"Pretty dismal to call whatever the fuck that was a 'lifelong relationship,'" is sharp and dry in a way that Daniel has so far avoided being, with Lestat. But there's been no need for deadpan hostility. Here, though, he wants to be clear. Louis and Armand were a miserable disaster, and at no point was Daniel even tempted to believe otherwise.
"The story stops when they left Paris, because that's when you left. And then Louis spent nearly eighty years slowly suffocating. When he talked to me for this interview, it was the first time he talked about most of this since— since it happened, I think. It was hell on him to revisit it, but I think he..."
Daniel trails off. He wanted to make a point here, and he does, but he can't just say please don't hurt him, he's been through so much shit and I'm scared for him, please don't drop him off the side of a building. If only shit was that simple, right.
"I think he felt like if he didn't do it, he was going to fucking die." Armand had accused him of documenting a suicide, but Daniel sees it as the opposite, in retrospect. A shriek for help from someone about to slip over the edge, in a convoluted, sleep-walker way. "And I think a lot of it feels like it happened last month, opposed to last century."
This first thing gets the shuttering up of an attitude that the kids might call 'cunty', replaced with a bracing defensiveness, like Lestat would like to say: I was only joking.
And about what?
He doesn't say that.
A by now familiar level of undivided attention, squared across at Daniel in the private train car, with the sun blistering hot on the other side of glass and tightly closed curtains. Lestat settles, arms folded, blinking less than a human should as Daniel speaks on things as horrible and bright as the daylight dwindling beyond. Inside and out.
Quiet, after. Comparing this to the sight of Louis, handsome Louis, standing in his teardown in immaculate clothing, telling him he's his own companion now. Louis telling him, I was in a dark way, and that sound—yes, Lestat knows it, knows how it feels, gripping your vocal chords, forcing them to tremble under the force of terrible sadness that hasn't been let out yet. His, too.
Draws himself back from the memory before it can catch him, brow furrowing as he studies Daniel again. No disbelief in his expression.
"I didn't leave Paris," is the most pointless thing he could say, but he says it anyway as the rest works its way through him. "They left Paris."
Lestat fixes his attention on him, and Daniel looks back. Clear-eyed and unflinching, and even less vulnerable to vampires making cunty expressions now than he was when the interview they're talking about was being conducted.
Eyebrows go up, over his glasses. Thinking that either Lestat let all of that fly over his head accidentally, or he's going to make a point by feinting. Daniel waits.
Silent, a little longer, breaking his focus off Daniel. "They left Paris," Lestat says again. "And it was like Louis disappeared from me. Like one of us was dead but I wasn't sure which one."
Great feeling, threatening to quake out of him, kept contained for the moment beneath his ribcage, possibly headed off by the fierce and terrible curiousity alone that demands he continue to speak.
"Is he okay now?" does not, mercifully, come out in a tiny little voice, but still something tentative about it, wary of the answer.
Armand is gone. Louis had come to find him. Louis has friends. Perhaps the answer is yes.
He'll let that slide. Flavors of needing the focus to be centered on himself, but Daniel has, himself, made a note of that leaving as profound. Strange to hear Lestat say it, too. That he felt dead. In the book—
The book, their book, no matter that Louis hasn't read it. There in it, Daniel recounts a discussion with one of his research assistants. She questions the way the three vampires part a crumbling medieval tower, unresolved. Poor storytelling. But that's the thing with true stories. He couldn't make something up, and furthermore, as someone with two divorces on his record, author Daniel reflects to the reader his own take. That Louis's aim was true. Lestat must have felt like he died.
His expression is muted. Understanding, a faint smile that's sympathetic, but mostly sad. A nod, as if to say: You left the story.
(And that was the end of it. Nothing else.)
"I don't know, Lestat." Quiet and honest. "I think he's in a place where he can become better. But it's early days. Which is why I am glad you two are talking."
Pause.
(BUT.)
"I worry about him being more vulnerable than he realizes. Picking fights and all this shit."
No, Lestat does not love that. Hearing the echo of it through Daniel's recollections, a familiar spike of worry. Louis inviting death. Harm. Maybe just a most violent distraction. A means of venting. All of which could get himself very killed. Lestat thinks of the headline in the newspaper and the fires in Storyville.
A shared source of anxiety, himself and Daniel. That much has been made clear to him.
"He said to me," and Lestat feels very generous for this offering, hewing so close to something that still feels wounding, "that he views the nights to come as a chance to live more honestly. He seemed grateful for it."
He thanked me, he does not say, but the thought glimmers close to the surface of his words, like he wishes to tell Daniel this thing, in some strange way, while guarding it jealously.
But Daniel is worried. A blind spot, perhaps.
"Armand," and his voice is quiet, but the venom is there, lip curled as if the name in the proximity of this topic is blasphemy. His focus returning to Daniel. Sharp with curiousity. Not accusation, not in this moment. "Has he stayed away?"
