damnedest | shotgun.

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.

But still. An upsetting outcome.

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.

"Okay."

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.

Do any of them?

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.

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.

"Look at me," he coaxes. "Lestat."

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.

A sigh, a tilt. The ghostly feeling of Armand's hand in that same place, gripping his hair. Ghostlier still, his maker. Armand's maker. Common, petty violences. It all bristles beneath the surface like it should not, but if he breathes deep enough, focuses on Louis' scent—

What has Armand put in his head, really? He thinks of that last memory, stolen, puppeting Louis, toying with Daniel. No, not that.

"He showed me things," Lestat offers, finally. Forgets, maybe, the point of his configuration. Tilts, lays his head against Louis' knee where it angles just over the edge of the tub. "He showed me you telling him how you meant to take Daniel as your own. He showed me," a pause, a moment to swallow around the taste of blood, "he played for me your first interview. Daniel bleeding on the floor. You were calling to him, burned, behind a door."

He knew, of course, of this gruesome little scene. Told of it through words, recounting, watched as Louis and Daniel came to grips with it together. Not so visceral as this. Not so exposing.

"He showed me true things," is a late amendment.

Long minutes where Louis says nothing. Has gone so, so still. He'd been meaning to make a point, but had not expected Lestat to explain what he'd been shown, to know which things Armand had chosen to display. Louis would have kept them all from Lestat forever. Loses what he'd meant to say, falling silent in spite of his intentions.

Lestat's head on his knee, explaining. Armand showing Lestat things Louis had never wished for him to see.

Slowly, Louis reaches to bring up palmfuls of water to douse Lestat's hair while he is so positioned. It is a careful dousing, no stray rivulets of water permitted to run into Lesat's eyes, across his cheek.

Eventually—

"He hurt you."

Driving true things into Lestat's mind like nails, wielding a heavy mallet.

"Punishing you, because you're where I went when Daniel got me free."

Stepping outside of his body. Watching from the ceiling as his fingers work hardened blood from Lestat's hair. His voice is very, very steady.

Armand, punishing Daniel. Punishing Lestat. All this suffering, because Louis left.

Edited 2025-02-24 04:25 (UTC)

Water gets in, stings where claws have marked the back of his head. Scratches he barely remembers getting. His fangs were in Armand's neck for sometime. Armand's in his. Stands to reason. He absently works his hands beneath the water, clearing his claws.

"Well," Lestat says. "That is only my latest sin."

A slight shift of his head, an angle that presses his cheek more deliberately to leg. The desire to give affection, receive it, return it again burning beneath the surface. "Do you regret this now?"

Louis is aware, to some extent. Or he would have thought he understood Armand and Lestat, but now what is true? Armand told him plenty, but did Armand tell him all, honestly. Not compatible, he had said, and Daniel had snorted.

Casts the thought aside.

"Not your sin, that I needed you."

Deliberate, this choice of words. Louis needed to be near him. Boarded a plan, flew across the ocean. Running home, and home was Lestat as much as it was New Orleans. Interwined, always.

Louis' sin. See how they have suffered for it, the people he values most in the world.

Another palmful of water, smoothing the burnished gold of Lestat's hair as it flows over Lestat's nape, Louis' thigh.

Draws a breath. Clarifies, "You asking if I regret coming?"

It's discordant, these thoughts. Louis, needing him, and saying all the things he did that night and holding him so, and the way things have been since. A struggle to reconcile with these other truths, the unkind things spoken in a room, to Armand himself, the totaling of Lestat's failures as a companion, a lover, a man. The book, a kind of bridge between these things.

No chance to clarify it all for himself here, or this evening, just sits miserably as these things compete for his attention, his heart. Well. He does feel a little less like Louis loathes him. That's a hard one to keep, while Louis works his fingers through his hair so gently.

"Oui," he says.

"No."

Easy.

"Never."

And then quiet again, as Louis claims a shampoo bottle. A choice made at random, roulette between Louis' expensive product, Lestat's eclectic collection, and Daniel's frugality. He squeezes out a dollop, works it into a lather.

It is good, having something to do. Steadying. Louis' conscious presence guttering in and out as he works.

Lestat doesn't need to hear the winding path of Louis' thoughts, his guilt. He doesn't regret anything, except that he left Daniel behind. He miscalculated. He didn't protect him. He'd barely been thinking, life in shatters around him, and he needed to leave.

He shouldn't have left Daniel.

He couldn't have done anything but run to New Orleans, to Lestat.

These things he holds in his mind while he methodically shampoos Lestat's hair.

More than a few quick minutes, but not too terribly long—

The garage door opens, closes again. This is probably the worst thing Daniel has ever done, even worse than eating an entire apartment full of people with Lestat. But he knows it'll be way down on the list, someday, so does it really matter? Identifying items already gone, t-shirts over heads like black bags, hands and legs bound.

A couple from out of state. Backpacking. Living frugally. They had political bumper stickers Daniel agrees with, and unfortunately, it just means fewer people will care about finding them, in today's climate.

Louis accused him of being a cold killer. Whatever. They're monsters. And the climate will be different in fifty years.

'I'm back,' he says, quiet, at the edge of Louis' consciousness. 'No rush. You two okay?'

It is an uncomplicated place to leave the conversation, and Lestat lapses quiet. Absorbs it as a simple truth. Knows it must not be, can't be, if Louis imagines all of this as some punishment for the action, but Louis came to him, and Louis would do it again anyway.

Soaps slides away. Blood is wetted, dispersed. The bath will need to be refilled. For the minute, Lestat finds himself zoning out in a way he had not let himself be while hiding throughout the daylight. They had wanted him somewhere safe, and now he is, and his body believes it.

