"I know it's not ideal, some tabloid manipulation bullshit about being with me, but it can't be this bad. What's going to happen, going after an ancient vampire who's hurt and cornered? What if he lashes out and incinerates you in an instant, even by fucking accident? What if he folds your head in two? Louis he can just— you could just come back changed, and what the fuck are we going to do then?"
Daniel speaks sense. Or speaks essential things. Makes the kinds of arguments that Lestat is familiar with the way they fail, break, slide away.
And while this occurs, he makes his presence known as a physical, tangible thing. A light grasp at Louis' pantleg that graduates to a weight, a solid presence of a shoulder leaning in against the back of his knee, Lestat leaning weight there, his breathing shallow, pained. Please don't, in the way he leans, the slight whine to his breathing. Je suis désolée, in the grasp to pant fabric, the press of his cheek to the side of Louis' thigh while the sight of the floor blurs from his vision.
His fault, of course. He has said the wrong thing, and the right thing evades him, feels beyond his grasp.
Bristling, angry (angrier) at the way Daniel says these things. As if the objection is the implication of them, together. Absurd.
Daniel's voice breaks.
Lestat is touch him, grasping, on his knees. (Louis had begged him from his knees. Begged, desperate, panicky, for Claudia. A terrible memory, stirred in his mind.)
They are in combination a paralytic. Stranding Louis with his rage, his hurt. Nowhere for it to go but inwards, inwards, inwards. Can't bring himself to move Daniel, to wrench away from Lestat. And so he is trapped.
Breathing too fast. Cold and hot at the same time. Watching himself become a statue, lose momentum as Lestat holds onto him and Daniel blocks the door.
"You want me to be afraid of him? Tiptoe around, beg 'em to stop fucking with the pair of you? Live another hundred, two hundred years letting him make me, and my fucking life into a knife to hurt you with?"
Fury, rushing from him like blood, like he is bleeding and hadn't realized. Lestat is holding onto him and Louis doesn't feel it, observes it from outside his own head too. He fell, because Armand hurt him, and it was too severe to heal. Just like Daniel, wan and pale the day after Armand's last offensive volley. Hurt on hurt and none of it lands on Louis, only on those standing near him.
"You think I'm so weak that I gotta hide, and hope he don't take you and kill Lestat next time?"
Of course there is a next time. Louis sees it now, the inevitability of it. Long years unfurling, marked by Armand's attentions as he sees fit to bestow them.
Daniel is aware, in his peripheral vision, that Lestat is on the ground and now grabbing Louis' leg and he thinks— well, that's a lot, but maybe warranted?? Not enough time to deviate to go Hey chill, particularly when Louis needs the most chilling out. Still. Hey, that's a lot. If this moment could extend, like a rubber band stretching out, he might bark a little incredulous laugh about it. Has he ever felt so much, so shamelessly? Impressive, in its on way.
"I don't want or think any of that," Daniel tells Louis. "And I'm pretty sure you know that, or you would, if you'd take a second to breathe."
See again: chill out.
He can tell Louis is angry. Radiating off of him like heat, like standing too close to a bonfire. But Daniel stays where he is, not because he thinks Louis is weak. Very aware he could end up smacked aside or incapacitated. Simply willing to endure it, if so.
"Lestat made a split-second decision to do something violent, and look what happened. Crushing ourselves over and over, repeating it, won't fix anything. Please don't. This isn't the way forward, it can't be."
And, horribly, Daniel does not want Armand to be dead. On the off-chance Louis succeeds, what the fuck does that feel like? The thought of it makes something feel like it's suffocating him. All of it, every angle, sucks.
It feels better, to cling this way. He feels as though that if Louis is under his hands, in contact with him, then he won't go anywhere. All things make sense, Lestat thinks, when they are touching one another, if only Louis would touch him back.
Aware of an argument occurring over his head. Aware of its substance. This time, it's alright if he is mostly spoken of as though he isn't in the room, because everything he has to say in possible response might project from him in a loud volume, stealing energy from anger, frustration, familiar patterns.
Sympathy pangs for the things Louis says. Armand, an ever-haunting presence. The scale of time, the extent. Lestat had laughed when Daniel had asked if he'd ever get bored and fuck off.
"Stay," he says. A murmur, only just audible, as if he is speaking to the floor more so than the man above him. "Stay here with me, mon cher. Ça me brisera le cœur si tu pars."
"This ain't a split second decision," spat back, words running alongside Daniel's protest, the logic he is trying to offer.
Louis has thought on this. (He has gone back and forth, wavering.) He has had a lot of time to consider how he would do it, how he would approach the task. The quality of the violence.
