It's a solid show, good entertainment. Something to focus on so Lestat isn't vibrating out of his own self. He has guessed that it's a sex thing, of course, until someone shouted about a sister, which doesn't rule it out.
There is pretty white and gold paper wrapped around the bouquet of a dozen red roses, which has become more and more crumpled as the minutes tick by in protective claws. An instance of laying them on the car of the Toyota so he could get through a cigarette, but he is holding them again when Daniel says 'hey', and Lestat's attention snaps in the direction of his nod. (That might have been good entertainment, see how may times he could get Lestat to do that before he's killed.)
But no, it's Louis, and Daniel is privy to the sharp intake of breath from the elder vampire beside him, wholly unironic. It's scarcely Lestat's fault. Louis is so beautiful, in those colours, in this silhouette, in existing.
He, too, has given over to anxiety about presentation. In the days since he's been let loose into the city, Daniel can probably detect that access to money has been obtained, because he probably has not murdered for the bouquet or his current wardrobe. The glasses remain, currently perched on his head and pinning his hair back behind his ears, and the studded leather jacket that Daniel had pronounced cool, cleaned of blood. Beneath that, the white-silver mesh shirt that clings to his torso is small by design, a neckline hitting beneath his collarbones, a hem a few inches above the waistband of his jeans. Denim is deliberately shredded at the knees, and below them,
well, different good boots. Someone might have died for them, actually. Iridescent silver-purple, a solid heel, and a couple of more inches in a platformed sole making him taller than Louis remembers.
He can walk in them, at least. See, he already is, immediately launched from his waiting spot, a long purposeful stride as if zooming down a catwalk that devolves into a half-jog. It's been, what, several months? Seventy-seven years? Both. Louis will have to brace to receive the hug, roses and wrapping crushed in the process.
Surprise had made Louis chuckle, unheard among the harried crowd of travelers moving from gate to gate. A few curious glances for Louis, who has no carry on in tow, an iPhone wielding young woman drafting along beside him. She will be the recipient of the private car, and is quite pleased with herself for the bit of luck that's fallen into her lap. It is she who carried Louis' coat from the plane, folded over one arm, perhaps already envisioning the delights of her lavish room once she has seen Louis out the door.
She passes Louis his coat, he nods, and she departs, so missing the exuberance of Lestat's embrace only moments later.
Louis had shrugged on the bomber jacket, dark fabric cropped to the waist, and perhaps intended to set the baseball cap in his hand onto his head. There's no chance at all. There is only the blur of Lestat, the split-second pop of thought (Don't you look good) before Louis is enveloped in embrace.
There is enough momentum behind it that it knocks Louis a step back, paper crinkling, leather creaking, a glimpse of Daniel. Then only the strength of Lestat's arms around him. New Orleans again. Louis lets himself duck his head in against Lestat' neck, breath there for a long moment before straightening.
Clutches on to Lestat even as he creates a little space, hands tightening on Lestat's arms, lifting fingers to tuck wayward locks back behind his sunglasses-festooned hair. Smiles.
There are so many ways that can tally their differences, those fraught first impressions, Lestat going tharn from beneath a flipped rock in the dirt, and Louis' calm and polished yet heartbreakingly gentle manner. The ways they had never really held each other before like that did that night, never shattered apart in each others presence in the same way.
Clothing, however, the fashions(?) of this era, this is a more immediately fun aspect to their long mutual absence. A moment longer, a mutual absorbing of scent and warmth. Lestat, primarily, smells of cigarettes and roses. Then, secure that Louis has yet to let him go, Lestat fondly touches the hem of Louis' bomber jacket to draw it back and look him over again, the tidy waist and rich colours.
And something familiar, too, that had been missing. Lestat casting him a bright and self-satisfied smile for flattery, some former sparkle of flamboyance returned, even if fine tailoring and boutonnières have been traded for fishnet and leather. Overdressed again, but differently.
