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.
He could say, he had felt it before. Had harboured it since Louis told him over the phone that Daniel had been his intended fledgling, had let this colour every kind moment, fond touch, affectionate glance. He could and nearly does before he finds himself letting it go, in part from the absurdity of arguing a thing he doesn't want to be true against someone saying over and over it isn't, and he's an idiot, but also—
Well, he will need to take it to Louis, he thinks. They will need to have a conversation. They will need to express to each other the things they want.
But not before—
"Then it is just me," tearful, pitchy, palms pressing over his eyes in the misery of it all. "It is only he doesn't wish to be my companion again. It is only that everything is fucked and he is as obligated to me as you are to that fucking demon."
And begins to work on crying out all the blood he just took.
Daniel is not the best at navigating emotional outbursts, but he likes this better than Lestat being angry. He doesn't know what to do for a moment, just looking at him over his shoulder, baffled, because a part of him thinks—
What the fuck, man, with everything that's happened, where's your perspective.
But that's not going to help, and he's exhausted from the discomfort of being at odds with Louis, and getting awful sleep quality, and the unease through the bond at whatever state Armand is in now. Daniel turns, sitting with one shoulder against the sofa, facing Lestat.
"Hey." A corner of Lestat's robe gets appropriated to lift up towards his face, offering, if he doesn't want Daniel to try and poke at him. "Louis needs space to work on himself. He just spent nearly a century with Armand scrambling his brain. Even if he misses you like crazy, he's allowed to prioritize figuring himself out. Doesn't mean you're kicked to the curb."
And it's likely some of this dialogue gets lost in tears, muffled fabric, French accent coming in thicker all of a sudden, the pressure of some amount of pent up feeling all releasing at once. "He showed me," he says, or continues, or responds, it isn't quite clear, "he showed me all the, he showed me everything, all that Louis said about me and everything wrong I have done, all the ways I was lacking, and all Louis said to you, and how I have hurt, how I have hurt him," and somewhere in the afterlife, Claudia would probably agree that Lestat could, perhaps, use some perspective.
But, an honest broken heartedness in his tone, in the weight of his outburst, and perhaps exacerbated, perhaps exaggerated. Clear headed just enough to pick up a real thing Daniel has said to him as he folds over his half-sodden robe corner, "And who says he missed me, when he went away again, when he only came back for you," breathe shuddering shallow through each word.
Oh Armand, immortal asshole. Daniel pulls in a breath, but he doesn't let himself audibly sigh. Not helpful. His hand hovers for a moment, robe corner delivered, but after some consideration, he carefully pets over Lestat's hair. Damp from being washed, the prettiest sad wet dumpster rat. Maybe it's a little insulting to treat Lestat like a teenager having a crying jag, but it's his only experience pool to draw from. (A shitty father, but a worse partner; put up with occasionally crying from the kids, but not their mothers. He'd just leave the room, or worse, get thrown out for rolling his eyes.)
"Louis believed something that wasn't true, about the trial in Paris," Daniel says. "He believed that, and he was stuck with Armand, and he finally got to wordvomit everything up to some junkie mortal kid. The only way he felt safe to think of you was through that lens. How do you think he feels now, knowing you heard all that, knowing he believed a bunch of bullshit for all these years?"
Pretty bad. More reasons why sinking his desire to go kill Armand sucks. An unfortunate necessity.
Daniel huffs a laugh, then.
"He left me with Armand and didn't come back. He went and saw you in New Orleans, right? That was after bailing on me. I hadn't seen him since then. He's working shit out, man. He's picking fights with the voices in the dark. It's not about who he wants to hold hands with, it's about being able to trust himself. You know. In his own head."
Probably? Yeah. Seems right. Hopefully Daniel's not making it worse, speaking on Louis' behalf, but on the other hand, this is what Louis gets for shutting down, sooOoOo.
A hand touches his hair, and if there is a coin flip between accepting comfort from this gesture or lashing out, it finds itself weighted to the former thing by the recent memory of warm water, of Louis' fingers against the nape of his neck, of Louis saying just as gently that he will never regret coming to find Lestat again.