But Lestat is holding onto him. Whispers in French, words just for them, an appeal so soft it would be easily lost if anyone other than Lestat were saying them. It is a foregone conclusion: so long as Lestat holds him here, so long as Daniel makes himself an obstacle, Louis must remain. The anger must turn inward, corrosive and acidic through it might be.
Wants to say again, Don't ask me this. How dare you ask me this.
Asks instead, pressing, claws digging in: "Who you protecting, me or him?" as he watches Daniel, walls him out of his mind, hands balled into fists rather than reach down to Lestat. An accusation, a searching kind of provocation.
Daniel does actually believe that it's not a split second decision. He believes that Louis has been stewing since walking out of the penthouse that first time after the ruinous reveal, since he made the mistake of leaving Armand alone with Daniel. He's certain that Louis has thought of what he'd do, has workshopped it in his head over and over again, and is now seeing an opportunity that might never come again. One where Armand is potentially weak, and Louis very, very motivated.
The chances of an opportunity coming along like this are closer to zero than bears quibbling over. It's once in a long, long lifetime, probably. And Daniel doesn't feel selfish at all. Thinks: Fuck you, I'm saving your life. Because even if he didn't feel anything for Armand, even if he was still mortal Daniel Molloy, tagging along on some other goddamn thing, barely functional, then Lestat would still be here crying against Louis' body, and Daniel would still think Fuck you, I'm saving your life.
He doesn't think Armand has it in him, ordinarily, to kill Louis. He's loosely had this opinion for a while, but seeing that Lestat is alive still, it's solidified. But what about half-dead and out of his mind? What about a wounded animal lashing out? No. It's too fucking terrifying.
"Ballsy thing to ask after all the romanticized shit you peddled to me about the vampire bond," Daniel fires back. Doesn't move, stands his ground and glares. "I've felt like my insides have been falling out for twenty-four fucking hours, but I'm still here. With your maker, who agrees with me. Is Lestat protecting Armand, too?"
"Non," here, from the ground, a direct appeal now being made as he tips his head back to look up at Louis. Tear streaked and bruised and hair drying into disorder, a little wild eyed with naked desperation. "The gremlin can burn for the things he's done to you. If he could succumb to your fire, chéri—"
A shake of his head completes the sentiment. The gremlin would burn, it is that simple. Meanwhile, Lestat has half an instinct left not to cry more about the things he has seen, the things he knows.
One hand graduating up to find a handhold into Louis' shirt, a needful tug for attention. "You remember, the last time we saw one another in Paris," he says. "The better death, the greater suffering. If you live and are happy, if you find the ones you love and keep them with you, it is enough."
A tearful laugh, self-deprecating as he adds, "And you were so beautiful in New Orleans, speaking of the promise your future held. This can't be what you meant."
Yes, Louis had said many things about the quality of the bond, attributed a great many things to its existence, but beneath all of those assertions—
If Louis were to bring himself to read the book, to listen again to Daniel's recordings, would he better able to separate which words Armand taught him to say, and which were his own? Would Louis be able to listen again and hear which words were a shield for the way he loved Lestat still, even when all he knew was that Lestat had seen Claudia killed?
He'd felt Madeleine and it had never been the same. It would have been something else, if she'd lived longer. Two points of comparison, all Louis has from which to operate, but enough to judge them all different. And perhaps to say something ugly to Daniel in return (Louis, who had cut Lestat's throat and felt him teeter on the edge of death. Louis, who felt Madeleine burn to ash.) But Lestat pulls his attention down, breaks his focus in this space where it is very clear Louis is drawing breath to say something cruel.
Lestat disrupts the intention. There is nowhere for the impulse to go. And so it turns inward, shuttered behind Louis' eyes.
"What I peddled was about me and him," Louis says flatly, tacit admission of these differences. Of the misrepresentation, the lie that just barely kept Louis from being consumed by guilt over what he could not change. He reaches down, gathers Lestat from the floor if permitted, all brisk, economical movements.
"I thought he'd let us all go, but he ain't going to do that. And you're asking me to give him a chance to do all this, again."
Take Daniel. Kill Lestat. Leave Louis alive, alone. Or maybe kill him too. It is hard to predict. Louis doesn't know, but the danger is a tangible thing. Armand, given time to heal. Armand, given opportunity to come back and finish what he started.
That's what's being asked of him. It's unbearable.
Go ahead and be cruel, Daniel thinks. Go ahead and take it out on me, instead of doing something with finality.
Ready for it, accepting. Even if it hurts, it'll hurt less than losing Louis and being left alone with Armand— because it would just be Armand, then, no matter the details of it all shaking out. Pretty clear that Lestat's just not going to make it in a world without Louis in it, anymore. Easy to imagine him fading away after the trial, now.
Everything is so fucked. But Louis pivots, maybe conceding to the futility of that line of argument. Daniel has not been entirely honest about his dealings with Armand, but he's here, he's always come back to Louis.
