Daniel doesn't imagine Armand sitting sadly under a bridge, escaping the rain, big spooky eyes looking tearful and lost. He thinks he's roaming, alone in a way he hasn't been in hundreds of years, choosing not to make a 'home' anywhere. Another strange thing about the bond, or perhaps latent transference from being brought over into this unlife— he's no longer skeptical about Armand's past. It feels certain to him, like a solved case, and like he'd be able to tell if Armand was lying.
He's tried to be suspicious of that instinct. Inspect it, determine if he's being manipulated by it somehow. But it just sits there, like the bond sits there, a nerve outside of his own body, existing.
"It seems that way, but I don't know for certain. Maybe he's bored, maybe he figured you'd show up eventually."
He's had the thought before: Louis, in 1983, said Daniel had to live through the night as a testament to his relationship with Armand enduring. Daniel becoming immortal could be Armand really trying something there. He said he'd give him 100 years, and it turned out to be months, maybe changed by the book, maybe Louis' challenge. These things he keeps to himself. Louis is too quick to take guilt.
"I have a hypothesis that his presence is preventing more attacks. Not because I think he's actively stopping anything. But the way other vampires talk about hierarchy, respond to each other speaking across the airwaves, you know, all that. Makes me think that if anyone's noticed there's an 'ancient' vampire lurking around, they're leaving it be as his business to take care of. Whether or not he'd be cognizant of that, I have no clue."
Louis has none to offer. Of course Armand is aware. Louis is past the time in his life where he could believe Armand is moving through the world without a clear understanding of what surrounds him. How he can affect it all.
Cannot consider that Armand was waiting for Louis himself. Puts that to the side.
A man who lived for hundreds of years upholding twisted medieval Great Laws only to orchestrate an implosion so he could be free of them, while still sort of upholding them. Louis' assertion that Armand doesn't do anything without full awareness of it feels correct. Even if Armand's awareness is twisted by his nightmare perspectives.
Why, though. That's the big one.
"I would like to talk to you about it," he says, and spreads his hands. Shrug. Here we are. "I want to avoid violence. I want to avoid making bad decisions due to paranoia. I hate not taking action, but every path of action seems like it'll just be a bad confrontation."
So. Kind of stuck.
"I know the answer is probably 'no', because of who it is, but this whole— fucked up bringing an injured gazelle in for feeding thing, is that. Normal. For vampires, I mean. Is there something in what he's doing that's about vampire wires in his head and not just insane wires?"
Is the kind of deflection that harkens back to those early days, the beginning of their interview. A shuttering of Louis while he tries to contain the snarl of emotion building in his chest.
Daniel is permitted to see the regrouping, the deliberate casting aside of the Book Voice.
No. They are past that.
"Lestat helped me, in the beginning," Louis admits. "Instructed me. Later, he would sometimes immobilize a human, in hopes that would make it easier for me to drink."
It hadn't. But Daniel knows that story already.
"But no, he never left me an injured human. He was present, always."
But Lestat is not Armand. How fruitful is the comparison, all things considered?
Daniel just tips his head and waits for Louis to relax his way out of that one— the response from investigative journalist Daniel Molloy would be to needle him about that being the point. Doubly so now, that he, too, is a goddamn vampire. But that's not why they're here, no matter that he enjoyed their sparring.
"You two got along," he says, thoughtful. Different situation. Would Lestat feel compelled, outside his affection for Louis? An animal compulsion?
Well. Maybe not. Louis hasn't said anything about Madeleine, and likely, Claudia handled her initiation past the change. The thought of them makes something in his stomach churn; sitting here trying to dissect the motivations of the monster that orchestrated their executions. He sighs, and scrubs a hand over his face.
"Alright, so. It's probably just an 'Armand has fucking problems' thing. It hasn't escalated, and he's been ignoring Lestat. That's not the worst. There was probably never a world where he was just going to convert me then vanish into the mist, never to be heard from again."
A rougher exhale. He doesn't know any more now than he did two minutes ago. But he has to know, has to make a call somehow. He hoped talking about it with Louis would offer some kind of clarity, but nothing has manifested. Not Louis' fault— the situation is just too strange.
"Nothing, right now." Saying so makes something restless in him itch, but it is what it is. "I don't have enough information to do anything. I haven't mentioned it to Lestat at all, I just..." Daniel shrugs. "It seemed the easiest way to avoid conflict was to just avoid, for now. I can't even guess what his reaction might have been."
It seemed - still seems - vital, somehow, to talk to Louis first. Figure out a bearing.