"He deserves to be himself. He hasn't been, for a while."
Lestat is the love of Louis' life. Daniel is sure of it. Looking back in 1973, he thinks he might have been sure of it then. No one is that passionate about someone they don't love, even if the moon was turned around on it, for a while. He hears the tone of Lestat's voice, feels the closely guarded, coveted thing behind it. They need each other and they have the luxury of all the time in the world. It'd be beautiful if it wasn't all so fucked up. But maybe it's a little beautiful anyway.
My love ran a theater company for a hundred and fifty years, Daniel. — Your love was in a box pondering a premeditated neck wound, according to Claudia.
Sure of it. In the 70s, and six months ago. Your love, and Armand still trying not to laugh at a joke Daniel had made a moment before, and to Daniel's recollection now, only half-hearing the exchange about the name he had once lost his mind over.
Disregard.
Quiet for a while. Disliking the shift for several reasons; Daniel has consistently disliked speaking of present Armand, though, having taken a bit to warm up to even mentioning him at all.
"I think so," is perhaps a worrying start. A bit poker face. A bit more genuine. But he continues. "Do you feel Louis? We're in different worlds a bit, I'm aware, I'm more than fine with Armand not being able to speak to me from afar. But I still feel something, and it's not always the same something, and it..."
He trails off, making a gesture that further illustrates his difficulty conceptualizing the bond between maker and fledgling.
is both not good enough and also the best he will get, he knows. A certain no would have been suspicious. A certain yes, the only trustworthy thing, but significantly more distressing. Lestat, whose expression had shifted somewhere hard, relaxes that thing in him again that grows his fangs. They've stayed dormant. Subtle.
Softens for this topic. A sad kind of fondness. "I do," he says. So much of the topic of Louis, of Louis speaking to him over speakerphone, is an odd soothing effect that seems to realign the fritzed wiring that is Lestat. Hard to say if that was always the case, or a new development, damage through eighty years of neglect.
But there, easy to observe, as his eyes wander past Daniel. "It is like my heart has been taken out of me and now walks the earth on its own. I can hear it, its beating. I can tell if its near. It doesn't change for me," an addition, recalling the specificity of the question, refocusing on him. "And there were times it felt like a trick I played on myself. Like he was in the other room when he was not. Like he was alive when he might not be."
A glance back down, aside. "It is different, with other fledglings. Claudia, like—knowing a storm is coming or not. And sometimes it remains, even now."
An invisible cord. A hallucination that is real. Louis saw Lestat's ghost that was not a ghost but was somehow still of Lestat. There is no science that can explain it.
"I would not be surprised to know that Armand can pull on it like a leash."
Saccharine despite the macabre nature of removing hearts. Daniel supposes that's just what's going to happen with an artistic vampire from the 18th century. No light from yonder windows, but there's still something poetic about it. A play being performed, though Daniel can tell he means it.
Claudia, a storm; they called Lestat a hurricane. And Louis, his heart.
Sentiment. Daniel instinctively tries to inch away from it, despite having brought the subject up. Too cool for school. And yet he finds himself reflecting on these descriptions, wondering about the negative space on the other side of them; if he can make out any shapes, if any are familiar.
"I can't begin to guess what Armand might be doing with it." Probably not trying to get him to heel, on account of being well aware Daniel is, politely, ungovernable anyway. Something in him whispers he knows already— that Armand is doing what he's doing, touching it curiously, trying to understand, and get used to it. Sometimes precious and sometimes intrusive, but becoming reliable. ... It's fucking fiction, though, he has no way of knowing that at all. "But it's nothing to do with the beating of my heart. Another more annoying part of me is wandering around, I guess."
The romance is abandoned, that soft-focus quality of his mood sharpening once more. Lestat tips his head, smiles. "A segment of lower intestine." Rude, but he must find ways to amuse himself—perhaps less uncomfortable than simply wishing to tear the elder vampire to shreds, like Daniel's book.
He rests his arm along the back of his seat, a shift in body language, less the defensive caging up at news of how well Louis may or may not be doing, from this man who cares for him so much. Let's shit on Armand. That's a fun topic. His hand flips.
"My condolences. I know what it is, to be abandoned by a maker of strange proclivity. At least mine had the courtesy to fuck off forever."
In the short-term, traumatic and distressing. In the long-term, no one wants an eldritch horror like Magnus still hanging around.
Deadpan. Complicated emotions swirl there, far more complicated than How do I answer if he's been around, and they drown out anything else. (Daniel, a beacon of truth, sidestepping; this is not his element. He just wants — needs? — to talk to Louis about it first.)
"And Louis, your heart."
Less deadpan. Daniel regards Lestat, thoughtful.