"I'm asking you to live. This is a fucking mess, and things will end up changed over it, but the change can't be you going and getting annihilated. You can't ask us to watch you gamble on that kind of an outcome. Especially because—"
Daniel gestures, stuck for a moment, then, ah, fuck it,
"Like I said. I get it, when it comes to a motivation to want to kick Armand's teeth in. He deserves it. But Armand wasn't doing anything to us. He was just around, and if not for this, maybe nothing would have happened and we'd have never known. Don't take this as being scolded, by the way, Blondie, it's fine, I'm just saying. There are things between the state of 'letting us go' and the state of 'constant terrorism', and it's possible to get there. I have to fucking hope it gets there. What'd he say, it's gonna break his heart, if you leave?"
A look, at the way Louis is cradling his former companion, his maker. As if checking for a translation note, though he doesn't expect Lestat's attention is going to slip free from Louis even a little.
"I feel that. Still, with the lack of technicalities, I care about you more than anyone. You're worth enduring this bullshit."
If there is a split second of surprise for this handling, it is consumed and hidden in the willing with which Lestat submits to it. Like some instinct in him is alert to the possibility, or in general, to the things Louis wants, desires, ambulates, anticipated and mirrored.
(Never mind all the twisting and carrying on during his rescue. That was different.)
Here, his arms fold around Louis' shoulders and lock into place, and in spite of the subject matter, the reason for his being held, the broader context that spans a century, he can't help but gaze at Louis with open adoration, eyes as big glass windows, shielding little. Maybe a little shadowed, tinted with all those things, the knowledge of who does not belong to whomst—
And Louis is angry. Angry with them. He knows how he might try to fix it, ninety years back, the little intimacies designed to coax his companion back around. This will have to do.
If Daniel was incorrect in his translation, Lestat might be moved to say so. The sentiment holds. Big wet eyes convey the truth of it. The truth, too, as to being the inciting incident.
It's a familiar impasse for them, he and Daniel coming to an impossible point where there is simply nothing else for it.
Louis would fight every living vampire and Armand, twice, to be certain of their safety. Daniel won't tolerate the risk.
Lestat clings onto his shoulder, still hurt. Hurt for who knows how long, how long and how much blood will it take to undo Armand's handiwork? And even when the injuries are gone, the knowledge Armand gave him will remain. It will hurt him.
The anger doesn't cool. It simply vanishes. An old trick, a disappearing act, Louis standing in front of them and absenting himself in the same breath. Louis straightening, expression flattening, hitching Lestat a little higher as Daniel tells him these things and Louis thinks of the futility of seeking middle ground with Armand.
Thinks of what chances there are of Armand simply taking Daniel, and how impossible it would be to find him. They'd been hidden so long from Lestat, Louis had been obscured for decades. How much more jealously would Armand guard Daniel?
(To say nothing of the truth: Daniel endures all of this bullshit because of Louis. Louis, who had misjudged. Been careless. Now they are here.)
"It's a mistake."
Simple. It's a mistake not to exploit the opening. A mistake to assume there is anything good, anything tolerable, between the two extremes Daniel outlines. (Cannot touch the rest. Whose broken heart, what Louis is worth enduring.) It is only a last objection, turning away with Lestat to bear him back to the couch.
Daniel understands that his own feelings, the things he would experience, if his maker were to die, really die, are not of any importance to Louis. It can't rank against the things Armand has done to him, things that have carved his life and left him mutilated inside, maybe permanently. How can the loss of Claudia, of Madeleine, ever heal seamlessly? How can the manipulation and the lies ever clear up? Time won't fix it.
Dying won't either. Daniel has to stick to that, because if he says I don't want Armand to die, he doesn't know what will happen. Worries a little that Louis knows he feels that way, worries that it will be more damning than the rest is uplifting. Because even though Daniel doesn't want Armand to die, the stronger thing, the bigger worry, is Louis dying.
"I don't give a shit."
He doesn't sound hostile. He just sounds honest, seared open.
"I don't want you to get roasted by a cornered animal. I don't think you'd be able to survive him. Hate me for it. I'll fucking deal, because you'll be around still somewhere."
Take him away from here. To bed, or to coffin, or to the past, when things were simpler. Take him oh it's just the couch.
:(
Lestat doesn't insist on keeping his hold on Louis, wrestling him down. Lets the loop open and detach, but then does find places to grasp at his arm. Shades of New Orleans, but not the glamourous life they'd started to build so much as the husks of it, Lestat found admidst its scraps.
Maybe there will be space for it tomorrow, the day after. Space for that tone in Daniel's voice. For the thorny, painful reality of fledglings and makers, how Daniel is subject to it just as Louis is, as Claudia was. (And Madeleine, Madeleine was.)