How blind had Louis been, for so long? There is every chance that Daniel knows them better. Daniel, who had seen all the things Louis had missed for so many years.
But the bitterness, the regret, neither of those are productive things. Louis has to set it aside. They are here. There are decisions to be made.
"Lestat won't like to hear that he's present," is hardly a shock. "And it will be instinct to intervene."
As powerful as Lestat is, Louis doesn't care to measure him against Armand. To test what Armand might tolerate.
"Blondie, you still do," Lestat is a fucking mystery to Daniel still in most ways, let's be real, "and if you don't continue to know him he's probably going to explode like the world's glittery-est IED."
A man like a teakettle. Screaming when left alone for too long, and the timer on it goes much faster when you stop paying attention. Armand, though. The person Daniel saw immediately is starkly different than the person Louis met in Paris, is different than the person that Louis shared a life with for nearly a century. And the person Daniel saw is turning out to be more real. What does all that mean?
Nothing good. Possibly interesting, but Daniel is trying very hard not to turn this into a thing where he ends up thinking of Armand as somebody he can get an angle on and figure out. It's easier to keep this facade up in front of Louis, where he can just be angry about everything, where he can't take mental notes on Armand's otherworldly oddities.
"Yeah. That's what I was worried about. I'd like to avoid intervening. Are we on the same page there?"
Lying sucks and Daniel is bad at it, but if they just don't mention it, maybe Armand will continue to ignore him. Hiding a surprise body every so often it's the worst he could be made to endure. Here's where he has to hope Louis doesn't find a new path to guilt, by the way, and put together that Daniel's 'It's fine because he can't fuck with me' line is pretty feeble in the face of Armand actively fucking with him.
A reassurance that carries more weight coming from Daniel. Daniel has a gift for insight. He has seen what Louis didn't, couldn't.
He can let this deflect the most immediate of his worries, for the moment.
"I don't want him hurt," Louis says. Agreement.
Louis can't pretend to know Armand, to know what he would do. But he thinks there must be some resentment, some fury, for Lestat in all of his. Maybe he would be another way in which Armand punished Louis for the wreckage of their long companionship, punished as Daniel was punished for his role bringing it about.
"We should keep it at least until we leave the city," Louis proposes. "Things are more difficult in less populated areas. We'll have some distance from him."
Though what is really difficult for Armand, who walks in the sun?
The faintest tinge of skepticism, but it's not directed at Louis. The whole situation makes him uneasy— too many variables. A part of him wishes it would happen when he was alone, but he doesn't understand that desire. He should want it all to stop, for Armand to vanish.
Right?
(He should ask more about the bond.)
"If anything else happens, if there's a need to explain— you know, that's fine. Path of least resistance away from conflict. Don't put yourself in any danger, either."
The words coalescing so smoothly, instinct bypassing conscious thought: Armand has never hurt me.
Louis has to struggle to swallow it back. (Struggles with the parts of him that believe it to be true.) Looks away from Daniel, reorders the lay of his fingers over his knee. Little movements, none of which manage to detract from the statue-like quality of Louis' affect in this moment.
"I'm not in danger from him," Louis says finally. "I'd like to be certain the same is true for you."
A slippery motherfucker, Armand. Even after all this, and they know, each victim is sitting here and thinking I'd probably be fine. Morons.
"Hey." A little lean forward. Daniel fixes Louis with a look. "I know you can kick his ass."
Which is not him fooling himself, he's pretty sure. Armand may be capable of more, but is he capable of getting there first? Of not hesitating, before Louis just lets go? Armand seems to have hesitated over everything, all the good things and the worst things, drawn it out and hedged his bets. (Except turning Daniel. He had gotten up and walked towards him without pause—)
"But that's still fucking yourself up more over this guy. Okay? I don't want either of us to be there. I don't feel threatened by him, I promise you. Maybe that's fucking bonkers of me, I don't know. But let's get through it. I want to have hope about it."
That Armand has forgiven him the role he'd played in breaking apart what Armand had held for seventy-seven years? For tossing that script onto the table?
Has he forgiven Louis for casting him out? For seeing him and all that he'd done, and refusing to be lulled back into complacency?
Would he forgive Lestat for being easily found?
Louis thinks no. But it is as he said. How well does he really know Armand, even after all this time?
"I'm hoping that you don't have to continue in a fucking ping-pong game of abuse."
