Daniel tries to look at Louis through the rear-view mirror (where's Armand?), but it's touch and go while he has to pay attention to driving. Hoping to avoid cops or pedestrians, anyone who might notice the blood on the car. A little help? Sitting there silently, not even dying that they're in a relationship.
Ugh, man.
(Where's Armand?)
He wasn't still in New York. He followed them, to keep an eye on them — Louis, sure, Louis should be free of Armand, but it had been Daniel who told him that they could spend time together after all of this. (Where the fuck is he.)
"Okay, well." That was so stupid, that was so fucking stupid, why would you do that. "Okay." Trying again, oof. "We're gonna get you cleaned up and sort it out. No one's leaving you behind. That was never in the cards. Louis and I aren't dating, by the way."
Does Armand think that? ... Does it matter? Armand apparently presented it that way. Daniel's stomach drops further. He's so fucking stupid. Dumber than Lestat, actually.
And Louis remains silent, inscrutable, looking between Lestat and Daniel.
He is thinking. Turns over Lestat's injuries, the way his pain had felt, like an exposed nerve. How he'd sobbed. Begged.
Armand still unreachable.
Quietly: "We need blood. You'll need to drink."
Because Louis can't say any of the other things that come most immediately to him. Can't say You shouldn't have done that. Can't say Leave him to me.
Also can't say I'm going to return every wound he gave you.
And so, Louis offers this practicality instead. Lestat needs blood. He needs rest. It's what he'd recommended himself, when Armand had walked a mine-trapped puppet into their hotel in New York.
Little fragments, still bleeding from him. Armand's dazed look, morning light slanting off his face, the rivers of blood streaming from his nose, mouth, blood-slick black curls like a halo around him. More. The sound of Louis' voice parsed through his Pixel, asking Lestat what he thinks of Daniel, and the innocuous words, I was going to offer it to him. This Gift, which come with such a gut-churning sinking feeling that Louis may as well have said We're getting married. Even finer splinters of thought, the reverberation of pained groaning through a closed wall. Armand crouching over a puddle of blood, running north. The static on a tape recorder.
And maybe none of this makes it to Daniel through the cheese grater of Lestat's mind, but it all comes up so ready and easy that his eyes immediately fill with tears at the twinned sensation of the pair of them, again, extending these kindnesses, aNd for wHaT, and the laughable denial that they aren't dating.
And blood. Merde, but he is hungry.
"I would prefer not to quibble over the technicalities over what you both are or are not doing together," he says, miserably, princessy, while trying not to have fangs to lisp through. "S'il te plaît."
A kaleidoscope. Lestat may get the impression that Daniel is sticking his hand into those broken pieces, trying to make sense of it, but being unable to find his footing. He has to skitter away to be able to drive without slamming them into oncoming traffic.
But this, too: Daniel and Lestat, phone shopping, helping him pick out headphones. Lestat had asked a question and Daniel had answered. Honestly. It's still the truth. He doesn't understand this shift now, or why Lestat finds it so believable, or why Armand would push it. Daniel feels—
More than he should, really. A little bit betrayed. Does he really seem like the kind of person who'd pull this? (Did Armand really put this in Lestat's head? After—)
Louis, still not helping. Thanks, bud.
"It's not a technicality." His voice sounds flat. He'd say We talked about you last night, we talked about how I went out of my way to try to give you two time to fool around, but what if that makes Louis (who is still not helping) feel weird, and violated. Christ.
Fortunately, Burlington isn't very big, and they'll be back at the rental house soon.
"You two are going to go inside, and I'll go grab something. No negotiations, that's what's happening."
In the space of time between Lestat's rejoinder and Daniel's rebuttal, Louis has rolled back one ruined sleeve. The gouges Lestat made are half-healed, easy to reopen. Louis makes a neat slash across his wrist, and offers the fresh swell of blood wordlessly over to Lestat.
Prompts, "Go on," only to coax, to head off any questions about how whether or not he is serious in his offering.
A look flicked to the back of Daniel's head at this second denial, the flurry of memory overlapping. Guarded doubt. Lestat has all these things, now, these pieces of evidence, context, he could gather them all up and make his case, but it's an absurd thing to be arguing. An absurd thing to be denying.
He can feel it like a headache, as if he doesn't have enough of one, the possibility that he might be wrong after all, but it's too much. Twists from it as tasks are delegated. Negotiations closed.
Fresh blood, again. Lestat's focus drawn in almost the same moment Louis offers his arm, holds his breath as he is coaxed.