But there is space for very little now.
A single opportunity to free Daniel, to be certain Armand will never twist pieces of Louis' life like knives into Lestat again. It's slipping away, and Louis will have to allow it to happen.
"I'm not going after him."
Words that taste like ash. Louis says them and hates them and feels as if he's failing them both by permitting himself to be held here.
Whether or not Louis remains in this room, less certain.
Straightening, slowly extricating himself from Lestat's grasp, as he turns to look back to Daniel, where Louis left him.
"I don't hate you," however: "Stop trying to convince me."
It's a cool line. Louis is cool. Eternally impressive, and beautiful, and if Daniel thought he could fight Armand and survive, if he wouldn't feel destroyed by Armand's death, he'd want to watch him do it. No matter what he feels about violence.
But.
Daniel spreads his hands in a gesture that's both helpless and irreverent. A bit of a shrug. What does Louis want? He knows who Daniel is.
At this verbal confirmation, something in Lestat relaxes. His hands loosen, Louis extricating himself without needing to shake him loose, sinking back into the couch corner where he'd begun. There is every possibility, of course, that Louis vanishes now, disappears for a time measurable in years, but it would be acceptable if it meant he didn't seek out Armand, try to do what Lestat did not.
Would not? Could not? There had been no plan, only impulse, but he does remember towards the end feeling a shift in himself, one that longed for murder more than punishment. And he had nothing left for it.
He tips his head back, regards the ceiling. Breathes through painful twinges. Perhaps he should not have been so precious about refusing to put his fangs in Louis' skin, earlier, when it had been offered.
Daniel is who he is. And Louis is who he has always been. (To a point. How much of the man he was has survived? What has emerged unaltered after seventy-seven years with Armand?) Daniel says this, and Louis says nothing.
Stop shutting down.
Impossible.
He lets his attention drift from Daniel. Measures the labored quality of Lestat's breathing.
Something else to lay at Louis' feet, this exacerbation of Lestat's injuries.
"Do you need another person, Lestat?"
Something concrete for Louis to do. Daniel can ask his questions, whichever of them remain. Louis can acquire someone else for Lestat to drain. He can certainly manage that, can't he?
A pause, and then he draws his posture back up enough to look at Louis from somewhere beneath his eyelashes.
Something concrete for Louis to do, even as the idea of his leaving the room feels like a blow he is bracing for. There is the sense, anyway, that Louis will leave the room whether given a task or not, Lestat glancing to Daniel to check his expression, to see if he knows this as well, before looking to Louis.
"Would you?" he says, like Louis is offering to collect his dry cleaning. He slides his hand across the sofa arm, like he would take Louis' hand if it were nearer. "Don't be long."
Daniel has slapped Louis before. He's spit Fuck your boyfriend, he's laughed at him, he's provoked him. But here, now, he's more angry at Louis now than he's ever been. The shutting down, the death wish, the threat of hating him.
Tough luck. Daniel's not the kind of let go when something hurts, and Louis' not going to intimidate him into not caring anymore. It feels like a bridge burned, this silence from him, and that hurts too, especially watching him touch Lestat's hand, followed by a swift exit.
Which, no, Daniel doesn't try to block. He just stands there. He has to trust Louis, even though he doesn't want to. Louis could leave and never come back. Daniel can't do anything about it either way. Maybe he could say something like, if you aren't back by dawn I'm walking out into the sun.
Doesn't. Just lets him go, and continues to stand there.
When he does finally move, he goes to the sofa, and sits on the floor with his back against it. Hanging out with Lestat, a crumbled mess.
"You and Armand are both idiots if you thought we were a thing."
Lestat watches Louis walk away, skin tingling where it had been touched. Watches the closed door as he listens to Daniel move closer, sit down, settle. Speak to him.
A mumble, thanks to the way his chin rests on draped arm, "I thought you were a thing."
He is not all the way convinced it isn't true. Perhaps it's not true yet and he has ruined the surprise, and for this, he can't entirely feel sorry. Good thing, when there is enough to feel sorry about. "I thought," he continues, "that he had chosen someone new. That he was unhappy with Armand."
A slight shift, sinking further into the corner, angling a look to what he can see of Daniel's face in profile. "And why is that so idiotic?"
Daniel flourishes a hand. Congrats: confirmed idiot.
He draws in a breath, sighs it out. Far less crunched than Lestat, but no less pathetic. An old man sitting on the floor, knees drawn up, pitiful. Tired and defeated, after the effort of trying to bully Louis out of killing himself.
"He was unhappy with Armand," Daniel confirms, "and he spent the entire length of both interviews talking about you."