Vampires don't need to breathe, but the body forgets. It certainly sounds like it as Lestat barely muffles this latest bout of grief into silky robe fabric, just as vital and damp and struggling as any mortal, and slow revs down as Daniel speaks. The slightest lean towards that hand as he does so.
Looks to him, vision a rosy blur, as Daniel speaks of his companion, his former companion, lost in the wind still.
Absorbing. Some sense of internalisation, information for sifting through, shredding apart like paperback pulp print. Lestat says, "He said he didn't like my music," but this time it's with a laugh, quiet and wet, a brief flash of white, blunt teeth, because isn't that funny, even if tears haven't quite stopped.
"At divorce mediation with my second wife, I told her she almost looked healthier after having finally gained some weight somewhere besides her ass. She looked great, but I made her feel awful. We all say shit when we're mad and hurt."
Lestat is very handsome. Daniel looks at him, and sometimes forgets to see a person; he's a figure from Louis' story, a fixture of his existence, a threat, a force of nature to be navigated. He supposes the blond vampire is all that, too.
Gentle pats. Just trying to offer him something to feel stable against. Hands that don't tremble and shake, not anymore. Would Lestat worry about him and Louis, if he'd seen Daniel when he was sick? Would he understand how fucking ridiculous his concern is, then?
"I'm sorry you heard any of it."
Daniel tries not to sound too tired. Violating, to know more of his trauma is being shared, but he understands Lestat was definitely not focusing on him. And he understands (hates that he understands) that Armand was probably going for the most effective way to hurt Lestat. Daniel just happened to be incidentally bleeding on the floor for a fair bit of it. Oh, well.
It makes him laugh again, this first thing Daniel says, the way mirth can kind of break through beneath the tears. It isn't funny, really, except in the way it's funny that everyone is a little terrible, and it can be a delightful sort of surprise the ways it manifests. Pettiness, little cruelties. Daniel is sorry Lestat heard any of that. Did Louis want him to, once?
Not now. They had moved on so quickly off the topic, back in New York. And now, Louis, going cold and still and silent. Walking away.
"The cruelest things a lover can say to you are the things you can see in yourself," he says. "That you most fear about yourself. Not the part about music. That's absurd."
But the rest. Lestat is a lot, he is not perfect.
He brings a hand up and covers Daniel's with his own, pressing it there to the side of his head for a moment. Soaking up this kindness like it's life-giving, excess crimson squeezed from beneath his lashes as he closes his eyes tightly for a moment, like wishing some substantial portion of heartbreak to soothe.
"He showed me," quiet, "your time in Dubai. The way he would govern Louis. The way he would toy with you. Do you wish to see?"
See, it's not so dismal. They can have some quiet laughter, a small bit of relief before Louis comes back and is probably still fucking miserable. Daniel hopes not, but he also knows, with a strange, depressed resignation, that he's going to have to go find Armand, if not tonight then soon, and it's going to make Louis feel a million times worse all over. Not looking forward to it, but he's also not enjoying the way it feels like his insides have been removed like somebody scooping them out to make deviled eggs.
A pause, like a hitch in breathing.
"I was there," he ventures, wry. "He and I interacted a lot while Louis was asleep. I dunno if I need to see whatever filter he put over it. Is it going to give you a headache to do?"
On the one hand, Daniel wants to know things. On the other, Daniel is not eager to see himself with Parkinson's again.
This question is replied to with a sound. Maybe, maybe not.
And it doesn't matter. At least, now, the air around him feels a little less heavy, less full of psychic radioactivity since their first encounter in the alleyway. The blood of two humans and the sampling of Louis' blood, and some calm restored over the passing minutes, doing something to stitch these things closed.