"Thank you. You look handsome. Here," and with a rustle, he swings the bouquet of red roses back around to deliver them into Louis' arms. There are a few loose petals on the pavement around them. "These are for you. Heureux vous revoir, mon ami."
Mon ami bends the curve of Louis' smile in some inscrutable way.
But one hand squeezes Lestat's bicep, lingers even with the management of a bouquet in the mix. Roses. It's been almost eighty years, so who is Louis to judge, but by all the metrics he knows this is positively restrained for Lestat.
And feels some strangeness for that too. Some mild regret at not holding him longer, tighter, before separating. Converts the grip on Lestat's elbow to the link of pinky and third finger, cap hooked off his index finger.
"They're beautiful. Thank you," is restrained too, though Louis is smiling still. "Was this surprise your idea? Or Daniel's?"
Lestat can curl an arm around Louis' free one, tangle their available fingers together at the end of it. More familiar than ami, maybe, romantic red roses and now linking arms to draw Louis further from the entrance of the terminals by the standards of two dudes existing in 2022, but then—well. By all metrics, restrained.
If there is some kind of film edit feeling of oddness for the absence of a different kind of embrace, it doesn't really show on Lestat's face. No room for regret or rue, pleasure like sunshine in the odd lighting of the parking lot interior, gazing side along.
"Daniel's," he must admit. A glance forwards, to the Toyota and the man waiting near it, and then back. Leaning his weight a little. "He's been very organised. But he spoke my wish aloud, and here we are. How was your flight? Restful?"
He will let go of the arm he has captured eventually, but for now, the walk over—
It's a short walk, but enough to cover Louis' flight report. Daniel scrolls through texts, marking most as read (sorry Raglan), and gives them artificial privacy. This will be strange, but he reminds himself that third wheeling is not new. Two sets of wives and daughters hating him has given him Olympic medal levels of tolerance.
Anyway. Big talk, in his own head, to immediately feel a tangle of relief and joy at seeing Louis walk over. Arm in arm with Lestat is surreal, almost seems cartoonish for how long the man was just a specter in his work, and the interview (interviews) — made truth, touching Louis, in the same plane of existence.
They're here. Nobody's dead. Louis is freely traveling, Daniel isn't in pain. The world kept spinning and they get to see each other again.
Fashion notes to avoid threats: regular jeans, regular worn-in work boots that suggest a lot of walking in contradiction to the car, a button-up shirt, a leather jacket over it. Nothing as outlandishly counter-culture as a biker cut, fashionably old fashioned, never really out of style. He holds himself with the ease of a twenty year old and the relaxed confidence of a seventy year old. Weird. Different from how it was six months ago, different from how it was fifty years ago, but reminiscent of both.
"Louis du Lac," he says, pleasant and familiar, an It's good to see you. He stalls out after that, a little taken by the sight still. He shakes it off.
"One of you is sitting in the front, I'm not playing your weird old chauffeur."
Louis had been so pleased to see him alive, grown old and successful.
Now here they are, and Daniel is familiar and welcome and a tangible reminder of the price paid to deliver truth to Louis. Armand's punishment to them both, whatever silver lining Daniel has found in it.
"You came to collect me," bypasses the edict as to the front seat. Gentle teasing as Louis extends a hand to him. "In style, I see."
A handshake to say hello, bookending with the one that had said goodbye, way out on the other side of the planet in a penthouse with Armand on the floor behind them. His grip is steadier now, no threats of a tremor, and his expression is unbearably affectionate instead of shell-shocked.
Glasses, still. Slightly tinted even though he's only been standing around with Lestat; he's gotten a few comments on them changing color, Tricks of the light, probably, he'll say to mortals. Who knows what that's about. But they're unearthly blue at this minute, darker and more saturated than they were.
'We made it.'
Privately. Hey, check it out. We fucking lived. And they aren't barred from each other's minds, no one was gored too badly in the process, and Louis can be here and smile like that and look a thousand times lighter.
