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.
Easy agreement. Yes, Lestat is adaptable. A gift for surviving, to weather the worst.
Louis watches him. Feels warmth curling in his chest at the sight of the wrinkled nose, some familiar sign of the old discerning taste.
"Will you let me buy you a cell phone?" is a little abrupt. Giving in to that flutter of warmth, of wanting to hold fast to Lestat even if he chooses to spend another hundred years hidden away while Louis walks into the world.
A belated question: Does Lestat know what a cell phone is?
That Louis is met with some suspicion for the proposal probably indicates that Lestat has some idea of what a cell phone is, if perhaps, not a very good one. He shifts the cup in his hand to swirl the liquid within, stopping it from getting texturally disastrous.
Louis is not going to start picking at the intricacies of cellular reception at this exact moment. His ankle nudges Lestat's as he turns just that much further into him, intent on his reactions.
"It'd be yours," Louis promises. "Could put music on it, take pictures."
Is he coaxing? He's uncertain.
He just wants something, a thread of something, to connect them. To be certain Lestat doesn't slip away.
Lestat thinks of his tablet, which has his music. Uncertain if it takes pictures. If it is the same as a phone in enough ways to matter, that Louis is asking to give him this specific other kind of device. He supposes not, if Louis had seen it and is asking him this. Or knows it might well be broken, now.
Of course, all the things the tablet does for him, he did not set up himself. But, well, didn't he just say he is adaptable? He purses his mouth, thinking.
"Can change the voice on it, if you want. It'll speak French and all."
Maybe this has been offered already. But would the millenial know to offer French? Hadn't known to press Lestat into leaving that waterlogged cottage, or not in any way that might work properly to coax Lestat out of harm's way.
There are other virtues of a cell phone. Louis chooses to let this one simmer while he sips quietly from his mug.
Teasing. Leaning, a little, into the Louisianian twang that has settled into his accent, even if he still reaches for the cadence that he'd found for himself, still sometimes avoids a graceless grammatical contraction. Regardless, a century away from the boat he'd stepped off from, if not so much distance.
To his ear, Louis sounds different as well. Not unpleasant. New Orleans, still a texture to his words, its broad vowels holding words with gentle hands. He could never fathom moving away, in these intervening years, not when the city whispers constantly in this specific voice, even as modernity tries to flood it out.
He toys with the cup, edge of his thumbnail sliding along the handle. "You don't have to buy me things," finally. "I have money."
There's no reason it should catch Louis off-guard, hearing Louisiana in Lestat's voice in even minor measures, but it does.
Complicated, how he feels about it. How much he likes it. How the sound of it carries a muted pain along with it. New Orleans making its mark on Lestat, and Louis miles and miles away, losing his own accent for long decades. A sorrowful kind of symmetry.
"I know you have money," Louis tells him, setting aside his empty cup. Admits, quiet: "Lived off it for a couple months when we first got to Paris."
And he'd felt deep guilt about it, how they'd taken from him after what they'd done. What Louis had done. Claudia's anger simmering, remorseless, and Louis haunted, grief-stricken and guilty, using Lestat's money for that apartment, for clothes, for furnishings—
It had felt wrong.
But this, it's not only about the money they'd taken, not about repayment. Louis still likes to pick out things for Lestat. A phone is only the most acceptable avenue, utilitarian rather than the opulent whirl of goods they'd swept up when Lestat had first arrived in New Orleans.
The handful of months spent in Paris had consisted of at least one appointment with Roget. The theatre destroyed meant a shuffle around in various portfolios. Reports of what had been extracted, including his final letter. Money, then, shifted into a kind of interest-accruing hibernation. The practical things, done at his behest.
But Lestat does not recall feeling resentment or anger or really much of anything at the time and now, certainly not. He starts to say something like what he used to say, to express that all his wealth is Louis' wealth, and stops. If this is true, what does that say for the reverse?
Maybe what Lestat is saying: I can look after myself.
Suspects he will have to, at some point, but for now—
"Then, if it would please you."
His tone says: if it would please Louis, it would please him too.
Maybe will have to say later, once a phone is procured, that it would please him also if Lestat were to use it.
But not now.
The far door opens once more. Rachida bears in a crisp brown paper bag, sets it by the window. A brief exchange between her and Louis, logistics only. A few lingering pieces of business, things that could not accommodate being upended just because Louis' life had been entirely upended.
And then she is gone. And it is the two of them, alone in a room again.
"I made guesses," Louis says. "What you might like to wear."
