"Please stop beating yourself up about it. I mean it. I don't have to read your mind to know you're doing it, and Armand beat us both up enough without piling anything else on, okay?"
Many things are possible, with Armand. Possibly endless things. Daniel will have to ask him what he was trying to do, and scry answers from his face the way Armand can't do to him. He wonders if his maker will even permit a meeting, now, with that in mind— he's definitely picked up on the fact that Armand hates their imbalance of intuition. But he's going to have to fucking cope.
Louis' head half-turns towards the sound, keeping the thread of conversation between them as he answers, "I'm not sure he would have felt the need to make a point had our conversation gone better."
Though it begs the question: in what world did their conversations go well, now that Louis knows what he does?
There are things that can be forgiven. Armand knows he has not transgressed in a way Louis can forgive, unless Armand takes it from him.
Perhaps it is some kind of love, that Armand let Louis keep what Daniel showed to him.
"Maybe," he hedges, because they both have to learn something from this, not just tell each other it's okay and fall on their own bullheaded swords. "But he shouldn't feel a need like this. We've got to work on approaching him better, if he's going to be lurking around."
Which feels inevitable. He supposes they could part ways, but that feels like shit, honestly. Daniel leans elbows on his knees, and extends his free hand to brush knuckles against the back of Louis'. He sighs.
Quiet, then. Not even really thinking. Just sitting here with him. That's why he thinks he smelled burning, he guesses. Louis remembering being in the sun, because Armand forced the memory into him, in real time. Not afraid then, not afraid now. He'd still embrace him, no matter how fucked up.
"Want to get some air? This hotel feels like a fucking Kubrick movie, tonight."
That little brush of contact sparks a movement in turn, Louis catching Daniel's fingers before he can draw back. Laces them together, linking them as they lapse into silence.
The loop plays on. Louis was still in the building. Somewhere in his head he is still standing in the sun. Still trapped in a bed while Armand stood over Daniel's crumpled body.
All this turned over in Louis' head while they sit together, interrupted only by the possibility Daniel puts forth.
"Yes."
A better alternative, as it provides an opportunity for a hunt.
"You and Lestat should eat," Louis says aloud. "It'll help you both shake these after effects."
Even if it means leaving Louis on a park bench somewhere while they do it. Louis brings Daniel up with him by their linked hands, releases him so they might make their way into the main room of the suite, rouse Lestat if he is not already awake.
Standing the main room, leaning back against the edge of the nearest sofa lounge, already oriented in their direction as if with every expectation that they should run into each other. Dressed for the evening, currently, in his oxblood velvet trousers, dressed down with a tank top of silky black fabric, bare arms folded stiff across his chest. No makeup, save for what lingering particles of black and silver he didn't excavate from between his eyelashes.
And emanating a specific kind of poisonous anger that has yet to surface this entire time, but familiar from a distant past for one of them. Different from a preydrive, where black pupils have shrunk small in glacial-grey, and his jaw is set taut, haughty, even when he offers then a small slice of a smile.
"Bonsoir," he says. "I trust you both slept well."
"Maybe if somebody spontaneously breaks their legs in front of me," he says dryly. Not feeling especially predatory at the moment, brain too bruised to think deeply about anything, much less extend psychic awareness to select appropriate prey. Another night of taking it easy won't hurt, especially with the much maligned, now much appreciated, salad bar option.
Or,
maybe the issue is that, suddenly, he doesn't think Lestat wants to hang out.
Daniel is still holding an ice pack to his head like a moron, but he stares at the other vampire, disliking the vibe. Great, now what.
"I did, thanks."
Slightly clipped out of wariness, but despite that, he does mean the thank-you.
Maybe if he did not feel stripped raw from the night before, he would have an easier time tempering his reaction to that expression on Lestat's face. As it is, Louis is simply knocked off balance, tensed between fight or flight.
Intent, as he tacks on, "I thought you and Daniel might need something to eat."
Louis, who did not sleep. Who is braced against the lashing pull of memory in this moment, hoping to simply be wrong.
Ridiculously, mutual responses of reservation and wariness shove Lestat further to the edge of his bad mood, as if he were not passively exuding it like radioactivity. A little 'ah' at Louis' suggestion follows him shifting his weight from his lean and onto his feet, arms unfolding, all too much grace and deliberation in the way he moves.