"Oh, yeah. Nothing like the luxury of a slightly outdated Toyota. You'll have to hook me up with your fleet guy next time."
"I am the style," Lestat assures Daniel. His Toyota is all the sexier for his presence, obviously. "And I will take the backseat."
He is very generous.
And not dying on the inside from not being the sole focus of Louis' attention so soon and so effortlessly.
A last squeeze to Louis' hand before he releases his arm, circling around to the door with the echoing thump of his heels. No, he is still in a good mood, of course, all elegance and sway in his posture and his body language. Louis is here, not a billion miles across an ocean where Lestat could not fly to him whenever he wants, not currently under attack. He is not waiting for him any longer, on the end of a phone, in the car on the way to JFK, in NOLA under the floorboards of his shack.
Things could be so much worse than a little affection aimed at another person.
Someone from a knot of friends shouts "Happy Birthday!" over at them, bursting forth from raucous conversation as they pile towards a Jeep and three vampires hop into a 4Runner. Probably the flowers. Funny little interactions. Blind well wishes, fist fights. Ordinary airport fare in America.
"Look, man—" companionable fussing. He is from the west coast, he will Actually Die, and he grumbles about having to pay for a goddamn detached garage down the street. The maze of parking structure winds out before them, lights strobing overhead as they pass.
"Maestro can have the aux cable if he wants," about that. Lestat figured it out well enough on the drive over. "I wouldn't dream of interfering."
Is it necessary, for him to lean like this, and drape an arm so that his hand might rest on Louis' chest as he peruses his now connected phone for his music? Seatbelts are also unnecessary. Feeling Louis' heartbeat beneath the casual drape of his fingers, however—
Tempting to overwhelm the interior of the Toyota with the French heavy metal Lestat's been enjoying recently, or playfully suffuse the vibe with some heartbreakingly tender gen Z fare to cry into your wine to, something of a not-so-guilty pleasure, but so as not to get overruled, something more accommodatingly familiar filters through the speakers.
The PDA is expected, and despite the internal cringe, so are more attacks. He glances at Louis via the rear-view mirror, checking in, but doesn't make a big deal out of it. That's exactly why they wanted everyone in the same place, so. They're on the right path here.
Sam, though, is a surprise. One he counters with his own—
"I've got a number. Since he works for my new editors." Louis might know more about this if he had read any of the drafts Daniel sent him, which were full of notes and expanded references, but here we are.
"He wasn't in London when I was there,"
where I was spirited away to out of DXB instead of going home, because I was a fucking vampire all of a sudden
"But we've spoken. Interesting guy. What are you thinking about?"
The appeal for him is the guitar, singing away within the layers of drum and lyric. It is to that that Lestat attunes his ears, chin resting on the shoulder of Louis' chair, his gaze wandering more to flickering movement beyond the vehicle. Finding himself infinitely content with the resting Louis' fingers over his.
No answer from him here, lightly tapping out the beat against Louis' collarbone.
Listening to the conversation too, of course. He did begin it. Skirmishes has his mouth set, but says nothing in the moment.
"I'd like to know what Sam knows," is a terribly loaded statement.
Sam must know many things. The workings of the Talamasca, perhaps, and to what extent their hand is directing the response to Louis and Daniel's work.
The working of a theater long since reduced to ash.
His fingers do not interfere with the fidgeting taps of Lestat's, but the bit of contact remains, reassuring, as Louis continues, "What did you speak to Sam about?"
Uhm. Not usually in Daniel's conversational wheelhouse, signaling sheepish embarrassment over the truthful answer to that question. He feigns total absorption in driving for a moment before shooting Luis a look from the edge of his vision, and a lopsided smile.
"Kenneth Tynan, mostly?"