"I know you saved him. In Paris. I figured it out earlier than Louis realizes. I know you can do it again, even though it'll be slower and less dramatic now, when it's about the precarious mess of recovery and and discovery and healing. With people trying to kill us at the same time."
Ah yes, the plot twist. But reader, he did love him, quelle surprise.
Except that bitterness doesn't rise now. It doesn't rise every time, either, when Lestat rereads it. A strange alchemy of potent gratitude to see the thing realised on the page in between the angst of all his failings committed to ink, no matter the framing. And now—
Lestat stops breathing (drama queen) through Daniel's words, the slackness of his attitude going still, but a different kind of tension than before. How strange it is, to be told by someone—told by this friend of Louis', who was close to being made by him, who listened and processed and published this one-sided everything—that he, Lestat, could be good for Louis. The fingers on his hand curl in, a fidget.
"It gives us something to do," on the subject of people trying to kill them. But. He doesn't make Daniel sit through another pause to see if Lestat has registered the rest, swallowing, giving a slight shimmy of a shrug. "I want him to be happy again. I've always wanted him to be happy."
Alright okay Lestat Narrator, good for Louis, let's not get carried away here.
Love was never in question, anyway. Not even when Louis was screaming about Lestat's tacky frailty at a tape recorder in 1973.
Softly,
"I'm glad for that, too."
Glad that they're talking. That they have space for the truth. That Lestat wishes for happiness. None of the rest has to matter (even though it does, critically). Daniel can support it while remaining aware. Rooting for them, and the anger management therapy they both probably need. Abuse is a monster (like memory, like love), but they all choose which ones to live with.
There's no way for him to say Hurt Louis again and I'll hurt you, because it's stupid. He can't. Even if he could, it's not his style. So he tries for this. He sees it and he wants it to be good.
A different kind of smile here from the big shark grins that Daniel is often treated to—subtler, softer, no baring of teeth, sharp or otherwise.
Can Lestat be so generous in return? Say out loud, that he is (now, suddenly) glad Louis has a friend in Daniel? It isn't a conscious pondering of whether or not to share the sentiment so much as a quiet decision to believe it. It isn't conscious, when he will later feel less tensely for the prospect of seeing Louis again where Daniel can observe him, that he will be freer to feel excited, happy. The overwound thing in him loosening, just a little.
After a beat—
"I asked him to bring along one of his photographs, from when he took them in Paris. Twisted his arm." Just a little. "Do you have more of them yourself? I think he is shy."
They can happily be a work in progress, for a while. Or indefinitely. Maybe there's no great friendship on the horizon for Daniel and Lestat— some people are like vicious dogs and only like the on. Lestat, perhaps, is that way; he's decided Louis is it, and doesn't need anyone else, even willing to shrug off saving their daughter to focus on the one.
He's been fun, though, despite all the horrors. So maybe there's something.
An exhale, like a laugh.
"He's too hard on himself," is confirmation of shy, sort of. "His eye for art is so good that his own is never up to that standard, even though the rest of us think it's great. I do have more, mmmmaybe on this laptop." Squint. Trying to remember exact file pathways, is it on an external in his safe, or does he have a few floating around?
Well, can't hurt to check. He leans to fish the thing out.
A good eye for art. Lestat's own updated wardrobe, and Claudia's too in the beginning, and that mentioned ransacking of the storehouses to furnish his townhouse, in which the only instinct for design he had was that of lavishness and luxury and maximalist clutter, gently harnessed and mitigated by the human man he was dating/hunting with more refined taste. A layman for music but ready to be moved by it, with the sensitivity of a person who understood its heart.
These are thoughts that swirl around, and Lestat deliberately sends them. Daniel did not have a keen telepathic ability when he was interviewing Louis, saddled with his own imagination. Here, the ephemeral sense of the lovely townhouse interior on the Rue Royale, the beautiful suits, the decor, Claudia's little sailor get up ("it's chiffon, it has movement"), an approval hand sliding across the shoulder of a sharp suit, an undercurrent of Louis that matches well the man he would become, or remain as, a century later.
Keen, anyway, for evidence of this, Lestat listing out of his slouch to be attentive.
Telepathy is interesting, and sometimes overwhelming to navigate. Daniel has a special gift of getting angles. Being able to needle people into the truth, and tell when he's being lied to. Even without mindreading and empathetic transference, he'd know how tenderly Lestat regards Louis, and his art. Like he knew how Louis felt about Lestat.
Claudia, beautiful vintage cuts. Like stained glass impressions. Interesting, as he opens his laptop.
"I think they're mostly architecture around Paris," he says, "and practice shots." Half to himself as he remembers where they'd be filed under on his remote storage. Taktaktak, some passwords, and he opens the folder. He mouses over them, making sure he can reasonably identify the ones he has here, in case Lestat asks (or, heaven fucking forbid, there's one in here by somebody else and Louis thinks there's some kind of psyop in a few weeks).