He might resist this too, but his fangs are already long in his mouth, saliva gathering. (Memories like savagely putting his fangs in Louis' throat as they fly. Of a ragged claw opening up a laceration on a thick pale neck, grey with dirt. Of Armand's skin piercing beneath his teeth.) Too old to be as helpless to hunger as would make this easier, too young to ignore it, Lestat lets out a ragged breath of resignation, but holds onto Louis' arm.
Lowers his head, sealing his mouth around the wound, drawing in what it gives him. Teeth in check.
There are several problems. Entirely too many. One of them, he supposes, is how deeply he and Louis care for each other; how even though they did talk about Lestat last night, they did so while spending time together in a way most would earmark as non-platonic, even if it was also non-romantic. There is something, and it occurs to him, somewhat unpleasantly, that it's possible Louis' silence is partly because Daniel is shutting a door without talking to him about it first. Quick on the heels of that thought is a distinct sense of revulsion at himself, that he'd even waste time considering it.
Blood, and Daniel not being responded to, and them doing that, and that's fine. Incidental, he reminds himself, and there's something bracing about it. Calming, orienting. He was alone in Dubai, figuring out a critical mystery while being antagonized and monitored and threatened; he was alone being transformed by someone who lost control of himself, he was alone leaning how to be dead, and that suits him, it suits him to be solitary in this car, too.
No one's asked him if he'd even want something like that. And he doesn't. Daniel was not ever looking for the third ex Mrs Molloy in retiree communities and 55+ dating apps. He doesn't want an immortal companion. Not even if it's Louis, maybe especially not Louis, because divorce is bad enough, he would prefer not to be murdered out of a relationship instead. Louis is out of his league, he cannot compete, he doesn't want that smoke, no thank you. He loves him, but he can't love him like that.
He parks in the garage. The door rolls down behind them, leaving them bathed in the temporary light on the ceiling, and he goes to open doors and make sure there are no mortals in the house— kicking Jeannie and Mark out in a hurry before he goes to start the water running in the oversized bath tub in the primary bedroom.
Back down, then, to help bully and/or coax Lestat upstairs into it.
"I'll still go get someone," he advises. More so to let Lestat know he won't be expected to sustain himself while contending with leaving Louis compromised, but also to let Louis know what his plans are.
Anger. Easiest, safest. Permitted to float to the surface while Louis vanishes beneath with any other emotion he is harboring. A well-worn vanishing act. Implosion. Louis, gone, even as Lestat puts his mouth over a slashed wound and drinks. Louis doesn't pull away. Doesn't caution him. Lestat is permitted to drink until he stops on his own.
The roving tendril of his mind, covertly seeking a recognizable blankness among the Many, persists throughout their trip back to the hotel.
Presently standing on the paved floor outside the car, Louis had listened as Daniel got out, entered the building, moved from hallway to room to room. Louis is looking at Lestat, eyes tracing from hurt to hurt to hurt, observing pale skin, misery. His owns wounds are knitting slowly, bleeding sluggishly, ignored. Louis has drawn up familiar chilly poise around himself, creating a kind of absence, remoteness like a veil drawn down over the roiling pulse of feeling in his chest. Has crossed on arm over his chest, lifted a hand to rest his chin on his knuckles. Containment, it is all containment.
He is present, but only to a point.
Listening, Louis hears Jeannie and Mark depart. Hears doors, footsteps. Lifts eyes to see Daniel re-entering, before looking again to Lestat.
What to do with the sentiment that manifests, immediately, to coalesce into: I don't want you to go.
Fretful, this need to have them both where Louis can see them. Safe, accounted for, beyond any ability of some malevolent being's ability to touch. (Where is Armand, now?) He has to hold this need behind his teeth, compressed behind the opaque veil Louis has drawn down over his mind, while Daniel's words settle.
"You don't need to play fetch," is just honest. There are options open to them. Staff who could collect a tourist. Louis' stores of blood. He so rarely interferes with Daniel and Lestat's hunting, but this is not a usual night, their usual rhythms.
Head turning, looking back to Lestat as he continues on, quiet: "Unless you want to go."
The blood is not nothing. It is comfort, first, even tainted with anger. His fledgling's blood, returned to him, and it feels too profound a thing to have thoughtlessly accepted in the back of a car, and yet. Lestat drinks, and doesn't take much more than what he can draw from an already healing wound. Denies the urge to bite down. Denies the urge to lick closed the lacerations he has caused.
The blood is not nothing but he needs more and he needs a coffin. And a bath, or whatever. Inside, he is finally shedding his jacket of feathers, letting it fall in a heap. Beneath, a too-small waistcoat, and this comes off too. Bruises, cuts, scrapes, and the wound at his side which is hard to make out for all the blood drying thick in and around.
He looks to Daniel when he tells him this, and considers what he might say. Gratitude feels like it's a galaxy away, still. Apologies, too, for the mess, here and otherwise. An argument. Explanation. Accusation.