"Not if you take it," is probably true. Lestat's mind feels—swollen, perhaps, like muddy rivers leaking past their delineations, like a mouthful of broken glass. Memories that don't belong to him, information he didn't ask for. The gifting of one shard won't relieve any of it, but perhaps it can have a purpose. Perhaps all of this can have had a purpose, and he won't just collapse on Daniel's chest and cry that Louis always liked his music.
Instead, he closes his eyes. Focuses, recalling this one thing, and parcelling it up carefully into a single crystalline fragment. The cool lights of the penthouse, Louis speaking in soft tones about making Daniel one of them, and the undercurrent of feeling—frustration, annoyance, disgust—that comes with making him rest. Here is Daniel, hands shaking over a plastic bottle he is trying to open, and the texture of his hair in the palm of your hand as you grip a handful, yank his head backwards.
The scent of sunlight on wet concrete. Light illuminating off of metal, drainage pipes, wheel hubs, the taste of blood.
Lestat doesn't shove this into Daniel's mind. Pushes it to the front of his own. It would be nice if it doesn't hurt either of them.
He could shut it out. It occurs to him as it starts, that he's developed enough to be able to. For a suspended moment within himself, Daniel feels like he's standing in a doorway with one hand on the frame, easy to be on one side or the other. Seeing himself is excruciating misery he left behind writing a memoir, but it feels like being a little bitch to opt out.
Goddamnit.
Armand is—
Strange. Inhuman in a way the other inhumans aren't. Lestat will see Daniel's surgical regard of him, watching this, taking in emotion dispassionately, cataloguing it. Matching it up against information he already has, experiences he's already run through, Louis' mocking offer, and earlier than that, Armand, dark brown eyes, staring at him, doing nothing but staring directly at him, even when Louis is sitting next to him, even when Louis is nowhere to be found, standing together out on the balcony a million miles in the air in the desert, and Armand is still just staring at him.
Whatever. Armand is a freak. Louis needs help. Lestat needs something to be done about the melting, the swelling, the spill of tender ribbons out of his head. Daniel's hands are cold because he's an old man who smoked too much in life, and they're soothing in the telepathic world, sifting through, trying to carefully put things back onto a shelf.
Armand is a freak. Unbidden, Lestat feels a twinge of affection, enough so that it pulls at his expression, demands a tiny smile. It's funny, and a little familiar. They were incompatible because they were impossible, but they were.
He almost pulls back completely when he feels that touch to his mind, and stops. Something like the lion letting the mouse tend to the thorn in his paw, save that the mouse could harm itself, become full of thorns too, and the lion is not certain he would like to invite such an outcome. But it's a comfort, a touch of cool on something over-warm, skill in the way psychic touches move past the jagged wounding.
Old memories pushed back into the hazy layers they belong. New memories carefully contained. Slowly, the noise dims. Likely a dusting of impressions come away on Daniel's fingers. The sting of snow, of hard wooden floors under raw knees, and a black ribbon on glossy black hair and familiar faces fleeting in a spotted mirror, the scent of perfumes and powders.
Meanwhile, Lestat has shifted in closer, his brow now pressed to Daniel's shoulder in a doggish pursuit of—well, not affection, exactly. Shelter.
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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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He could say, he had felt it before. Had harboured it since Louis told him over the phone that Daniel had been his intended fledgling, had let this colour every kind moment, fond touch, affectionate glance. He could and nearly does before he finds himself letting it go, in part from the absurdity of arguing a thing he doesn't want to be true against someone saying over and over it isn't, and he's an idiot, but also—
Well, he will need to take it to Louis, he thinks. They will need to have a conversation. They will need to express to each other the things they want.
But not before—
"Then it is just me," tearful, pitchy, palms pressing over his eyes in the misery of it all. "It is only he doesn't wish to be my companion again. It is only that everything is fucked and he is as obligated to me as you are to that fucking demon."
And begins to work on crying out all the blood he just took.
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What the fuck, man, with everything that's happened, where's your perspective.
But that's not going to help, and he's exhausted from the discomfort of being at odds with Louis, and getting awful sleep quality, and the unease through the bond at whatever state Armand is in now. Daniel turns, sitting with one shoulder against the sofa, facing Lestat.