Pause. Daniel looks at the screen for a moment, and there are no unspoken clues from his mind.
Then,
"Architecture, portraits of people in their neighborhood, and group photos, which include Claudia."
And it's transparent in his face, the way it gives him pause. A real and genuine instinct to change his mind, just a moment of that, before Lestat gives a hummed sound of acknowledgement. Yes, of course, Claudia would be, their life together after him, their life together before the end of it all. Why should she not be photographed? Why should he not wish to view them, not that Daniel was asking?
Ridiculous for him to not have anticipated it. There is an additional moment where he thinks: perhaps Louis is not just shy. But then he says, "Oui," dismissing it. "Good."
How does this work. Lestat just holds out his hands for the laptop to be delivered to him.
No interruptions, while he decides. Daniel would want a head's up if he were in the same position, and he wouldn't want commentary.
(A brief derail of thought, the last time he saw his oldest girl, sitting across her kitchen table and watching her expression twist as he explained his diagnosis. Do you want me to feel sorry for you after all this time? She was so angry with him, spitting venom. Deserved.)
Good, Lestat says, and Daniel gives an 'mm' of acknowledgement. Here we go, then—
Always awkward. There are robots singing Happy Birthday on Mars but there's not a suave way to share a laptop screen in person. He gets up and shuffles over to crouch beside Lestat's seat, letting him hold it, poking in one finger to indicate how to swap to the next image.
"He turned the kitchen of their flat into a dark room. You can tell even with these, where he's not using the camera perfectly— that eye of his. The photos are developed perfectly."
Lestat's expression doesn't change when he snares on that thought. There have been little moments here and there, the other person on Daniel's phone account, and so Lestat is not ignorant to Daniel having mortal family left. Of course, Louis had his troublesome mother that reminded Lestat of his troublesome father, and a matter of siblings—
Children, though. Isn't that such a different thing? A daughter's anger. Familiar. Deserved.
It has not been such a long time since Lestat thought about it, about Claudia, and he can receive the laptop with about as much grace as the device allows instead of fumbling over the pang he feels beneath his breast. It is balanced on his knees and it becomes immediately evident he has never touched one of these things in his life.
But he can learn to do this one thing once it's demonstrated, keeping nails in check against the touchpad. "I don't know much about photography," murmured, a confession, but Lestat isn't here to appraise them, or judge them. Just look. And they're striking.
A streetlamp on old brickwork, and the reflection of its glow mingling in tree leaves. Lestat does not zoom through the pictures, lingering. Pointing out something he recognises, some street or building, unconsciously welcoming Daniel's participation rather than attempting to curl up with the images on his own. Then, humans, men, and Lestat grins, tilting his head as he admires the work.
"You can tell he found them beautiful."
He should get a medal for not getting jealous about mortals from eighty years ago, he thinks.
Daniel is a better journalist than he is a father. Here, his fascination with the world and people plays out as he lets Lestat talk about every detail, asks small questions to prompt more if he feels like talking. Here is the journalist, paying very close attention in a genuine way to the feedback of a man who was alive when these were taken, who is a part of the hidden-away subculture of vampires, who knows the artist personally.
Daniel is also a better journalist than he is a friend, but he'd like to think he's getting better.
(Helps that he actually has a fucking friend, now.)
"That must be a universal trait of artists," he reflects, thinking about Louis and his graciousness in between all the times when they made each other pointedly uncomfortable. "They think everything's beautiful. Which has to be incredible. The whole world exists for artists to interpret, and comment, and capture."
Oops, virus scan notif. No threats found. Daniel pokes it away via touchpad.
Virus scan notif. >8| Lestat's hands come up, curling together as Daniel takes care of this thing, and then back to perusal.
"You see this one," he says. Here, a young man bending to speak into another's ear, the surprise of whatever is said on the face of the other. "Nothing staged in it. When we took our portraits in New Orleans, you had to stay sitting for several moments or else it would be ruined. Everything just so. But these photos are the things you see and notice when you are in love, always moving and momentary."
In love with Paris, with humanity, with cute boys, why not. Lestat is, clearly, not shy about sentiment at all. He pivots a look at Daniel, a thin twist of a smile. "Perhaps that is why you rendered Louis so well in your own pages, hm?"
Lestat's openness about feeling is parts refreshing and parts scalding. It's the childlike aspect, as he reported to Louis, but maybe— is it childlike, or is it just that he isn't a little bitch about being honest about emotions, unlike the Baby Boomer brainrot that has been a part of Daniel's DNA since birth.
"Oh, Louis is definitely hot," he says, firing back at that ploy without hesitation. "But nobody needs a particular eye for that."
Louis is hot. An objective fact. Even Daniel Molloy, a for real straight guy with two kids and two ex-wives, can see it. He's just reporting the news.
"Fiction writers see beauty. They're the artists. Journalists get to go dig up all the skeletons."
