Hands in air! Look at him, the picture of innocence. He was not at all going to call Lestat a lightweight. The expression on his face is not the expression of a man who was going to do that. Even though he was, and if Louis asks, Daniel will tell him.
"It's been good," he says, like a normal person. He moves in close enough to have to swerve out of the way of an in-motion guitar case. Checking in, Louis' stillness, and—
'Are you okay?'
Poker face, outwardly. He thinks he'll excuse himself soon, with talk of appetites and opening volleys of flirting going on, but he'll always have an instinct to touch base with Louis. It's a luxury to be able to do so in person, one he doesn't take for granted.
"Dinner, no arson, no car wrecks. Impeccable musical research."
Had he told Daniel enough of New Orleans? How their home had so much music in it, even among all the pain and spite that had sprung up over the years?
Dubai had been so quiet.
Ask me tomorrow.
Demurring, more obvious about the absence of an answer than Louis' early deflections.
He hasn't decided what he means to tell Daniel. Lestat, bright and smiling and demanding, Louis can let his focus realign as Lestat sways him about the cleared space in the center of the room.
"Tell me about the research," Louis invites, Daniel as much as Lestat. "What were your findings?"
Talk to him, is the real request. The room feels better with two of them in it; turn down the volume on the conversation replaying over and over in Louis' mind.
It's less complicated, currently, in Lestat's world.
"That I like it," he says, and laughs. He is so funny and interesting. "Look, I have this," a swing of the guitar case, finally breaking from Louis to twirl around and find a landing place to set down his acquisition on one of the sofas. "I'll learn how to play it tonight if you can't be lured out. Oh,"
and pivoting back, fishing something out from his jacket pocket. "For you," and takes Louis' hand to place into the object—an antique but operational pocket watch, formed of a metal that certainly appears to be real gold, with a matching tangly chain. "A souvenir."
From a dead person, sure. He had often warned against trophies back in the day, but then, Daniel has been party to his slowly adapting wardrobe built from easy targets wearing things he thought were cool, so maybe magpie behaviour is a recent habit.
A telepathic equivalent of a reassuring shoulder-squeeze, for Louis; a silent agreement. Alright, tomorrow. He lets the observation go, trusting the other man, and huffs a laugh about Lestat pulling out a prize from the scene of the crime.
"Johnny Cash and Maynard James Keenan, and Poison. A hell of a soundtrack. I think that was Tool, and not A Perfect Circle."
Probably Tool. They were authentic elder millennials.
"Was that all you grabbed?" Notes on inventory. This time, his aside to Louis is out loud: "You've got fixers, right?"
That Lestat has jacked significant items from a crime scene is a thing.
"Souvenirs?" Louis asks, on the way to posing a question that is presumably for the room but realistically, for Daniel: "Do you have an address?"
So yes, Louis has someone on payroll for this. No longer Armand. (How long after San Francisco did Louis make this addition?) No word on whatever messes Louis left in his wake that needed cleaning prior to the year 2000.
His fingers catch Lestat's. Brackets the watch between their hands as Louis keeps brief hold of him.
Refrains from adding a third question to the litany. It is a slow warming, a deliberate effort to shake off the chill carried in from the balcony. To be here, with the pair of them, and let himself be drawn in to the comfort of their presence.
There is altogether too much talk of clean-up and not enough admiring of Lestat's kind gifts to himself and to Louis for his liking, meanwhile. Not enough to totally turn his mood around, especially with the feeling of Louis' hand holding onto his, so Lestat redirects his focus to Daniel.
Keeps that hand, so Louis must be dragged along the short distance towards Lestat putting his other on Daniel's shoulder as he says, "These millennial fledglings have it to so easy now," with a spread of a smile. A glance to Louis, "Especially this one. Five-hundred year old blood in his veins," back to Daniel, "a billionaire frérot with his 'fixers'," an eyeroll for show, "and then me."
A squeeze of his hand, a shift to deadly, fondly serious, "And my exceptional driving skills," which breaks into a peel of squeaky-hinge laughter. He will be incapable of sleep when dawn hits.