Not making eyes at Daniel, not hoping to be rescued, not wanting someone new. Daniel firmly believes that Louis has always loved Lestat, for better or worse, even when it hurt him. Even when it was stupid to do so. Even now, when he can't be with him without losing himself.
"I was a hooker with a gimmick, and now I'm a mistake he feels bad about. Armand couldn't show you the times Louis made fun of me for wanting him even when I was a kid and I wasn't some ugly old guy, because he wasn't there, but I assure you that happened, and it was as excruciating as it sounds. We're friends. He might be using me as some kind of emotional training wheels, too, which would be kinda fucked up, but I'm letting him, so whatever. Point is—"
Another gesture.
"Besides, I'm not open to companionship. I'm seventy years old and I've been divorced twice. Doing it again, except now everyone's immortal, no fucking thanks. All you charismatic hot people can have that. Not my gig."
Not necessarily agreeable silence, or calm silence, but a listening one all the same. Sullen absorption as Lestat tracks the weave in the carpet, the sound of Louis' footfalls down from the building, into the street.
"You can speak less than fondly about yourself all you like," he says, eventually, head tipping back into languished repose, "but it matters only how fondly Louis speaks of you. How you speak of him. This is how love works."
Some might disagree. Philosophers, therapists. Not the romantic ones, though.
"And you may find," one clawed finger lifting, "that companionship has its appeal, hm? Another seventy years? And another?"
"People can be fond of each other without the potential for a romantic relationship, Lestat."
He leans his head back to look at him.
Bro.
And also,
"I know it's annoying on principle to be told you're wrong, but in this instance, isn't it better to have been wrong? Armand tried to mindfuck you over something stupid. Trying to talk me into it is just helping Armand mess with you."
The rest, Daniel just shrugs. Dunno. Maybe. Right now he doesn't care, though.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Sharp. Unkind. Afraid.
"I know it's not ideal, some tabloid manipulation bullshit about being with me, but it can't be this bad. What's going to happen, going after an ancient vampire who's hurt and cornered? What if he lashes out and incinerates you in an instant, even by fucking accident? What if he folds your head in two? Louis he can just— you could just come back changed, and what the fuck are we going to do then?"
His voice breaks. Embarrassing.
Please, don't.
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And while this occurs, he makes his presence known as a physical, tangible thing. A light grasp at Louis' pantleg that graduates to a weight, a solid presence of a shoulder leaning in against the back of his knee, Lestat leaning weight there, his breathing shallow, pained. Please don't, in the way he leans, the slight whine to his breathing. Je suis désolée, in the grasp to pant fabric, the press of his cheek to the side of Louis' thigh while the sight of the floor blurs from his vision.
His fault, of course. He has said the wrong thing, and the right thing evades him, feels beyond his grasp.
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Daniel's voice breaks.
Lestat is touch him, grasping, on his knees. (Louis had begged him from his knees. Begged, desperate, panicky, for Claudia. A terrible memory, stirred in his mind.)
They are in combination a paralytic. Stranding Louis with his rage, his hurt. Nowhere for it to go but inwards, inwards, inwards. Can't bring himself to move Daniel, to wrench away from Lestat. And so he is trapped.
Breathing too fast. Cold and hot at the same time. Watching himself become a statue, lose momentum as Lestat holds onto him and Daniel blocks the door.
"You want me to be afraid of him? Tiptoe around, beg 'em to stop fucking with the pair of you? Live another hundred, two hundred years letting him make me, and my fucking life into a knife to hurt you with?"
Fury, rushing from him like blood, like he is bleeding and hadn't realized. Lestat is holding onto him and Louis doesn't feel it, observes it from outside his own head too. He fell, because Armand hurt him, and it was too severe to heal. Just like Daniel, wan and pale the day after Armand's last offensive volley. Hurt on hurt and none of it lands on Louis, only on those standing near him.
"You think I'm so weak that I gotta hide, and hope he don't take you and kill Lestat next time?"
Of course there is a next time. Louis sees it now, the inevitability of it. Long years unfurling, marked by Armand's attentions as he sees fit to bestow them.
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"I don't want or think any of that," Daniel tells Louis. "And I'm pretty sure you know that, or you would, if you'd take a second to breathe."
See again: chill out.
He can tell Louis is angry. Radiating off of him like heat, like standing too close to a bonfire. But Daniel stays where he is, not because he thinks Louis is weak. Very aware he could end up smacked aside or incapacitated. Simply willing to endure it, if so.
"Lestat made a split-second decision to do something violent, and look what happened. Crushing ourselves over and over, repeating it, won't fix anything. Please don't. This isn't the way forward, it can't be."
And, horribly, Daniel does not want Armand to be dead. On the off-chance Louis succeeds, what the fuck does that feel like? The thought of it makes something feel like it's suffocating him. All of it, every angle, sucks.
