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."
"Don't rush me," a light scolding. "If this room is as impervious to sunlight as you say—"
But, fine. Lestat attends one last window to ensure the curtains drawn properly before turning from it, looking back to where Louis has opened the coffin. Moves nearer, inspecting its insides. Pillowy silk, clean, a marked departure from his own that is, as they speak, likely filling with flood water. That would have been an uncomfortable, waterlogged evening.
Resists the urge to check the door as well. A show of trust, then. He at least feels sharp enough now that there's no clutch of fear that he will sleep and wake up and it will be as if none of this happened, but still. Some small lingering anxiety that, at the very least, Louis himself will vanish.
So, he dawdles. Observes, "The storm blew in fast," as he folds his arms. "It will probably leave just as quickly, don't you think?"
"I think it will be gone when we wake," Louis agreed, straightening upright beside Lestat. "As if it were never here."
Except for the damage. All the damage.
Louis' fingers find the center of Lestat's back. Thinking of all the hurricanes they weathered together. Thinking of their home here, now a stop on a tour and their story mangled and exaggerated.
"But we'll be here."
The pair of them, enduring. Surviving a storm, again.
"I'll be here, I promise," Louis offers, quieter. Wondering if this is what troubles him. The sense of having dreamed their reunion. That he could blink and it would all be gone.
A simple assurance, the kind you might make to a child reluctant to go to bed for fear of nightmares, but it tangles up in him anyway. That Louis will be here when he wakes, a guaranteed thing.
Lestat thinks he has been rather good at not letting emotions get the best of him tonight, but his eyes prickle, world turning rosy. He wants to say some tender thing now, but each potential word feels impossibly heavy and impossibly delicate, like it will collapse under the weight of meaning, sincerity. He is glad Louis is here. That Louis found him again. That he inhabits a world where he will wake and see him.
Just presses a smile at him, I know, touching his hip in answer. Hoping this conveys something of it, without forcing him to say it and shatter all apart.
It's not an unfamiliar expression on Lestat's face, except that Louis had nearly forgotten it. Hadn't thought of it for years and years, had remembered all the other expressions Lestat wore but none of the most fragile. The sight of it twists in Louis' chest. He lifts his hand, cupping Lestat's cheek.
Yes, he understands.
"I'll close you in," Louis murmurs. "Like I used to."
Not quite like they used to.
Louis closing the door to their room, then joining Lestat. They'd shared more often than not. They'd learned how to fit together so thoroughly that it had been instinct, required no thought at all.
Maybe Louis' body still knows. He isn't certain. Can't be sure what's left to him now.
Lestat presses his hand over Louis', indulging in this momentary press of contact. Then, takes his hand, uses it like needless balance as he goes to step into the silk-lined interior of the coffin.
Considers maintaining his dignified, prettily tearful silence as he stands on the plush silk, and then decides differently—
"I would imagine you with me," a little like it is dragged from him, a shake of his head preceding words as he decides to speak again. "Even before all of the unpleasantness, when we were being petty and slept apart, I'd feel as though we were still sharing as we preferred. And then after..."
A tip of his head, wandering his gaze aside. Like the staggering expanse of time has a depth to it, a gravity threatening to pull him out of orbit. Still here, though, says a squeeze of his hand. "When I permitted myself a little romance, I'd think perhaps you would go to coffin and imagine the same. Your fingers clutching a curl of my hair. Your body in my arms, carved out of the darkness."
Back to Louis' face. "Did you imagine me that way?"
Their hands still linked, Louis' thumb running back and forth across Lestat's knuckles as they stand here together. As Lestat says this thing and Louis feels himself wavering, eyes pricking with tears as he looks back at Lestat.
Had Louis imagined him?
"Yeah," he admits, voice thick. "I imagined you. It was like you were there with me in any room I was in."
When he felt loneliest. Weakest. When he couldn't keep the ache of missing Lestat in check, and then weeks, months, denying himself again out of guilt and self-loathing. He can't say he never imagined them folded into a coffin together, but it has been so many years since Louis has been habitually sleeping in his coffin. Easier to set the temptation to dream Lestat into the space with him aside when he wasn't closing himself into that quiet, dark space.
And now, aching with the reality of time wasted. Years lost to a lie. Louis feels it all over again, looking back at Lestat over their interlaced hands.