"Yeah, I got the address. I can talk it over if you want. No 'in an hour or we'll all explode' rush, it'll keep."
At least for a day or two. If Louis lets him, Daniel will coordinate, so he doesn't have to sit there and play telephone about how many dead humans need to be swept up. But not right this minute, when Lestat seems another minute's worth of inattention away from crawling along the ceiling, and Louis looks like he could use the distraction of something that's not murder.
So—
Daniel nearly makes a nepo baby joke, but it feels like evoking somebody he shouldn't, even after Lestat did. Instead over the maniacal laughter he says, "The musician, the actor, the visionary, the burgeoning rock star, the hunter, the very safe and lawful driver. I meant it, I had a good time."
And that is sincere. Not everything has to be mindless fun to enjoy it, though there was some of that, in the killing. A whole new life to learn. More experiences to take apart.
The invocation catches Louis the way a knocked elbow off, the way a scattering of salt into an open wound, the way a knife in the side might land. Sharp. Freezes his breath in his throat as the pain bursts in his body.
Lestat is laughing, Daniel is indulging him, and Louis has a moment to control that sensation. To trade his fingers over Lestat's for a hand at his hip as Louis takes the watch from him to examine. A steadying touch, as futile as that might be in the face of A Little Speed. (Steadying for which of them? For both of them?)
"It's a handsome watch," Louis offers as the laughter begins to taper off, a dutiful aside on the way to: "You were driving?"
A smoothness to his tone that irons out the re-emergence of accent Louis has fallen in and out of in he days since he arrived.
But a valid question, surely. Is this something that also needs some covering up? From where did Lestat procure a car, and is the driver still living? Is there a vehicle on the curb on front of the hotel that should be attended sooner rather than later?
Lestat's hand finds a place on Louis' arm without looking, as he's currently shining, beaming his approval in a Danielwards direction for these pretty words. The younger vampire is rewarded with Lestat's hand shifting from shoulder to an arm around the shoulders. "Careful, or I really shall trust you with my life's story," he teases.
And then his attention hooks back to Louis, a more sudden thing than the lazy swing brought around by a question. Evoking Armand had been nothing at all to Lestat, barely a passing thought—he and Daniel, he thinks, have something in common, unwillingly infused with immortal blood by an eldritch horror of selfish intent, and set on making the most of it besides.
But, call it the instincts of a musician. Louis' tone changes and he notices.
"A little joyride in a yellow taxicab," he supplies, taking his weight back off Daniel to shift back to Louis. He coaxes the pocket watch out of Louis' hand and sets about placing it, the watch itself into his trouser pocket, the end of the chain to a beltloop. Is this intimate? It's fine.
Fussfuss. There. "Daniel took care of it. I think I want a motorcycle."
Can Daniel turn his investigator brain off for a minute, and let Louis have a brittle reaction in private? Yeah. Will he do it? ... No, but he'll pretend. Louis is quick to guilt, and maybe the reminder of whose blood has transformed Daniel is an unpleasant one. Maybe it feels all the more raw after sitting at home for half a night while they're out without him, doing things he doesn't let himself do anymore. He does not think 'I bet Louis feels weird because he just got done talking to Armand', because why the fuck would he think that, but, you know. Recent chats. He's mindful. These things circle the drain in his own head very often.
Lestat slings an arm around his shoulders, and Daniel reaches out to touch Louis' side, turning the three of them into one, funny circular creature for a moment until momentum shifts them out of it, like rising and falling over a swell in the ocean.
"The driver was cool." Cool cool, like Lestat is cool cool about drugs. It pains Daniel slightly to not make this joke aloud, but he's being a good wingman and not saying He had half a joint and a couple Adderall, either, so. "I think Blondie was going to show off and tune his guitar."
Or paw at Louis' crotch in front of God and everyone, Lestat, but Daniel survives.
Bracketed briefly by them, both buoyant in the wake of their exploits, Louis can do nothing but make space for the tight clench of fondness that unfurls in his chest.