"Yes, of course, my role here," a gesture between them all. "A devout guard dog, while not-quite-your fledgling grows his fangs."
What would be like from them? To detect exactly what the matter is, to offer apologies and gratitude like tributes to an altar? It would certainly help. His voice loses some of the simpering, ash-soft quality, words coming sharper;
"How long were you both intending to keep his presence a secret from me?"
Alright. This. Perfectly timed for when both Daniel and Louis are already fucked up. Goodwill towards Lestat turns off as a defense mechanism, but it's done tiredly— Hey, man, I saved your whole fucking potential future by cracking that case is probably not going to be helpful.
But what is going to be helpful? The truth is going to be easy to twist from someone who's mad and (ballpark guess) jealous. Lying is pointless. What did Armand show Lestat, if anything? Is Lestat also reeling from something?
Daniel feels another flinch from the migraine. Goddamnit.
"Until he fucked off without incident, preferably."
Bristling is not the right response, but Louis bristles all the same.
The loop plays. Lestat's eyes are terrible and cold.
Louis hasn't slept.
Suppresses only by the barest restraint, to avoid accusatory: You sought him out on your own.
But it's such a brittle, painful thought that to delve into the topic would be destructive past the point of easy repair. So Louis bites it back. Let's Daniel's answer stand as he circles away, crossing to a chair that he can't bring himself to sit in, only stands behind, in a small attempt to present as less of a unified front. Head off some brewing thing Louis has a sense of if not actual sight of.
Armand had showed Lestat very little, and in fact, in the wake of it all, he had allowed himself some internal preening for, perhaps, chasing the gremlin off before he might deign to try it. But there had been something, some small thing, a little sting of rejection when he'd been summarily ejected out the airlock of Armand's brain. Something similar in the feeling that chimes for the hundredth time at Daniel's reply, Louis' roving quiet.
"So, never," is a quick sniping back, showing teeth. Blunt ones, still, even if he feels some kind of hackling hindbrain response to the way Louis circles round. Harder to yell at them both that way, but Lestat can cope with some dynamic staging.
Gears creaking, straining to remain in the one mode. Better to stay angry than betray hurt feeling. Hurt feeling is not the point. (It's not!)
"And does that not only prove I know him better than the two of you combined," he says, is flung back at Louis as well. Not quite shouting, but something in his voice has a way of filling the room without any effort at all. "You should know the reason we have not been harassed by the lesser vampires of this area is because of my presence alone. I'm not a fucking decorative accessory to your grand adventure together."
A stalking around, a furious sweep of a look that captures them both. "Or ought I be the one to fuck off without incident and see how you both fare then."
Dueling immediate instincts: worry about Louis, whose move away from him to make himself less offensive is painful to see. He hopes, for a strained heartbeat, that Lestat will notice and understand. See that Louis is fucking scared of him. But it doesn't happen, Lestat goes on, and the pause from Daniel after is awful. I own the night, out into the world, but after a mental asskicking from Armand, Louis is like this against his maker's bad mood.
The second instinct is to get in his face about it. Bark back and argue. Daniel is never afraid when he should be, and he isn't afraid of Lestat, even though he's very aware of what the vampire is capable of. He shoved a hand into Armand's stupid psychic nuke, he'll stand between Lestat and Louis, he doesn't give a fuck.
Neither despair nor hostility are going to work. Think about it. (Thinking hurts.)
"You're right."
Well. Sort of. Maybe. Close enough that Daniel is going to give it to him in hopes of de-escalation. Please see you're scaring Louis. Please care about it. For fuck's sake.
"I did hope for never, because I didn't want anything to happen. And you know that Louis coming here, with me and you, specifically, has been about safety. Armand is something he and I are still fucking processing and it's just been really hard. Maybe we aren't making the best decisions about it. And since I'm sure you were eavesdropping - which we're taking a whatever on, it's fine - you know we know that."
You're right brings Louis' gaze slanting over to Daniel, jaw tight. Assessing.
Louis' hands come to rest on the chair in front of him. Gaze sliding back to Lestat, measuring the effect Daniel's had.