A room full of secret agents managing a critical Zoom call while Daniel puts together who he's talking to, and immediately wants to talk about a man's personal involvement in the history of being able to use the word 'fuck' in artistic media. Slightly more animated—
"It was a weird day. I was. You know, fucked up, and they wanted to put me in a 'secure location' and whatever, but it was making me insane. So was talked for a few hours," HOURS, Daniel, while these poor anxiety-ridden librarians regretted their life choices, "and then I bailed the next evening. We've talked a little after, fact checking, but not for long. He's working on an album, apparently."
because who gives a fuck about Sam Barclay and his music career, Lestat spreading the hand he has on Louis' chest to snare his attention, shifting enough to withdraw his own attention on the road,
"that we had the electrified guitar in our time? The first rockstars among us lived while we were together, died before we were apart? And I don't think I heard a single one until Jimi Hendrix came on the radio and said that a girl put a spell on him."
He is smiling as he speaks. Genuine, no matter what spark of need incited his little monologue and continues it. "And legend has it that the Devil himself gave mankind the gift of this instrument. I am thinking of Robert Johnson, of course. Would you like to hear it?"
He's already fidgeting with his phone, sparkling in Louis' periphery. They can go back to talking while he wrestles Spotify to the ground.
Uhm must strike Louis as funny. Has he ever heard Daniel say it? Amusement colors his expression as he watches Daniel over the center console of this vehicle that Daniel owns, and drove to collect him from the airport with Lestat in tow when—
Abruptly musical history. Lestat's palm flattening over Louis' chest, over his heart. His own fingers circle lightly around Lestat's wrist, a hum of acknowledgement that is so, so familiar. Harkens back to New Orleans, their parlor, Lestat at the piano, Louis holding a book, looking up to smile at him across the room as Lestat beckons for his attention.
"Yes," Louis assures him. "Play some for us."
On the way to: "Do you think he would make time for us now?"
Now that it wasn't an assignment, but a polite request.
Buddy, please don't romantically frame the relationship around a guitar player who DIED,
is probably a thought Louis can hear, thanks to their comfortable rapport. But Daniel is (internally) laughing. Exasperated-fond. Lestat is a fucking ordeal, but some of it's charming, and it's definitely funny in that same charming way to watch him have a very elegant tantrum about Louis' attention straying for even fifteen seconds.
"It's likely," he says, of The Vampire Sam, who had not so long ago been used as Exhibit A in Daniel's dismantling of 80 years of Louis' life. Time heals all wounds, blah blah, now they know Armand was being so gracious about forgiveness and encouraging Louis to do the same because DJ Sam could have outed the play's director were he to be confronted. Live and let live, and never, ever talk to the guy.
"I can't imagine him following you to a secondary location or anything," this is also fond, because Louis is scary, and Daniel kind of likes that, "but I'm confident a video call is workable."
Morrison and Krieger go abruptly silent when some wrong thing is touched, which gets a quiet, annoyed sound out of Lestat, but he struggles on, and any pretense at following what is actually being said or why they wish to speak to DJ Agent Sam is abandoned completely.
More struggling. A sigh to himself.
Finally, old fashioned blues filters through the speakers. "Here. This is George Barnes playing with Big Bill Boonzy," and he takes delight in this name, managing to eclipse the frustration in failing to shake from the internet what he had been looking for originally, "and it is 1937, this recording."
The song skips ahead by about a solid minute and a half. "The solo starts here," is a little rude, maybe, but here we are.
Louis' thumb runs back and forth across the inside of Lestat's wrist throughout the ordeal of song changing.
"Would you set it up?" first, to Daniel, before: "I like this. The song."
And the solo, presumably. Louis is no musician, but he had shared a roof with Lestat for thirty years.
And then long decades of silence. A thought that blips across the surface of his mind, there and gone again as Louis continues:
"If I'm a convenience to the Talamasca, perhaps Sam could give us some insight as to how we could leverage that. I don't imagine the landscape has gone unnoticed."