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Aware of an argument occurring over his head. Aware of its substance. This time, it's alright if he is mostly spoken of as though he isn't in the room, because everything he has to say in possible response might project from him in a loud volume, stealing energy from anger, frustration, familiar patterns.
Sympathy pangs for the things Louis says. Armand, an ever-haunting presence. The scale of time, the extent. Lestat had laughed when Daniel had asked if he'd ever get bored and fuck off.
"Stay," he says. A murmur, only just audible, as if he is speaking to the floor more so than the man above him. "Stay here with me, mon cher. Ça me brisera le cœur si tu pars."
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Louis has thought on this. (He has gone back and forth, wavering.) He has had a lot of time to consider how he would do it, how he would approach the task. The quality of the violence.
But Lestat is holding onto him. Whispers in French, words just for them, an appeal so soft it would be easily lost if anyone other than Lestat were saying them. It is a foregone conclusion: so long as Lestat holds him here, so long as Daniel makes himself an obstacle, Louis must remain. The anger must turn inward, corrosive and acidic through it might be.
Wants to say again, Don't ask me this. How dare you ask me this.
Asks instead, pressing, claws digging in: "Who you protecting, me or him?" as he watches Daniel, walls him out of his mind, hands balled into fists rather than reach down to Lestat. An accusation, a searching kind of provocation.
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The chances of an opportunity coming along like this are closer to zero than bears quibbling over. It's once in a long, long lifetime, probably. And Daniel doesn't feel selfish at all. Thinks: Fuck you, I'm saving your life. Because even if he didn't feel anything for Armand, even if he was still mortal Daniel Molloy, tagging along on some other goddamn thing, barely functional, then Lestat would still be here crying against Louis' body, and Daniel would still think Fuck you, I'm saving your life.
He doesn't think Armand has it in him, ordinarily, to kill Louis. He's loosely had this opinion for a while, but seeing that Lestat is alive still, it's solidified. But what about half-dead and out of his mind? What about a wounded animal lashing out? No. It's too fucking terrifying.
"Ballsy thing to ask after all the romanticized shit you peddled to me about the vampire bond," Daniel fires back. Doesn't move, stands his ground and glares. "I've felt like my insides have been falling out for twenty-four fucking hours, but I'm still here. With your maker, who agrees with me. Is Lestat protecting Armand, too?"
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A shake of his head completes the sentiment. The gremlin would burn, it is that simple. Meanwhile, Lestat has half an instinct left not to cry more about the things he has seen, the things he knows.
One hand graduating up to find a handhold into Louis' shirt, a needful tug for attention. "You remember, the last time we saw one another in Paris," he says. "The better death, the greater suffering. If you live and are happy, if you find the ones you love and keep them with you, it is enough."
A tearful laugh, self-deprecating as he adds, "And you were so beautiful in New Orleans, speaking of the promise your future held. This can't be what you meant."
sorry this is so many words
Yes, Louis had said many things about the quality of the bond, attributed a great many things to its existence, but beneath all of those assertions—
If Louis were to bring himself to read the book, to listen again to Daniel's recordings, would he better able to separate which words Armand taught him to say, and which were his own? Would Louis be able to listen again and hear which words were a shield for the way he loved Lestat still, even when all he knew was that Lestat had seen Claudia killed?
He'd felt Madeleine and it had never been the same. It would have been something else, if she'd lived longer. Two points of comparison, all Louis has from which to operate, but enough to judge them all different. And perhaps to say something ugly to Daniel in return (Louis, who had cut Lestat's throat and felt him teeter on the edge of death. Louis, who felt Madeleine burn to ash.) But Lestat pulls his attention down, breaks his focus in this space where it is very clear Louis is drawing breath to say something cruel.
Lestat disrupts the intention. There is nowhere for the impulse to go. And so it turns inward, shuttered behind Louis' eyes.
"What I peddled was about me and him," Louis says flatly, tacit admission of these differences. Of the misrepresentation, the lie that just barely kept Louis from being consumed by guilt over what he could not change. He reaches down, gathers Lestat from the floor if permitted, all brisk, economical movements.
"I thought he'd let us all go, but he ain't going to do that. And you're asking me to give him a chance to do all this, again."
Take Daniel. Kill Lestat. Leave Louis alive, alone. Or maybe kill him too. It is hard to predict. Louis doesn't know, but the danger is a tangible thing. Armand, given time to heal. Armand, given opportunity to come back and finish what he started.
That's what's being asked of him. It's unbearable.
w o w
Ready for it, accepting. Even if it hurts, it'll hurt less than losing Louis and being left alone with Armand— because it would just be Armand, then, no matter the details of it all shaking out. Pretty clear that Lestat's just not going to make it in a world without Louis in it, anymore. Easy to imagine him fading away after the trial, now.