The pocket watch is an odd weight in one pocket. Louis who has carried a wallet only sporadically, a phone even less, needs a moment to acclimate to the addition. For the moment, it is a little draw on the edge of his awareness, as is Lestat's easy intimacy and Daniel's hand at his side. A bevy of anchors. Louis can almost let Armand's voice slip away, recede back beneath plates of ice.
"Show us the guitar," Louis encourages, perhaps choosing his battles in the moment. A motorcycle is best left unencouraged, surely. His fingers squeeze over Lestat's waist, even as he slips a private aside to question Daniel as to the veracity of: A little speed?
It's cute when Louis humours him. And Lestat is ever willing to be humoured.
Or, more generously: when Louis is willing to allow Lestat to distract him from whatever thing is otherwise pulling focus. Nostalgic, even with the assist from the resident youth, and Lestat brings up a hand to set fingertips along Louis' jawline, thumb touching the little divot in his chin with great affection.
And then, a pivot, moving through them both to go and retrieve his guitar. Rosewood and spruce, tones of sunset fire spreading to black on the edges of the top board, and the coveted signature decorating a rounded corner. "It's been signed by Johnny Cash, see?" he says as he wheels around, positioning the guitar in his hands—backwards, first, before correcting himself. It's fine, he's got this. "I think he's dead now. Pity."
Dead twenty years, in fact, but who's counting.
Settled on the couch, Lestat occupies himself with the tuning of the guitar, absorbed immediately in this task. It takes no time at all to get the tuning in order, keying out of whatever else is being said, before scales turn into what is only roughly the opening riff of 'The Man Who Sold The World', the tune of which is played faster, a circling melody that turns into something else. He had never played a violin the day he woke the Mother of all of them with his melodies and like then, mimicry morphs into something strange, unnatural, and oddly pretty. A far cry from his devotion to perfection, playing Bach and Beethoven at the grand.
Vampire nails (very carefully) replacing the need for a pick, technique probably not wholly correct in the way his fingers find their way across the strings. The result is probably at least informed by A Little Speed alongside a preternatural disposition to create.
Daniel sits next to Louis, wherever he ends up perching for the casual recital, and uses Lestat's preoccupation with tuning as a chance to explain,
'Maybe a joint and a half, and the equivalent of a line. He didn't do any independently.' Just ate some people, which probably accounts for the added euphoria. Blood, a 'real' hunt, which seemed more like a seduction that ended in a horror movie. Though what's hunting, really, it's not like they're out there with rifles. 'I had more than double than he did. I think he was just happy to get out, and happier to come back here.'
There is certainly some truth to this. But also, Daniel 'Mexican black tar' Molloy is absolutely underestimating his own constitution and tolerance; blood has little to do with it, his brain is trained to look at anything that couldn't compassionately euthanize an African elephant and shrug it off. Of course he's fine. Poor Lestat does not deserve these lightweight aspersions.
Doesn't seem to have dampened his musical acuity, though. Daniel finds himself paying close attention, despite himself.
In spite of all the drugs, Lestat is a quick study. And it is still as marvelous to watch. Louis is as charmed by it now as he had been in New Orleans. There is something particularly beautiful, watching Lestat take to an instrument. This is no piano, but Lestat takes to it.
Music, still the medium through which Lestat's affection for humanity, his own humanity, shines through most clearly. Still a thing that Louis finds charming, finds attractive.
And Daniel settles himself close. That too, a comfort.
The combination eases some of the stillness from Louis' posture, the way he holds his body. Slants his eyes sideways, a wry smile underscoring the nudging rejoinder: You are hardly the metric for what is and isn't too much.
Both of them have the same piecemeal recollections of that night, that little room, how much of Louis' drugs Daniel consumed.
His eyes drift back to Lestat as he crosses one knee over the other, arm stretched loosely along the back of the sofa.
He hadn't been hunting when I found him. I'm sure there is some pleasure in the return to the routine.
There is a vaguely hypnotic quality to these nonsense melodies, fingers moving swift and sure over the fretboard as separate notes are picked out, chords discovered. Consolidating the amount of time he's spent avidly watching this past century's masters on television or, some decades later after that particular device broke down, through his tablet, his own fingers tracing these movements in the air, an eerie way of passing the time while New Orleans hummed and whirred in the background. It's fine. There was no one around to observe.
