A lifetime of learning auto-pilot comes in handy. What's a grievous psychic injury to a professional high-functioning user, a man who was still sometimes doing a fuckload of cocaine while dealing with a toddler, someone in mid-stage Parkinson's. Louis grips his arms and some part of Daniel understands the wisdom of moving now, while Lestat is engaged enough to do something about it if they collapse.

It hurts to think. Daniel has never felt anything like it.

He's not fully cognizant of how he gets to the sofa, only that he does. Sideways, hands at his own face now, feeling blood and not being able to complete a thought.

"I'm fine," says man who is not fine; probably, Daniel would say this if a bear ate his legs. Just an FYI. Check on Louis, or the asshole who he does not realize is very much dead with a skull that currently looks like lasagna.

It was such a minor move, but Daniel in the infancy of these abilities was still punching so high above his weight class that the blowback is disproportionately painful. Like reaching for something and being burned, fumbling into a nail being bent back, stumbling, but much, much worse, and it pisses him off, and it embarrasses him, and it frustrates him. Things to be felt in full later, as he is currently preoccupied with holding very still and thinking nothing.

Except:

"Fucking prick."