"Most people - mortal people - feel the most connection to the 'contemporary' music of their lifetimes," he says, looking at Lestat for a moment, so he knows they're all talking, even though the conversation is multi-sided. "Do you feel that way about different eras that grabbed your interest?"
A little bit of a journalist question, but he thinks Blondie will let it slide.
"I'm pretty sure we're all inconvenient to the Talamasca." Dry. "Just a lesser one than some of their other headaches. But it's a good thought. I'm not sure where Sam stands, politically speaking, but he'll have seen several generations of these guys by now."
Being needy on purpose or not, there's a genuine pleasure to be had in listening to the sharp plucking of the guitar, the lingering on the first string, the odd way the lax resolution of each riff threatens to put his teeth on edge before it concludes. It's possible Daniel saves them from a repeated loop of this specific twenty seconds as Lestat's focus is drawn back over.
His lifetime. A hummed sound, amused. "I thought I would always return to the music of my century," he says. "We went to enough concertos and symphonies that I think Louis can say he has absorbed as much of the golden era of Beethoven and Bach and Lizst as I have, isn't that so?"
Lestat's hand lifts, settles back down, a shrug. "The first time I heard someone play Mozart with skill, it felt like a revelation. Something like that again, in opening my heart to this century's masters. A constellation of influences, stars rapidly dying, blooming. I don't play favourites anymore.
"What's the Talamasca?" Seems important, he guesses.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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There is pretty white and gold paper wrapped around the bouquet of a dozen red roses, which has become more and more crumpled as the minutes tick by in protective claws. An instance of laying them on the car of the Toyota so he could get through a cigarette, but he is holding them again when Daniel says 'hey', and Lestat's attention snaps in the direction of his nod. (That might have been good entertainment, see how may times he could get Lestat to do that before he's killed.)
But no, it's Louis, and Daniel is privy to the sharp intake of breath from the elder vampire beside him, wholly unironic. It's scarcely Lestat's fault. Louis is so beautiful, in those colours, in this silhouette, in existing.
He, too, has given over to anxiety about presentation. In the days since he's been let loose into the city, Daniel can probably detect that access to money has been obtained, because he probably has not murdered for the bouquet or his current wardrobe. The glasses remain, currently perched on his head and pinning his hair back behind his ears, and the studded leather jacket that Daniel had pronounced cool, cleaned of blood. Beneath that, the white-silver mesh shirt that clings to his torso is small by design, a neckline hitting beneath his collarbones, a hem a few inches above the waistband of his jeans. Denim is deliberately shredded at the knees, and below them,
well, different good boots. Someone might have died for them, actually. Iridescent silver-purple, a solid heel, and a couple of more inches in a platformed sole making him taller than Louis remembers.
He can walk in them, at least. See, he already is, immediately launched from his waiting spot, a long purposeful stride as if zooming down a catwalk that devolves into a half-jog. It's been, what, several months? Seventy-seven years? Both. Louis will have to brace to receive the hug, roses and wrapping crushed in the process.
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She passes Louis his coat, he nods, and she departs, so missing the exuberance of Lestat's embrace only moments later.
Louis had shrugged on the bomber jacket, dark fabric cropped to the waist, and perhaps intended to set the baseball cap in his hand onto his head. There's no chance at all. There is only the blur of Lestat, the split-second pop of thought (Don't you look good) before Louis is enveloped in embrace.
There is enough momentum behind it that it knocks Louis a step back, paper crinkling, leather creaking, a glimpse of Daniel. Then only the strength of Lestat's arms around him. New Orleans again. Louis lets himself duck his head in against Lestat' neck, breath there for a long moment before straightening.
Clutches on to Lestat even as he creates a little space, hands tightening on Lestat's arms, lifting fingers to tuck wayward locks back behind his sunglasses-festooned hair. Smiles.
"You look nice."
Taller.
"I like the glasses."
