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lestat de lioncourt. ([personal profile] damnedest) wrote2034-06-28 12:42 pm
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-04 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-04 11:21 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-05 02:21 am (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-08 06:55 am (UTC)(link)
"I don't know."

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-09 03:23 am (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-09 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
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.
Edited 2025-01-09 04:38 (UTC)
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-09 05:56 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-10 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
"Does it?"

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-10 03:02 am (UTC)(link)
"I know."

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-10 03:42 am (UTC)(link)
"Most of the time."

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-10 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
"Yes."

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-10 05:26 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2025-01-11 11:55 pm (UTC)(link)
"It would."

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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