An ear pricking, anyway, for the sound of the garage, but he remains still, docile, even as several synapse spark together to twinge at his hunger. Soon, blood.

Lestat stops speaking and Louis lets the silent hold. There is no reason to break it, no need to dislodge Lestat from where he leans, cheek on Louis' thigh.

Louis washes the shampoo from his hair. Works conditioner through, just as they had done that first night. He leaves it to sit while he sweeps soaped palms down Lestat's shoulders and arms, light touches over injuries seen and unseen.

Breathes. Feels their heartbeats, twinned once more. Lestat quieted under his hands, safe. (If Louis gives himself any space to think, he will shatter under the force of his own relief, and guilt. So much of this is his fault.) The water is bloody. Louis is eyeing the attachments, considering his own reach and if Lestat would tolerate being rinsed so, when the rumble of the garage door finds them, when Daniel touches his mind.

He's calmer.

Resting a hand at the nape of Lestat's neck, making a decision to hook the shower attachment on its bending hose with his off hand.

Can you find me something for him to put on?

The impression lingers after this request. Soft things, whether they come from Louis' suitcase or Lestat's. Doesn't matter.

Chooses not to react any given way about Daniel's return. He's back. He must have taken someone. Louis can ask after it later.

'I'll do that,' he confirms. 'How are you?'

Lestat being calmer is good. Lestat being in a position to put on something clean and soft is good. But how is Louis? Daniel is aware he's not being especially sensitive in the face of Louis' instinct to shut down and withdraw, but Daniel is utterly unskilled at being sensitive to that kind of behavior, unfortunately. He can't cope with it. They're not conducting an interview anymore, he can't devote two weeks of poking and prodding and cajoling, he just has to move forward.

Still. He's aware.

Sacrifices get left in the garage for now, locked in the back of his car. Not worried about screams for help; punctures through their necks, carefully hitting but not severing the larynx, will prevent it. Off to find a change of clothes for Lestat, and he grabs a robe and pajamas, which he carts to the bathroom while deliberately making his footsteps audible so that he's not sneaking up on anyone.

"Alright." Here. "Do you feel up to a hike down to the garage, or should I bring them up here? It's not a problem either way." He looks at Louis, adds, "You don't have to be in the room. I texted Rachida, it's handled, so."

Shrug. He didn't involve them in the actual grab, but he's spent enough time around Louis' employees by now to know they can clean up once he rolls the bodies into their care.

His wounds have stopped bleeding in the time between taking Louis' blood and now. A human should probably worry about some of these injuries, contamination, continued damage while left untreated. A vampire can ignore them well enough until he has a chance to sleep it off.

Lestat has left off his lean against Louis' leg for the sake of practicality, feeling a little like he has just slept deeply and is only now fuzzily awake, senses sharpening for the prospect of a meal. Lifting his head as Daniel enters, then turning slightly in the direction he knows these mortals to be. He can listen to their little panicked heartbeats from here.

"I can find them where they are," he decides. The world's easiest hunt, but he'll take it.

How is Louis?

Radio silence. He is occupied.

Splits attention in these moments between Daniel's progress through halls and rooms, and the wash of suds down Lestat's back, the conditioner rinsed from his hair. He can feel Lestat come alert under his hands, observing the progress of healed wounds.

And then Daniel, the door opening. An offering clearly made out of deference to Louis' sensibilities, and his expression in response is inscrutable. He turns instead, hooking the shower attachment back onto the wall.

"Okay."

Okay, Louis doesn't have to be there.

Okay, Lestat will seek them where they are.

Okay.

He straightens, reaching to accept Daniel's chosen fashions. Set them within reach, alongside a towel.

"Thank you," to Daniel. For kidnappings. For coming back too, maybe.

Anticipating some kind of dismissal so Lestat can dress, moving towards the door.

Internal sigh.

"You're welcome. Hey." Corralling Louis and keeping him from escaping. "Half his fucking torso was falling off, help him put that on."

(No good nurse jokes no good nurse jokes no good nurse jokes bad coping mechanism bad coping mechanism)

"I know you're pissed," he continues, out loud because doing it telepathically would be obvious and possibly send Lestat into a tailspin, "but you're where you're needed right now."

Lestat needs Louis here. Daniel needs Louis here. Louis needs to be right here, and not off doing anything stupid, be it going after Armand or spiraling in self-loathing or whatever's going on in his head. Daniel can't actually manage both of them, somebody else in this bathroom is going to have to be at least A LITTLE less neurodivergent for a FEW MINUTES at least.

Daniel might have gotten away with the former interjection, with preventing Louis from vanishing bodily from the room. He is allowed.

But the latter—

Maybe it's right. (It's probably right.) But it's unwelcome. It's unwelcome even when it's Daniel saying it. It strikes Louis as patronizing instead of comforting, needling at the well-banked embers of his anger.

"Alright."

Flat.

Petty, maybe, in refusing to even instigate an argument. Withholding maybe for the same reason Daniel didn't touch his mind: Lestat is calm now, but it all feels fragile still. Louis doesn't want him to break apart again.

And so Louis returns to Lestat. With the bath water draining away, the wounds stand out agonizingly stark on pale skin. Louis' jaw tightens, though his hands are gentle, steadying, as he reaches out for Lestat.

Daniel can stay if he wants.

Daniel stays in case they need another hand, unruffled by Louis' unresponsiveness. Plenty experienced with being on the receiving end of the silent treatment. What does Louis want, for Daniel to inform him he's being childish? Real productive use of everyone's time. If he wants to be a simmering angry zombie, he's free to. Daniel isn't his parent, and he's not his partner, he's not in a position to scold him.

What he will do is continue to ask Louis to help make sure Lestat actually makes it to the garage. Obviously uninterested in leaving Louis unsupervised.

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