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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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 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.
Perhaps Lestat says the same thing as Daniel in the way Louis must take his weight to draw him to his feet, steady him, encourage fabric where it's meant to go and is otherwise too awkward to reach without causing pain or aggravate injuries. He is not certain of the substance behind the tension he senses, save for the generalised notion that he has caused it.
Well. Oh well. Everyone can be unhappy, then.
Help is accepted right down to the entryway to the garage, at which point he says, "I have it now," voice soft and drifting but focus forwards, and goes to move on in by himself. Steady enough on his feet, and it's a little as if the presence of prey is its own encouragement, balance, support. If there is something he can be certain in, his skill for it, his need of it, his desire, it's this.
And there will be no playing, just the car being opened, and strong hands making still struggling humans, and a strong bite closing around their throats where he will drink too deeply to make much of a mess at all.
And so Louis is in the room after all, trailed a few steps inside the doorway to stand sentinel. Presses knuckles to his mouth, watching Lestat make his way forward. Watching how his steps steady, strengthen.
Louis can hear them too. Rapid heartbeats, harsh breathing. They reek of fear. He can't identify the emotion in his own body immediately, but eventually:
Relief. An absence of anything else. Slow, delayed for that absence.
Lestat makes it very quick. There are no screams.
The gravity of what Louis had offered in that same backseat has not occurred to him at all, only in the sense that Lestat did not take enough, that it was insufficient. This will be enough. Two, and then sleep, and Armand's handiwork will be erased.
Well, if Louis would communicate, he could find himself in the kitchen instead, while Daniel posted up in the doorway between it and the garage, but no.
He is skeptical that Armand's handiwork will be erased by tomorrow. Lestat reeked of Armand's blood, the same blood that healed Daniel's mind in an instant after the psychic blowback from his stupid 'prank' back in New York, and he was in a horrific state. What had he been like when he first crawled into the dumpster? How bad had it started off, how much gruesome work was already hidden away by ancient blood?
What does Armand look like, right now? Like Louis in New Olreans, bad enough to banish Lestat from his life for years across the river?
Violence makes Daniel sick to his stomach. He hates seeing this. He hates that Louis is quiet and withdrawn, unresponsive, like he was in Dubai before he threw Armand into a wall. Like he was after the attack at the museum. He doesn't want it to boil down to violence anymore. It's fucking stupid. It's tiring, and pointless, and it just makes everything worse, and worse, and worse.
"Keep an eye on each other."
To Lestat, and to Louis. A mutual task, as Daniel passes him to return to the car. He knows where the body bags are tucked away, having coordinated with Rachida. He'll clean this up, get everything ready for the fixer crew to slink in as soon as they're out of the garage.
Two hundred and forty years ago or so, Lestat kept and bred mastiffs. Most of them are sweet hearted beings who loved one another, until something reminded them of being animals. He thinks of the several seconds of time before something snaps and he would have to wrestle one dog off the other, air filled with deep phlegmy growls and scattering saliva. He doubts very much that Daniel and Louis would fly into such rages against each other, against him.
But still. They are a group of predators in containment, overlapping ill tempers, triggers, and it feels familiar. Lestat says to Louis, "Come sit with me," on his way back inside, feeling new blood pulsing beneath his skin, made pink from replenishment.
They can all find each other once respective tasks have been accomplished. Lestat is quiet for the moment. Memories and thoughts come up as random as sparks off a campfire.
He had a dark pull, a handsome Satan. I'm sure you do, Amadeo. Violins, violins. Save your kisses for the world. And on and on.
Echoes of their past. Come to me cutting through the grief and agony of one of the worst nights of his life, carried to him with all the richness of Lestat's voice.
Come sit with me Lestat says now, and the words hook him, just as they did then. And even though Louis remains very still, a long, held breath of time where he watches Daniel go about his work, Louis allows himself to be beckoned back inside.
Little to say once they're inside. Lestat is quiet, and it worries Louis, but he is having his own troubles finding something to talk about. A tendril of though still probing among the Many, a restless, likely futile exercise.
They sit. Louis lights a cigarette. From here, it is easy to hear all the signs of clean up. Louis' staff moving like ghosts into the garage, soft murmurs releasing Daniel from any further involvement. Can't touch Lestat's mind, won't touch Daniel's, so all there is left for him to do is be nearby, as present as he is capable of in this moment.
Thinks: he is pretty irritated with Lestat, which could be alleviated or exacerbated based on details he does not yet know. He is frustrated with and a little bit scared for Louis. He is anxious about Armand, and could easily become angry with him, should the wind blow that way. None of that is going to help. He's not going to not be any of those things, but he can take a moment to stand there and acknowledge what he's feeling, and then shelve it all as 'unproductive to prioritize'.
He moves into the sitting room, and then, as the room asks, he sits.
