirt with a tasteful V-neck, loose sleeves. Humble on paper, luxurious in practice, in cut, in fit. Lestat moves off a little ways away to shed his towel, to dry off the last of the damp clinging to his skin, and then tug these items on, brushing his hands over them once settled. He has not exactly been enduring his penance in hairshirts and chains, but still.
Nice to feel normal. Human, as one would say. Easiest to move at this pace, one step at a time. A shower, and then grooming, and now comfortable clothes to pass the night and the day.
As if to come at the thing the opposite way—
"You've been eating human," he says. "I can tell."
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"Yeah, some."
Is there any other way for this topic to be other than fraught? Louis tells him this, and cannot do anything other than think of all the times Lestat had tried to coax him, pressure him, drag him towards blood. How Armand had retread similar ground, trying to coax Louis to eat.
And Louis, reluctant. Denying himself. Taking the least, the smallest sips. Always just enough to sustain himself, and no more.
What would it be now? Louis doesn't know. Hasn't decided.
"And you aren't, I think," he counters. Not quite a question.
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Some is half-hopeful, and he nods to this, even if it invites more questions than answers. Imagines that even the smallest of follow up questions will tug free a thread, begin an unravelling, and they are still shower-warm, still smoothing out the clothes they've dressed into, and it all still feels only half-real.
"Oh," in reply to this observation. "Yes."
A beat. Is there an explanation?
"I have been inattentive to the hunt," is a fair admission, he thinks. "When you stay in the same place, it can be difficult."
And joyless. No joy in killing, lately.
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Louis is looking back at him so, so steadily. Lestat, speaking of losing interest in the hunt. Gaunter than Louis remembers him.
"Yeah," Louis agrees quietly. "I get that."
Pretend that is what Louis has been doing for the past twenty or so years. Losing interest.
Pretend that there weren't long years where Louis barely ate. Pretend he is not still there, sitting most days with his hunger. His hunger; it's been with him longer than Armand, longer than Lestat.
"Difficult to hunt in a hurricane anyway," saves them both from speaking of it too deeply. "You think you could make do with whats on hand?"
A toss up: would Lestat drink blood from a bag? Would he take a little sip from the other hotel guests? Would they descend to hunt rats in the basement of this place?
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The usual fare, back in the day. But Lestat pulls back from this brief psychic wandering, focuses again on Louis. He feels hungry, yes, but he has become used to it. Like something splintered off in his flesh, worked around.
"What were you going to do?" he invites, a little gesture. Hungrier, in the soft way he asks, for an answer.
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be strong eppy
sweats
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we did it
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