Louis, from his remote and cool tower, suggests Daniel does not have to do this thing unless he is using it as an excuse to fuck off, which has Lestat scoff and realise he does not want to witness whatever this conversation is. He will go to the bathroom, sticky fingers leaving marks on the walls to steady himself.
"What I want," Daniel says calmly, "is for nobody to have to leave and be unaccounted for again, as soon as possible. I need you to stay with him, because he trusts you more than he trusts me. I can get this handled the fastest, and we don't have to involve anyone else. And then we're going to sit in here and figure it out."
So everybody just chill, okay.
"Please." A gesture after Lestat. And then, privately: 'He needs you. I don't know how much help I can be even with seeing into his head.'
Daniel will not be bolting anywhere, no matter that he would really like to know what the fuck is up with Armand right now. He'll be cleaning off his car as best he can in a pinch, and then going to yank a tourist or two. No need to subject anyone's employees to potential kidnapping charges when a vampire can move faster than eyes can track.
He does call Armand when he's out. But of course the line's dead. What did he expect?
Louis wants to argue. But he has said his piece, and Daniel says his, and Daniel gets in his bloody car and goes. Louis stands long minutes in the empty garage, breathing in the cold air before punching the door closed.
Follows the bloody fingerprints down the hallway, the pulse of misery and pain Lestat trails in his wake.
The door is ajar. Louis lets himself in, calling softly, "Lestat," pitched over the sound of rushing water.
Lestat is found kneeling outside the tub, an arm folded and balanced on the edge as it fills with water. His breathing has heightened and his face turned from the door, and it would be understandable, given history, to assume he has resumed crying again. Not quite, though, something else, tense the way he holds his body, the air in his lungs.
Then, at a different angle, it's easier to see the way he has fingers buried in the wound at his side. Fishing around in there, discomfort plain in the hitch of his breathing, eyes tightly closed, a sheen of sweat now painting bare shoulders, his brow.
"A moment, chéri," has the audacity to carry a little dry humour to it. I'll be with you in a second, just digging a loose claw out of my innards.
Louis is silent, statue-still. Watching, fury and grief coiling in his belly before Louis says, "Let me do it."
No, he isn't certain of what Lestat is trying to fish out. Crosses to him anyway, sinking into a crouch in front of him. Runs fingers along Lestat's forearm, touch lingering at his wrist. Waiting for some sign of yielding, some permission, as he offers, "Just hang on to me, and keep breathing."
Lestat relents. His fingers, glossy with fresh blood, find a place to hook at Louis' shoulder. Studies his face. Does not love that he's caused all this pain. Of course, did not even think about it at the time.
He lays his head on his folded arm, watching him. Thinks about the apostle who touched the crucifixion wounds of Christ. It was probably erotic too.
"I hurt him," he says, after a moment, in the odd echo of the bathroom. His eyes as silver as mirrors, reflective, his voice soft with the sound of flowing water. "I broke his bones beneath my hands. I shattered the ground beneath his body. I stole his blood first, and drank it greedily. I told him he was alone, and he believed me."
He offers these truths like recitation, no inflection in his voice that implies pride or assurance or confession. He watches Louis' face. He resists the urge to care about the pain of the thing they are doing, though his voice grows tight.
They are so close. Lestat is looking at him so intently.
Louis' eyes are cast down, attention on his work. He wishes this could hurt less, but knows as gentle as he is, there is going to be pain.
And as he digs fingers in after the offending object, Lestat tells him these things. The ways he hurt Armand, no admission of how Armand might have hurt him in return. Armand surely did. Louis can see it written all over Lestat's body, but he has Daniel's assessment of Lestat's mind too. Hurt. Hurt there, hurt here. All for what?
"You could have been killed," Louis says quietly.
Draws out the claw. Grimaces, pitches it past Lestat to the small trash bin beneath the sink.
White lights in Lestat's vision as Louis does what he must, finds the jagged little piece of claw, draws it out. Breathing harder, sweatier than a moment ago, the intensity of his gaze dulled just a little before drawing back into focus at Louis' words. A twitch at his mouth, smile-adjacent. He should say: He tried.
And doesn't. Doesn't want to detail to Louis all the little hurts, the larger ones. They have been well earned. (Doesn't want him to think of the sun on Lestat's skin. Doesn't want to contend with it anyway.)
They should get him into the tub. The water is about level.
"I have made it worse, haven't I," Lestat says instead, instead of moving or agreeing.
It was not a well thought out plan. Or a thought out plan. Or a plan.
If Louis stops to think, really think, about the repercussions of this fight—
He can't. If Daniel comes back, he will probably force the conversation and it will be the right thing to do.