An indulgent I see. What a delightful double-act Louis and Daniel might make, demurring their artistic ability. Their sensitivities. Latent homosexual tendencies as younger men, probably. Lestat sees all. "Then we shall call your book a beautiful danse macabre. Like the bit about me fucking your maker in a theatre box while my heartbroken ex-lover gazed on from the orchestra pit," a slow sweep of his hand to indicate the dramatic tableau. "Such delightful fictions in your journalism."
All credit to Daniel, who'd made sure about indicating the particularly uncorroborated hearsay while providing certain contextual elements. He is a good journalist or whatever. Appropriately, Lestat's tone is not the bristling aggression it could be, but light and dry, acerbic humour like flames licking off the edges.
Back to the photographs. Daniel is probably permitted a word in edgewise before it flips to a smiling Claudia, the backdrop that of a Parisian wine bar, blur and light, and Lestat's hand lifts off the touchpad, a slight flinch.
Weird and sad, and a liar. Given developments three chapters from now, a line in the back half of the book reads, concerning details conveyed to him by the vampire Armand, his word is somewhat difficult to commit belief to. No need to read ahead, just put a mental pin in there to hold yourself up from being swept away by the haunting seduction of his narrative.
But who doesn't want to include fucking in theater boxes? Come on.
Just a faintly amused hm for all of that, and then there's Claudia. Lestat's hesitation makes Daniel glad he gave him a warning. He knows they had photographs of her before, and he knows she doesn't age, but he also knows the last time Lestat saw her in the flesh was one of the worst things he's ever had to hear about.
"Louis asked me not to put any of her in. But I think he did excellent with these, too."
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"The story stops when they left Paris, because that's when you left. And then Louis spent nearly eighty years slowly suffocating. When he talked to me for this interview, it was the first time he talked about most of this since— since it happened, I think. It was hell on him to revisit it, but I think he..."
Daniel trails off. He wanted to make a point here, and he does, but he can't just say please don't hurt him, he's been through so much shit and I'm scared for him, please don't drop him off the side of a building. If only shit was that simple, right.
"I think he felt like if he didn't do it, he was going to fucking die." Armand had accused him of documenting a suicide, but Daniel sees it as the opposite, in retrospect. A shriek for help from someone about to slip over the edge, in a convoluted, sleep-walker way. "And I think a lot of it feels like it happened last month, opposed to last century."
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And about what?
He doesn't say that.
A by now familiar level of undivided attention, squared across at Daniel in the private train car, with the sun blistering hot on the other side of glass and tightly closed curtains. Lestat settles, arms folded, blinking less than a human should as Daniel speaks on things as horrible and bright as the daylight dwindling beyond. Inside and out.
Quiet, after. Comparing this to the sight of Louis, handsome Louis, standing in his teardown in immaculate clothing, telling him he's his own companion now. Louis telling him, I was in a dark way, and that sound—yes, Lestat knows it, knows how it feels, gripping your vocal chords, forcing them to tremble under the force of terrible sadness that hasn't been let out yet. His, too.
Draws himself back from the memory before it can catch him, brow furrowing as he studies Daniel again. No disbelief in his expression.
"I didn't leave Paris," is the most pointless thing he could say, but he says it anyway as the rest works its way through him. "They left Paris."
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Eyebrows go up, over his glasses. Thinking that either Lestat let all of that fly over his head accidentally, or he's going to make a point by feinting. Daniel waits.
Well okay, and? Willing to hear you out, Blondie.
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Silent, a little longer, breaking his focus off Daniel. "They left Paris," Lestat says again. "And it was like Louis disappeared from me. Like one of us was dead but I wasn't sure which one."
Great feeling, threatening to quake out of him, kept contained for the moment beneath his ribcage, possibly headed off by the fierce and terrible curiousity alone that demands he continue to speak.
"Is he okay now?" does not, mercifully, come out in a tiny little voice, but still something tentative about it, wary of the answer.
Armand is gone. Louis had come to find him. Louis has friends. Perhaps the answer is yes.
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The book, their book, no matter that Louis hasn't read it. There in it, Daniel recounts a discussion with one of his research assistants. She questions the way the three vampires part a crumbling medieval tower, unresolved. Poor storytelling. But that's the thing with true stories. He couldn't make something up, and furthermore, as someone with two divorces on his record, author Daniel reflects to the reader his own take. That Louis's aim was true. Lestat must have felt like he died.
His expression is muted. Understanding, a faint smile that's sympathetic, but mostly sad. A nod, as if to say: You left the story.
(And that was the end of it. Nothing else.)
"I don't know, Lestat." Quiet and honest. "I think he's in a place where he can become better. But it's early days. Which is why I am glad you two are talking."
Pause.
(BUT.)
"I worry about him being more vulnerable than he realizes. Picking fights and all this shit."