Withholding his own thoughts on who needed what safety. No need to litigate that in this exact moment.
"No one wants you to leave."
Well. Maybe Armand would prefer Lestat absent, but Armand is not part of this calculation.
Louis holds his own temper in check. Trying to follow Daniel's lead, to deflate rather than match Lestat's energy. (Whatever parts of his are governed by the past, by the lesson learned in New Orleans that lives in Louis' body still, Louis will not examine.) Bites down on the part of him galled by the thought of being perceived as in need of protection.
Says a thing that Louis knows to be true, his own growing frustration aside:
It's off-guarding, an unexpected You're right, Lestat silent with hands planted on his hips (nail polish still there, too, save for one bare fingernail picked clean) and a twitch at his mouth for the free pass as pertains to the eavesdropping. A brief short-circuit in the fritzing already occurring in his skull.
Posture tensing at Louis' appeal to him. Daniel is sure he was eavesdropping, like Louis had been certain he had been followed that night in the bayou, and of course Lestat did both of those things, and Louis wants him to stay, stay, stay but for what? Daniel had said it would be good, them talking, but do they talk? He had asked and Louis had said nothing, Daniel had asked and Louis had said everything.
And on and on, fast like lightning, frenetic and irrational, and no one needs to attack him for his heart rate to climb as if they are.
"Armand has had his claws in me for centuries," can still be believed to be true at the same time he feels Armand overlooked him, Lestat is talented in this way. His voice has taken on a wavering quality, like the rattling of a chain holding back an angry dog. A spread of his arms, a grand sweep of a gesture. "Maybe I have my own ~processing~ to do, but what does any of that matter."
The look he casts Louis' way, a splash of acid. "And to do what? Entertain you both between your plotting and planning and heartfelt tête-à-tête? Have I not had my fill of all that?"
Assessing the reaction: angry, still, but given pause. Empathy is effective, then, but he's got the air of someone still spoiling for a fight. Lestat does not strike him as a man who will think excessive pandering is sincere, but on the other hand, his ego might accept it, cloying as it is. Would it be believable from Daniel, though.
There's always empathy applied with a baseball bat to the face?
"You have been an incredible relief," Daniel says, words at odds with how aggressively he spits them out. Trying to drag Lestat's attention back over. "Your company and your experience. Your genuine care for Louis, and graciousness for not ripping my spine out over the book. Okay?"
Blunt, honest.
"If all three of us are struggling with bullshit about Armand, if you're unhappy with how things are shaking out with the investigation, then we've got some adjusting to do. That's normal after this prolonged series of traumatic events. The past fifty years, the past eighty for you two—" he raises one hand, shrug!! It's a mess!! His other one is still holding the ice pack against his head. He looks stupid.
"Do you really feel like that's all you're doing? Entertaining us?"
The accusation winds that point of tension tighter in Louis, a simultaneous bracing alongside the unconscious reaction to the rattled warning of Lestat's voice.
His knuckles are whitening over the back of the chair.
A separate argument caught behind Louis' teeth. Who suffered what. What Armand took. The roots in Louis that exist still to be yanked upon. Seventy-seven years of companionship that do not untangle simply because Louis stepped away. Fingerprints dug into him as if Louis had been wet concrete, which belong to Lestat and which have been overlaid by Armand.
He feels baited. (Or just helpless, cornered.) But his jaw clicks closed, eyes intent on Lestat as Daniel makes his appeal.
Louis won't undercut him. Doesn't want Lestat to make good on his threats to go.
The wood creaks quietly under his hands, a comical addition to Daniel's extended hand, but that can't be helped.
Baiting or cornering, Lestat's focus on Louis has all the expectation for reprisal, feeling as much as seeing or hearing the bloodless tension in the other vampire's hands, a sense of restraint that makes him want to shake loose whatever is being held back from him. Go, then, say it, say whatever it is, Lestat's sneer seems to say.
Ignores Daniel at first, or seems to, holding Louis' intent focus right up until that Okay?, and Lestat wavers.
His look over to Daniel has gone traitorously glossy, rose-tinged. In the secondhand account of arguments with Lestat, there was never an awful lot of if you're unhappy, we can change things in either direction, and he tenses against it as he had tensed against the transaction of kindnesses in a mobile store.