But crouched on the tile as this bathroom fills with steam and the scent of fresh blood, Louis is free to say, "We don't gotta talk about it just yet."
They do have to talk about it. But not yet.
"Just let's get you cleaned up and fed a little better."
There is so much blood. Wounds crusting over, bruises blooming into ugly technicolor. And Louis still, still has the picture in his mind of Lestat in the dumpster, crumpled and sobbing.
Maybe they wash all that away. Maybe it feels like less of a catastrophe when they do.
"You gonna let me help?"
He's not leaving. But Lestat gets to decide if he wants Louis touching him or not.
If Lestat refused Louis' help, he thinks he might just lie on the ground and feel sorry for himself while the tub overflows. As if the only difference between how he is now and how he was found are the coordinates.
But he offers his hands. Does not angle to be lifted but does rely on Louis' strength to draw him to his feet. There are deep internal hurts from bones that have been knocked loose and snapped back, cracked and then knitted closed, overworked and bruised muscles, and they all sing together as he gets to his feet.
Nasty little goblin, he thinks, never mind how Armand must be feeling in turn in this moment.
He undresses himself the rest of the way. Lets Louis help with his boots, in stepping out of everything, all of it ruined, including the silly harness accessories that had snapped halfway apart during all the chaos. Into the water, which feels like acid, first, in his wounds, but then comfort.
Watches blood detach from his skin, disappear into water that is already pink. His vision blurs, and looks to Louis with big wet eyes as he says, "Don't go," even as he hates himself for it. Unable to even accept whatever divine punishment this is alone, if he doesn't have to.
If Lestat had asked him to go, Louis isn't certain what he would do. Sit on the floor outside the bathroom. Scream into the Many until Armand answered. Pick a fight with anyone else who chorused back to him before that.
So it is for the best, Lestat staying this. Giving Louis reason to sit on the edge of the tub, shrug out of his torn coat, now-ruined sweater. White singlet pristine still, a minor sacrifice to whatever splash of bloody water might come throughout the process.
"I'm here," Louis tells him. Here, and maybe a little overwhelmed with where to start first, what he can do when Lestat seems so hurt, had seemed so reluctant to be touched before. Decides, instructs, "Tip your face up for me, and close your eyes."
Like before. Like New Orleans. Cupped palmfuls of water lifted, gentle fingers sweeping away crusted blood. Rub it from his eyebrows, thumb away rivulets from his temples and cheeks. Small start, but a start all the same.
He had washed himself in the river, those decades back. Tore pieces of his fine white clothes, then filthy, used it to clean his face, his throat. There was no wishing he wasn't alone, in that moment. Beyond the point of wishing.
Lestat does as asked. Breathes in deep, assures himself it is Louis' fingers at his face, touching him gently, and no one else's. The panic has fled, or at least been replaced with exhaustion, and perhaps Louis does believe all these terrible things about him, had never truly liked him even if he loved him, perhaps Louis deserves to be free of Lestat as he does of Armand, but tonight, he is willing to touch him gently and help him in this way—
And certainly, Lestat is not so proud to refuse it.
After some long minutes, when he can open his eyes again, he says, "Have you not told him?" An earnest upwards study. "How you wanted him as your own fledgling? What it means?"
Feels small, the way Louis can tend to him. Can't do much else but stay attentive to the quality of the connection between them. Feel the way hurt comes, waves of anguish, some acute, white-hot snap of feeling. Can't touch, can't soothe, no other comfort but Louis' damp fingers rubbing the blood from Lestat's skin.
His hands are framing Lestat's face when his eyes open. He's still pale, even with the worst of the night's evidence washed clean. Hasn't drank enough, wouldn't take like Louis had hoped he would.
And now this question. Louis doesn't want to answer it.
"It don't matter," he asserts. And it doesn't. Armand did what he did. Louis had made a mistake, and Daniel had suffered for it. Was Armand's fledgling, could never be anything else.
A scrape of blood at Lestat's jaw holds Louis' attention, gently dislodged so as to avoid opening a fresh wound. Cups his palm there when he's finished, examining.
Admits, sighs, "He don't believe me. Not sure he knows what it means."
And Louis is, in turn, uncertain he understands. If he ever did. If the way Lestat did things, the way Claudia did things, were exceptions. If Louis would be an exception himself, if he ever made another.
The water has done something to soothe the odd, peeling texture of Lestat's skin, mostly only present on his face, throat, some ways down his chest. Kissed by sunlight, maybe. Old enough to not be too harmed by the barest, faintest glance, perhaps. Still, an absence of a real burn. Just one more odd detail to an odd evening.
"So you tell him," Lestat says. His voice wobbles, his eyes are already glassy, but this all must be said. "You tell him what would make you happiest. He would give it to you."