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No, Lestat does not love that. Hearing the echo of it through Daniel's recollections, a familiar spike of worry. Louis inviting death. Harm. Maybe just a most violent distraction. A means of venting. All of which could get himself very killed. Lestat thinks of the headline in the newspaper and the fires in Storyville.
A shared source of anxiety, himself and Daniel. That much has been made clear to him.
"He said to me," and Lestat feels very generous for this offering, hewing so close to something that still feels wounding, "that he views the nights to come as a chance to live more honestly. He seemed grateful for it."
He thanked me, he does not say, but the thought glimmers close to the surface of his words, like he wishes to tell Daniel this thing, in some strange way, while guarding it jealously.
But Daniel is worried. A blind spot, perhaps.
"Armand," and his voice is quiet, but the venom is there, lip curled as if the name in the proximity of this topic is blasphemy. His focus returning to Daniel. Sharp with curiousity. Not accusation, not in this moment. "Has he stayed away?"
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Lestat is the love of Louis' life. Daniel is sure of it. Looking back in 1973, he thinks he might have been sure of it then. No one is that passionate about someone they don't love, even if the moon was turned around on it, for a while. He hears the tone of Lestat's voice, feels the closely guarded, coveted thing behind it. They need each other and they have the luxury of all the time in the world. It'd be beautiful if it wasn't all so fucked up. But maybe it's a little beautiful anyway.
My love ran a theater company for a hundred and fifty years, Daniel. — Your love was in a box pondering a premeditated neck wound, according to Claudia.
Sure of it. In the 70s, and six months ago. Your love, and Armand still trying not to laugh at a joke Daniel had made a moment before, and to Daniel's recollection now, only half-hearing the exchange about the name he had once lost his mind over.
Disregard.
Quiet for a while. Disliking the shift for several reasons; Daniel has consistently disliked speaking of present Armand, though, having taken a bit to warm up to even mentioning him at all.
"I think so," is perhaps a worrying start. A bit poker face. A bit more genuine. But he continues. "Do you feel Louis? We're in different worlds a bit, I'm aware, I'm more than fine with Armand not being able to speak to me from afar. But I still feel something, and it's not always the same something, and it..."
He trails off, making a gesture that further illustrates his difficulty conceptualizing the bond between maker and fledgling.
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is both not good enough and also the best he will get, he knows. A certain no would have been suspicious. A certain yes, the only trustworthy thing, but significantly more distressing. Lestat, whose expression had shifted somewhere hard, relaxes that thing in him again that grows his fangs. They've stayed dormant. Subtle.
Softens for this topic. A sad kind of fondness. "I do," he says. So much of the topic of Louis, of Louis speaking to him over speakerphone, is an odd soothing effect that seems to realign the fritzed wiring that is Lestat. Hard to say if that was always the case, or a new development, damage through eighty years of neglect.
But there, easy to observe, as his eyes wander past Daniel. "It is like my heart has been taken out of me and now walks the earth on its own. I can hear it, its beating. I can tell if its near. It doesn't change for me," an addition, recalling the specificity of the question, refocusing on him. "And there were times it felt like a trick I played on myself. Like he was in the other room when he was not. Like he was alive when he might not be."
A glance back down, aside. "It is different, with other fledglings. Claudia, like—knowing a storm is coming or not. And sometimes it remains, even now."
An invisible cord. A hallucination that is real. Louis saw Lestat's ghost that was not a ghost but was somehow still of Lestat. There is no science that can explain it.
"I would not be surprised to know that Armand can pull on it like a leash."
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Claudia, a storm; they called Lestat a hurricane. And Louis, his heart.
Sentiment. Daniel instinctively tries to inch away from it, despite having brought the subject up. Too cool for school. And yet he finds himself reflecting on these descriptions, wondering about the negative space on the other side of them; if he can make out any shapes, if any are familiar.
"I can't begin to guess what Armand might be doing with it." Probably not trying to get him to heel, on account of being well aware Daniel is, politely, ungovernable anyway. Something in him whispers he knows already— that Armand is doing what he's doing, touching it curiously, trying to understand, and get used to it. Sometimes precious and sometimes intrusive, but becoming reliable. ... It's fucking fiction, though, he has no way of knowing that at all. "But it's nothing to do with the beating of my heart. Another more annoying part of me is wandering around, I guess."
Somewhat less romance over here on Team Spite.
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The romance is abandoned, that soft-focus quality of his mood sharpening once more. Lestat tips his head, smiles. "A segment of lower intestine." Rude, but he must find ways to amuse himself—perhaps less uncomfortable than simply wishing to tear the elder vampire to shreds, like Daniel's book.
He rests his arm along the back of his seat, a shift in body language, less the defensive caging up at news of how well Louis may or may not be doing, from this man who cares for him so much. Let's shit on Armand. That's a fun topic. His hand flips.