Leans across the edge of the coffin from where he stands within it, pulling Louis closer by the hand so he can wind an arm around him. Tuck his face in there against his shoulder. Not the same collapsing urgency as the gravitational pull of mutual grief, the hurricane muted where it rages beyond sturdy walls and boarded windows, but perhaps they can be permitted this—another embrace, because they have missed one another.
The urge to say, You weren't, you were so far away.
It had been Louis and Armand together for so long. Louis and Armand and the grief Louis carried, the pain, this longing that he could never shed and hated himself for. Lestat takes him into his arms again and Louis turns his face in against the warmth of his neck. Breathes.
(Some curl of satisfaction, noting the way Lestat smells like him now.)
"You're here," skirts away from the thought. Dreaming Lestat into rooms and around corners and into the dark, seeing him on dance floors and hotel lobbies, hearing him in snatches of music. Years and years, finding pieces of him in every place he and Armand went.
"We don't gotta do that anymore."
No need for dreaming. Here they are. They missed each other, and they don't have to anymore. Louis should let go, but he doesn't. Holds on, because it is such a luxury. Holds on because Lestat won't.
It is a long and lingering hug, soaking up that sense of reality, of Louis' heart really beating against his own, his real breath against his neck. He can take this with him into the coffin, even as Louis says that need not do any imagining, but it is also true because they can have, at least, this.
"Okay," murmured, finally. "You can close me in now."
Untangles in stages, as if his hands were independently reluctant to let go, creeping along Louis' back, clutching his arm and shoulder, smoothing to flutter against his chest before finally breaking away.
The interior of the coffin smells clean and like Louis. Lestat lays amongst it, the generous pillowy interior, and—
There's a book in here, making a soft little sound as he tugs it free from a sewn in compartment beside him. Looks it over, fond creases at his eyes. Of course. Offers it up.
Louis follows him down. Not into the coffin, but knelt alongside it, watching Lestat settle and feeling some uneven pulse of his heart. Longing, Louis knows. But something satisfied too, worries assuaged by the sight of Lestat safe and warm and ensconced in Louis' own coffin. He'll rest and wake steadier, and this knowledge is what prevents Louis from asking some question about playlists, about Lestat's opinions on this or that song, whether he's seen any given movie.
They had talked for hours, in the beginning. It had felt like this.
"Thanks," comes soft, Louis hanging just slightly over the edge of the coffin.
Lingers.
Eventually, murmurs, "Bonne nuit." French again, after so many years letting the language atrophy on his tongue.
Closes the lid. Lays a hand along the smooth surface, lingering still, before Louis lifts himself from the floor and into bed.
And this too is as it was. Louis sleeping later, longer. Never the first to wake between them. Whether or not Lestat lets himself out is his own business. The coffin opens from the inside.
It takes Lestat a little while to sleep, even as the sun rises, pulls at him. Laying there in the dark, hand finding a place to rest over his heart, listening keenly to Louis settling, Louis sleeping. The movement of the hotel in the morning, cleaners passing through the hallways, guests stirring, some filtering out to brave the post-hurricane outside. He finally lapses into unconsciousness, making these observations.
Wakes early. The sun barely gone, likely still staining the sky. The coffin is well made and does not creak as he presses the lid open and silently climbs out.
Watches Louis sleep for a moment before deciding that it's alright, maybe, to sit on the edge of the bed, and then to come to settle in the empty space beside Louis on top of the covers. It's a generous and expensive mattress, barely dipping as Lestat settles on his side, inches of space between them carefully preserved.
He can observe Louis' profile like this. Take this opportunity to stare, to reconcile the fact that Louis is here again, where he can be viewed and heard, even touched. Perhaps Louis will go away soon. Perhaps he won't get to for another eighty years.
Armand had needed so little sleep. Louis had sometimes woken beside him while Armand silently swiped this and that across the smooth surface of his tablet, or in years before, holding a book, turning pages. Louis, centuries younger. Louis, still beholden to the pull of sun and moon.
Sometimes he'd woken alone. Less and less, in Dubai.
All these memories passing in a tangled flash as he comes to consciousness. A moment lingering in the space between sleeping and waking, not yet able to place his surroundings.