Pausing. Stopping with his hands cradling Lestat's face.
Stops for the waver in Lestat's voice. The echoing pain in his face. Recognizing that it costs him dearly to say these things.
Louis murmurs to him, formless hushing as his thumbs stroke across his damp cheeks. The damage is soothed away. What Louis had seen on his skin, felt under his fingers, eased by the water. Louis touches him and remembers them, together. Remembers an echo, a dream, sitting across a table in a crowded cafe and sniping I told you I love you and you did nothing.
Speak it aloud? Louis is no more capable now than he was then.
"I'm happy to be here with you both," Louis reminds him. "You and he already given me that."
What makes him happy? Louis scarcely knows. He is no closer to knowing himself now than he had been setting out from Dubai.
That answer again. Twinges at some deeper hurt, the one that had spilled out into the street as he struggled, that he can't bear it, can't exist this way, can't sit there in view of two vampires making their meandering way to a companionship he doesn't have, may never have. Perhaps this is selfish of him. He doesn't know anymore, where the selfishness begins, where it ends.
Louis keeps him held in this way, urges him to look. Does as coaxed, helplessly, teetering on the verge of yet another collapse.
Expressive as he has always been, Lestat. Louis can read everything on his face, all this hurt.
It brings chilly anger flaring up in his chest. Louis doesn't smother it. Something to be kept, this anger. Cultivated, tended to. Held until the right moment, when it can be returned to Armand in kind.
"Armand," he says, and stops. The name. His name. Louis breathes out, starts again.
"He put all this in your head, yeah? Hurt you, here?"
Fingers sliding up into his hair, working carefully into blood-stiff locks. His thumb runs along Lestat's forehead. Imagines he can feel the damage done, like a fever beneath his palms.
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Ugh, man.
(Where's Armand?)
He wasn't still in New York. He followed them, to keep an eye on them — Louis, sure, Louis should be free of Armand, but it had been Daniel who told him that they could spend time together after all of this. (Where the fuck is he.)
"Okay, well." That was so stupid, that was so fucking stupid, why would you do that. "Okay." Trying again, oof. "We're gonna get you cleaned up and sort it out. No one's leaving you behind. That was never in the cards. Louis and I aren't dating, by the way."
Does Armand think that? ... Does it matter? Armand apparently presented it that way. Daniel's stomach drops further. He's so fucking stupid. Dumber than Lestat, actually.
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He is thinking. Turns over Lestat's injuries, the way his pain had felt, like an exposed nerve. How he'd sobbed. Begged.
Armand still unreachable.
Quietly: "We need blood. You'll need to drink."
Because Louis can't say any of the other things that come most immediately to him. Can't say You shouldn't have done that. Can't say Leave him to me.
Also can't say I'm going to return every wound he gave you.
And so, Louis offers this practicality instead. Lestat needs blood. He needs rest. It's what he'd recommended himself, when Armand had walked a mine-trapped puppet into their hotel in New York.
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And maybe none of this makes it to Daniel through the cheese grater of Lestat's mind, but it all comes up so ready and easy that his eyes immediately fill with tears at the twinned sensation of the pair of them, again, extending these kindnesses, aNd for wHaT, and the laughable denial that they aren't dating.
And blood. Merde, but he is hungry.
"I would prefer not to quibble over the technicalities over what you both are or are not doing together," he says, miserably, princessy, while trying not to have fangs to lisp through. "S'il te plaît."
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But this, too: Daniel and Lestat, phone shopping, helping him pick out headphones. Lestat had asked a question and Daniel had answered. Honestly. It's still the truth. He doesn't understand this shift now, or why Lestat finds it so believable, or why Armand would push it. Daniel feels—
More than he should, really. A little bit betrayed. Does he really seem like the kind of person who'd pull this? (Did Armand really put this in Lestat's head? After—)
Louis, still not helping. Thanks, bud.
"It's not a technicality." His voice sounds flat. He'd say We talked about you last night, we talked about how I went out of my way to try to give you two time to fool around, but what if that makes Louis (who is still not helping) feel weird, and violated. Christ.
Fortunately, Burlington isn't very big, and they'll be back at the rental house soon.
"You two are going to go inside, and I'll go grab something. No negotiations, that's what's happening."
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In the space of time between Lestat's rejoinder and Daniel's rebuttal, Louis has rolled back one ruined sleeve. The gouges Lestat made are half-healed, easy to reopen. Louis makes a neat slash across his wrist, and offers the fresh swell of blood wordlessly over to Lestat.
Prompts, "Go on," only to coax, to head off any questions about how whether or not he is serious in his offering.