"My condolences. I know what it is, to be abandoned by a maker of strange proclivity. At least mine had the courtesy to fuck off forever."
In the short-term, traumatic and distressing. In the long-term, no one wants an eldritch horror like Magnus still hanging around.
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Deadpan. Complicated emotions swirl there, far more complicated than How do I answer if he's been around, and they drown out anything else. (Daniel, a beacon of truth, sidestepping; this is not his element. He just wants — needs? — to talk to Louis about it first.)
"And Louis, your heart."
Less deadpan. Daniel regards Lestat, thoughtful.
"I know you saved him. In Paris. I figured it out earlier than Louis realizes. I know you can do it again, even though it'll be slower and less dramatic now, when it's about the precarious mess of recovery and and discovery and healing. With people trying to kill us at the same time."
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Except that bitterness doesn't rise now. It doesn't rise every time, either, when Lestat rereads it. A strange alchemy of potent gratitude to see the thing realised on the page in between the angst of all his failings committed to ink, no matter the framing. And now—
Lestat stops breathing (drama queen) through Daniel's words, the slackness of his attitude going still, but a different kind of tension than before. How strange it is, to be told by someone—told by this friend of Louis', who was close to being made by him, who listened and processed and published this one-sided everything—that he, Lestat, could be good for Louis. The fingers on his hand curl in, a fidget.
"It gives us something to do," on the subject of people trying to kill them. But. He doesn't make Daniel sit through another pause to see if Lestat has registered the rest, swallowing, giving a slight shimmy of a shrug. "I want him to be happy again. I've always wanted him to be happy."
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Love was never in question, anyway. Not even when Louis was screaming about Lestat's tacky frailty at a tape recorder in 1973.
Softly,
"I'm glad for that, too."
Glad that they're talking. That they have space for the truth. That Lestat wishes for happiness. None of the rest has to matter (even though it does, critically). Daniel can support it while remaining aware. Rooting for them, and the anger management therapy they both probably need. Abuse is a monster (like memory, like love), but they all choose which ones to live with.
There's no way for him to say Hurt Louis again and I'll hurt you, because it's stupid. He can't. Even if he could, it's not his style. So he tries for this. He sees it and he wants it to be good.
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Can Lestat be so generous in return? Say out loud, that he is (now, suddenly) glad Louis has a friend in Daniel? It isn't a conscious pondering of whether or not to share the sentiment so much as a quiet decision to believe it. It isn't conscious, when he will later feel less tensely for the prospect of seeing Louis again where Daniel can observe him, that he will be freer to feel excited, happy. The overwound thing in him loosening, just a little.
After a beat—
"I asked him to bring along one of his photographs, from when he took them in Paris. Twisted his arm." Just a little. "Do you have more of them yourself? I think he is shy."
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He's been fun, though, despite all the horrors. So maybe there's something.
An exhale, like a laugh.
"He's too hard on himself," is confirmation of shy, sort of. "His eye for art is so good that his own is never up to that standard, even though the rest of us think it's great. I do have more, mmmmaybe on this laptop." Squint. Trying to remember exact file pathways, is it on an external in his safe, or does he have a few floating around?
Well, can't hurt to check. He leans to fish the thing out.
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A good eye for art. Lestat's own updated wardrobe, and Claudia's too in the beginning, and that mentioned ransacking of the storehouses to furnish his townhouse, in which the only instinct for design he had was that of lavishness and luxury and maximalist clutter, gently harnessed and mitigated by the human man he was dating/hunting with more refined taste. A layman for music but ready to be moved by it, with the sensitivity of a person who understood its heart.
These are thoughts that swirl around, and Lestat deliberately sends them. Daniel did not have a keen telepathic ability when he was interviewing Louis, saddled with his own imagination. Here, the ephemeral sense of the lovely townhouse interior on the Rue Royale, the beautiful suits, the decor, Claudia's little sailor get up ("it's chiffon, it has movement"), an approval hand sliding across the shoulder of a sharp suit, an undercurrent of Louis that matches well the man he would become, or remain as, a century later.
Keen, anyway, for evidence of this, Lestat listing out of his slouch to be attentive.
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Claudia, beautiful vintage cuts. Like stained glass impressions. Interesting, as he opens his laptop.
"I think they're mostly architecture around Paris," he says, "and practice shots." Half to himself as he remembers where they'd be filed under on his remote storage. Taktaktak, some passwords, and he opens the folder. He mouses over them, making sure he can reasonably identify the ones he has here, in case Lestat asks (or, heaven fucking forbid, there's one in here by somebody else and Louis thinks there's some kind of psyop in a few weeks).
Pause. Daniel looks at the screen for a moment, and there are no unspoken clues from his mind.
Then,
"Architecture, portraits of people in their neighborhood, and group photos, which include Claudia."