A moment where Lestat must be a dream
And then Louis reaches for him, touches his face, and remembers all at once everything that's passed between them the night before. Lestat, here. Real.
"Hey," Louis greets, voice still rough with sleep. Fingers lingering on Lestat's cheek as he asks, "You been awake long?"
Remembering. Their shared coffin. Lestat, the warmth of him, how perfectly he fit alongside Louis. How often Louis woke to his touch, his eyes bright in the dark.
Louis touches him as if to check that he is real, and it takes all of Lestat to resist closing that distance, to resist pressing his body against Louis', to resist sinking into the familiar warm embraces they used to enjoy after a day of rest. The urge to do so sweeps through him, and he lets it go by with a breath in, and out. His hand coming up, touching the back of Louis'.
"A while," he says, quiet, near-whispered. "Just listening. The city is a little wounded. Some outages, some flooding. Generators, sirens. It was a little selfish of us to take a longer shower, up in our castle."
He doesn't sound like he regrets it. He's weathered enough Louisianian hurricanes to know the way they all pass by, the water drains away, the windows are repaired. Certainly, there's been worse.
A humming contemplation of this possibility. Of remaining here, Louis beneath the covers and Lestat atop them, a thin barrier between the pair of them acting as a reminder for Louis' self control.
"Rachida can bring us a cup."
A cup each, something Lestat seemed inclined to tolerate the night before. Louis is choosing to believe Lestat doesn't wish to lure a guest or two into bed with them.
"We could go out after," Louis murmurs, watching Lestat's face. "See what the storm did, you show me what's left of all our favorite places."
Places they'd visited little and less in those last dwindling months together. Always together, but rare to linger and enjoy each others company in those days.
Ravages of a hurricane, ravages of time. A bleak little tour. Or, perhaps not. They'll be doing it alongside one another, and,
he feels a little out of time, still. A little human blood and a calm day's sleep has cleared away much of the fog, but the mystery remains as to Louis' presence here. Something happened, and Lestat doesn't know what, and the longer they go on this way, the longer it might feel a little less real. As if he couldn't dream up the circumstances in which Louis realised the truth of things and came to visit him, and so, he continues to push it away.
But, no. It is only that he doesn't yet know. It is only that Louis hasn't wished to discuss it yet.
"Cafe Lafitte moved several buildings down from where it was," he imparts. "But it continues. Bourbon Street has retained its charms with a death grip. A little kitsch, now. One plays jazz to play jazz, not to be the hot new thing."
Trailing his fingertips down Louis' arm. "The Azalea is a hotel. But you probably knew that."
His fingers slowly, reluctantly, leave Lestat's face as he speaks. A necessary concession, so Louis might lift his phone from the nightstand and send a brief text. Breakfast in bed. Stall the question of a true hunt, whether Lestat cares to try, whether Louis is capable.
"I kept track of the Azalea," Louis admits. "For a while I thought..."
A trailing pause, Louis' expression abashed. He'd wanted it so badly, back then. Wanted a business. Wanted the boot off his neck. Wanted it badly enough to involve Lestat, use his money for it. Lestat hadn't minded but Louis had. Still does, maybe. A point of pride that he's made so much of his own money that he'd never find himself in that position again.
"Thought about buying it again, sometimes."
A dream. A dream like Lestat was a dream for years and years. Buy the Azalea, remake the past to a more pleasing outcome.
"Timing was never right," Louis dismisses. Turns his palm up, inviting the graze of fingers.
So invited, Lestat runs his fingers up to sensitive palm skin, yielding fingers. Follows those shallow lines, attention turned towards this idle activity.
A brief momentary sense memory of Louis' fingers squeezing his hair, trailing wash cloth down over his skin. Decorum compels him not to linger on it, letting out a breath of agreement. Poor timing, a curse not even immortals are free from.
His most destructive impulses that would have seen the building razed down to ashes. His most wistful (destructive too, even masquerading as longing) wanting to recreate something thoroughly lost to him.
Lestat touches his palm and Louis' fingers twitch up. Acknowledging. Not quite trapping.
"Might have leased it out," he says finally. "Let someone make their own dream out of it."
A dream that would look very different from Louis'. Maybe last longer.
"Don't matter now," is not unlike a person shaking themself from a daydream. Setting aside these thoughts, shifting focus back to Lestat's face. "You think there's anything left of the park for us?"
