In the coming hours (days, weeks) Louis will feel badly for all of this. Guilt for the way he spins out. (Something unproductive in its own right.)
But the feeling is absent now.
Lestat moves and it spurs Louis into motion, crossing away from them both to the window where he can take in the quality of the dark, observe the lightening of the sky. Creates distance, his back to them, a little breathing space. Inevitably reminded of time and opportunity slipping away from him, while Lestat draws his robe closed, wounds veiled, the damage to his face made starker. Louis doesn't need to look; the map of his injuries are imprinted so clearly in his mind. He doesn't want to claw into Daniel. He wants to scratch out of his own skin.
"Daniel can claw if he likes."
Wow, so generous.
A mistake to think on Claudia. She sticks in his head like Lestat's wounds stick in his head like Daniel's predicament sticks in his head. All that Armand has touched and broken and destroyed. And Louis permits it all to stand. Fights a war that changes nothing, and Armand continues on and on and on. Louis has promised, and must adhere to it now, no matter what it feels like to him.
"On account of having been nearly turned into brain paste," he says to Lestat, "I'm giving you a pass for being unhelpful and also trying to shut down."
Withering, but not... you know, not funny. A little.
"Nobody's trying to claw at anyone, I'm talking to you."
Does Louis really think that's what it is? That Daniel's just digging at him because he's a curiosity? It doesn't make Daniel want to stop, exactly, because he lacks that instinct, but it does make him consider doing so. It feels shitty to just pick an argument and then abandon it so unresolved, but at which point is he just hitting his head on a brick wall?
He was able to get Louis to respond in Dubai. Maybe he's lost something, becoming a vampire. Or maybe Louis just doesn't have a use for him anymore. He doesn't know.
Delicate. Question like the point of a knife pressing to skin, claws set just so.
Are they talking? Is that what they're doing here? Louis hasn't wanted it. Louis came back, the best choice he could make, but containing the hurricane of anger and misery and regret inside his body feels impossible. Demands something Louis will never be able to acquire as long as he remains.
"What else do you want from me, Daniel?"
Turning from the window.
"This is what I got to offer. You asked me to stay, and I have. You need to fix me now so you both can feel better about it?"
Fix spat out of his mouth.
The rising, desperate realization: I don't want to be here. Wanting to claw out of his skin, out of this moment, out of this room. Recognizes anger bigger than his body, anger and hunger and loathing building in him. (Recognizes the quality of this thought, always familiar even when it comes colored by anger rather than despair.) He should have gone. It's all his fault, where they are now. His doing. His failure now, passing the chance to rectify it.
"I am talking to you, and you are reacting badly to it. I don't know what you're hearing instead of what I'm actually saying, but it has nothing to do with wanting to 'fix' you. I've never thought that about you at all, and you fucking know that."
Daniel thought that Lestat and Louis were fooling around this whole time, he thought Louis was feeling a lot better than he actually was— thought, whatever, he's going to publish the book anyway, because he's owed after what he was put through, and nothing Armand said to him in those weeks has been treated as plainly factual.
Fix is something that lives alone in Louis' head.
"You've shut down over and over since you got here, and it just sucks. It hurts to watch and it can't feel good for you. You've got a nuclear radiation aura."
Lestat has moved off a little to create some more space. Perches on the arm of a chair, arms wrapped around himself. Unhelpful, shutting down, yes, perhaps so. Sulking, most definitely.
A minor flinch in it at all at the vitriol, even directed as it is at Daniel. Louis' talent for making him feel so selfish for wanting things to be better for them, for him, mixed in with all the times he really was being selfish. No sense of delineation.
He doesn't interrupt, here. There is a ghost of things he has said before, tried before, in Daniel's punchier approach. Perhaps it will do. The man got a whole book out of Louis. Lestat has a track record of years of silence.
A involuntary consideration: maybe Louis should have stayed in Dubai, maybe he wasn't ready to be here with them, this way. It's an unsteady, ugly thought. It's his own, but Louis can hear it in someone else's calm, cossetting tones. Feels like touching a hot stove, like catching fingers in a stray strip of sunlight. It spins up his heart rate, this whisper like a sprung trap inside his own head.
Terrible, brittle silence, before Louis dredges up careful, neutral tones to tell him:
"Then don't watch."
Not unaware that they are skating towards a breaking point. Louis' breaking point. A point where the impulses and fury and pain in his body spin out past his ability to contain. And then what?
Says this and bites down on the rest. The spitting fury over every part of the past twenty-four hours, all this helpless, agonizing feeling that Louis can do nothing with but turn inward, because if he loosened his grip it would shatter him apart, break them all from each other. Maybe what little he's said has already done this.
Repeats, again, "I got nothing else for you tonight, Daniel. I'm done, now."
Done. Taking all splitting cracks and hairline fractures from the room with him, leaving. Implosion, empty space. This is what he has left to give.
Serious irritation, One of my kids used to do that when she was thirteen, you know, if I said her room wasn't clean enough she'd scream 'Then don't come in here', have you considered growing the fuck up? But this is discarded. Lestat has an excuse to be deliberately unhelpful, Daniel does not.
The other side of the weight is what tips furthest. Daniel hates to do it, hates succumbing to hurt feelings and indulging Louis' bullshit, reinforcing the stupidity of what's going on here, but what else is he going to do?
Disappointing. Bitterly so. Uncharacteristic silence remains for another few heartbeats, as though the tense nothingness is threatening further argument.
He lets him keep the last word, and leaves the room.