But now he has an instrument, and soon, the experimentation circles back around to something more recognisable, a simpler strummed melody that he hums along to, working his way to what Daniel will potentially recognise as a loose acoustic rendition of the song they'd just been enjoying, still in his head.
Lestat does not remember the verses, which is alright, filling in a line with something of his own, "And they're talking about me in their heads," with a smile tossed their way, "And I hope it's only nice things".
Lestat can do all the drugs he wants, Daniel can stay effectively sober even if he partakes. And Louis— well, who knows, they haven't talked about his indulgences after, though he suspects a halt. Daniel carried on with extremes well into the next decade, and still dipped back in now and again. Was still dipping once in a blue moon by the time he was diagnosed with Parkinson's, which he found a little funny. Of course he gets sick and it's not anything his drug use led to. Just shitty luck.
Behind him now. He huffs a quiet laugh at Lestat doing some reverse-heckling at their (obvious? it must be) chat right in front of his face.
'He likes being what he is.'
A thoughtful reflection. Something Daniel is contending with, as someone who was having a miserable fucking time as an aging, sick human with no friends. He's not an ideal vampire. He looks too old, he has no instincts towards shutting up and hiding. But does he like this better?
—Anyway. Alright, alright, he'll leave it. No more secret talk. For now.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"It's been good," he says, like a normal person. He moves in close enough to have to swerve out of the way of an in-motion guitar case. Checking in, Louis' stillness, and—
'Are you okay?'
Poker face, outwardly. He thinks he'll excuse himself soon, with talk of appetites and opening volleys of flirting going on, but he'll always have an instinct to touch base with Louis. It's a luxury to be able to do so in person, one he doesn't take for granted.
"Dinner, no arson, no car wrecks. Impeccable musical research."
no subject
Dubai had been so quiet.
Ask me tomorrow.
Demurring, more obvious about the absence of an answer than Louis' early deflections.
He hasn't decided what he means to tell Daniel. Lestat, bright and smiling and demanding, Louis can let his focus realign as Lestat sways him about the cleared space in the center of the room.
"Tell me about the research," Louis invites, Daniel as much as Lestat. "What were your findings?"
Talk to him, is the real request. The room feels better with two of them in it; turn down the volume on the conversation replaying over and over in Louis' mind.
no subject
"That I like it," he says, and laughs. He is so funny and interesting. "Look, I have this," a swing of the guitar case, finally breaking from Louis to twirl around and find a landing place to set down his acquisition on one of the sofas. "I'll learn how to play it tonight if you can't be lured out. Oh,"
and pivoting back, fishing something out from his jacket pocket. "For you," and takes Louis' hand to place into the object—an antique but operational pocket watch, formed of a metal that certainly appears to be real gold, with a matching tangly chain. "A souvenir."
From a dead person, sure. He had often warned against trophies back in the day, but then, Daniel has been party to his slowly adapting wardrobe built from easy targets wearing things he thought were cool, so maybe magpie behaviour is a recent habit.
no subject
"Johnny Cash and Maynard James Keenan, and Poison. A hell of a soundtrack. I think that was Tool, and not A Perfect Circle."
Probably Tool. They were authentic elder millennials.
"Was that all you grabbed?" Notes on inventory. This time, his aside to Louis is out loud: "You've got fixers, right?"
That Lestat has jacked significant items from a crime scene is a thing.
no subject
So yes, Louis has someone on payroll for this. No longer Armand. (How long after San Francisco did Louis make this addition?) No word on whatever messes Louis left in his wake that needed cleaning prior to the year 2000.
His fingers catch Lestat's. Brackets the watch between their hands as Louis keeps brief hold of him.
Refrains from adding a third question to the litany. It is a slow warming, a deliberate effort to shake off the chill carried in from the balcony. To be here, with the pair of them, and let himself be drawn in to the comfort of their presence.
no subject
There is altogether too much talk of clean-up and not enough admiring of Lestat's kind gifts to himself and to Louis for his liking, meanwhile. Not enough to totally turn his mood around, especially with the feeling of Louis' hand holding onto his, so Lestat redirects his focus to Daniel.
