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Louis’ phone starts ringing around three in the morning. It’s not, all told, a particularly strange time for him to get a call, but the unique ringtone, gentle piano and strings, tips him off immediately. (He is, perhaps, a little bit sentimental.)
Daniel, who has been nose-down in his laptop for the past three hours, all but dead to the world, clocks it almost faster than Louis does; he snaps up his head with an alacrity that probably would have made his vertebrae make an alarming crack, if he were still human. He snaps his laptop shut with a flick of one wrist. “Gonna go out for a walk, get some air,” he says. “Maybe get something to eat. Enjoy.” He grabs a jacket from the hook by the door and then he’s out as fast as his vampiric speed will allow, which is pretty damn fast.
This interaction happens in the span of three rings, so Louis picks up on the fourth. “Hey, Lestat,” he says.
“Hello, Louis.” Every time they talk, even though they’ve been doing it a couple times a week since Louis left New Orleans, Lestat sounds gently surprised to hear Louis on the other end of the phone.
“How are things going?” Louis asks, after a pause. It’s so strange, trying to make small talk, trying to relearn this man who he has loved longer and more deeply than anyone else in the world, trying to make something good and new out of the wreckage they made from each other. It’s fragile and young still, whatever this is between them. Louis is trying so hard to commit to being his own person for a while — not attached, not belonging to anyone. It’s not familiar. But he’s pretty sure it’s the only hope that he and Lestat have, and so he’s doing it, every day, even when all he wants is to get on a plane back to New Orleans, back into Lestat’s arms, back into his undeniable orbit.
“The album is coming along well,” Lestat offers. “I have five songs now, I believe. In the midst of working out a sixth. I don’t suppose you would be willing to learn the bass guitar for us? I have had simply terrible luck trying to hold onto a player with any talent.”
Lestat is trying to be his own person, too, and Louis is glad to see it, even if the world of glam rock and music production is bafflingly foreign to him. “I can’t imagine I’d be any good at it,” Louis says, “but tell you what, I’ll get Daniel to put up flyers at the shitty dive bars where he hunts.”
“Ugh,” says Lestat. “Thank you, I will pass.” He pauses, then asks, “And how are things with you, and your Daniel?”
“Les, he’s not —”
“Yes, yes, I know. He’s Armand’s Daniel. But Armand has seen fit to flee, so he’s yours for the time being,” Lestat says. “Are you not teaching him the ways of the Dark Gift? Are you not offering him the communion of your own blood? He is, perhaps, both of yours. A shared fledgling, of a sort. I certainly think you are doing a better job with him than the gremlin would have.”
“Hopefully the gremlin comes back to do his job eventually,” mutters Louis, and is immediately grateful that Daniel is out of the house.
“What, do you tire of the fledgling already? You speak of him fondly. And you had more patience with —” Lestat breaks off, and Louis can’t blame him. It’s still uncertain territory, maybe always will be; a grief too large to see the edges of, between them. A wound that won’t ever heal up the whole way. “I have seen you more patient with those new to the blood, in the past.”
“I really don’t mind it,” says Louis, which is a criminal understatement. He is, genuinely, having a very good time. He’s felt more engaged and at ease in these past few weeks in New York with Daniel than he had in more years than he wants to admit, in Dubai. “It’s just — it seems like being separated from his maker is doing a number on him.” They’re quiet for a minute, then Louis offers, “I know this is — touchy territory, I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No,” says Lestat, “it’s all right. I am perhaps uniquely qualified to understand his situation, yes, and I think I see, in what you have told me of him, that same capacity for enduring. It was not easy for me, either. I found things that helped. I went onstage. I found companionship. I think it is worse, for him. I had a clean break, and at least if Magnus haunted me, I had the comfort of knowing he truly was dead. Armand is still out there, only beyond his reach.” He pauses, then adds, “And there was no love lost between Magnus and I.”
Louis scoffs. “Not like there’s any between Daniel and Armand, either.” It’s strange to say the name. He avoids it when Daniel’s home, because Daniel does, but he wonders sometimes if he’s avoiding it for himself, too. It sits like broken glass on his tongue. Six months has dulled the sharpness a little, but not so much that it doesn’t cut in, still.
“I don’t know,” says Lestat. “From what you have told me — well, it certainly is inexplicable, but it does not seem to me that Daniel feels nothing for the gremlin, nor does it seem to me that all he feels is hatred. And Armand, well. His first fledgling in all his five hundred years of life. I don’t say it is without complication, but do you think he could truly have done it without any love at all? He is all feeling, that creature.”
“I’m pretty sure Daniel is just new to the vampire bond. And fuck if I know what Armand has ever been thinking or feeling, ever.”
“As you say. You’d know better than I,” Lestat says, in a tone which suggests that he believes no such thing, but has no intention of having an argument about it.
