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?"
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.
A breath of a laugh, nearly, a look back down at the cup in his hands.
Very well. Lestat raises the cup, turning it, and tells Louis, "It tastes muddy," a long awaited complaint, but one offered with a twinge of a smile. "Like if the bayou could bleed."
But here, he drinks. He takes a longer draw this time, two swallows, and his tongue cleans off his teeth beneath his lips. Not quite dead blood, but close in how empty it is. None of the syrupy life sparkling through it. But, all the same, something satisfying about the way it settles in his belly, suffuses through him.
A small hummed sound, acknowledging it. Already feeling a little less dislocated from reality.
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.
He drinks down another mouthful, wonders after it, after Louis wishing to live honestly. Another surge of curiousity. Does Louis hunt anymore, or is it just the bagged blood? Supplementing with rats, again? How had it been with Armand, who had not even a trace of pity in his heart for mortal lives? Armand, more patient than Lestat, but perhaps just as invested in Louis' survival.
Swallows the blood, and his questions, looking back up at Louis. A moment of study, and then he says, "If you are not, then I am not."
He rotates the cup in his hands, adds, "Only, I am not sure how long we have."
This settles inside of him, aches. Eighty years for a few days. Not dramatic at all, he thinks, to equate this to a man dying of thirst and given a sip of water. Not enough, but desperately sweet. But he is nodding, yes, the storm damage, figuring out how to tell it, and his gaze dips down to the offered second cup. An instinct to say, Louis needs to eat too.
But that's just the same annoying bullshit when Louis would defer back in the day, when he'd let time spool out between hunts, find some excuse despite how clear the need was. So. Lestat flicks some hair back and finishes his present cup, thick warm blood swallowed down.
He takes up the second cup, a little gesture like Happy? as he brings it up.
"Perhaps," he says, "if the weather improves, we can tour somewhere familiar. You can tell it to me there."
He is thinking of Jackson Square, a preferred bench. It's still there, barring disastrous hurricane consequences.
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.
They had been friends once, hadn't they? Yes, a different pull at play, his attraction mirrored back to him in Louis' dark brown eyes, whether or not the then-mortal knew it, could name it, but Lestat thinks: Louis had been so quiet and thoughtful, deep layers of great sensitivities beneath his rougher exterior, and he thinks he himself had been warm and charming and funny. And interested.
He is interested now. Louis, all his depths, his glass green eyes. What remains, what changes. "I will," he says. "You can see how you like it now."
Not that Lestat has a deeply intimate grasp on the city's more recent transformations, but it doesn't really matter. What is new he can discover, what is the same, he can point to. He feels that perhaps he has been at home too much. Perhaps a storm wrecking his house is for the best.
Well, he has other questions. Most of them seem bundled up in what they plan to talk about. He lands on, "What kinds of art do you sell?"
Louis is strangely proud of it, of his success. And he wants Lestat to know it, even if Lestat doesn't fully grasp the minutia of what Louis does. He is still capable of operating a business. He is a success. He did it on his own, building up wealth again.
"Whatever interests me," is true, but so is: "Whatever I know will fetch a sizeable profit."
He leans back, a familiar slouch back against the couch. Talking like they used to, comfortable with each other, Louis' hand stretched along the back of the cushions as he explains, "If I like something enough, I put it into my private collection."
And, the offer, most quietly made, "Maybe I'll show it to you, if you'd like."
Implicit invitation. A kind of promise. Yes, they will see each other again. Louis doesn't intend to vanish. He only needs time, time enough to know himself.
In the meantime, they can talk. Lestat will drink from Louis' oversized mug. This piece of art, this bit of music. The storm howls outside. Easy exchange of things they like, things they have discovered in the passing years.
Eventually, even with the storm outside, Louis tells Lestat, "You need to get some sleep."
Louis is well outside any internal clock. Hours and hours ahead, still aware that it's about time for a vampire in New Orleans to take to coffin.
In turns, Lestat relaxes into the evening. He allows a third cup of not-quite-dead blood to be pushed into his hands. Allows the ever-present fog in his mind to roll back a little, enough for him to know it was there.