Restless, arms folding once again. "Is it not so? Without any throats to demonstrably tear open." Sulkier, now, a little flick of his hand. "I do not want to eavesdrop to learn things. And there would have been nothing I could hear if you were both fit enough to speak in your minds."
A sore point. And there is, of course, another element to all of this, but he finds himself guarding it jealously (ha) once more.
That Louis hasn't much is a burning coal in Daniel's awareness, but he doesn't know what to do about it. He doesn't feel confident checking in on him telepathically, still feeling so raw.
"You've been having a good time, too. That much has to be true."
An appeal to emotion. Come on, man, you loved stealing a guitar and accidentally getting high after murdering four people! They're building friendships. Learning about each other, be it for the first time, or how they are, now, so many years removed from brutal wounds.
He nearly continues, but— ah, fucking Christ, speaking of feeling raw. Daniel doesn't quite sway on his feet, but it's still an odd fuzzy moment before he sits down in a chair. Extremely annoying, and he says nothing about it. Whatever.
"I didn't know you well enough to feel comfortable talking to you about it. Maybe we should have re-evaluated. Before Armand pulled this bullshit."
Daniel doesn't know if that's true. Lestat's reactivity here is sensitive enough to make him think that the ideal is still to keep it under wraps— but that's not possible, so there's no sense dwelling on it, and defending it is just asking for a bad fight. Pushing forward as-is. It's fine.
Silent still, biting down on his fear, on the anger that is so much easier to reach for.
He knows he is not truly angry at Lestat. Maybe not even at Armand. Maybe it is as simple as having had a mirror held up to himself, and being shown his failures, his short-comings, the terrible cost of them. (You were still in the building.) Armand has ever possessed an insight, honed over seventy-seven years of companionship. Maybe Louis is only angry with himself.
(Whose voice does Louis mind speak in, when this insight comes to mind?)
The tension in Louis' face breaks as Daniel wavers. Sits. A flex of worry, the protesting creak of wood as Louis' hands grip briefly tighter against the impulse to cross back to him.
Holds his place against that impulse. Daniel's tired of being coddled, however justified Louis' concerns may be. Looks from Daniel, now seated, to Lestat, and back again. Moderating the temptation of his temper in the wake of Daniel's conciliatory offerings once more when he offers, "What do you want to learn, Lestat?"
Voice flattened into blank syllables, tightly controlled into neutrality.
It's possible his anger could disintegrate altogether if it was only Daniel here, feelings Validated and ego Stroked, Lestat's lessening physical presence less a sign of retreat as it is a relaxing of the stranglehold he can have over the gravity of a room. He gives a skeptical little exhale for the idea of Daniel not knowing him very well, given the circumstances of their acquaintance, but alright, yes—
And then something in Louis' question, his chosen tone, like a needle. A slightly watery but intent zigzagging study follows, Lestat half-pivoting on a heel to regard him. Mouth tense once more.
"That the gremlin leaves dead birds on Daniel's doorstep, when we all share a doorstep now. That you spoke to him, that he destroyed something that belonged to you both. I can't protect either of you if I don't know these things. I don't understand why I don't know these things."
And something else. The measure of hurt Armand levied at Louis, shared with Daniel and not Lestat. But this, he pushes aside as he adds, tearfully, "I have no secrets from either of you."
There are ways he can argue all that, and feel justified - be justified, frankly - but he sits on them. He thinks Lestat needs to bleed this mood more, and he's still winding himself back up in increments. Daniel holds the ice pack, staring to lose its integrity again already, between his hands. It sloshes around and adds a weird audio layer to this tense moment. Sorry. He has a fucking migraine.
Oh god, is he crying? He's crying. He glances at Louis, but finds Louis a statue, slowly destroying the back of a chair. Ah, fuck, all of this.
"It sucks to talk about, and I don't think either of us wanted to. I didn't. I just wanted Armand to get bored and stop, and I thought drawing more attention to it would provoke him more. Turns out that was a bad call. I can't do anything about it now but make different ones from here forward."
