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lestat de lioncourt. ([personal profile] damnedest) wrote2034-06-28 12:42 pm
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-24 01:44 am (UTC)(link)
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?
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-24 05:18 am (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-25 03:36 am (UTC)(link)
"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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-26 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-26 03:20 am (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-26 06:13 am (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-27 02:28 am (UTC)(link)
"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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-27 04:00 am (UTC)(link)
"You wouldn't?"

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-27 11:38 pm (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-28 01:44 am (UTC)(link)
Lestat was always going to ask. Louis owes him an answer.

The explanation feels fraught, scattered. Daniel would make it easy, if he were here. Sum up all Louis' mistakes in a few sentences. But it's Louis' task now, to think on what's happened to him. To explain it, now that Lestat has asked.

But first—

"If you drink that," Louis prompts.

Is more certain now than he was that it is not to Lestat's taste. That he is politely withholding complaint. But he needs to eat. Louis can lead by example, but he will barter if he must.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-28 06:38 am (UTC)(link)
A breath out. Alright.

Muddy, Louis can live with, because Lestat does not put aside his cup.

"I think I've grown accustomed to the taste."

Or to hunger, living with his hunger. Ever present, his most faithful companion.

But he doesn't want Lestat to feel it. They need only tide him over, wait out the storm. Then Lestat can eat his fill.

In the meantime—

"Are you sure you want to talk about this now?"

Though if not, it'd beg the question: when? Louis has no sense of schedule, of what his life will look like now. He had needed to see Lestat. Now that he's here, Louis is less certain of what comes next. Has an understanding of what he needs, but less of where his feet should carry him, what he would even find back in Dubai when he returned.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-28 08:54 pm (UTC)(link)
A question Louis has only half an answer to himself.

How long will he stay?

(If he stays too long, he'll never leave.)

Louis puts his mug onto the table in front of Lestat. Silent offering. Drink this too.

"A few days," he says quietly. Nonspecific. "Wanna give you a hand with the storm damage before I go."

Maybe buy a cell phone. Exact some promises, some assurances. Bully this millenial a little.

"I'm just...trying to figure out how to tell it. What happened."
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-12-29 01:57 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, Louis is happy. Unconcerned with his own hunger, for the moment.

"Bet you know the town better than me now," Louis admits. Lestat who has been here, stayed this whole time while Louis ranged far afield. Says to him, "You gonna take me on one of our walks? Like we used to?"

The very beginning of their courtship, long looping walks where Louis spoke and Lestat listened, asked questions, responded in kind. Louis had missed him. Had dreamed him, even consumed by his own guilt for doing so, to reach back for even a shadow of the comfort their companionship had been.

A little surreal, to think of reprising any part of the life they'd had together. Surreal to be here, sitting alongside him, close enough to feel Lestat's skin warming as he downs a full cup of blood, starts on another.

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