Vampires make it complex, but the heart of it is tragically simple. Daniel spotted it when he was a stupid kid. Louis got his heart broken over his first love. Now he knows he probably broke Lestat's heart, too. That their relationship was mutually (if still lop-sided) abusive. His relationship with Armand was, too, even though it expressed itself in a very different way.
"You didn't kill Armand. You walked away from that and towards healing. Is it childish of me to hope that can be the trajectory? For everybody?"
Daniel has ruined two marriages. He never beat the shit out of either of his wives (i dont actually know this im just choosing to trust itd have come up), but he was cruel, and unfair, and neglectful, and combative. Regular awful shit, without any nightmare supernatural shit. Maybe it's not comparable enough. But he has some real empathy here. Lessons learned much too late for his own attempts.
If I had killed him, he wouldn't have been able to hurt you.
That's not something Daniel is going to be able to hear. Louis' regrets are his own. He lets them slip away, leaving some space for fondness to warm his expression as he looks back at Daniel.
"No," Louis tells him. "Optimistic, but not childish."
What does healing look like for Louis? Taking the relief and understanding Daniel gifted to him and parlaying it into something else, a way he could move through the world, that is something Louis has no guidance for.
And Armand—
"I'm not going back to him, Daniel. But if he wants my attention, I'd sooner he have that than yours."
"You say that, but it was pretty unsettling watching him have your attention for two weeks."
Was Armand editing Louis' brain in realtime, right in front of him? So many odd moments. Loud arguments followed by serene evenings. A ruinous reveal transitioning into Louis being on the verge of forgiving Armand. Daniel has gone around in circles trying to decide if his own memory of those days in Dubai are all real—
And they seem to be, which is just fucking bizarre. He's had to decide that he thinks Armand simply didn't see him as a threat, because what else is the explanation, there. It seems unlikely that Armand enjoyed their hostile back and forths.
"But I'll lay off. I know you can handle yourself. Just... try to go on day by day, huh? Night by night, rather."
In the wake of this offering, Louis reaches over to catch Daniel's hand. Lace their fingers together.
"I ain't asking you to lay off. I don't think you're capable of it."
Louis had given Daniel a kind of gift, hadn't he? But the need to know is intrinsic. It had been there from the start. Daniel and his tape recorder, curious enough to accept Louis' invitation home.
Daniel will ask his questions. Louis has no desire to stop him.
"Just promise me you aren't going to try to placate him on your own. Please."
It's cute when his accent comes out. Even if makes Daniel thinks he is still very much spoiling for a fight. Nevertheless, what Louis says makes him laugh, because no. He probably isn't capable of laying off.
He squeezes Louis' hand, and then reaches out with his other to touch the side of his face. Holding there for a moment, looking at him.
"No placating. No fighting. Deal?"
is this bow territory or is there a little more gas in the tank?
Is this a habit forming? It's a welcome little touch, Daniel's fingers at his face. Prompts a slight smile, a loosening of tension in his body. Satisfied with the holding pattern they've established, that it will see them to the next stop on Daniel's tour at the very least.
"Yes," Louis acquiesces, the slight tip of his head into Daniel's fingers as he confirms, "Deal."
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no subject
He's tried to be suspicious of that instinct. Inspect it, determine if he's being manipulated by it somehow. But it just sits there, like the bond sits there, a nerve outside of his own body, existing.
"It seems that way, but I don't know for certain. Maybe he's bored, maybe he figured you'd show up eventually."
He's had the thought before: Louis, in 1983, said Daniel had to live through the night as a testament to his relationship with Armand enduring. Daniel becoming immortal could be Armand really trying something there. He said he'd give him 100 years, and it turned out to be months, maybe changed by the book, maybe Louis' challenge. These things he keeps to himself. Louis is too quick to take guilt.
"I have a hypothesis that his presence is preventing more attacks. Not because I think he's actively stopping anything. But the way other vampires talk about hierarchy, respond to each other speaking across the airwaves, you know, all that. Makes me think that if anyone's noticed there's an 'ancient' vampire lurking around, they're leaving it be as his business to take care of. Whether or not he'd be cognizant of that, I have no clue."
no subject
No benefit of the doubt.
Louis has none to offer. Of course Armand is aware. Louis is past the time in his life where he could believe Armand is moving through the world without a clear understanding of what surrounds him. How he can affect it all.
Cannot consider that Armand was waiting for Louis himself. Puts that to the side.
"What would you like to do about it, Daniel?"
no subject
Why, though. That's the big one.