Maybe Louis' conversation with Armand was the catalyst, but maybe it was inevitable. They can't know, and assigning blame won't do anything. He looks at Louis again, trying to assess if he's okay, but he really doesn't seem to be. It twists that note of worry in him tighter.
And it twists something Louis, though he holds his place. Remains where he stands, straight-backed behind his chosen chair.
Of course Louis has had the thought. Perhaps if he had not reached out to Armand, Armand would not have dug a bomb into Roy Travis' skull and sent him to New York to make a point. Because Armand was making a point. Might have made it another way if he and Louis had not spoken, if Louis had maintained totality of silence between them since he left.
Strips the accelerant from his tone, leaving his voice as measured as it must be on the first of Daniel's Dubai recordings where they nest in the cloud when he tacks on his offering to Daniel's explanation.
"I wanted to protect you. Both of you."
Unspoken: he failed, catastrophically.
Daniel has a migraine. Lestat is upset. A human's head caved in. A poor showing for Louis' hopes of keeping Armand's rebuttal's contained.
And he doesn't quite recognise this, what he sees in Louis now. Hears. Louis and his fiery rage and great well of sensitivity, who suffers and laughs, ever prepared to match Lestat, whether to yell back at him or go to him at first sign of distress, to plead or negotiate or tell him to fuck off. And why shouldn't he be different? It's been eighty years. Lestat is different as well. They are not companions anymore. Louis stands with a chair between them like a shield.
Daniel with his migraine, speaking sense. A mistake, perhaps, and there is no changing what has happened, the decisions that were made, and the only option available is to move forwards differently, and there is the quiet, barely conscious knowledge in Lestat that he is making it worse, but also, he has ceased to start feeling better, so maybe everyone should get to feel worse too.
So he smiles, and sweeps a gesture about the room, and says, "And see how well that turned out," in a certain kind of hush cruelty that the slight thickness of his voice doesn't mitigate.
A fast snap, then, turned on Daniel, voice hiking back up in volume; "You think you have tricked the devil once that you can do it again. I assure you, my clever friend, he will not allow it. And a man who has survived the tedium of half a millennia is not predisposed to becoming bored with anything, least of all the one fledgling he has made in his long, miserable, empty life. You are both,"
a vividly angry look cast back to Louis, "children, who have no idea," now he's yelling, "of the forces you are toying with. Armand, the rest of the vampire world, tu amènes tous les monstres à ta porte. And my task is to watch it happen. Va te faire foutre."
Daniel doesn't flinch in the face of yelling, though he doesn't love it. He especially doesn't love it aimed at Louis.
"If you're not going to accept apologies and explanations—" he says, not actually raising his voice but turning his tone hard, stern. Unflinching and leveling Lestat with an unimpressed look. "Then people aren't going to want to offer them to you. Did you want us to come in here and make up some bullshit instead of answering you honestly?"
Who knows. He's a loose cannon. He could grab either one of them and do fuck-knows-what, and if he does it to Louis, it's going to be devastating and Daniel is going to blame himself for not ditching the guy and never saying anything to Louis about it, and if he does it to Daniel, well, who cares really, except Louis, who will probably end up super fucked up over it.
He has a thought, then, that makes him feel fucking insane. He hates it. He moves away from it so fast as to barely be aware of it, though maybe he'll scream about it later when he's alone. If he's ever alone again, Jesus Christ. This hotel really is a psychological horror film.
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Many things are possible, with Armand. Possibly endless things. Daniel will have to ask him what he was trying to do, and scry answers from his face the way Armand can't do to him. He wonders if his maker will even permit a meeting, now, with that in mind— he's definitely picked up on the fact that Armand hates their imbalance of intuition. But he's going to have to fucking cope.
Door slam? Daniel wrinkles his brow.
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Louis' head half-turns towards the sound, keeping the thread of conversation between them as he answers, "I'm not sure he would have felt the need to make a point had our conversation gone better."
Though it begs the question: in what world did their conversations go well, now that Louis knows what he does?
There are things that can be forgiven. Armand knows he has not transgressed in a way Louis can forgive, unless Armand takes it from him.
Perhaps it is some kind of love, that Armand let Louis keep what Daniel showed to him.