Keeps that hand, so Louis must be dragged along the short distance towards Lestat putting his other on Daniel's shoulder as he says, "These millennial fledglings have it to so easy now," with a spread of a smile. A glance to Louis, "Especially this one. Five-hundred year old blood in his veins," back to Daniel, "a billionaire frérot with his 'fixers'," an eyeroll for show, "and then me."
A squeeze of his hand, a shift to deadly, fondly serious, "And my exceptional driving skills," which breaks into a peel of squeaky-hinge laughter. He will be incapable of sleep when dawn hits.
no subject
At least for a day or two. If Louis lets him, Daniel will coordinate, so he doesn't have to sit there and play telephone about how many dead humans need to be swept up. But not right this minute, when Lestat seems another minute's worth of inattention away from crawling along the ceiling, and Louis looks like he could use the distraction of something that's not murder.
So—
Daniel nearly makes a nepo baby joke, but it feels like evoking somebody he shouldn't, even after Lestat did. Instead over the maniacal laughter he says, "The musician, the actor, the visionary, the burgeoning rock star, the hunter, the very safe and lawful driver. I meant it, I had a good time."
And that is sincere. Not everything has to be mindless fun to enjoy it, though there was some of that, in the killing. A whole new life to learn. More experiences to take apart.
no subject
Lestat is laughing, Daniel is indulging him, and Louis has a moment to control that sensation. To trade his fingers over Lestat's for a hand at his hip as Louis takes the watch from him to examine. A steadying touch, as futile as that might be in the face of A Little Speed. (Steadying for which of them? For both of them?)
"It's a handsome watch," Louis offers as the laughter begins to taper off, a dutiful aside on the way to: "You were driving?"
A smoothness to his tone that irons out the re-emergence of accent Louis has fallen in and out of in he days since he arrived.
But a valid question, surely. Is this something that also needs some covering up? From where did Lestat procure a car, and is the driver still living? Is there a vehicle on the curb on front of the hotel that should be attended sooner rather than later?
no subject
And then his attention hooks back to Louis, a more sudden thing than the lazy swing brought around by a question. Evoking Armand had been nothing at all to Lestat, barely a passing thought—he and Daniel, he thinks, have something in common, unwillingly infused with immortal blood by an eldritch horror of selfish intent, and set on making the most of it besides.
But, call it the instincts of a musician. Louis' tone changes and he notices.
"A little joyride in a yellow taxicab," he supplies, taking his weight back off Daniel to shift back to Louis. He coaxes the pocket watch out of Louis' hand and sets about placing it, the watch itself into his trouser pocket, the end of the chain to a beltloop. Is this intimate? It's fine.
Fussfuss. There. "Daniel took care of it. I think I want a motorcycle."
no subject
Lestat slings an arm around his shoulders, and Daniel reaches out to touch Louis' side, turning the three of them into one, funny circular creature for a moment until momentum shifts them out of it, like rising and falling over a swell in the ocean.
"The driver was cool." Cool cool, like Lestat is cool cool about drugs. It pains Daniel slightly to not make this joke aloud, but he's being a good wingman and not saying He had half a joint and a couple Adderall, either, so. "I think Blondie was going to show off and tune his guitar."
Or paw at Louis' crotch in front of God and everyone, Lestat, but Daniel survives.
no subject
The pocket watch is an odd weight in one pocket. Louis who has carried a wallet only sporadically, a phone even less, needs a moment to acclimate to the addition. For the moment, it is a little draw on the edge of his awareness, as is Lestat's easy intimacy and Daniel's hand at his side. A bevy of anchors. Louis can almost let Armand's voice slip away, recede back beneath plates of ice.
"Show us the guitar," Louis encourages, perhaps choosing his battles in the moment. A motorcycle is best left unencouraged, surely. His fingers squeeze over Lestat's waist, even as he slips a private aside to question Daniel as to the veracity of: A little speed?
i hope he has a keytar in s3
Or, more generously: when Louis is willing to allow Lestat to distract him from whatever thing is otherwise pulling focus. Nostalgic, even with the assist from the resident youth, and Lestat brings up a hand to set fingertips along Louis' jawline, thumb touching the little divot in his chin with great affection.
