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.
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.
"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.
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."
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?"
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."
"I'm not complaining about the reception. Feels right."
Walking into a hurricane, walking out of it with Lestat.
Sitting here now with him, watching as Lestat sips from the cup and suppresses the urge to prod at him, question whether or not it's to his taste. To drag an opinion out of him and dissect it. Some part of him wanting an argument, wanting to see Lestat's teeth.
Veers away from the impulse, offers, "I need some time. I can't...I need to figure what's left of me and what I want to make of it. If I got you..."
A trailing breath out. Overwhelming, the way he feels for Lestat even now. Louis can't do anything but feel it, to the exclusion of all else.
How forceful would a hurricane have to be to topple a building like this one? Quite strong, he supposes. World ending. The rattling of the wooden boards only makes the motionless walls around them feel sturdier. There would need to be simultaneous catastrophic events. Earthquakes and meteors.
At least he is keeping his histrionics within. Battened down. He tips his head after the distant baying of alarms. Ambulance, police? But Louis has trailed off, and Lestat sharpens his focus back to him again.
If he has Lestat, then there is no figuring himself out. No certainty about what he wants.
"Yes," he says, in that lingering silence. "I understand. I wouldn't..."
Lestat shakes his head, a motion that sways some hair from his face, communicates that whatever he was going to say is unworthy.
Fingers curling firmer around the cup in his hands, an anchoring. "I've been working on some compositions," comes out of his mouth, and he supposes, that's fine. "Nearly one hundred years since the last, so it seems like it might be time for me to create something new."
He can also do this. Work out what's left of him. What to make of it.
So recently, Lestat's voice had spilled from speakers in Dubai. A rare composition, made for Louis. Recorded again after for Louis with Lestat's voice alone.
Strange to feel some miserly anxiety at Lestat composing other songs, other music. Anxious at the thought of other muses.
Louis sips from his mug, deep swallows to give him time to wind his way towards the response he knows he should give:
"I'd like to hear them, when you're ready."
Because of course he does. Of course he wants to hear what Lestat has assembled. They have been so long apart.
And Lestat's piano had been broke. Louis had seen that, left it unremarked upon but much considered.
"You can make me wait until the tour," is a little teasing, in spite of Louis' eyes moving over his face. Studying. "I can be patient."
An amused little hum, and he lets himself be warmed by it. The promise of some future time, when Lestat has music to share, and Louis would like to hear it.
"You will have to be," matches tone for tone. "I like to take my time."
They are speaking in reverse, he thinks. He should be the one assuring Louis he can be patient. Louis is the one asking him to wait. He remembers the cup in his hands, brings it up again. Another sip, still small. His face still does not give away what he thinks of it.
His appetite, dwindled. He considers the things he wants to say, wants to ask. Takes a bracing breath in, looks up at him. "Will you tell me what happened?"
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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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"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.
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"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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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?"
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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.
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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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Walking into a hurricane, walking out of it with Lestat.
Sitting here now with him, watching as Lestat sips from the cup and suppresses the urge to prod at him, question whether or not it's to his taste. To drag an opinion out of him and dissect it. Some part of him wanting an argument, wanting to see Lestat's teeth.
Veers away from the impulse, offers, "I need some time. I can't...I need to figure what's left of me and what I want to make of it. If I got you..."
A trailing breath out. Overwhelming, the way he feels for Lestat even now. Louis can't do anything but feel it, to the exclusion of all else.
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At least he is keeping his histrionics within. Battened down. He tips his head after the distant baying of alarms. Ambulance, police? But Louis has trailed off, and Lestat sharpens his focus back to him again.
If he has Lestat, then there is no figuring himself out. No certainty about what he wants.
"Yes," he says, in that lingering silence. "I understand. I wouldn't..."
And now it is his turn to trail off.
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Quiet prompting.
Still no return to the question Louis had asked under the warmth of the shower spray. Will Lestat stay here?
Tamping down hard on the urge to say Come with me. A solution that's not a solution at all. It doesn't matter the landscape. It's the proximity.
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Fingers curling firmer around the cup in his hands, an anchoring. "I've been working on some compositions," comes out of his mouth, and he supposes, that's fine. "Nearly one hundred years since the last, so it seems like it might be time for me to create something new."
He can also do this. Work out what's left of him. What to make of it.
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Strange to feel some miserly anxiety at Lestat composing other songs, other music. Anxious at the thought of other muses.
Louis sips from his mug, deep swallows to give him time to wind his way towards the response he knows he should give:
"I'd like to hear them, when you're ready."
Because of course he does. Of course he wants to hear what Lestat has assembled. They have been so long apart.
And Lestat's piano had been broke. Louis had seen that, left it unremarked upon but much considered.
"You can make me wait until the tour," is a little teasing, in spite of Louis' eyes moving over his face. Studying. "I can be patient."
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"You will have to be," matches tone for tone. "I like to take my time."
They are speaking in reverse, he thinks. He should be the one assuring Louis he can be patient. Louis is the one asking him to wait. He remembers the cup in his hands, brings it up again. Another sip, still small. His face still does not give away what he thinks of it.
His appetite, dwindled. He considers the things he wants to say, wants to ask. Takes a bracing breath in, looks up at him. "Will you tell me what happened?"
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be strong eppy
sweats
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we did it
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