"I would like to talk to you about it," he says, and spreads his hands. Shrug. Here we are. "I want to avoid violence. I want to avoid making bad decisions due to paranoia. I hate not taking action, but every path of action seems like it'll just be a bad confrontation."
So. Kind of stuck.
"I know the answer is probably 'no', because of who it is, but this whole— fucked up bringing an injured gazelle in for feeding thing, is that. Normal. For vampires, I mean. Is there something in what he's doing that's about vampire wires in his head and not just insane wires?"
no subject
Is the kind of deflection that harkens back to those early days, the beginning of their interview. A shuttering of Louis while he tries to contain the snarl of emotion building in his chest.
Daniel is permitted to see the regrouping, the deliberate casting aside of the Book Voice.
No. They are past that.
"Lestat helped me, in the beginning," Louis admits. "Instructed me. Later, he would sometimes immobilize a human, in hopes that would make it easier for me to drink."
It hadn't. But Daniel knows that story already.
"But no, he never left me an injured human. He was present, always."
But Lestat is not Armand. How fruitful is the comparison, all things considered?
no subject
"You two got along," he says, thoughtful. Different situation. Would Lestat feel compelled, outside his affection for Louis? An animal compulsion?
Well. Maybe not. Louis hasn't said anything about Madeleine, and likely, Claudia handled her initiation past the change. The thought of them makes something in his stomach churn; sitting here trying to dissect the motivations of the monster that orchestrated their executions. He sighs, and scrubs a hand over his face.
"Alright, so. It's probably just an 'Armand has fucking problems' thing. It hasn't escalated, and he's been ignoring Lestat. That's not the worst. There was probably never a world where he was just going to convert me then vanish into the mist, never to be heard from again."
no subject
A hard won certainty.
"What do you want to do about it, Daniel?" is a little softer, in spite of Louis' inner turmoil.
How long can it be tolerated? How can they trust that Armand wants nothing more than to encourage Daniel to feed and castigate him through corpses?
no subject
"Nothing, right now." Saying so makes something restless in him itch, but it is what it is. "I don't have enough information to do anything. I haven't mentioned it to Lestat at all, I just..." Daniel shrugs. "It seemed the easiest way to avoid conflict was to just avoid, for now. I can't even guess what his reaction might have been."
It seemed - still seems - vital, somehow, to talk to Louis first. Figure out a bearing.
"What do you think? You know them both better."
Even as he says it—
Lestat, sure. But...
no subject
"Do I?"
How blind had Louis been, for so long? There is every chance that Daniel knows them better. Daniel, who had seen all the things Louis had missed for so many years.
But the bitterness, the regret, neither of those are productive things. Louis has to set it aside. They are here. There are decisions to be made.
"Lestat won't like to hear that he's present," is hardly a shock. "And it will be instinct to intervene."
As powerful as Lestat is, Louis doesn't care to measure him against Armand. To test what Armand might tolerate.
no subject
A man like a teakettle. Screaming when left alone for too long, and the timer on it goes much faster when you stop paying attention. Armand, though. The person Daniel saw immediately is starkly different than the person Louis met in Paris, is different than the person that Louis shared a life with for nearly a century. And the person Daniel saw is turning out to be more real. What does all that mean?
Nothing good. Possibly interesting, but Daniel is trying very hard not to turn this into a thing where he ends up thinking of Armand as somebody he can get an angle on and figure out. It's easier to keep this facade up in front of Louis, where he can just be angry about everything, where he can't take mental notes on Armand's otherworldly oddities.
"Yeah. That's what I was worried about. I'd like to avoid intervening. Are we on the same page there?"
Lying sucks and Daniel is bad at it, but if they just don't mention it, maybe Armand will continue to ignore him. Hiding a surprise body every so often it's the worst he could be made to endure. Here's where he has to hope Louis doesn't find a new path to guilt, by the way, and put together that Daniel's 'It's fine because he can't fuck with me' line is pretty feeble in the face of Armand actively fucking with him.
no subject
He can let this deflect the most immediate of his worries, for the moment.
"I don't want him hurt," Louis says. Agreement.
Louis can't pretend to know Armand, to know what he would do. But he thinks there must be some resentment, some fury, for Lestat in all of his. Maybe he would be another way in which Armand punished Louis for the wreckage of their long companionship, punished as Daniel was punished for his role bringing it about.
"We should keep it at least until we leave the city," Louis proposes. "Things are more difficult in less populated areas. We'll have some distance from him."
