damnedest | open.

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.

An innocent question. Lestat is curious.

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 His working knowledge of men's hair and grooming products a trifle out of date, this sleek thing in his hands compared to the little cans of pomade or glass tonic bottles he'd come to know.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.

"Perhaps you know better than me, now."

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?

Maybe.

Does Louis want the old pieces back?

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.

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 joyless. No joy in killing, lately.

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.

Half-way to an answer, stops, backtracks to ask:

"Do you know what a blood bag is?"

A question that gives Louis a little space to sit with his own curdling sense of shame.

Half-measures. All the ways he had found, they had found, to coax Louis to eat after his last stumble. (Armand, sitting across the table watching intently as Louis moved from course to course. Armand, rising to occupy Damek's abandoned chair.) He finds now the old defensiveness, embarrassment. The ways in which he failed before. The ways in which he was a disappointment, still misaligned in him.

Amusement, a crinkle around the eyes, twinged smile.

"A bag of blood," Lestat says. "One presumes."

But, says a hand, fingers opening and stopping Louis from explaining. "Yes, I know. For hospitals. This works for us?"

It stands to reason, if he thinks about it. A living man may bleed into a cup, and a vampire may drink from that cup whether that man lives and dies. It must be something about the veins, the heart, that allows death to poison it. Or something. He doesn't know, far from an expert—apparently.

Here, maybe Louis has something to teach him about blood drinking.

"It'll do."

It has done for Louis, for at least twenty years.

"I have it warmed," Louis tells him. "But it won't taste the same as it does when you drink from a vein."

Fair warning. Louis is watching Lestat's face so intently for any sign of—

Well. What had been there in New Orleans. Exasperation. Impatience. Disgust. Things Louis remembers very clearly, enough to inspire caution as they tread across this tender ground.

Maybe in the coming days, weeks, months, however long they have—the old arguments, the old exasperations, they surely can't be so far away.

Just tonight they are, it seems. None of those familiar reactions present themselves, not with Lestat watching Louis so intently. Here, a little twinge at his brow, like a question, but whatever it is doesn't make it all the way to words.

Likely better than the thin sustenance provided by rodents, no?

"I'll try it," he offers. And, to be clear, "Warmed."

All the pomp and circumstance of Dubai could not be collapsed into a suitcase. Louis isn't certain he had wanted it transported. Doesn't know that he wanted to touch it, just yet.

So they will try this familiar thing a new way. Together.

"Warmed," Louis agrees.

A single text, pinged back with an affirmative.

Louis had arranged adjoining rooms. Rachida is awake. Louis can hear her going about the business of preparation, and in this span of time Louis crosses to the elegant coffee table, the low couch beside it. Beckons to Lestat.

What can they talk about? They have said all the weighty things. The smaller exchanges feel fraught to Louis, difficult to navigate without tripping over one wound or another. They can have this little starting point: Louis, beckoning Lestat over as the far door opens, and Rachida sets two generous mugs onto the adjacent bookshelf without ever entering.

Lestat pauses a moment, absorbing what is a new information.

Minor, in the scheme of things, but Louis using his device to communicate, and then the sound of the door opening, and the scent of blood. Louis is not here alone, but has brought staff. Human staff, who understand his nature. Inconsequential information, maybe, except for all that it implies. A whole life sprawling out, full of arrangements, decisions, history, wealth, power.

Lestat isn't unfamiliar with the notion. He had Roget, back when, and a couple of other mortal contacts who understood enough of who they were dealing with. Reminds himself of this on the way to sitting as beckoned. Unseemly to startle at every little unexpected thing.

Unseemly to gaze at Louis, now that he is right here again, available to be viewed in vivid detail, but this one he can't help.

"Where did you go?" he asks. "After Paris."

Where did he go?

Louis touches Lestat's knee, rises from his seat to fetch the mugs. Nervous about presenting them to Lestat. Feels the spectre of their old arguments (of not-arguments with Armand) close to hand. But he bears the cups back to Lestat anyway, muscling the nerves away as he comes around to his answer.

"Egypt," Louis says quietly. He puts the mug into Lestat's hands. "Then port to port, for a time."

Wandering.

"New York, for a long spell after. San Francisco," with a moment's pause, looking at Lestat's face. San Francisco, weighted down by memory. "Then wandering again, wherever struck us."

Armand's words in his mouth again as Louis echoes, "Here, there, everywhere, and Dubai."

Lowering himself down to the couch once more, cup in hand, as he finishes, "And now, New Orleans."

Lestat takes the cup. Spares it a glance.

Otherwise, his focus locks on Louis, this item largely forgotten where he balances it on his knee. Listens to this tale of wanderlust, the little discordant chime of a reminder, us, and the way one location blends into the general idea of more of them. Louis entering the States, leaving again. Never going south enough to be anywhere near.

And San Francisco, when Louis had been in a dark way. Maybe he should ask, Any favourites? Instead, he catches on this last thing. New Orleans, at the end.

The question must be asked. It can't abide going unspoken any longer. "To remain?"

Trading back Louis' question.

Fair enough, isn't it? Louis had asked, Lestat had side-stepped. Lestat asks now, and Louis...hesitates.

Says nothing right away. He takes a long drink out of his mug, runs knuckles across his mouth. Louis knows his answer. He has already decided. It is only the unexpected struggle of saying it aloud, knowing what it will mean.

"No," is the truth. He owes Lestat the truth. "I'm not ready yet."

Where is home? It is still New Orleans. It is still Lestat. But Louis doesn't know that he fits back among these pieces. If he can grow past what the past eighty years have made of him if he tries now.

Strange that something can feel both devastating and calming. Lestat had, at least, tempered the impulse to hope very ardently, and now—

Now he knows. He nods. The storm outside batters the walls. What if the bricks come apart like autumn leaves, what if the waters rise and come streaming in through the closed doorways? He raises the cup in his hands to drink from and then pauses before it touches his lips when he remembers what it is.

Takes a sip. It is rich and vital in comparison to vermin blood, and he does not miss the urgent squirming of his prey between his jaws. Even so, he does not greedily take a second, settling the cup back down on his knee.

Considers grasping onto this one thing. Yet.

"Well. The city has not given you a warm reception," he says. "Perhaps next time."

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