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Clothing, however, the fashions(?) of this era, this is a more immediately fun aspect to their long mutual absence. A moment longer, a mutual absorbing of scent and warmth. Lestat, primarily, smells of cigarettes and roses. Then, secure that Louis has yet to let him go, Lestat fondly touches the hem of Louis' bomber jacket to draw it back and look him over again, the tidy waist and rich colours.
And something familiar, too, that had been missing. Lestat casting him a bright and self-satisfied smile for flattery, some former sparkle of flamboyance returned, even if fine tailoring and boutonnières have been traded for fishnet and leather. Overdressed again, but differently.
"Thank you. You look handsome. Here," and with a rustle, he swings the bouquet of red roses back around to deliver them into Louis' arms. There are a few loose petals on the pavement around them. "These are for you. Heureux vous revoir, mon ami."
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But one hand squeezes Lestat's bicep, lingers even with the management of a bouquet in the mix. Roses. It's been almost eighty years, so who is Louis to judge, but by all the metrics he knows this is positively restrained for Lestat.
And feels some strangeness for that too. Some mild regret at not holding him longer, tighter, before separating. Converts the grip on Lestat's elbow to the link of pinky and third finger, cap hooked off his index finger.
"They're beautiful. Thank you," is restrained too, though Louis is smiling still. "Was this surprise your idea? Or Daniel's?"
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If there is some kind of film edit feeling of oddness for the absence of a different kind of embrace, it doesn't really show on Lestat's face. No room for regret or rue, pleasure like sunshine in the odd lighting of the parking lot interior, gazing side along.
"Daniel's," he must admit. A glance forwards, to the Toyota and the man waiting near it, and then back. Leaning his weight a little. "He's been very organised. But he spoke my wish aloud, and here we are. How was your flight? Restful?"
He will let go of the arm he has captured eventually, but for now, the walk over—
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Anyway. Big talk, in his own head, to immediately feel a tangle of relief and joy at seeing Louis walk over. Arm in arm with Lestat is surreal, almost seems cartoonish for how long the man was just a specter in his work, and the interview (interviews) — made truth, touching Louis, in the same plane of existence.
They're here. Nobody's dead. Louis is freely traveling, Daniel isn't in pain. The world kept spinning and they get to see each other again.
Fashion notes to avoid threats: regular jeans, regular worn-in work boots that suggest a lot of walking in contradiction to the car, a button-up shirt, a leather jacket over it. Nothing as outlandishly counter-culture as a biker cut, fashionably old fashioned, never really out of style. He holds himself with the ease of a twenty year old and the relaxed confidence of a seventy year old. Weird. Different from how it was six months ago, different from how it was fifty years ago, but reminiscent of both.
"Louis du Lac," he says, pleasant and familiar, an It's good to see you. He stalls out after that, a little taken by the sight still. He shakes it off.
"One of you is sitting in the front, I'm not playing your weird old chauffeur."
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And bittersweet, in spite of that affection.
Louis had been so pleased to see him alive, grown old and successful.
Now here they are, and Daniel is familiar and welcome and a tangible reminder of the price paid to deliver truth to Louis. Armand's punishment to them both, whatever silver lining Daniel has found in it.
"You came to collect me," bypasses the edict as to the front seat. Gentle teasing as Louis extends a hand to him. "In style, I see."
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Glasses, still. Slightly tinted even though he's only been standing around with Lestat; he's gotten a few comments on them changing color, Tricks of the light, probably, he'll say to mortals. Who knows what that's about. But they're unearthly blue at this minute, darker and more saturated than they were.
'We made it.'
Privately. Hey, check it out. We fucking lived. And they aren't barred from each other's minds, no one was gored too badly in the process, and Louis can be here and smile like that and look a thousand times lighter.
"Oh, yeah. Nothing like the luxury of a slightly outdated Toyota. You'll have to hook me up with your fleet guy next time."
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He is very generous.
And not dying on the inside from not being the sole focus of Louis' attention so soon and so effortlessly.
