Simple, calm, controlled in all the ways that he knows Armand can be, and in all the ways he knows that he isn't at the same time. His love doesn't meet his eyes and something heavy and cold sinks into his gut and he knows the pause in their midnight stroll is coming long before they both stop on the lawn.
In a different time, Louis would not look the Armand in the eye to confess this, would not even utter the name Lestat aloud for everything that could come roaring back with it. He's said it a thousand times, sitting nestled into Armand's side while giving his interview, but saying now feels different. Perched on the couch in Dubai, Lestat could be a ghost, still. A very real one, perhaps, but a ghost all the same.
Louis doesn't turn to see where the drunken boy has wandered, but he'd not been particularly interested from the start. Instead, he tilts his head, meeting the eyes of the other across from him, squeezing his hand tighter as he speaks.
"I have." A beat, a shaky exhale, then: "He doesn't know."
That Louis killed him. That he died. That he and Armand are what they are now, however broken. Again, a different version of him might shrug it off, might scoff and cant his nose in the air at the very idea of Lestat, but the reality of this place caging them in, with Lestat waiting around any corner has shaken him.
"He's hunting, somewhere - left him to it, said I'd find him after. He says Claudia just left." And there it is - his voice breaks a tiny bit but he sucks in another breath. "You saw him, too, didn't you?"
It's pathetic how much hope is in the statement. Hope that he didn't imagine it, that his mind isn't playing damnable tricks on him again. There's another sliver of hope (one he doesn't recognize, doesn't acknowledge) that if someone else saw him? Then Lestat is real.
no subject
Simple, calm, controlled in all the ways that he knows Armand can be, and in all the ways he knows that he isn't at the same time. His love doesn't meet his eyes and something heavy and cold sinks into his gut and he knows the pause in their midnight stroll is coming long before they both stop on the lawn.
In a different time, Louis would not look the Armand in the eye to confess this, would not even utter the name Lestat aloud for everything that could come roaring back with it. He's said it a thousand times, sitting nestled into Armand's side while giving his interview, but saying now feels different. Perched on the couch in Dubai, Lestat could be a ghost, still. A very real one, perhaps, but a ghost all the same.
Louis doesn't turn to see where the drunken boy has wandered, but he'd not been particularly interested from the start. Instead, he tilts his head, meeting the eyes of the other across from him, squeezing his hand tighter as he speaks.
"I have." A beat, a shaky exhale, then: "He doesn't know."
That Louis killed him. That he died. That he and Armand are what they are now, however broken. Again, a different version of him might shrug it off, might scoff and cant his nose in the air at the very idea of Lestat, but the reality of this place caging them in, with Lestat waiting around any corner has shaken him.
"He's hunting, somewhere - left him to it, said I'd find him after. He says Claudia just left." And there it is - his voice breaks a tiny bit but he sucks in another breath. "You saw him, too, didn't you?"
It's pathetic how much hope is in the statement. Hope that he didn't imagine it, that his mind isn't playing damnable tricks on him again. There's another sliver of hope (one he doesn't recognize, doesn't acknowledge) that if someone else saw him? Then Lestat is real.