"Hey." A corner of Lestat's robe gets appropriated to lift up towards his face, offering, if he doesn't want Daniel to try and poke at him. "Louis needs space to work on himself. He just spent nearly a century with Armand scrambling his brain. Even if he misses you like crazy, he's allowed to prioritize figuring himself out. Doesn't mean you're kicked to the curb."
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And it's likely some of this dialogue gets lost in tears, muffled fabric, French accent coming in thicker all of a sudden, the pressure of some amount of pent up feeling all releasing at once. "He showed me," he says, or continues, or responds, it isn't quite clear, "he showed me all the, he showed me everything, all that Louis said about me and everything wrong I have done, all the ways I was lacking, and all Louis said to you, and how I have hurt, how I have hurt him," and somewhere in the afterlife, Claudia would probably agree that Lestat could, perhaps, use some perspective.
But, an honest broken heartedness in his tone, in the weight of his outburst, and perhaps exacerbated, perhaps exaggerated. Clear headed just enough to pick up a real thing Daniel has said to him as he folds over his half-sodden robe corner, "And who says he missed me, when he went away again, when he only came back for you," breathe shuddering shallow through each word.
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"Louis believed something that wasn't true, about the trial in Paris," Daniel says. "He believed that, and he was stuck with Armand, and he finally got to wordvomit everything up to some junkie mortal kid. The only way he felt safe to think of you was through that lens. How do you think he feels now, knowing you heard all that, knowing he believed a bunch of bullshit for all these years?"
Pretty bad. More reasons why sinking his desire to go kill Armand sucks. An unfortunate necessity.
Daniel huffs a laugh, then.
"He left me with Armand and didn't come back. He went and saw you in New Orleans, right? That was after bailing on me. I hadn't seen him since then. He's working shit out, man. He's picking fights with the voices in the dark. It's not about who he wants to hold hands with, it's about being able to trust himself. You know. In his own head."
Probably? Yeah. Seems right. Hopefully Daniel's not making it worse, speaking on Louis' behalf, but on the other hand, this is what Louis gets for shutting down, sooOoOo.
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Vampires don't need to breathe, but the body forgets. It certainly sounds like it as Lestat barely muffles this latest bout of grief into silky robe fabric, just as vital and damp and struggling as any mortal, and slow revs down as Daniel speaks. The slightest lean towards that hand as he does so.
Looks to him, vision a rosy blur, as Daniel speaks of his companion, his former companion, lost in the wind still.
Absorbing. Some sense of internalisation, information for sifting through, shredding apart like paperback pulp print. Lestat says, "He said he didn't like my music," but this time it's with a laugh, quiet and wet, a brief flash of white, blunt teeth, because isn't that funny, even if tears haven't quite stopped.
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Lestat is very handsome. Daniel looks at him, and sometimes forgets to see a person; he's a figure from Louis' story, a fixture of his existence, a threat, a force of nature to be navigated. He supposes the blond vampire is all that, too.
Gentle pats. Just trying to offer him something to feel stable against. Hands that don't tremble and shake, not anymore. Would Lestat worry about him and Louis, if he'd seen Daniel when he was sick? Would he understand how fucking ridiculous his concern is, then?
"I'm sorry you heard any of it."
Daniel tries not to sound too tired. Violating, to know more of his trauma is being shared, but he understands Lestat was definitely not focusing on him. And he understands (hates that he understands) that Armand was probably going for the most effective way to hurt Lestat. Daniel just happened to be incidentally bleeding on the floor for a fair bit of it. Oh, well.
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Not now. They had moved on so quickly off the topic, back in New York. And now, Louis, going cold and still and silent. Walking away.
"The cruelest things a lover can say to you are the things you can see in yourself," he says. "That you most fear about yourself. Not the part about music. That's absurd."
But the rest. Lestat is a lot, he is not perfect.