And then, a pivot, moving through them both to go and retrieve his guitar. Rosewood and spruce, tones of sunset fire spreading to black on the edges of the top board, and the coveted signature decorating a rounded corner. "It's been signed by Johnny Cash, see?" he says as he wheels around, positioning the guitar in his hands—backwards, first, before correcting himself. It's fine, he's got this. "I think he's dead now. Pity."
Dead twenty years, in fact, but who's counting.
Settled on the couch, Lestat occupies himself with the tuning of the guitar, absorbed immediately in this task. It takes no time at all to get the tuning in order, keying out of whatever else is being said, before scales turn into what is only roughly the opening riff of 'The Man Who Sold The World', the tune of which is played faster, a circling melody that turns into something else. He had never played a violin the day he woke the Mother of all of them with his melodies and like then, mimicry morphs into something strange, unnatural, and oddly pretty. A far cry from his devotion to perfection, playing Bach and Beethoven at the grand.
Vampire nails (very carefully) replacing the need for a pick, technique probably not wholly correct in the way his fingers find their way across the strings. The result is probably at least informed by A Little Speed alongside a preternatural disposition to create.
theremin
'Maybe a joint and a half, and the equivalent of a line. He didn't do any independently.' Just ate some people, which probably accounts for the added euphoria. Blood, a 'real' hunt, which seemed more like a seduction that ended in a horror movie. Though what's hunting, really, it's not like they're out there with rifles. 'I had more than double than he did. I think he was just happy to get out, and happier to come back here.'
There is certainly some truth to this. But also, Daniel 'Mexican black tar' Molloy is absolutely underestimating his own constitution and tolerance; blood has little to do with it, his brain is trained to look at anything that couldn't compassionately euthanize an African elephant and shrug it off. Of course he's fine. Poor Lestat does not deserve these lightweight aspersions.
Doesn't seem to have dampened his musical acuity, though. Daniel finds himself paying close attention, despite himself.
no subject
Music, still the medium through which Lestat's affection for humanity, his own humanity, shines through most clearly. Still a thing that Louis finds charming, finds attractive.
And Daniel settles himself close. That too, a comfort.
The combination eases some of the stillness from Louis' posture, the way he holds his body. Slants his eyes sideways, a wry smile underscoring the nudging rejoinder: You are hardly the metric for what is and isn't too much.
Both of them have the same piecemeal recollections of that night, that little room, how much of Louis' drugs Daniel consumed.
His eyes drift back to Lestat as he crosses one knee over the other, arm stretched loosely along the back of the sofa.
He hadn't been hunting when I found him. I'm sure there is some pleasure in the return to the routine.
no subject
But now he has an instrument, and soon, the experimentation circles back around to something more recognisable, a simpler strummed melody that he hums along to, working his way to what Daniel will potentially recognise as a loose acoustic rendition of the song they'd just been enjoying, still in his head.
Lestat does not remember the verses, which is alright, filling in a line with something of his own, "And they're talking about me in their heads," with a smile tossed their way, "And I hope it's only nice things".
Anyway, a chorus: "Don't need nothin',"—
no subject
Lestat can do all the drugs he wants, Daniel can stay effectively sober even if he partakes. And Louis— well, who knows, they haven't talked about his indulgences after, though he suspects a halt. Daniel carried on with extremes well into the next decade, and still dipped back in now and again. Was still dipping once in a blue moon by the time he was diagnosed with Parkinson's, which he found a little funny. Of course he gets sick and it's not anything his drug use led to. Just shitty luck.
Behind him now. He huffs a quiet laugh at Lestat doing some reverse-heckling at their (obvious? it must be) chat right in front of his face.
'He likes being what he is.'
A thoughtful reflection. Something Daniel is contending with, as someone who was having a miserable fucking time as an aging, sick human with no friends. He's not an ideal vampire. He looks too old, he has no instincts towards shutting up and hiding. But does he like this better?
—Anyway. Alright, alright, he'll leave it. No more secret talk. For now.