“I hate to ask,” Louis says, “but would you be willing to —”
“I have already been listening for Armand’s voice,” Lestat says, “if that is what you mean to ask of me. I have called out to him, once or twice. I have met with no reply. I do not imagine he is any more likely to speak to me than to you.”
“Oh,” says Louis. “That’s —”
“Uncharacteristically kind of me? Yes, well, what can I say, my sympathies get the better of me sometimes,” says Lestat. He sounds almost embarrassed. “Besides, the sooner he comes back to do his duty, the sooner you might return to me here in New Orleans.” He pauses, then adds, “If you wish to, of course.” Despite all the years apart, he’s still breaking the habit of possessiveness. It would rub Louis the wrong way if Lestat wasn’t so diligent about correcting himself. It’s so clear how hard he’s trying.
“We talked about this,” Louis says, gently. “I’m heading back to Dubai once Daniel is on his feet. A little space, you know? No need to rush anything.”
Lestat sighs. “Yes. I know. I apologize. I get … ahead of myself.”
“It’s okay,” Louis says. “I get it. New territory for us both.”
“Yes,” Lestat. “Uncharted waters.” He sighs again, almost too quietly for Louis to hear.
“Actually,” says Louis, “I was thinking I might come back down to New Orleans for a weekend sometime soon. I’d like to see you when I do. If you’d want that.”
“I would,” says Lestat, immediately. “You are welcome anytime, Louis. Anytime at all. Only — would you come by yourself, or do you intend to bring the fledgling?”
Louis laughs. “No, just me. I’m not inflicting you on him until he’s got a better handle on things,” he adds, hoping his tone is light enough to convey that he’s teasing.
Lestat scoffs. “Inflict me! He should be so lucky,” and they both laugh, and Louis is glad it landed as he meant it. Lestat’s more fragile now, or maybe it’s just that Louis has a better sense of his fragility, and Louis is doing his best not to wound him, because it goes both ways, this new care. “It is him,” Lestat adds, “that you would be inflicting on me.”
They let the conversation drift to other things; it’s easier now, the initial awkwardness dissolving. Lestat puts Louis on speakerphone and plays a little on the keyboard for him, the song-in-progress for the album. It’s an upbeat dance tune, bright and vibrant. No lyrics yet, but Lestat hums a tune over the chords, and Louis closes his eyes and lets himself sink into it. Lestat grills him about it afterward, asking music theory questions which are more or less incomprehensible to Louis, and Louis has to tell him that yes, he liked it, but no, he doesn’t have any incredibly strong feelings or particularly intelligent thoughts about it. He — just barely — manages not to say that he’d listen to Lestat play him anything, he always would.
In return, Lestat listens to Louis talk about the art he’s considering for the penthouse. There’s the spot in the living room where the Bacon triptych had hung, of course, but he’s freed up a wall in the dining room, too. Armand hadn’t taken the de Romanus with him when he left, but Louis couldn’t bear to see it on the wall anymore, so he’d taken it down, wrapped it up securely, and sent it to storage. He should sell it, probably, but he can’t help thinking that Armand might want it back someday. He shouldn’t care, shouldn’t give a single flying fuck what that bastard wants, but seventy-seven years of habit are hard to break. So the painting is in the climate-controlled storage unit instead of up for auction. Louis will tell him that, someday, if he ever manages to get ahold of him again. In the meantime, he’s thinking maybe a photograph, for the dining room. Something in friendly color.
Lestat appreciates art about as much as Louis appreciates music — which is to say that he likes it, and has no particular eye for it, and mostly listens to Louis talk about it because it makes Louis happy — but that’s fine, actually, it makes the conversation feel balanced. It’s not so much what they talk about, anyway, just that they’re getting to talk at all.
They wind down eventually; it’s not for lack of conversation topics, Louis is pretty sure he could talk to Lestat forever (and he’s very sure that the reverse is true), but eventually the rhythm lulls into what would be a companionable silence if they were in the same place, but feels strange and stilted on the phone. They’ve decided, mutually and without discussing it, that those places are good ends to these phone calls.
As they’re going to hang up, Lestat — in a voice so soft that Louis, for a second, thinks he’s dreaming it — says, “It was good to hear your voice. Bonne nuit, mon — bonne nuit, Louis.”
“Bonne nuit, Lestat,” says Louis, and then, more quietly, “Good night, mon cher.”
He hangs up after that, like a coward, but not so fast that he doesn’t hear Lestat’s sharp intake of breath on the other side of the line. He opens up iMessage to text Daniel that it’s safe to return to the apartment, but stops when he sees the three grey dots underneath Lestat’s name. Typing.
He looks at them for a long time, until eventually they disappear. No text message ever arrives.