Though what is really difficult for Armand, who walks in the sun?
no subject
The faintest tinge of skepticism, but it's not directed at Louis. The whole situation makes him uneasy— too many variables. A part of him wishes it would happen when he was alone, but he doesn't understand that desire. He should want it all to stop, for Armand to vanish.
Right?
(He should ask more about the bond.)
"If anything else happens, if there's a need to explain— you know, that's fine. Path of least resistance away from conflict. Don't put yourself in any danger, either."
No intervention from Louis either.
no subject
The words coalescing so smoothly, instinct bypassing conscious thought: Armand has never hurt me.
Louis has to struggle to swallow it back. (Struggles with the parts of him that believe it to be true.) Looks away from Daniel, reorders the lay of his fingers over his knee. Little movements, none of which manage to detract from the statue-like quality of Louis' affect in this moment.
"I'm not in danger from him," Louis says finally. "I'd like to be certain the same is true for you."
no subject
"Hey." A little lean forward. Daniel fixes Louis with a look. "I know you can kick his ass."
Which is not him fooling himself, he's pretty sure. Armand may be capable of more, but is he capable of getting there first? Of not hesitating, before Louis just lets go? Armand seems to have hesitated over everything, all the good things and the worst things, drawn it out and hedged his bets. (Except turning Daniel. He had gotten up and walked towards him without pause—)
"But that's still fucking yourself up more over this guy. Okay? I don't want either of us to be there. I don't feel threatened by him, I promise you. Maybe that's fucking bonkers of me, I don't know. But let's get through it. I want to have hope about it."
Stupid. Stupid. But nobody can see the future.
no subject
That Armand has forgiven him the role he'd played in breaking apart what Armand had held for seventy-seven years? For tossing that script onto the table?
Has he forgiven Louis for casting him out? For seeing him and all that he'd done, and refusing to be lulled back into complacency?
Would he forgive Lestat for being easily found?
Louis thinks no. But it is as he said. How well does he really know Armand, even after all this time?
no subject
Vampires make it complex, but the heart of it is tragically simple. Daniel spotted it when he was a stupid kid. Louis got his heart broken over his first love. Now he knows he probably broke Lestat's heart, too. That their relationship was mutually (if still lop-sided) abusive. His relationship with Armand was, too, even though it expressed itself in a very different way.
"You didn't kill Armand. You walked away from that and towards healing. Is it childish of me to hope that can be the trajectory? For everybody?"
Daniel has ruined two marriages. He never beat the shit out of either of his wives (i dont actually know this im just choosing to trust itd have come up), but he was cruel, and unfair, and neglectful, and combative. Regular awful shit, without any nightmare supernatural shit. Maybe it's not comparable enough. But he has some real empathy here. Lessons learned much too late for his own attempts.
no subject
If I had killed him, he wouldn't have been able to hurt you.
That's not something Daniel is going to be able to hear. Louis' regrets are his own. He lets them slip away, leaving some space for fondness to warm his expression as he looks back at Daniel.
"No," Louis tells him. "Optimistic, but not childish."
What does healing look like for Louis? Taking the relief and understanding Daniel gifted to him and parlaying it into something else, a way he could move through the world, that is something Louis has no guidance for.
And Armand—
"I'm not going back to him, Daniel. But if he wants my attention, I'd sooner he have that than yours."
no subject
Was Armand editing Louis' brain in realtime, right in front of him? So many odd moments. Loud arguments followed by serene evenings. A ruinous reveal transitioning into Louis being on the verge of forgiving Armand. Daniel has gone around in circles trying to decide if his own memory of those days in Dubai are all real—
And they seem to be, which is just fucking bizarre. He's had to decide that he thinks Armand simply didn't see him as a threat, because what else is the explanation, there. It seems unlikely that Armand enjoyed their hostile back and forths.
"But I'll lay off. I know you can handle yourself. Just... try to go on day by day, huh? Night by night, rather."
no subject
"I ain't asking you to lay off. I don't think you're capable of it."
Louis had given Daniel a kind of gift, hadn't he? But the need to know is intrinsic. It had been there from the start. Daniel and his tape recorder, curious enough to accept Louis' invitation home.
Daniel will ask his questions. Louis has no desire to stop him.
"Just promise me you aren't going to try to placate him on your own. Please."
no subject
He squeezes Louis' hand, and then reaches out with his other to touch the side of his face. Holding there for a moment, looking at him.
"No placating. No fighting. Deal?"
is this bow territory or is there a little more gas in the tank?
"Yes," Louis acquiesces, the slight tip of his head into Daniel's fingers as he confirms, "Deal."
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