He asks Louis questions, and none of them are the ones that needle him. About art, about Dubai, his building. He shares, too, his thoughts on the past eighty years of music—most of them, perhaps surprisingly, are positive despite having been found practicing a classical piece, of claiming to have ambitions to replace Martha Argerich.
He asks if Louis has heard of Nirvana. He asks if Louis has heard of a small YouTube content creator who does amusing analysis of contemporary classical music. Did he ever see the Marilyn Monroe films? Did he watch The Golden Girls?
Scattered, these offerings. Dependent, in part, of what technology may have fallen into his hands and when.
But he would like to see Louis' art collections. He would like it very much.
An unexpected closing of the conversation, and Lestat glances to the windows. Impossible to tell where the sun is in the sky, between the storm, the boards, the curtains, but yes, he can sense it.
"As do you," he says, looking back at him. "Even if you insist on only feeding me and not yourself."
"I'm okay," is an old refrain, one Louis attempts to correct, adding, "We can eat together when the sun sets."
A promise. Yes, he will eat. It's worth it, keeping his hunger close to see Lestat coming into clearer focus. Steadier. Color improved.
"I have a coffin," Louis tells him. "I'd like you to stay in it today."
Another small offering. A coffin to heal what the blood hasn't. Maybe. Louis isn't certain exactly what kind of harm Lestat needs to repair, only that there are fractures. That there is something that needs to be tended to, like there are broken pieces in Louis that need tending to.
The one coffin, he supposes. Lestat leans to set down his empty cup. Being cared for, taken care of, somehow both pleasant as well as chafing. Call it vampiric instinct, stupid and useless. Louis, his fledgling, who he should be taking care of instead, who he has failed too many times previously for such an urge to be worthy.
So yes, itchy, for no good reason, but also warming. A scratchy blanket. That will do, as far as metaphors go. "And you will sleep where?"
Watching Lestat's face as he says this, thinking of long years in shared beds with Armand. How often they had slept alongside each other. The way they had learned to fit together, and how that had frayed, slowly, quietly, as Louis' restless unease grew.
Thinking too of Lestat and the bed in their townhouse before, how they never slept in but would tear the covers off sometimes, pillows shoved aside, how they'd lay together on the mattress after, breathless and sweating. Thinking of Lestat taking him to coffin after, folding in alongside each other in the dark.
A pang in his chest. Wanting. Wanting that closeness again. (Or maybe he's just lonesome, and putting too much on Lestat.)
"I'll be alright," Louis repeats. "Be right here when you open that lid in the morning."
Well yes there's a bed, but where is Louis going to—
Fine.
Lestat purses his lips, not wholly content with this assurance, this predicament, but first he moves. Stands, moves for the broad windows. Not quite the same self-possessed swagger that Louis recalls, but still, a habit for gliding, touching the edge of the curtains with a graceful for hand. Checking its density, flicking it back to look at the wood covering the glass.
"What if they remove the boards?" he asks, even as he checks whether the curtains can be drawn completely. They can. But also, they're only curtains.
"I'm a light sleeper," is probably not a joke that Lestat will find very funny, even without full context of what Louis has gotten up to in the course of seventy-seven years.
He stands, stepping around and out from behind the coffee table.
The nonchalance might be a little misplaced. Their bedroom in Dubai hadn't featured windows. Armand had been present, rarely asleep. Different circumstances.
Or maybe Louis is. Maybe always was, and Lestat only remembers it differently because he had a habit of sleeping last, waking first. And maybe it's changed. They hadn't shared coffins so much in their last few years together. They had done it so constantly in the past, before.
Before the worst of it. The urge to ask Louis to share forms and dies, Lestat's mouth even parting to say it before it withers. Wets his lips instead, looks towards the coffin that's been placed at the foot of the bed, like a travel trunk. He supposes that's what it is.
Moves across to another window. Checks this too, fussing with the curtains.
It's been some time since Louis slept in a coffin. He doesn't volunteer this. They're delaying so many conversations, and have spent the passing hours so pleasantly. Louis would spend another night letting Lestat lob various pop culture references at him, comparing where their experience of the world has overlapped these past years.