Everything is so fucked. But Louis pivots, maybe conceding to the futility of that line of argument. Daniel has not been entirely honest about his dealings with Armand, but he's here, he's always come back to Louis.
"I'm asking you to live. This is a fucking mess, and things will end up changed over it, but the change can't be you going and getting annihilated. You can't ask us to watch you gamble on that kind of an outcome. Especially because—"
Daniel gestures, stuck for a moment, then, ah, fuck it,
"Like I said. I get it, when it comes to a motivation to want to kick Armand's teeth in. He deserves it. But Armand wasn't doing anything to us. He was just around, and if not for this, maybe nothing would have happened and we'd have never known. Don't take this as being scolded, by the way, Blondie, it's fine, I'm just saying. There are things between the state of 'letting us go' and the state of 'constant terrorism', and it's possible to get there. I have to fucking hope it gets there. What'd he say, it's gonna break his heart, if you leave?"
A look, at the way Louis is cradling his former companion, his maker. As if checking for a translation note, though he doesn't expect Lestat's attention is going to slip free from Louis even a little.
"I feel that. Still, with the lack of technicalities, I care about you more than anyone. You're worth enduring this bullshit."
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(Never mind all the twisting and carrying on during his rescue. That was different.)
Here, his arms fold around Louis' shoulders and lock into place, and in spite of the subject matter, the reason for his being held, the broader context that spans a century, he can't help but gaze at Louis with open adoration, eyes as big glass windows, shielding little. Maybe a little shadowed, tinted with all those things, the knowledge of who does not belong to whomst—
And Louis is angry. Angry with them. He knows how he might try to fix it, ninety years back, the little intimacies designed to coax his companion back around. This will have to do.
If Daniel was incorrect in his translation, Lestat might be moved to say so. The sentiment holds. Big wet eyes convey the truth of it. The truth, too, as to being the inciting incident.
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Louis would fight every living vampire and Armand, twice, to be certain of their safety. Daniel won't tolerate the risk.
Lestat clings onto his shoulder, still hurt. Hurt for who knows how long, how long and how much blood will it take to undo Armand's handiwork? And even when the injuries are gone, the knowledge Armand gave him will remain. It will hurt him.
The anger doesn't cool. It simply vanishes. An old trick, a disappearing act, Louis standing in front of them and absenting himself in the same breath. Louis straightening, expression flattening, hitching Lestat a little higher as Daniel tells him these things and Louis thinks of the futility of seeking middle ground with Armand.
Thinks of what chances there are of Armand simply taking Daniel, and how impossible it would be to find him. They'd been hidden so long from Lestat, Louis had been obscured for decades. How much more jealously would Armand guard Daniel?
(To say nothing of the truth: Daniel endures all of this bullshit because of Louis. Louis, who had misjudged. Been careless. Now they are here.)
"It's a mistake."
Simple. It's a mistake not to exploit the opening. A mistake to assume there is anything good, anything tolerable, between the two extremes Daniel outlines. (Cannot touch the rest. Whose broken heart, what Louis is worth enduring.) It is only a last objection, turning away with Lestat to bear him back to the couch.
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Dying won't either. Daniel has to stick to that, because if he says I don't want Armand to die, he doesn't know what will happen. Worries a little that Louis knows he feels that way, worries that it will be more damning than the rest is uplifting. Because even though Daniel doesn't want Armand to die, the stronger thing, the bigger worry, is Louis dying.
"I don't give a shit."
He doesn't sound hostile. He just sounds honest, seared open.
"I don't want you to get roasted by a cornered animal. I don't think you'd be able to survive him. Hate me for it. I'll fucking deal, because you'll be around still somewhere."
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:(
Lestat doesn't insist on keeping his hold on Louis, wrestling him down. Lets the loop open and detach, but then does find places to grasp at his arm. Shades of New Orleans, but not the glamourous life they'd started to build so much as the husks of it, Lestat found admidst its scraps.
"Are you staying?"
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But there is space for very little now.
A single opportunity to free Daniel, to be certain Armand will never twist pieces of Louis' life like knives into Lestat again. It's slipping away, and Louis will have to allow it to happen.
"I'm not going after him."
Words that taste like ash. Louis says them and hates them and feels as if he's failing them both by permitting himself to be held here.
Whether or not Louis remains in this room, less certain.
Straightening, slowly extricating himself from Lestat's grasp, as he turns to look back to Daniel, where Louis left him.
"I don't hate you," however: "Stop trying to convince me."
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But.
Daniel spreads his hands in a gesture that's both helpless and irreverent. A bit of a shrug. What does Louis want? He knows who Daniel is.
"Stop shutting down."