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He can feel it like a headache, as if he doesn't have enough of one, the possibility that he might be wrong after all, but it's too much. Twists from it as tasks are delegated. Negotiations closed.
Fresh blood, again. Lestat's focus drawn in almost the same moment Louis offers his arm, holds his breath as he is coaxed.
He might resist this too, but his fangs are already long in his mouth, saliva gathering. (Memories like savagely putting his fangs in Louis' throat as they fly. Of a ragged claw opening up a laceration on a thick pale neck, grey with dirt. Of Armand's skin piercing beneath his teeth.) Too old to be as helpless to hunger as would make this easier, too young to ignore it, Lestat lets out a ragged breath of resignation, but holds onto Louis' arm.
Lowers his head, sealing his mouth around the wound, drawing in what it gives him. Teeth in check.
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There are several problems. Entirely too many. One of them, he supposes, is how deeply he and Louis care for each other; how even though they did talk about Lestat last night, they did so while spending time together in a way most would earmark as non-platonic, even if it was also non-romantic. There is something, and it occurs to him, somewhat unpleasantly, that it's possible Louis' silence is partly because Daniel is shutting a door without talking to him about it first. Quick on the heels of that thought is a distinct sense of revulsion at himself, that he'd even waste time considering it.
Blood, and Daniel not being responded to, and them doing that, and that's fine. Incidental, he reminds himself, and there's something bracing about it. Calming, orienting. He was alone in Dubai, figuring out a critical mystery while being antagonized and monitored and threatened; he was alone being transformed by someone who lost control of himself, he was alone leaning how to be dead, and that suits him, it suits him to be solitary in this car, too.
No one's asked him if he'd even want something like that. And he doesn't. Daniel was not ever looking for the third ex Mrs Molloy in retiree communities and 55+ dating apps. He doesn't want an immortal companion. Not even if it's Louis, maybe especially not Louis, because divorce is bad enough, he would prefer not to be murdered out of a relationship instead. Louis is out of his league, he cannot compete, he doesn't want that smoke, no thank you. He loves him, but he can't love him like that.
He parks in the garage. The door rolls down behind them, leaving them bathed in the temporary light on the ceiling, and he goes to open doors and make sure there are no mortals in the house— kicking Jeannie and Mark out in a hurry before he goes to start the water running in the oversized bath tub in the primary bedroom.
Back down, then, to help bully and/or coax Lestat upstairs into it.
"I'll still go get someone," he advises. More so to let Lestat know he won't be expected to sustain himself while contending with leaving Louis compromised, but also to let Louis know what his plans are.
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Anger. Easiest, safest. Permitted to float to the surface while Louis vanishes beneath with any other emotion he is harboring. A well-worn vanishing act. Implosion. Louis, gone, even as Lestat puts his mouth over a slashed wound and drinks. Louis doesn't pull away. Doesn't caution him. Lestat is permitted to drink until he stops on his own.
The roving tendril of his mind, covertly seeking a recognizable blankness among the Many, persists throughout their trip back to the hotel.
Presently standing on the paved floor outside the car, Louis had listened as Daniel got out, entered the building, moved from hallway to room to room. Louis is looking at Lestat, eyes tracing from hurt to hurt to hurt, observing pale skin, misery. His owns wounds are knitting slowly, bleeding sluggishly, ignored. Louis has drawn up familiar chilly poise around himself, creating a kind of absence, remoteness like a veil drawn down over the roiling pulse of feeling in his chest. Has crossed on arm over his chest, lifted a hand to rest his chin on his knuckles. Containment, it is all containment.
He is present, but only to a point.
Listening, Louis hears Jeannie and Mark depart. Hears doors, footsteps. Lifts eyes to see Daniel re-entering, before looking again to Lestat.
What to do with the sentiment that manifests, immediately, to coalesce into: I don't want you to go.
Fretful, this need to have them both where Louis can see them. Safe, accounted for, beyond any ability of some malevolent being's ability to touch. (Where is Armand, now?) He has to hold this need behind his teeth, compressed behind the opaque veil Louis has drawn down over his mind, while Daniel's words settle.
"You don't need to play fetch," is just honest. There are options open to them. Staff who could collect a tourist. Louis' stores of blood. He so rarely interferes with Daniel and Lestat's hunting, but this is not a usual night, their usual rhythms.
Head turning, looking back to Lestat as he continues on, quiet: "Unless you want to go."
So.
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The blood is not nothing but he needs more and he needs a coffin. And a bath, or whatever. Inside, he is finally shedding his jacket of feathers, letting it fall in a heap. Beneath, a too-small waistcoat, and this comes off too. Bruises, cuts, scrapes, and the wound at his side which is hard to make out for all the blood drying thick in and around.