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Which feels inevitable. He supposes they could part ways, but that feels like shit, honestly. Daniel leans elbows on his knees, and extends his free hand to brush knuckles against the back of Louis'. He sighs.
Quiet, then. Not even really thinking. Just sitting here with him. That's why he thinks he smelled burning, he guesses. Louis remembering being in the sun, because Armand forced the memory into him, in real time. Not afraid then, not afraid now. He'd still embrace him, no matter how fucked up.
"Want to get some air? This hotel feels like a fucking Kubrick movie, tonight."
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The loop plays on. Louis was still in the building. Somewhere in his head he is still standing in the sun. Still trapped in a bed while Armand stood over Daniel's crumpled body.
All this turned over in Louis' head while they sit together, interrupted only by the possibility Daniel puts forth.
"Yes."
A better alternative, as it provides an opportunity for a hunt.
"You and Lestat should eat," Louis says aloud. "It'll help you both shake these after effects."
Even if it means leaving Louis on a park bench somewhere while they do it. Louis brings Daniel up with him by their linked hands, releases him so they might make their way into the main room of the suite, rouse Lestat if he is not already awake.
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Standing the main room, leaning back against the edge of the nearest sofa lounge, already oriented in their direction as if with every expectation that they should run into each other. Dressed for the evening, currently, in his oxblood velvet trousers, dressed down with a tank top of silky black fabric, bare arms folded stiff across his chest. No makeup, save for what lingering particles of black and silver he didn't excavate from between his eyelashes.
And emanating a specific kind of poisonous anger that has yet to surface this entire time, but familiar from a distant past for one of them. Different from a preydrive, where black pupils have shrunk small in glacial-grey, and his jaw is set taut, haughty, even when he offers then a small slice of a smile.
"Bonsoir," he says. "I trust you both slept well."
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Or,
maybe the issue is that, suddenly, he doesn't think Lestat wants to hang out.
Daniel is still holding an ice pack to his head like a moron, but he stares at the other vampire, disliking the vibe. Great, now what.
"I did, thanks."
Slightly clipped out of wariness, but despite that, he does mean the thank-you.
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Maybe if he did not feel stripped raw from the night before, he would have an easier time tempering his reaction to that expression on Lestat's face. As it is, Louis is simply knocked off balance, tensed between fight or flight.
Intent, as he tacks on, "I thought you and Daniel might need something to eat."
Louis, who did not sleep. Who is braced against the lashing pull of memory in this moment, hoping to simply be wrong.
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"Yes, of course, my role here," a gesture between them all. "A devout guard dog, while not-quite-your fledgling grows his fangs."
What would be like from them? To detect exactly what the matter is, to offer apologies and gratitude like tributes to an altar? It would certainly help. His voice loses some of the simpering, ash-soft quality, words coming sharper;
"How long were you both intending to keep his presence a secret from me?"
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But what is going to be helpful? The truth is going to be easy to twist from someone who's mad and (ballpark guess) jealous. Lying is pointless. What did Armand show Lestat, if anything? Is Lestat also reeling from something?
Daniel feels another flinch from the migraine. Goddamnit.
"Until he fucked off without incident, preferably."
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The loop plays. Lestat's eyes are terrible and cold.
Louis hasn't slept.
Suppresses only by the barest restraint, to avoid accusatory: You sought him out on your own.
But it's such a brittle, painful thought that to delve into the topic would be destructive past the point of easy repair. So Louis bites it back. Let's Daniel's answer stand as he circles away, crossing to a chair that he can't bring himself to sit in, only stands behind, in a small attempt to present as less of a unified front. Head off some brewing thing Louis has a sense of if not actual sight of.
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"So, never," is a quick sniping back, showing teeth. Blunt ones, still, even if he feels some kind of hackling hindbrain response to the way Louis circles round. Harder to yell at them both that way, but Lestat can cope with some dynamic staging.
Gears creaking, straining to remain in the one mode. Better to stay angry than betray hurt feeling. Hurt feeling is not the point. (It's not!)
"And does that not only prove I know him better than the two of you combined," he says, is flung back at Louis as well. Not quite shouting, but something in his voice has a way of filling the room without any effort at all. "You should know the reason we have not been harassed by the lesser vampires of this area is because of my presence alone. I'm not a fucking decorative accessory to your grand adventure together."