It doesn't matter because the impulse has passed? Because Louis is leaving New Orleans in the next few days, never to return? Because whatever has happened to bring him here has realigned his perspective, of the important things?
Lestat could ask. Perhaps should. But they have yet to have breakfast. They have yet to discuss all they need to.
"Fair chance it will be soggy but not a ruin," he says. "It came in from the east, so. The lakes will have been more troublesome than the river. And the trees have deep roots."
Louis hums. He finally closes fingers fully around Lestat's, running his thumb over Lestat's knuckles. Toys with his fingers, the pleasure of this small bit of contact.
"I don't mind a little mud on my boots."
A flash of memory: Lestat, lifting him with stunning ease. Louis, laughing. Held, and carried, and set down only on the safety of a curb, shoes and hem spared the ordeal of mud.
Louis' fingers run along Lestat's knuckles.
"You want me to have something suitable sent up for you from whatever shops are open?"
Louis, pretending he hadn't already dispatched Rachida. Hasn't quietly worried over the thought of Lestat's changed measurements, sought forgiving garments to accommodate what Louis no longer knows by heart.
Lestat's gaze flicks up from their hands, uncomprehending for a moment, before the logistical reality of his situation reoccurs to him. In his borrowed clothes, and his shoes still drying and likely ruined.
He hasn't given it any thought at all, what he should accept from Louis, if he should. Pyjamas, cups of blood that he had likely only brought for himself, talk of cleaning up his place or at least making an assessment. This offering, too practical again to really do more with than allow.
"If it isn't any trouble," is prim acceptance. "Just to be decent when we leave the hotel."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
But, fine. Lestat attends one last window to ensure the curtains drawn properly before turning from it, looking back to where Louis has opened the coffin. Moves nearer, inspecting its insides. Pillowy silk, clean, a marked departure from his own that is, as they speak, likely filling with flood water. That would have been an uncomfortable, waterlogged evening.
Resists the urge to check the door as well. A show of trust, then. He at least feels sharp enough now that there's no clutch of fear that he will sleep and wake up and it will be as if none of this happened, but still. Some small lingering anxiety that, at the very least, Louis himself will vanish.
So, he dawdles. Observes, "The storm blew in fast," as he folds his arms. "It will probably leave just as quickly, don't you think?"
no subject
Except for the damage. All the damage.
Louis' fingers find the center of Lestat's back. Thinking of all the hurricanes they weathered together. Thinking of their home here, now a stop on a tour and their story mangled and exaggerated.
"But we'll be here."
The pair of them, enduring. Surviving a storm, again.
"I'll be here, I promise," Louis offers, quieter. Wondering if this is what troubles him. The sense of having dreamed their reunion. That he could blink and it would all be gone.
no subject
Lestat thinks he has been rather good at not letting emotions get the best of him tonight, but his eyes prickle, world turning rosy. He wants to say some tender thing now, but each potential word feels impossibly heavy and impossibly delicate, like it will collapse under the weight of meaning, sincerity. He is glad Louis is here. That Louis found him again. That he inhabits a world where he will wake and see him.
Just presses a smile at him, I know, touching his hip in answer. Hoping this conveys something of it, without forcing him to say it and shatter all apart.
no subject
Yes, he understands.
"I'll close you in," Louis murmurs. "Like I used to."
Not quite like they used to.
Louis closing the door to their room, then joining Lestat. They'd shared more often than not. They'd learned how to fit together so thoroughly that it had been instinct, required no thought at all.
Maybe Louis' body still knows. He isn't certain. Can't be sure what's left to him now.
no subject
Considers maintaining his dignified, prettily tearful silence as he stands on the plush silk, and then decides differently—
"I would imagine you with me," a little like it is dragged from him, a shake of his head preceding words as he decides to speak again. "Even before all of the unpleasantness, when we were being petty and slept apart, I'd feel as though we were still sharing as we preferred. And then after..."
A tip of his head, wandering his gaze aside. Like the staggering expanse of time has a depth to it, a gravity threatening to pull him out of orbit. Still here, though, says a squeeze of his hand. "When I permitted myself a little romance, I'd think perhaps you would go to coffin and imagine the same. Your fingers clutching a curl of my hair. Your body in my arms, carved out of the darkness."