He looks to Daniel when he tells him this, and considers what he might say. Gratitude feels like it's a galaxy away, still. Apologies, too, for the mess, here and otherwise. An argument. Explanation. Accusation.
Louis, from his remote and cool tower, suggests Daniel does not have to do this thing unless he is using it as an excuse to fuck off, which has Lestat scoff and realise he does not want to witness whatever this conversation is. He will go to the bathroom, sticky fingers leaving marks on the walls to steady himself.
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So everybody just chill, okay.
"Please." A gesture after Lestat. And then, privately: 'He needs you. I don't know how much help I can be even with seeing into his head.'
Daniel will not be bolting anywhere, no matter that he would really like to know what the fuck is up with Armand right now. He'll be cleaning off his car as best he can in a pinch, and then going to yank a tourist or two. No need to subject anyone's employees to potential kidnapping charges when a vampire can move faster than eyes can track.
He does call Armand when he's out. But of course the line's dead. What did he expect?
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Louis wants to argue. But he has said his piece, and Daniel says his, and Daniel gets in his bloody car and goes. Louis stands long minutes in the empty garage, breathing in the cold air before punching the door closed.
Follows the bloody fingerprints down the hallway, the pulse of misery and pain Lestat trails in his wake.
The door is ajar. Louis lets himself in, calling softly, "Lestat," pitched over the sound of rushing water.
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Then, at a different angle, it's easier to see the way he has fingers buried in the wound at his side. Fishing around in there, discomfort plain in the hitch of his breathing, eyes tightly closed, a sheen of sweat now painting bare shoulders, his brow.
"A moment, chéri," has the audacity to carry a little dry humour to it. I'll be with you in a second, just digging a loose claw out of my innards.
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Louis is silent, statue-still. Watching, fury and grief coiling in his belly before Louis says, "Let me do it."
No, he isn't certain of what Lestat is trying to fish out. Crosses to him anyway, sinking into a crouch in front of him. Runs fingers along Lestat's forearm, touch lingering at his wrist. Waiting for some sign of yielding, some permission, as he offers, "Just hang on to me, and keep breathing."
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He lays his head on his folded arm, watching him. Thinks about the apostle who touched the crucifixion wounds of Christ. It was probably erotic too.
"I hurt him," he says, after a moment, in the odd echo of the bathroom. His eyes as silver as mirrors, reflective, his voice soft with the sound of flowing water. "I broke his bones beneath my hands. I shattered the ground beneath his body. I stole his blood first, and drank it greedily. I told him he was alone, and he believed me."
He offers these truths like recitation, no inflection in his voice that implies pride or assurance or confession. He watches Louis' face. He resists the urge to care about the pain of the thing they are doing, though his voice grows tight.
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Louis' eyes are cast down, attention on his work. He wishes this could hurt less, but knows as gentle as he is, there is going to be pain.
And as he digs fingers in after the offending object, Lestat tells him these things. The ways he hurt Armand, no admission of how Armand might have hurt him in return. Armand surely did. Louis can see it written all over Lestat's body, but he has Daniel's assessment of Lestat's mind too. Hurt. Hurt there, hurt here. All for what?
"You could have been killed," Louis says quietly.
Draws out the claw. Grimaces, pitches it past Lestat to the small trash bin beneath the sink.
"We should get you into the tub."
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And doesn't. Doesn't want to detail to Louis all the little hurts, the larger ones. They have been well earned. (Doesn't want him to think of the sun on Lestat's skin. Doesn't want to contend with it anyway.)
They should get him into the tub. The water is about level.
"I have made it worse, haven't I," Lestat says instead, instead of moving or agreeing.
It was not a well thought out plan. Or a thought out plan. Or a plan.
But still. An upsetting outcome.
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He can't. If Daniel comes back, he will probably force the conversation and it will be the right thing to do.
But crouched on the tile as this bathroom fills with steam and the scent of fresh blood, Louis is free to say, "We don't gotta talk about it just yet."
They do have to talk about it. But not yet.
"Just let's get you cleaned up and fed a little better."
There is so much blood. Wounds crusting over, bruises blooming into ugly technicolor. And Louis still, still has the picture in his mind of Lestat in the dumpster, crumpled and sobbing.
Maybe they wash all that away. Maybe it feels like less of a catastrophe when they do.
"You gonna let me help?"
He's not leaving. But Lestat gets to decide if he wants Louis touching him or not.
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But he offers his hands. Does not angle to be lifted but does rely on Louis' strength to draw him to his feet. There are deep internal hurts from bones that have been knocked loose and snapped back, cracked and then knitted closed, overworked and bruised muscles, and they all sing together as he gets to his feet.
Nasty little goblin, he thinks, never mind how Armand must be feeling in turn in this moment.