Lestat draws in a breath, as deep as he cares to allow, and tips a look back to Louis. Fond, despite himself. Sad as well. A myriad of complicated feeling left to flow like a bitter, briny undercurrent, untested, unable to reach for it. He feels like hammered shit, still, and is vaguely disappointed that he thinks Louis has likely rescinded his offer for a second helping of blood.
Last morning, he tasted the sun and didn't burn. He is almost sure of it. He does not want to think of how long it will all be for him, now.
"We love you," he says, in the tone of an explanation, the cadence of je suis désolée. "That is all."
And he takes his weight off the chair, and leaves for his own room.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
But the feeling is absent now.
Lestat moves and it spurs Louis into motion, crossing away from them both to the window where he can take in the quality of the dark, observe the lightening of the sky. Creates distance, his back to them, a little breathing space. Inevitably reminded of time and opportunity slipping away from him, while Lestat draws his robe closed, wounds veiled, the damage to his face made starker. Louis doesn't need to look; the map of his injuries are imprinted so clearly in his mind. He doesn't want to claw into Daniel. He wants to scratch out of his own skin.
"Daniel can claw if he likes."
Wow, so generous.
A mistake to think on Claudia. She sticks in his head like Lestat's wounds stick in his head like Daniel's predicament sticks in his head. All that Armand has touched and broken and destroyed. And Louis permits it all to stand. Fights a war that changes nothing, and Armand continues on and on and on. Louis has promised, and must adhere to it now, no matter what it feels like to him.
no subject
Withering, but not... you know, not funny. A little.
"Nobody's trying to claw at anyone, I'm talking to you."
Does Louis really think that's what it is? That Daniel's just digging at him because he's a curiosity? It doesn't make Daniel want to stop, exactly, because he lacks that instinct, but it does make him consider doing so. It feels shitty to just pick an argument and then abandon it so unresolved, but at which point is he just hitting his head on a brick wall?
He was able to get Louis to respond in Dubai. Maybe he's lost something, becoming a vampire. Or maybe Louis just doesn't have a use for him anymore. He doesn't know.
sneaks in a tag forgive
Delicate. Question like the point of a knife pressing to skin, claws set just so.
Are they talking? Is that what they're doing here? Louis hasn't wanted it. Louis came back, the best choice he could make, but containing the hurricane of anger and misery and regret inside his body feels impossible. Demands something Louis will never be able to acquire as long as he remains.
"What else do you want from me, Daniel?"
Turning from the window.
"This is what I got to offer. You asked me to stay, and I have. You need to fix me now so you both can feel better about it?"
Fix spat out of his mouth.
The rising, desperate realization: I don't want to be here. Wanting to claw out of his skin, out of this moment, out of this room. Recognizes anger bigger than his body, anger and hunger and loathing building in him. (Recognizes the quality of this thought, always familiar even when it comes colored by anger rather than despair.) He should have gone. It's all his fault, where they are now. His doing. His failure now, passing the chance to rectify it.
no subject
Daniel thought that Lestat and Louis were fooling around this whole time, he thought Louis was feeling a lot better than he actually was— thought, whatever, he's going to publish the book anyway, because he's owed after what he was put through, and nothing Armand said to him in those weeks has been treated as plainly factual.
Fix is something that lives alone in Louis' head.
"You've shut down over and over since you got here, and it just sucks. It hurts to watch and it can't feel good for you. You've got a nuclear radiation aura."
no subject
A minor flinch in it at all at the vitriol, even directed as it is at Daniel. Louis' talent for making him feel so selfish for wanting things to be better for them, for him, mixed in with all the times he really was being selfish. No sense of delineation.
He doesn't interrupt, here. There is a ghost of things he has said before, tried before, in Daniel's punchier approach. Perhaps it will do. The man got a whole book out of Louis. Lestat has a track record of years of silence.
no subject
Terrible, brittle silence, before Louis dredges up careful, neutral tones to tell him:
"Then don't watch."
Not unaware that they are skating towards a breaking point. Louis' breaking point. A point where the impulses and fury and pain in his body spin out past his ability to contain. And then what?
Says this and bites down on the rest. The spitting fury over every part of the past twenty-four hours, all this helpless, agonizing feeling that Louis can do nothing with but turn inward, because if he loosened his grip it would shatter him apart, break them all from each other. Maybe what little he's said has already done this.
Repeats, again, "I got nothing else for you tonight, Daniel. I'm done, now."
Done. Taking all splitting cracks and hairline fractures from the room with him, leaving. Implosion, empty space. This is what he has left to give.
no subject
Weighing between—
Serious irritation, One of my kids used to do that when she was thirteen, you know, if I said her room wasn't clean enough she'd scream 'Then don't come in here', have you considered growing the fuck up? But this is discarded. Lestat has an excuse to be deliberately unhelpful, Daniel does not.
The other side of the weight is what tips furthest. Daniel hates to do it, hates succumbing to hurt feelings and indulging Louis' bullshit, reinforcing the stupidity of what's going on here, but what else is he going to do?
Disappointing. Bitterly so. Uncharacteristic silence remains for another few heartbeats, as though the tense nothingness is threatening further argument.
He lets him keep the last word, and leaves the room.
no subject
Lestat draws in a breath, as deep as he cares to allow, and tips a look back to Louis. Fond, despite himself. Sad as well. A myriad of complicated feeling left to flow like a bitter, briny undercurrent, untested, unable to reach for it. He feels like hammered shit, still, and is vaguely disappointed that he thinks Louis has likely rescinded his offer for a second helping of blood.
Last morning, he tasted the sun and didn't burn. He is almost sure of it. He does not want to think of how long it will all be for him, now.
"We love you," he says, in the tone of an explanation, the cadence of je suis désolée. "That is all."
And he takes his weight off the chair, and leaves for his own room.