He doesn't want to speak of the intimacies he and Armand had cultivated. Doesn't want to think on them. His thoughts flinch away from long years of memories. (How long until he has to begin testing these memories for accuracy? How long until he has to commit himself to trying to find missing pieces where he had never expected them?)
"I'll sleep with the blankets over my head," sounds a little like teasing still, punctuated by the creak of the trunk opening. "Lestat, the curtains will be enough. The door is locked and bolted. It's only us."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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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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.
no subject
Very well. Lestat raises the cup, turning it, and tells Louis, "It tastes muddy," a long awaited complaint, but one offered with a twinge of a smile. "Like if the bayou could bleed."
But here, he drinks. He takes a longer draw this time, two swallows, and his tongue cleans off his teeth beneath his lips. Not quite dead blood, but close in how empty it is. None of the syrupy life sparkling through it. But, all the same, something satisfying about the way it settles in his belly, suffuses through him.
A small hummed sound, acknowledging it. Already feeling a little less dislocated from reality.
no subject
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.
no subject
Swallows the blood, and his questions, looking back up at Louis. A moment of study, and then he says, "If you are not, then I am not."
He rotates the cup in his hands, adds, "Only, I am not sure how long we have."
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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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This settles inside of him, aches. Eighty years for a few days. Not dramatic at all, he thinks, to equate this to a man dying of thirst and given a sip of water. Not enough, but desperately sweet. But he is nodding, yes, the storm damage, figuring out how to tell it, and his gaze dips down to the offered second cup. An instinct to say, Louis needs to eat too.
But that's just the same annoying bullshit when Louis would defer back in the day, when he'd let time spool out between hunts, find some excuse despite how clear the need was. So. Lestat flicks some hair back and finishes his present cup, thick warm blood swallowed down.
He takes up the second cup, a little gesture like Happy? as he brings it up.
"Perhaps," he says, "if the weather improves, we can tour somewhere familiar. You can tell it to me there."
He is thinking of Jackson Square, a preferred bench. It's still there, barring disastrous hurricane consequences.
no subject
"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.
no subject
They had been friends once, hadn't they? Yes, a different pull at play, his attraction mirrored back to him in Louis' dark brown eyes, whether or not the then-mortal knew it, could name it, but Lestat thinks: Louis had been so quiet and thoughtful, deep layers of great sensitivities beneath his rougher exterior, and he thinks he himself had been warm and charming and funny. And interested.
He is interested now. Louis, all his depths, his glass green eyes. What remains, what changes. "I will," he says. "You can see how you like it now."
Not that Lestat has a deeply intimate grasp on the city's more recent transformations, but it doesn't really matter. What is new he can discover, what is the same, he can point to. He feels that perhaps he has been at home too much. Perhaps a storm wrecking his house is for the best.
Well, he has other questions. Most of them seem bundled up in what they plan to talk about. He lands on, "What kinds of art do you sell?"
no subject
Louis is strangely proud of it, of his success. And he wants Lestat to know it, even if Lestat doesn't fully grasp the minutia of what Louis does. He is still capable of operating a business. He is a success. He did it on his own, building up wealth again.
"Whatever interests me," is true, but so is: "Whatever I know will fetch a sizeable profit."
He leans back, a familiar slouch back against the couch. Talking like they used to, comfortable with each other, Louis' hand stretched along the back of the cushions as he explains, "If I like something enough, I put it into my private collection."
And, the offer, most quietly made, "Maybe I'll show it to you, if you'd like."
Implicit invitation. A kind of promise. Yes, they will see each other again. Louis doesn't intend to vanish. He only needs time, time enough to know himself.
In the meantime, they can talk. Lestat will drink from Louis' oversized mug. This piece of art, this bit of music. The storm howls outside. Easy exchange of things they like, things they have discovered in the passing years.
Eventually, even with the storm outside, Louis tells Lestat, "You need to get some sleep."