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Would not? Could not? There had been no plan, only impulse, but he does remember towards the end feeling a shift in himself, one that longed for murder more than punishment. And he had nothing left for it.
He tips his head back, regards the ceiling. Breathes through painful twinges. Perhaps he should not have been so precious about refusing to put his fangs in Louis' skin, earlier, when it had been offered.
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Stop shutting down.
Impossible.
He lets his attention drift from Daniel. Measures the labored quality of Lestat's breathing.
Something else to lay at Louis' feet, this exacerbation of Lestat's injuries.
"Do you need another person, Lestat?"
Something concrete for Louis to do. Daniel can ask his questions, whichever of them remain. Louis can acquire someone else for Lestat to drain. He can certainly manage that, can't he?
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Something concrete for Louis to do, even as the idea of his leaving the room feels like a blow he is bracing for. There is the sense, anyway, that Louis will leave the room whether given a task or not, Lestat glancing to Daniel to check his expression, to see if he knows this as well, before looking to Louis.
"Would you?" he says, like Louis is offering to collect his dry cleaning. He slides his hand across the sofa arm, like he would take Louis' hand if it were nearer. "Don't be long."
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Louis is aware of it. Aware of the glances, of Daniel holding his ground.
A light touch, a little brush of fingers to Lestat's knuckles without any opportunity given to caught, to be held more securely.
"Alright."
As if there is nothing fraught about this exchange.
He turns. He strides towards the door, and assuming Daniel does not attempt to block his progress, vanishes into the dark.
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Tough luck. Daniel's not the kind of let go when something hurts, and Louis' not going to intimidate him into not caring anymore. It feels like a bridge burned, this silence from him, and that hurts too, especially watching him touch Lestat's hand, followed by a swift exit.
Which, no, Daniel doesn't try to block. He just stands there. He has to trust Louis, even though he doesn't want to. Louis could leave and never come back. Daniel can't do anything about it either way. Maybe he could say something like, if you aren't back by dawn I'm walking out into the sun.
Doesn't. Just lets him go, and continues to stand there.
When he does finally move, he goes to the sofa, and sits on the floor with his back against it. Hanging out with Lestat, a crumbled mess.
"You and Armand are both idiots if you thought we were a thing."
Just for the record.
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A mumble, thanks to the way his chin rests on draped arm, "I thought you were a thing."
He is not all the way convinced it isn't true. Perhaps it's not true yet and he has ruined the surprise, and for this, he can't entirely feel sorry. Good thing, when there is enough to feel sorry about. "I thought," he continues, "that he had chosen someone new. That he was unhappy with Armand."
A slight shift, sinking further into the corner, angling a look to what he can see of Daniel's face in profile. "And why is that so idiotic?"
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He draws in a breath, sighs it out. Far less crunched than Lestat, but no less pathetic. An old man sitting on the floor, knees drawn up, pitiful. Tired and defeated, after the effort of trying to bully Louis out of killing himself.
"He was unhappy with Armand," Daniel confirms, "and he spent the entire length of both interviews talking about you."
Not making eyes at Daniel, not hoping to be rescued, not wanting someone new. Daniel firmly believes that Louis has always loved Lestat, for better or worse, even when it hurt him. Even when it was stupid to do so. Even now, when he can't be with him without losing himself.
"I was a hooker with a gimmick, and now I'm a mistake he feels bad about. Armand couldn't show you the times Louis made fun of me for wanting him even when I was a kid and I wasn't some ugly old guy, because he wasn't there, but I assure you that happened, and it was as excruciating as it sounds. We're friends. He might be using me as some kind of emotional training wheels, too, which would be kinda fucked up, but I'm letting him, so whatever. Point is—"
Another gesture.
"Besides, I'm not open to companionship. I'm seventy years old and I've been divorced twice. Doing it again, except now everyone's immortal, no fucking thanks. All you charismatic hot people can have that. Not my gig."
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Not necessarily agreeable silence, or calm silence, but a listening one all the same. Sullen absorption as Lestat tracks the weave in the carpet, the sound of Louis' footfalls down from the building, into the street.
"You can speak less than fondly about yourself all you like," he says, eventually, head tipping back into languished repose, "but it matters only how fondly Louis speaks of you. How you speak of him. This is how love works."
Some might disagree. Philosophers, therapists. Not the romantic ones, though.
"And you may find," one clawed finger lifting, "that companionship has its appeal, hm? Another seventy years? And another?"
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He leans his head back to look at him.
Bro.
And also,
"I know it's annoying on principle to be told you're wrong, but in this instance, isn't it better to have been wrong? Armand tried to mindfuck you over something stupid. Trying to talk me into it is just helping Armand mess with you."
The rest, Daniel just shrugs. Dunno. Maybe. Right now he doesn't care, though.
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