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."
A piece of repeating history. Louis, inflicting modern styling on Lestat. Lestat, offering up some acquiescence in that exact tone Louis recalls so well now.
"You'll be decent."
The far door opens again. Rachida, briefly visible as she sets down two mugs, and then gone. Breakfast, ahead of something more substantial.
Unless there is nothing more substantial than this. Maybe Lestat wants nothing more. Louis looks into his face, searching, before he begins the slow process of sliding out from under blankets, putting bare feet to floor.
"I had Rachida look for a dry cleaner," Louis tells him. "For the robe."
A specialized operation, surely. But Louis feels some horrible pang in his chest at Lestat's robe destroyed. He remembers him on the stairs in it still, observing Louis and Lily as they ordered their clothes, as Louis did up his tie, as they walked out the front door.
It is a much appreciated garment. Lestat's memories tend to feature it in cosy nights in, both of them reading quietly or engaged in quiet conversation in a bed that is only used for recreation. Reveal a little of his history in his highhanded condescension for what New Orleans calls 'winter'. Sets of pyjamas underneath, or nothing underneath. Louis' arms around him, Louis' shoulder leaning against his.
So there is a twinge of new affection for this gesture, carried in the way he watches Louis slide out of bed, stand to go fetch their blood. (Had only seemed to anticipate the arrival of the mugs, and nothing more.)
Lestat eases himself up to slouch against the headboard, legs curling in. "She will need to be sure they're reputable," he says, instead of something like That isn't necessary. "It's not delicate, but a little old."
Novelty mugs, warm to the touch. Louis crosses the room with them, offers one to Lestat before sliding into the space he'd vacated. Joins Lestat against the headboard and feels an ache in his chest for the domesticity of it. Shared cups, shared bed, soft conversation.
"She's very thorough," Louis reassures. "And she's been made to understand it's importance."
Important to Lestat. Important to Louis.
"It'll clean up nice."
A slanting look sideways at Lestat, who has also cleaned up very nicely.
He catches that, gaining a smile over the top of his cup. A little rueful. Not all the way cognizant, before, to the ways he had languished in his own neglect until he'd seen the water turn that slight shade of grey. The fact that had Louis not come the night he did, he might have retreated down beneath his floors and withstood drowning in his sleep, only to rise like a creature of the lagoon the next evening.
The way vampires find themselves existing. From the very human, the extra-human, through to the monstrous. Recalls sleeping in tombs and in dirt and in silk-lined coffins and pressed pyjamas.
Another thought that lingers on the edge of his awareness: is this his reentry into the world?
He pushes it aside. Later. Pushes himself external. Louis, settled in front of him, and even in these casual things, stylish. Beyond style, comfortable. Powerful, in a world where capital means so much. Doors not only opened to him, but politely held so.
Lestat, who has only seen this barest glimpse of Louis' life, how he presents within it, nods once at this question. Yes, he is certain.
Less certain: what he wants. He hums an acknowledging sound and then hides an answer in a sip of blood. It would be generous of anyone to say that he had a plan all along, which was to deny himself the urge to go into the earth in the hopes that he would be found, some day, and now that he is, he must know what to do. His sip of blood is long and tolerant.
And himself enough to let his nose wrinkle in the aftertaste. Better than rat, which he'd consumed unflinching for no long, but maybe he would flinch now.
"I'm very adaptable," finally, diplomatic. This era will suit him if he chooses it, as will the next.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
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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."
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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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
"You'll be decent."
The far door opens again. Rachida, briefly visible as she sets down two mugs, and then gone. Breakfast, ahead of something more substantial.
Unless there is nothing more substantial than this. Maybe Lestat wants nothing more. Louis looks into his face, searching, before he begins the slow process of sliding out from under blankets, putting bare feet to floor.
"I had Rachida look for a dry cleaner," Louis tells him. "For the robe."
A specialized operation, surely. But Louis feels some horrible pang in his chest at Lestat's robe destroyed. He remembers him on the stairs in it still, observing Louis and Lily as they ordered their clothes, as Louis did up his tie, as they walked out the front door.
no subject
So there is a twinge of new affection for this gesture, carried in the way he watches Louis slide out of bed, stand to go fetch their blood. (Had only seemed to anticipate the arrival of the mugs, and nothing more.)
Lestat eases himself up to slouch against the headboard, legs curling in. "She will need to be sure they're reputable," he says, instead of something like That isn't necessary. "It's not delicate, but a little old."
As if he's been looking after it at all.
no subject
"She's very thorough," Louis reassures. "And she's been made to understand it's importance."
Important to Lestat. Important to Louis.
"It'll clean up nice."
A slanting look sideways at Lestat, who has also cleaned up very nicely.
no subject
The way vampires find themselves existing. From the very human, the extra-human, through to the monstrous. Recalls sleeping in tombs and in dirt and in silk-lined coffins and pressed pyjamas.
Another thought that lingers on the edge of his awareness: is this his reentry into the world?
He pushes it aside. Later. Pushes himself external. Louis, settled in front of him, and even in these casual things, stylish. Beyond style, comfortable. Powerful, in a world where capital means so much. Doors not only opened to him, but politely held so.
"This era suits you, I think."
no subject
How little Louis has actually seen of it.
More than Lestat, but all at a great distance. Comfort with it, yes, but very little of it has touched him in any meaningful way.
He sips. Awareness rising in him of a missed meal. Disregulation in his meal schedule after so many years is a novelty. Not unpleasant
"It'll suit you too," he offers. "If you want it to."
If Lestat cares to mire himself in time again. Louis isn't sure he does.
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Less certain: what he wants. He hums an acknowledging sound and then hides an answer in a sip of blood. It would be generous of anyone to say that he had a plan all along, which was to deny himself the urge to go into the earth in the hopes that he would be found, some day, and now that he is, he must know what to do. His sip of blood is long and tolerant.
And himself enough to let his nose wrinkle in the aftertaste. Better than rat, which he'd consumed unflinching for no long, but maybe he would flinch now.
"I'm very adaptable," finally, diplomatic. This era will suit him if he chooses it, as will the next.
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