Lestat considers a cigarette, except he's pretty sure his lungs are still trying to work out how to be lungs again, and it would be very undignified to cough his way through a puff and probably hork up some of this blood he just took. So. He stays here, at the edge of this sofa, hair drying into frayed curls. Nebulas of bruises across his face, some of the swelling going down. Little red bleed throughs where his eyes should only be white.
A reflexively sullen cast to the look flicked to Daniel when asked so directly.
"I said in the car," he says, after a beat. "I attacked him. We fought. I hid. I don't know where he is," is offered a little more insistently, like perhaps this is the chase Daniel and Louis would like him to cut to, casting a glance to Louis to include him in this answer. "If he isn't where I left him, and you would have noticed."
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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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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.
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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.
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"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?"
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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?"
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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.
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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.
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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?'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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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Well. Oh well. Everyone can be unhappy, then.
Help is accepted right down to the entryway to the garage, at which point he says, "I have it now," voice soft and drifting but focus forwards, and goes to move on in by himself. Steady enough on his feet, and it's a little as if the presence of prey is its own encouragement, balance, support. If there is something he can be certain in, his skill for it, his need of it, his desire, it's this.
And there will be no playing, just the car being opened, and strong hands making still struggling humans, and a strong bite closing around their throats where he will drink too deeply to make much of a mess at all.
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Louis can hear them too. Rapid heartbeats, harsh breathing. They reek of fear. He can't identify the emotion in his own body immediately, but eventually:
Relief. An absence of anything else. Slow, delayed for that absence.
Lestat makes it very quick. There are no screams.
The gravity of what Louis had offered in that same backseat has not occurred to him at all, only in the sense that Lestat did not take enough, that it was insufficient. This will be enough. Two, and then sleep, and Armand's handiwork will be erased.
More or less.
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He is skeptical that Armand's handiwork will be erased by tomorrow. Lestat reeked of Armand's blood, the same blood that healed Daniel's mind in an instant after the psychic blowback from his stupid 'prank' back in New York, and he was in a horrific state. What had he been like when he first crawled into the dumpster? How bad had it started off, how much gruesome work was already hidden away by ancient blood?
What does Armand look like, right now? Like Louis in New Olreans, bad enough to banish Lestat from his life for years across the river?
Violence makes Daniel sick to his stomach. He hates seeing this. He hates that Louis is quiet and withdrawn, unresponsive, like he was in Dubai before he threw Armand into a wall. Like he was after the attack at the museum. He doesn't want it to boil down to violence anymore. It's fucking stupid. It's tiring, and pointless, and it just makes everything worse, and worse, and worse.
"Keep an eye on each other."
To Lestat, and to Louis. A mutual task, as Daniel passes him to return to the car. He knows where the body bags are tucked away, having coordinated with Rachida. He'll clean this up, get everything ready for the fixer crew to slink in as soon as they're out of the garage.
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But still. They are a group of predators in containment, overlapping ill tempers, triggers, and it feels familiar. Lestat says to Louis, "Come sit with me," on his way back inside, feeling new blood pulsing beneath his skin, made pink from replenishment.
They can all find each other once respective tasks have been accomplished. Lestat is quiet for the moment. Memories and thoughts come up as random as sparks off a campfire.
He had a dark pull, a handsome Satan. I'm sure you do, Amadeo. Violins, violins. Save your kisses for the world. And on and on.
tag of nothing, redux.
Come sit with me Lestat says now, and the words hook him, just as they did then. And even though Louis remains very still, a long, held breath of time where he watches Daniel go about his work, Louis allows himself to be beckoned back inside.
Little to say once they're inside. Lestat is quiet, and it worries Louis, but he is having his own troubles finding something to talk about. A tendril of though still probing among the Many, a restless, likely futile exercise.
They sit. Louis lights a cigarette. From here, it is easy to hear all the signs of clean up. Louis' staff moving like ghosts into the garage, soft murmurs releasing Daniel from any further involvement. Can't touch Lestat's mind, won't touch Daniel's, so all there is left for him to do is be nearby, as present as he is capable of in this moment.
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Thinks: he is pretty irritated with Lestat, which could be alleviated or exacerbated based on details he does not yet know. He is frustrated with and a little bit scared for Louis. He is anxious about Armand, and could easily become angry with him, should the wind blow that way. None of that is going to help. He's not going to not be any of those things, but he can take a moment to stand there and acknowledge what he's feeling, and then shelve it all as 'unproductive to prioritize'.
He moves into the sitting room, and then, as the room asks, he sits.
"Alright. So what happened? Exactly."
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A reflexively sullen cast to the look flicked to Daniel when asked so directly.
"I said in the car," he says, after a beat. "I attacked him. We fought. I hid. I don't know where he is," is offered a little more insistently, like perhaps this is the chase Daniel and Louis would like him to cut to, casting a glance to Louis to include him in this answer. "If he isn't where I left him, and you would have noticed."
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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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