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And it's transparent in his face, the way it gives him pause. A real and genuine instinct to change his mind, just a moment of that, before Lestat gives a hummed sound of acknowledgement. Yes, of course, Claudia would be, their life together after him, their life together before the end of it all. Why should she not be photographed? Why should he not wish to view them, not that Daniel was asking?
Ridiculous for him to not have anticipated it. There is an additional moment where he thinks: perhaps Louis is not just shy. But then he says, "Oui," dismissing it. "Good."
How does this work. Lestat just holds out his hands for the laptop to be delivered to him.
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(A brief derail of thought, the last time he saw his oldest girl, sitting across her kitchen table and watching her expression twist as he explained his diagnosis. Do you want me to feel sorry for you after all this time? She was so angry with him, spitting venom. Deserved.)
Good, Lestat says, and Daniel gives an 'mm' of acknowledgement. Here we go, then—
Always awkward. There are robots singing Happy Birthday on Mars but there's not a suave way to share a laptop screen in person. He gets up and shuffles over to crouch beside Lestat's seat, letting him hold it, poking in one finger to indicate how to swap to the next image.
"He turned the kitchen of their flat into a dark room. You can tell even with these, where he's not using the camera perfectly— that eye of his. The photos are developed perfectly."
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Children, though. Isn't that such a different thing? A daughter's anger. Familiar. Deserved.
It has not been such a long time since Lestat thought about it, about Claudia, and he can receive the laptop with about as much grace as the device allows instead of fumbling over the pang he feels beneath his breast. It is balanced on his knees and it becomes immediately evident he has never touched one of these things in his life.
But he can learn to do this one thing once it's demonstrated, keeping nails in check against the touchpad. "I don't know much about photography," murmured, a confession, but Lestat isn't here to appraise them, or judge them. Just look. And they're striking.
A streetlamp on old brickwork, and the reflection of its glow mingling in tree leaves. Lestat does not zoom through the pictures, lingering. Pointing out something he recognises, some street or building, unconsciously welcoming Daniel's participation rather than attempting to curl up with the images on his own. Then, humans, men, and Lestat grins, tilting his head as he admires the work.
"You can tell he found them beautiful."
He should get a medal for not getting jealous about mortals from eighty years ago, he thinks.
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Daniel is also a better journalist than he is a friend, but he'd like to think he's getting better.
(Helps that he actually has a fucking friend, now.)
"That must be a universal trait of artists," he reflects, thinking about Louis and his graciousness in between all the times when they made each other pointedly uncomfortable. "They think everything's beautiful. Which has to be incredible. The whole world exists for artists to interpret, and comment, and capture."
Oops, virus scan notif. No threats found. Daniel pokes it away via touchpad.
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"You see this one," he says. Here, a young man bending to speak into another's ear, the surprise of whatever is said on the face of the other. "Nothing staged in it. When we took our portraits in New Orleans, you had to stay sitting for several moments or else it would be ruined. Everything just so. But these photos are the things you see and notice when you are in love, always moving and momentary."
In love with Paris, with humanity, with cute boys, why not. Lestat is, clearly, not shy about sentiment at all. He pivots a look at Daniel, a thin twist of a smile. "Perhaps that is why you rendered Louis so well in your own pages, hm?"
We have fun here.
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"Oh, Louis is definitely hot," he says, firing back at that ploy without hesitation. "But nobody needs a particular eye for that."
Louis is hot. An objective fact. Even Daniel Molloy, a for real straight guy with two kids and two ex-wives, can see it. He's just reporting the news.
"Fiction writers see beauty. They're the artists. Journalists get to go dig up all the skeletons."
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An indulgent I see. What a delightful double-act Louis and Daniel might make, demurring their artistic ability. Their sensitivities. Latent homosexual tendencies as younger men, probably. Lestat sees all. "Then we shall call your book a beautiful danse macabre. Like the bit about me fucking your maker in a theatre box while my heartbroken ex-lover gazed on from the orchestra pit," a slow sweep of his hand to indicate the dramatic tableau. "Such delightful fictions in your journalism."
All credit to Daniel, who'd made sure about indicating the particularly uncorroborated hearsay while providing certain contextual elements. He is a good journalist or whatever. Appropriately, Lestat's tone is not the bristling aggression it could be, but light and dry, acerbic humour like flames licking off the edges.
Back to the photographs. Daniel is probably permitted a word in edgewise before it flips to a smiling Claudia, the backdrop that of a Parisian wine bar, blur and light, and Lestat's hand lifts off the touchpad, a slight flinch.
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But who doesn't want to include fucking in theater boxes? Come on.
Just a faintly amused hm for all of that, and then there's Claudia. Lestat's hesitation makes Daniel glad he gave him a warning. He knows they had photographs of her before, and he knows she doesn't age, but he also knows the last time Lestat saw her in the flesh was one of the worst things he's ever had to hear about.
"Louis asked me not to put any of her in. But I think he did excellent with these, too."
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