Back to Louis' face. "Did you imagine me that way?"
no subject
Had Louis imagined him?
"Yeah," he admits, voice thick. "I imagined you. It was like you were there with me in any room I was in."
When he felt loneliest. Weakest. When he couldn't keep the ache of missing Lestat in check, and then weeks, months, denying himself again out of guilt and self-loathing. He can't say he never imagined them folded into a coffin together, but it has been so many years since Louis has been habitually sleeping in his coffin. Easier to set the temptation to dream Lestat into the space with him aside when he wasn't closing himself into that quiet, dark space.
And now, aching with the reality of time wasted. Years lost to a lie. Louis feels it all over again, looking back at Lestat over their interlaced hands.
no subject
Leans across the edge of the coffin from where he stands within it, pulling Louis closer by the hand so he can wind an arm around him. Tuck his face in there against his shoulder. Not the same collapsing urgency as the gravitational pull of mutual grief, the hurricane muted where it rages beyond sturdy walls and boarded windows, but perhaps they can be permitted this—another embrace, because they have missed one another.
"I was," he whispers. "I was there."
no subject
The urge to say, You weren't, you were so far away.
It had been Louis and Armand together for so long. Louis and Armand and the grief Louis carried, the pain, this longing that he could never shed and hated himself for. Lestat takes him into his arms again and Louis turns his face in against the warmth of his neck. Breathes.
(Some curl of satisfaction, noting the way Lestat smells like him now.)
"You're here," skirts away from the thought. Dreaming Lestat into rooms and around corners and into the dark, seeing him on dance floors and hotel lobbies, hearing him in snatches of music. Years and years, finding pieces of him in every place he and Armand went.
"We don't gotta do that anymore."
No need for dreaming. Here they are. They missed each other, and they don't have to anymore. Louis should let go, but he doesn't. Holds on, because it is such a luxury. Holds on because Lestat won't.
no subject
"Okay," murmured, finally. "You can close me in now."
Untangles in stages, as if his hands were independently reluctant to let go, creeping along Louis' back, clutching his arm and shoulder, smoothing to flutter against his chest before finally breaking away.
The interior of the coffin smells clean and like Louis. Lestat lays amongst it, the generous pillowy interior, and—
There's a book in here, making a soft little sound as he tugs it free from a sewn in compartment beside him. Looks it over, fond creases at his eyes. Of course. Offers it up.
we did it
They had talked for hours, in the beginning. It had felt like this.
"Thanks," comes soft, Louis hanging just slightly over the edge of the coffin.
Lingers.
Eventually, murmurs, "Bonne nuit." French again, after so many years letting the language atrophy on his tongue.
Closes the lid. Lays a hand along the smooth surface, lingering still, before Louis lifts himself from the floor and into bed.
And this too is as it was. Louis sleeping later, longer. Never the first to wake between them. Whether or not Lestat lets himself out is his own business. The coffin opens from the inside.
no subject
Wakes early. The sun barely gone, likely still staining the sky. The coffin is well made and does not creak as he presses the lid open and silently climbs out.
Watches Louis sleep for a moment before deciding that it's alright, maybe, to sit on the edge of the bed, and then to come to settle in the empty space beside Louis on top of the covers. It's a generous and expensive mattress, barely dipping as Lestat settles on his side, inches of space between them carefully preserved.
He can observe Louis' profile like this. Take this opportunity to stare, to reconcile the fact that Louis is here again, where he can be viewed and heard, even touched. Perhaps Louis will go away soon. Perhaps he won't get to for another eighty years.
no subject
Sometimes he'd woken alone. Less and less, in Dubai.
All these memories passing in a tangled flash as he comes to consciousness. A moment lingering in the space between sleeping and waking, not yet able to place his surroundings.
A moment where Lestat must be a dream
And then Louis reaches for him, touches his face, and remembers all at once everything that's passed between them the night before. Lestat, here. Real.
"Hey," Louis greets, voice still rough with sleep. Fingers lingering on Lestat's cheek as he asks, "You been awake long?"
Remembering. Their shared coffin. Lestat, the warmth of him, how perfectly he fit alongside Louis. How often Louis woke to his touch, his eyes bright in the dark.
no subject
"A while," he says, quiet, near-whispered. "Just listening. The city is a little wounded. Some outages, some flooding. Generators, sirens. It was a little selfish of us to take a longer shower, up in our castle."
