No, they don’t really date in canon *cries* You gotta read between the lines!
[^from Mad Magazine. Date night used to involve getting all dolled up, sharing a nice French “wine” and then pretending to eat dinner and this is where alot of my sense of humor originally came from btw]
They had a very intense and rocky beginning that seemed to skip over the dating phase directly to marriage, then parenting, and then the separation for around 100 years.
I wouldn’t say they “date” in canon in the conventional sense of the word. There are certain moments they have together like that heartbreaking little scene when they met the night before Lestat’s concert (TVL), and another time when Lestat drags Louis against his will to go pester David Talbot for the first time (QOTD) 😛
You might like my #Another typical night at the Rue Royale tag for some date-y stuff.
…But in a more general sense, they do sort of Netflix and chill together. From Tale of the Body Thief:
“It’s amazing how often he came to visit me in my overheated and brilliantly illuminated rooms downtown. There he watched my giant television screen for hours. Sometimes he brought his own films for it on disk or tape. The Company of Wolves, that was one which he watched over and over… There were many other films which delighted him. But these visits could never be commanded by me, and they never lasted very long. He often deplored the “rank materialism” in which I “wallowed” and turned his back on my velvet cushions and thickly carpeted floor, and lavish marble bath. He drifted off again, to his forlorn and vine-covered shack.”
Sadly, both Louis and Lestat don’t kiss and tell much when it comes to their romantic interactions. There’s alot of Lestat pining for Louis, bc (in the immortal words of @hyperbeeb) #nobody ships Louis and Lestat harder than Lestat ships Louis and Lestat…
You’d think, for one of the fandom’s main ships, there would be more of it explicitly canon. There just isn’t, sadly. Part of why it’s such a tough ship is that AR just does not let us have much in terms of fluff of them! It mostly happens off-screen. Which is where fanfic steps in to satisfy that need ;]
I-want-my-IWTV 