He brings a hand up and covers Daniel's with his own, pressing it there to the side of his head for a moment. Soaking up this kindness like it's life-giving, excess crimson squeezed from beneath his lashes as he closes his eyes tightly for a moment, like wishing some substantial portion of heartbreak to soothe.
"He showed me," quiet, "your time in Dubai. The way he would govern Louis. The way he would toy with you. Do you wish to see?"
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See, it's not so dismal. They can have some quiet laughter, a small bit of relief before Louis comes back and is probably still fucking miserable. Daniel hopes not, but he also knows, with a strange, depressed resignation, that he's going to have to go find Armand, if not tonight then soon, and it's going to make Louis feel a million times worse all over. Not looking forward to it, but he's also not enjoying the way it feels like his insides have been removed like somebody scooping them out to make deviled eggs.
A pause, like a hitch in breathing.
"I was there," he ventures, wry. "He and I interacted a lot while Louis was asleep. I dunno if I need to see whatever filter he put over it. Is it going to give you a headache to do?"
On the one hand, Daniel wants to know things. On the other, Daniel is not eager to see himself with Parkinson's again.
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And it doesn't matter. At least, now, the air around him feels a little less heavy, less full of psychic radioactivity since their first encounter in the alleyway. The blood of two humans and the sampling of Louis' blood, and some calm restored over the passing minutes, doing something to stitch these things closed.
"Not if you take it," is probably true. Lestat's mind feels—swollen, perhaps, like muddy rivers leaking past their delineations, like a mouthful of broken glass. Memories that don't belong to him, information he didn't ask for. The gifting of one shard won't relieve any of it, but perhaps it can have a purpose. Perhaps all of this can have had a purpose, and he won't just collapse on Daniel's chest and cry that Louis always liked his music.
Instead, he closes his eyes. Focuses, recalling this one thing, and parcelling it up carefully into a single crystalline fragment. The cool lights of the penthouse, Louis speaking in soft tones about making Daniel one of them, and the undercurrent of feeling—frustration, annoyance, disgust—that comes with making him rest. Here is Daniel, hands shaking over a plastic bottle he is trying to open, and the texture of his hair in the palm of your hand as you grip a handful, yank his head backwards.
The scent of sunlight on wet concrete. Light illuminating off of metal, drainage pipes, wheel hubs, the taste of blood.
Lestat doesn't shove this into Daniel's mind. Pushes it to the front of his own. It would be nice if it doesn't hurt either of them.
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Goddamnit.
Armand is—
Strange. Inhuman in a way the other inhumans aren't. Lestat will see Daniel's surgical regard of him, watching this, taking in emotion dispassionately, cataloguing it. Matching it up against information he already has, experiences he's already run through, Louis' mocking offer, and earlier than that, Armand, dark brown eyes, staring at him, doing nothing but staring directly at him, even when Louis is sitting next to him, even when Louis is nowhere to be found, standing together out on the balcony a million miles in the air in the desert, and Armand is still just staring at him.
Whatever. Armand is a freak. Louis needs help. Lestat needs something to be done about the melting, the swelling, the spill of tender ribbons out of his head. Daniel's hands are cold because he's an old man who smoked too much in life, and they're soothing in the telepathic world, sifting through, trying to carefully put things back onto a shelf.
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He almost pulls back completely when he feels that touch to his mind, and stops. Something like the lion letting the mouse tend to the thorn in his paw, save that the mouse could harm itself, become full of thorns too, and the lion is not certain he would like to invite such an outcome. But it's a comfort, a touch of cool on something over-warm, skill in the way psychic touches move past the jagged wounding.
Old memories pushed back into the hazy layers they belong. New memories carefully contained. Slowly, the noise dims. Likely a dusting of impressions come away on Daniel's fingers. The sting of snow, of hard wooden floors under raw knees, and a black ribbon on glossy black hair and familiar faces fleeting in a spotted mirror, the scent of perfumes and powders.
Meanwhile, Lestat has shifted in closer, his brow now pressed to Daniel's shoulder in a doggish pursuit of—well, not affection, exactly. Shelter.
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