He undresses himself the rest of the way. Lets Louis help with his boots, in stepping out of everything, all of it ruined, including the silly harness accessories that had snapped halfway apart during all the chaos. Into the water, which feels like acid, first, in his wounds, but then comfort.
Watches blood detach from his skin, disappear into water that is already pink. His vision blurs, and looks to Louis with big wet eyes as he says, "Don't go," even as he hates himself for it. Unable to even accept whatever divine punishment this is alone, if he doesn't have to.
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If Lestat had asked him to go, Louis isn't certain what he would do. Sit on the floor outside the bathroom. Scream into the Many until Armand answered. Pick a fight with anyone else who chorused back to him before that.
So it is for the best, Lestat staying this. Giving Louis reason to sit on the edge of the tub, shrug out of his torn coat, now-ruined sweater. White singlet pristine still, a minor sacrifice to whatever splash of bloody water might come throughout the process.
"I'm here," Louis tells him. Here, and maybe a little overwhelmed with where to start first, what he can do when Lestat seems so hurt, had seemed so reluctant to be touched before. Decides, instructs, "Tip your face up for me, and close your eyes."
Like before. Like New Orleans. Cupped palmfuls of water lifted, gentle fingers sweeping away crusted blood. Rub it from his eyebrows, thumb away rivulets from his temples and cheeks. Small start, but a start all the same.
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Lestat does as asked. Breathes in deep, assures himself it is Louis' fingers at his face, touching him gently, and no one else's. The panic has fled, or at least been replaced with exhaustion, and perhaps Louis does believe all these terrible things about him, had never truly liked him even if he loved him, perhaps Louis deserves to be free of Lestat as he does of Armand, but tonight, he is willing to touch him gently and help him in this way—
And certainly, Lestat is not so proud to refuse it.
After some long minutes, when he can open his eyes again, he says, "Have you not told him?" An earnest upwards study. "How you wanted him as your own fledgling? What it means?"
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His hands are framing Lestat's face when his eyes open. He's still pale, even with the worst of the night's evidence washed clean. Hasn't drank enough, wouldn't take like Louis had hoped he would.
And now this question. Louis doesn't want to answer it.
"It don't matter," he asserts. And it doesn't. Armand did what he did. Louis had made a mistake, and Daniel had suffered for it. Was Armand's fledgling, could never be anything else.
A scrape of blood at Lestat's jaw holds Louis' attention, gently dislodged so as to avoid opening a fresh wound. Cups his palm there when he's finished, examining.
Admits, sighs, "He don't believe me. Not sure he knows what it means."
And Louis is, in turn, uncertain he understands. If he ever did. If the way Lestat did things, the way Claudia did things, were exceptions. If Louis would be an exception himself, if he ever made another.
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The water has done something to soothe the odd, peeling texture of Lestat's skin, mostly only present on his face, throat, some ways down his chest. Kissed by sunlight, maybe. Old enough to not be too harmed by the barest, faintest glance, perhaps. Still, an absence of a real burn. Just one more odd detail to an odd evening.
"So you tell him," Lestat says. His voice wobbles, his eyes are already glassy, but this all must be said. "You tell him what would make you happiest. He would give it to you."
Talking about Daniel and no one else. Obviously.
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Stops for the waver in Lestat's voice. The echoing pain in his face. Recognizing that it costs him dearly to say these things.
Louis murmurs to him, formless hushing as his thumbs stroke across his damp cheeks. The damage is soothed away. What Louis had seen on his skin, felt under his fingers, eased by the water. Louis touches him and remembers them, together. Remembers an echo, a dream, sitting across a table in a crowded cafe and sniping I told you I love you and you did nothing.
Speak it aloud? Louis is no more capable now than he was then.
"I'm happy to be here with you both," Louis reminds him. "You and he already given me that."
What makes him happy? Louis scarcely knows. He is no closer to knowing himself now than he had been setting out from Dubai.
"Look at me," he coaxes. "Lestat."
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Louis keeps him held in this way, urges him to look. Does as coaxed, helplessly, teetering on the verge of yet another collapse.
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It brings chilly anger flaring up in his chest. Louis doesn't smother it. Something to be kept, this anger. Cultivated, tended to. Held until the right moment, when it can be returned to Armand in kind.
"Armand," he says, and stops. The name. His name. Louis breathes out, starts again.
"He put all this in your head, yeah? Hurt you, here?"
Fingers sliding up into his hair, working carefully into blood-stiff locks. His thumb runs along Lestat's forehead. Imagines he can feel the damage done, like a fever beneath his palms.
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enjoy tag of nothing
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tag of nothing, redux.
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sorry this is so many words
w o w
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sneaks in a tag forgive
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