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.
The human comes in, which feels odd. Far removed from the days of invisible servants, who could go anywhere and see anything and it didn't matter. They'd guarded their own privacy in New Orleans. A maid on occasion and nothing more intimate than that. Still, Lestat doesn't hackle, just curls his knees in slightly, watches the proceedings.
Like Louis has let in a stray cat, which happens to be a lion. He finishes his cup while they talk, a languid and luxurious drinking down of thick blood, twisting to set it down once she leaves the room.
"Oh?" at this news. Tempting enough to draw Lestat out of bed, finally, one last glance before pushing himself across the mattress to go attend to the bag. Not because he is so excited for new clothes, but keen to see what Louis would choose for him.
Hums over these items, drawing them out one by one. Garments made for men but with the textures and softness that he would still associate with women's clothes, trousers that hang like skirts and shirts that drape like blouses. Pleasing, this confusion, or mingling, whatever it is. These resemble, too, the things he'd been wearing last night, even if he barely recalls obtaining them, choosing them.
Louis had guided him into the present day, but Lestat had found his footing eventually.
(A fond memory of the ways their wardrobes had complimented. Subtle matching between colors, small mirrors in their chosen accessories. Louis had enjoyed those things, minor ways to link them, if easy to overlook.)
"This is just for starters," Louis reminds, the curling pleasure in his chest rising as he watches Lestat handling his choices kept in careful check. "You can send Rachida out if you want. If there's more you think you need."
While he's here. While they're together. A offer guided by the anxious urge to get Lestat set up, well-stocked and safe, guiding the offer.
Strange to imagine that a man's wardrobe can fit inside a paper bag, but, this seems to be achievable. Especially as he is not completely certain of the state of his things as they are now. Not just for the hurricane, but, the previous decades, years, months. At the bottom of the bag, he finds someplain but undoubtedly luxurious sets of underwear and socks, so he doesn't have to immediately add these little necessities to the list.
"These will do, Louis," Lestat says instead, looking over at him. Clutching the articles in his hands tighter, relaxing, before he says, with a tip of his head, "Should I change in the other room?"
A little bit of a real question, but delivered with some coy and proper affectation.
It's a real question, one Louis should think on with some seriousness. They've already been naked with each other, laid completely bare in the hours since they'd reunited and Louis had brought him here. But maybe there should be a point where some boundaries are reintroduced.
Maybe.
"You change where you want," Louis tells him, an easy shrug of acceptance as he leaves Lestat in custody of the bag and considers his own suitcase. "I won't mind."
A choice laid out for Lestat as Louis strips to the waist. His suitcase is neatly opened on its stand, waiting for Louis to make some selections of his own.
But turns his back, and undresses without ceremony. Then, briefs first, followed by a pair of trousers of a dark grey with a subtle pinstripe, fabric draping save for where it buttons around his waist. A clinging wide-necked undershirt is layered beneath a loose button down of a deep rusty red. Some hesitation follows buttoning it closed halfway up his chest and tucking the loose tails into his waistband. And then undoing another button.
Familiar shades, somewhat familiar silhouettes, flattering his proportions in the way he'd been specific about back when, and still now. He skims his fingers over his knuckles. His little collection of rings, likely still hidden away in his home. Unless Felix stole them. In which case, he will remove Felix's spine.
"Voilà ," he says, twirling back around. If he catches sight of a butt cheek by accident, it will be a good start to the evening, but he has been polite. "What should I do with the sleeves?" Rolled, unrolled and buttoned? He would like input.
The twirl yields a glimpse of bare back, the flex of muscle as Louis' arms lift to guide down a polo, lightweight and textured. Regrettably, Louis had pulled on his trousers first. Utilitarian today, maybe in anticipation of excavating Lestat's cottage, worn canvas fabric artfully distressed.
It is a marked deviation. Louis is experimenting, not yet sure he is interested but willing to give himself the day.
"Come here," Louis beckons, reaching out with one hand while the other tugs clinging knit fabric into place over his chest and stomach.
An excuse to take Lestat by the wrist, run his thumb over the delicate tracery of veins there at the inside of his arm before fastening the button.
Lestat gives up his wrists easily, holding himself still under the passing sweep of Louis' thumb, the gentle tickle of fabric drawn tighter to button. Sense memories of similar gestures in the past. Undoing shirt buttons. Applying gifted cufflinks.
Home, in little golden glimpses. How near it seems, how far away. He wanders a glance back up at this question.
"Yes," he says, unsure as to what metric they're measuring by, but all of them are at the very least okay. The clothes, probably. A glance aside locates a mirror on the wall, and he turns to it while leaving his other wrist in Louis' care. "Your valet has good taste."
He has not had much cause to preen in front of a mirror, lately. The only one in his cottage is in the door of its wardrobe, which is spotted, dusty, obscuring, and rarely entertained. Here, he pushes his hair behind an ear, angles his head, considering. Not so bad.