A last squeeze to Louis' hand before he releases his arm, circling around to the door with the echoing thump of his heels. No, he is still in a good mood, of course, all elegance and sway in his posture and his body language. Louis is here, not a billion miles across an ocean where Lestat could not fly to him whenever he wants, not currently under attack. He is not waiting for him any longer, on the end of a phone, in the car on the way to JFK, in NOLA under the floorboards of his shack.
Things could be so much worse than a little affection aimed at another person.
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"Ah, it's not a rental," is a little rich coming from Louis, but good natured all the same.
If he feels any similar awareness of the inherent strangeness of this gathering of people, he has clearly determined it will never show outwardly.
He is pleased to be here. He has missed them both.
"Are you also selecting the music?" aimed to the backseat, presuming someone will turn on the radio sooner rather than later.
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"Look, man—" companionable fussing. He is from the west coast, he will Actually Die, and he grumbles about having to pay for a goddamn detached garage down the street. The maze of parking structure winds out before them, lights strobing overhead as they pass.
"Maestro can have the aux cable if he wants," about that. Lestat figured it out well enough on the drive over. "I wouldn't dream of interfering."
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Is it necessary, for him to lean like this, and drape an arm so that his hand might rest on Louis' chest as he peruses his now connected phone for his music? Seatbelts are also unnecessary. Feeling Louis' heartbeat beneath the casual drape of his fingers, however—
Tempting to overwhelm the interior of the Toyota with the French heavy metal Lestat's been enjoying recently, or playfully suffuse the vibe with some heartbreakingly tender gen Z fare to cry into your wine to, something of a not-so-guilty pleasure, but so as not to get overruled, something more accommodatingly familiar filters through the speakers.
"How goes the war?"
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Reaches up to catch Lestat's fingers as the selection is made as Louis hums with quiet interest. Approval, as the first sliding notes manifest.
And maybe it is a minor delay as Louis considers what should be said. What will upset both occupants of the car and what will simply be of interest.
"Skirmishes, mostly," Louis settles on. "Not as exciting as it sounds."
More annoying, but that will certainly garner some objections, so.
"I was thinking it might be useful to get in touch with Sam."
The vampire Sam, DJ and erstwhile Talamasca agent.
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Sam, though, is a surprise. One he counters with his own—
"I've got a number. Since he works for my new editors." Louis might know more about this if he had read any of the drafts Daniel sent him, which were full of notes and expanded references, but here we are.
"He wasn't in London when I was there,"
where I was spirited away to out of DXB instead of going home, because I was a fucking vampire all of a sudden
"But we've spoken. Interesting guy. What are you thinking about?"
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No answer from him here, lightly tapping out the beat against Louis' collarbone.
Listening to the conversation too, of course. He did begin it. Skirmishes has his mouth set, but says nothing in the moment.
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Sam must know many things. The workings of the Talamasca, perhaps, and to what extent their hand is directing the response to Louis and Daniel's work.
The working of a theater long since reduced to ash.
His fingers do not interfere with the fidgeting taps of Lestat's, but the bit of contact remains, reassuring, as Louis continues, "What did you speak to Sam about?"
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Uhm. Not usually in Daniel's conversational wheelhouse, signaling sheepish embarrassment over the truthful answer to that question. He feigns total absorption in driving for a moment before shooting Luis a look from the edge of his vision, and a lopsided smile.
"Kenneth Tynan, mostly?"
A room full of secret agents managing a critical Zoom call while Daniel puts together who he's talking to, and immediately wants to talk about a man's personal involvement in the history of being able to use the word 'fuck' in artistic media. Slightly more animated—
"It was a weird day. I was. You know, fucked up, and they wanted to put me in a 'secure location' and whatever, but it was making me insane. So was talked for a few hours," HOURS, Daniel, while these poor anxiety-ridden librarians regretted their life choices, "and then I bailed the next evening. We've talked a little after, fact checking, but not for long. He's working on an album, apparently."