He doesn't sound like he regrets it. He's weathered enough Louisianian hurricanes to know the way they all pass by, the water drains away, the windows are repaired. Certainly, there's been worse.
"Shall we have breakfast in bed?"
no subject
"Rachida can bring us a cup."
A cup each, something Lestat seemed inclined to tolerate the night before. Louis is choosing to believe Lestat doesn't wish to lure a guest or two into bed with them.
"We could go out after," Louis murmurs, watching Lestat's face. "See what the storm did, you show me what's left of all our favorite places."
Places they'd visited little and less in those last dwindling months together. Always together, but rare to linger and enjoy each others company in those days.
no subject
he feels a little out of time, still. A little human blood and a calm day's sleep has cleared away much of the fog, but the mystery remains as to Louis' presence here. Something happened, and Lestat doesn't know what, and the longer they go on this way, the longer it might feel a little less real. As if he couldn't dream up the circumstances in which Louis realised the truth of things and came to visit him, and so, he continues to push it away.
But, no. It is only that he doesn't yet know. It is only that Louis hasn't wished to discuss it yet.
"Cafe Lafitte moved several buildings down from where it was," he imparts. "But it continues. Bourbon Street has retained its charms with a death grip. A little kitsch, now. One plays jazz to play jazz, not to be the hot new thing."
Trailing his fingertips down Louis' arm. "The Azalea is a hotel. But you probably knew that."
no subject
"I kept track of the Azalea," Louis admits. "For a while I thought..."
A trailing pause, Louis' expression abashed. He'd wanted it so badly, back then. Wanted a business. Wanted the boot off his neck. Wanted it badly enough to involve Lestat, use his money for it. Lestat hadn't minded but Louis had. Still does, maybe. A point of pride that he's made so much of his own money that he'd never find himself in that position again.
"Thought about buying it again, sometimes."
A dream. A dream like Lestat was a dream for years and years. Buy the Azalea, remake the past to a more pleasing outcome.
"Timing was never right," Louis dismisses. Turns his palm up, inviting the graze of fingers.
no subject
A brief momentary sense memory of Louis' fingers squeezing his hair, trailing wash cloth down over his skin. Decorum compels him not to linger on it, letting out a breath of agreement. Poor timing, a curse not even immortals are free from.
"What would it become?"
no subject
Decades cycling through different possibilities.
His most destructive impulses that would have seen the building razed down to ashes. His most wistful (destructive too, even masquerading as longing) wanting to recreate something thoroughly lost to him.
Lestat touches his palm and Louis' fingers twitch up. Acknowledging. Not quite trapping.
"Might have leased it out," he says finally. "Let someone make their own dream out of it."
A dream that would look very different from Louis'. Maybe last longer.
"Don't matter now," is not unlike a person shaking themself from a daydream. Setting aside these thoughts, shifting focus back to Lestat's face. "You think there's anything left of the park for us?"
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Lestat could ask. Perhaps should. But they have yet to have breakfast. They have yet to discuss all they need to.
"Fair chance it will be soggy but not a ruin," he says. "It came in from the east, so. The lakes will have been more troublesome than the river. And the trees have deep roots."
Deeper now than a hundred years ago, even.
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Louis hums. He finally closes fingers fully around Lestat's, running his thumb over Lestat's knuckles. Toys with his fingers, the pleasure of this small bit of contact.
"I don't mind a little mud on my boots."
A flash of memory: Lestat, lifting him with stunning ease. Louis, laughing. Held, and carried, and set down only on the safety of a curb, shoes and hem spared the ordeal of mud.
Louis' fingers run along Lestat's knuckles.
"You want me to have something suitable sent up for you from whatever shops are open?"
Louis, pretending he hadn't already dispatched Rachida. Hasn't quietly worried over the thought of Lestat's changed measurements, sought forgiving garments to accommodate what Louis no longer knows by heart.
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He hasn't given it any thought at all, what he should accept from Louis, if he should. Pyjamas, cups of blood that he had likely only brought for himself, talk of cleaning up his place or at least making an assessment. This offering, too practical again to really do more with than allow.
"If it isn't any trouble," is prim acceptance. "Just to be decent when we leave the hotel."
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