Louis is well outside any internal clock. Hours and hours ahead, still aware that it's about time for a vampire in New Orleans to take to coffin.
no subject
He asks Louis questions, and none of them are the ones that needle him. About art, about Dubai, his building. He shares, too, his thoughts on the past eighty years of music—most of them, perhaps surprisingly, are positive despite having been found practicing a classical piece, of claiming to have ambitions to replace Martha Argerich.
He asks if Louis has heard of Nirvana. He asks if Louis has heard of a small YouTube content creator who does amusing analysis of contemporary classical music. Did he ever see the Marilyn Monroe films? Did he watch The Golden Girls?
Scattered, these offerings. Dependent, in part, of what technology may have fallen into his hands and when.
But he would like to see Louis' art collections. He would like it very much.
An unexpected closing of the conversation, and Lestat glances to the windows. Impossible to tell where the sun is in the sky, between the storm, the boards, the curtains, but yes, he can sense it.
"As do you," he says, looking back at him. "Even if you insist on only feeding me and not yourself."
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A promise. Yes, he will eat. It's worth it, keeping his hunger close to see Lestat coming into clearer focus. Steadier. Color improved.
"I have a coffin," Louis tells him. "I'd like you to stay in it today."
Another small offering. A coffin to heal what the blood hasn't. Maybe. Louis isn't certain exactly what kind of harm Lestat needs to repair, only that there are fractures. That there is something that needs to be tended to, like there are broken pieces in Louis that need tending to.
no subject
So yes, itchy, for no good reason, but also warming. A scratchy blanket. That will do, as far as metaphors go. "And you will sleep where?"
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Watching Lestat's face as he says this, thinking of long years in shared beds with Armand. How often they had slept alongside each other. The way they had learned to fit together, and how that had frayed, slowly, quietly, as Louis' restless unease grew.
Thinking too of Lestat and the bed in their townhouse before, how they never slept in but would tear the covers off sometimes, pillows shoved aside, how they'd lay together on the mattress after, breathless and sweating. Thinking of Lestat taking him to coffin after, folding in alongside each other in the dark.
A pang in his chest. Wanting. Wanting that closeness again. (Or maybe he's just lonesome, and putting too much on Lestat.)
"I'll be alright," Louis repeats. "Be right here when you open that lid in the morning."
no subject
Fine.
Lestat purses his lips, not wholly content with this assurance, this predicament, but first he moves. Stands, moves for the broad windows. Not quite the same self-possessed swagger that Louis recalls, but still, a habit for gliding, touching the edge of the curtains with a graceful for hand. Checking its density, flicking it back to look at the wood covering the glass.
"What if they remove the boards?" he asks, even as he checks whether the curtains can be drawn completely. They can. But also, they're only curtains.
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He stands, stepping around and out from behind the coffee table.
The nonchalance might be a little misplaced. Their bedroom in Dubai hadn't featured windows. Armand had been present, rarely asleep. Different circumstances.
But still.
be strong eppy
Or maybe Louis is. Maybe always was, and Lestat only remembers it differently because he had a habit of sleeping last, waking first. And maybe it's changed. They hadn't shared coffins so much in their last few years together. They had done it so constantly in the past, before.
Before the worst of it. The urge to ask Louis to share forms and dies, Lestat's mouth even parting to say it before it withers. Wets his lips instead, looks towards the coffin that's been placed at the foot of the bed, like a travel trunk. He supposes that's what it is.
Moves across to another window. Checks this too, fussing with the curtains.
sweats
It's been some time since Louis slept in a coffin. He doesn't volunteer this. They're delaying so many conversations, and have spent the passing hours so pleasantly. Louis would spend another night letting Lestat lob various pop culture references at him, comparing where their experience of the world has overlapped these past years.
He doesn't want to speak of the intimacies he and Armand had cultivated. Doesn't want to think on them. His thoughts flinch away from long years of memories. (How long until he has to begin testing these memories for accuracy? How long until he has to commit himself to trying to find missing pieces where he had never expected them?)
"I'll sleep with the blankets over my head," sounds a little like teasing still, punctuated by the creak of the trunk opening. "Lestat, the curtains will be enough. The door is locked and bolted. It's only us."
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we did it
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