And may well be far off base. They have been apart for a long time. Lestat had been wearing expensive things, in spite of the obvious neglect. Louis has chosen some similar items. Draping shirts, gleaming black buttons for fastening. Soft, clinging undershirts. Loose trousers, waists nipped in. And Lestat's own boots returned, polished, repaired.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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.
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"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?"
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"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.
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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."
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"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.
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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?"
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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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"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.
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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.
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"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.
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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."
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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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Easy agreement. Yes, Lestat is adaptable. A gift for surviving, to weather the worst.
Louis watches him. Feels warmth curling in his chest at the sight of the wrinkled nose, some familiar sign of the old discerning taste.
"Will you let me buy you a cell phone?" is a little abrupt. Giving in to that flutter of warmth, of wanting to hold fast to Lestat even if he chooses to spend another hundred years hidden away while Louis walks into the world.
A belated question: Does Lestat know what a cell phone is?
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"Do they work well?"
Doubt.
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Louis is not going to start picking at the intricacies of cellular reception at this exact moment. His ankle nudges Lestat's as he turns just that much further into him, intent on his reactions.
"It'd be yours," Louis promises. "Could put music on it, take pictures."
Is he coaxing? He's uncertain.
He just wants something, a thread of something, to connect them. To be certain Lestat doesn't slip away.
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Of course, all the things the tablet does for him, he did not set up himself. But, well, didn't he just say he is adaptable? He purses his mouth, thinking.
"Do they have Siri?" is halfway to a yes.
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Is this the deciding factor?
"Can change the voice on it, if you want. It'll speak French and all."
Maybe this has been offered already. But would the millenial know to offer French? Hadn't known to press Lestat into leaving that waterlogged cottage, or not in any way that might work properly to coax Lestat out of harm's way.
There are other virtues of a cell phone. Louis chooses to let this one simmer while he sips quietly from his mug.
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Teasing. Leaning, a little, into the Louisianian twang that has settled into his accent, even if he still reaches for the cadence that he'd found for himself, still sometimes avoids a graceless grammatical contraction. Regardless, a century away from the boat he'd stepped off from, if not so much distance.
To his ear, Louis sounds different as well. Not unpleasant. New Orleans, still a texture to his words, its broad vowels holding words with gentle hands. He could never fathom moving away, in these intervening years, not when the city whispers constantly in this specific voice, even as modernity tries to flood it out.
He toys with the cup, edge of his thumbnail sliding along the handle. "You don't have to buy me things," finally. "I have money."
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Complicated, how he feels about it. How much he likes it. How the sound of it carries a muted pain along with it. New Orleans making its mark on Lestat, and Louis miles and miles away, losing his own accent for long decades. A sorrowful kind of symmetry.
"I know you have money," Louis tells him, setting aside his empty cup. Admits, quiet: "Lived off it for a couple months when we first got to Paris."
And he'd felt deep guilt about it, how they'd taken from him after what they'd done. What Louis had done. Claudia's anger simmering, remorseless, and Louis haunted, grief-stricken and guilty, using Lestat's money for that apartment, for clothes, for furnishings—
It had felt wrong.
But this, it's not only about the money they'd taken, not about repayment. Louis still likes to pick out things for Lestat. A phone is only the most acceptable avenue, utilitarian rather than the opulent whirl of goods they'd swept up when Lestat had first arrived in New Orleans.
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The handful of months spent in Paris had consisted of at least one appointment with Roget. The theatre destroyed meant a shuffle around in various portfolios. Reports of what had been extracted, including his final letter. Money, then, shifted into a kind of interest-accruing hibernation. The practical things, done at his behest.
But Lestat does not recall feeling resentment or anger or really much of anything at the time and now, certainly not. He starts to say something like what he used to say, to express that all his wealth is Louis' wealth, and stops. If this is true, what does that say for the reverse?
Maybe what Lestat is saying: I can look after myself.
Suspects he will have to, at some point, but for now—
"Then, if it would please you."
His tone says: if it would please Louis, it would please him too.
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Maybe will have to say later, once a phone is procured, that it would please him also if Lestat were to use it.
But not now.
The far door opens once more. Rachida bears in a crisp brown paper bag, sets it by the window. A brief exchange between her and Louis, logistics only. A few lingering pieces of business, things that could not accommodate being upended just because Louis' life had been entirely upended.
And then she is gone. And it is the two of them, alone in a room again.
"I made guesses," Louis says. "What you might like to wear."
And may well be far off base. They have been apart for a long time. Lestat had been wearing expensive things, in spite of the obvious neglect. Louis has chosen some similar items. Draping shirts, gleaming black buttons for fastening. Soft, clinging undershirts. Loose trousers, waists nipped in. And Lestat's own boots returned, polished, repaired.
A humble offering. A start.
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