And due for a raise, perhaps, if Louis is going to spend more time stateside.
Louis looks him over, smiling a little at the small gesture of Lestat pushing his hair back. Remembering too the life they had together.
In the present, admiring the graceful drape of the sleeves, the fall of fabric around Lestat's still-narrow hips. Louis likes it very much. He is still handsome, even thinner, even marked by years of neglect.
"It's only a beginning," Louis offers. "I was thinking of what you wore before."
Maybe no longer relevant. Or maybe only a touchstone from which Lestat will build something else from when (if?) he continues updating his wardrobe.
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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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Like Louis has let in a stray cat, which happens to be a lion. He finishes his cup while they talk, a languid and luxurious drinking down of thick blood, twisting to set it down once she leaves the room.
"Oh?" at this news. Tempting enough to draw Lestat out of bed, finally, one last glance before pushing himself across the mattress to go attend to the bag. Not because he is so excited for new clothes, but keen to see what Louis would choose for him.
Hums over these items, drawing them out one by one. Garments made for men but with the textures and softness that he would still associate with women's clothes, trousers that hang like skirts and shirts that drape like blouses. Pleasing, this confusion, or mingling, whatever it is. These resemble, too, the things he'd been wearing last night, even if he barely recalls obtaining them, choosing them.
"I do," he says, over a shoulder. "I like them."
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Louis had guided him into the present day, but Lestat had found his footing eventually.
(A fond memory of the ways their wardrobes had complimented. Subtle matching between colors, small mirrors in their chosen accessories. Louis had enjoyed those things, minor ways to link them, if easy to overlook.)
"This is just for starters," Louis reminds, the curling pleasure in his chest rising as he watches Lestat handling his choices kept in careful check. "You can send Rachida out if you want. If there's more you think you need."
While he's here. While they're together. A offer guided by the anxious urge to get Lestat set up, well-stocked and safe, guiding the offer.
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"These will do, Louis," Lestat says instead, looking over at him. Clutching the articles in his hands tighter, relaxing, before he says, with a tip of his head, "Should I change in the other room?"
A little bit of a real question, but delivered with some coy and proper affectation.
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Maybe.
"You change where you want," Louis tells him, an easy shrug of acceptance as he leaves Lestat in custody of the bag and considers his own suitcase. "I won't mind."
A choice laid out for Lestat as Louis strips to the waist. His suitcase is neatly opened on its stand, waiting for Louis to make some selections of his own.
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Lestat stays where he is.
But turns his back, and undresses without ceremony. Then, briefs first, followed by a pair of trousers of a dark grey with a subtle pinstripe, fabric draping save for where it buttons around his waist. A clinging wide-necked undershirt is layered beneath a loose button down of a deep rusty red. Some hesitation follows buttoning it closed halfway up his chest and tucking the loose tails into his waistband. And then undoing another button.
Familiar shades, somewhat familiar silhouettes, flattering his proportions in the way he'd been specific about back when, and still now. He skims his fingers over his knuckles. His little collection of rings, likely still hidden away in his home. Unless Felix stole them. In which case, he will remove Felix's spine.
"Voilà ," he says, twirling back around. If he catches sight of a butt cheek by accident, it will be a good start to the evening, but he has been polite. "What should I do with the sleeves?" Rolled, unrolled and buttoned? He would like input.
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It is a marked deviation. Louis is experimenting, not yet sure he is interested but willing to give himself the day.
"Come here," Louis beckons, reaching out with one hand while the other tugs clinging knit fabric into place over his chest and stomach.
An excuse to take Lestat by the wrist, run his thumb over the delicate tracery of veins there at the inside of his arm before fastening the button.
"Feel okay?"
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Home, in little golden glimpses. How near it seems, how far away. He wanders a glance back up at this question.
"Yes," he says, unsure as to what metric they're measuring by, but all of them are at the very least okay. The clothes, probably. A glance aside locates a mirror on the wall, and he turns to it while leaving his other wrist in Louis' care. "Your valet has good taste."
He has not had much cause to preen in front of a mirror, lately. The only one in his cottage is in the door of its wardrobe, which is spotted, dusty, obscuring, and rarely entertained. Here, he pushes his hair behind an ear, angles his head, considering. Not so bad.
no subject
And due for a raise, perhaps, if Louis is going to spend more time stateside.
Louis looks him over, smiling a little at the small gesture of Lestat pushing his hair back. Remembering too the life they had together.
In the present, admiring the graceful drape of the sleeves, the fall of fabric around Lestat's still-narrow hips. Louis likes it very much. He is still handsome, even thinner, even marked by years of neglect.
"It's only a beginning," Louis offers. "I was thinking of what you wore before."
Maybe no longer relevant. Or maybe only a touchstone from which Lestat will build something else from when (if?) he continues updating his wardrobe.
"Are you still hungry?"
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