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because who gives a fuck about Sam Barclay and his music career, Lestat spreading the hand he has on Louis' chest to snare his attention, shifting enough to withdraw his own attention on the road,
"that we had the electrified guitar in our time? The first rockstars among us lived while we were together, died before we were apart? And I don't think I heard a single one until Jimi Hendrix came on the radio and said that a girl put a spell on him."
He is smiling as he speaks. Genuine, no matter what spark of need incited his little monologue and continues it. "And legend has it that the Devil himself gave mankind the gift of this instrument. I am thinking of Robert Johnson, of course. Would you like to hear it?"
He's already fidgeting with his phone, sparkling in Louis' periphery. They can go back to talking while he wrestles Spotify to the ground.
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Abruptly musical history. Lestat's palm flattening over Louis' chest, over his heart. His own fingers circle lightly around Lestat's wrist, a hum of acknowledgement that is so, so familiar. Harkens back to New Orleans, their parlor, Lestat at the piano, Louis holding a book, looking up to smile at him across the room as Lestat beckons for his attention.
"Yes," Louis assures him. "Play some for us."
On the way to: "Do you think he would make time for us now?"
Now that it wasn't an assignment, but a polite request.
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is probably a thought Louis can hear, thanks to their comfortable rapport. But Daniel is (internally) laughing. Exasperated-fond. Lestat is a fucking ordeal, but some of it's charming, and it's definitely funny in that same charming way to watch him have a very elegant tantrum about Louis' attention straying for even fifteen seconds.
"It's likely," he says, of The Vampire Sam, who had not so long ago been used as Exhibit A in Daniel's dismantling of 80 years of Louis' life. Time heals all wounds, blah blah, now they know Armand was being so gracious about forgiveness and encouraging Louis to do the same because DJ Sam could have outed the play's director were he to be confronted. Live and let live, and never, ever talk to the guy.
"I can't imagine him following you to a secondary location or anything," this is also fond, because Louis is scary, and Daniel kind of likes that, "but I'm confident a video call is workable."
he's just a little guy
More struggling. A sigh to himself.
Finally, old fashioned blues filters through the speakers. "Here. This is George Barnes playing with Big Bill Boonzy," and he takes delight in this name, managing to eclipse the frustration in failing to shake from the internet what he had been looking for originally, "and it is 1937, this recording."
The song skips ahead by about a solid minute and a half. "The solo starts here," is a little rude, maybe, but here we are.
doing his best
"Would you set it up?" first, to Daniel, before: "I like this. The song."
And the solo, presumably. Louis is no musician, but he had shared a roof with Lestat for thirty years.
And then long decades of silence. A thought that blips across the surface of his mind, there and gone again as Louis continues:
"If I'm a convenience to the Talamasca, perhaps Sam could give us some insight as to how we could leverage that. I don't imagine the landscape has gone unnoticed."
clippy lestat notices ur not paying attn to him
A little bit of a journalist question, but he thinks Blondie will let it slide.
"I'm pretty sure we're all inconvenient to the Talamasca." Dry. "Just a lesser one than some of their other headaches. But it's a good thought. I'm not sure where Sam stands, politically speaking, but he'll have seen several generations of these guys by now."
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His lifetime. A hummed sound, amused. "I thought I would always return to the music of my century," he says. "We went to enough concertos and symphonies that I think Louis can say he has absorbed as much of the golden era of Beethoven and Bach and Lizst as I have, isn't that so?"
Lestat's hand lifts, settles back down, a shrug. "The first time I heard someone play Mozart with skill, it felt like a revelation. Something like that again, in opening my heart to this century's masters. A constellation of influences, stars rapidly dying, blooming. I don't play favourites anymore.
"What's the Talamasca?" Seems important, he guesses.
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Oddities.
His thumb continues it's path up and down Lestat's wrist.
"You wanted me to gather more information," he reminds Lestat. Enter: the Vampire Sam.
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