A stalking around, a furious sweep of a look that captures them both. "Or ought I be the one to fuck off without incident and see how you both fare then."
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The second instinct is to get in his face about it. Bark back and argue. Daniel is never afraid when he should be, and he isn't afraid of Lestat, even though he's very aware of what the vampire is capable of. He shoved a hand into Armand's stupid psychic nuke, he'll stand between Lestat and Louis, he doesn't give a fuck.
Neither despair nor hostility are going to work. Think about it. (Thinking hurts.)
"You're right."
Well. Sort of. Maybe. Close enough that Daniel is going to give it to him in hopes of de-escalation. Please see you're scaring Louis. Please care about it. For fuck's sake.
"I did hope for never, because I didn't want anything to happen. And you know that Louis coming here, with me and you, specifically, has been about safety. Armand is something he and I are still fucking processing and it's just been really hard. Maybe we aren't making the best decisions about it. And since I'm sure you were eavesdropping - which we're taking a whatever on, it's fine - you know we know that."
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Louis' hands come to rest on the chair in front of him. Gaze sliding back to Lestat, measuring the effect Daniel's had.
Withholding his own thoughts on who needed what safety. No need to litigate that in this exact moment.
"No one wants you to leave."
Well. Maybe Armand would prefer Lestat absent, but Armand is not part of this calculation.
Louis holds his own temper in check. Trying to follow Daniel's lead, to deflate rather than match Lestat's energy. (Whatever parts of his are governed by the past, by the lesson learned in New Orleans that lives in Louis' body still, Louis will not examine.) Bites down on the part of him galled by the thought of being perceived as in need of protection.
Says a thing that Louis knows to be true, his own growing frustration aside:
"I want you to stay."
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Posture tensing at Louis' appeal to him. Daniel is sure he was eavesdropping, like Louis had been certain he had been followed that night in the bayou, and of course Lestat did both of those things, and Louis wants him to stay, stay, stay but for what? Daniel had said it would be good, them talking, but do they talk? He had asked and Louis had said nothing, Daniel had asked and Louis had said everything.
And on and on, fast like lightning, frenetic and irrational, and no one needs to attack him for his heart rate to climb as if they are.
"Armand has had his claws in me for centuries," can still be believed to be true at the same time he feels Armand overlooked him, Lestat is talented in this way. His voice has taken on a wavering quality, like the rattling of a chain holding back an angry dog. A spread of his arms, a grand sweep of a gesture. "Maybe I have my own ~processing~ to do, but what does any of that matter."
The look he casts Louis' way, a splash of acid. "And to do what? Entertain you both between your plotting and planning and heartfelt tête-à-tête? Have I not had my fill of all that?"
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There's always empathy applied with a baseball bat to the face?
"You have been an incredible relief," Daniel says, words at odds with how aggressively he spits them out. Trying to drag Lestat's attention back over. "Your company and your experience. Your genuine care for Louis, and graciousness for not ripping my spine out over the book. Okay?"
Blunt, honest.
"If all three of us are struggling with bullshit about Armand, if you're unhappy with how things are shaking out with the investigation, then we've got some adjusting to do. That's normal after this prolonged series of traumatic events. The past fifty years, the past eighty for you two—" he raises one hand, shrug!! It's a mess!! His other one is still holding the ice pack against his head. He looks stupid.
"Do you really feel like that's all you're doing? Entertaining us?"
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His knuckles are whitening over the back of the chair.
A separate argument caught behind Louis' teeth. Who suffered what. What Armand took. The roots in Louis that exist still to be yanked upon. Seventy-seven years of companionship that do not untangle simply because Louis stepped away. Fingerprints dug into him as if Louis had been wet concrete, which belong to Lestat and which have been overlaid by Armand.
He feels baited. (Or just helpless, cornered.) But his jaw clicks closed, eyes intent on Lestat as Daniel makes his appeal.
Louis won't undercut him. Doesn't want Lestat to make good on his threats to go.
The wood creaks quietly under his hands, a comical addition to Daniel's extended hand, but that can't be helped.
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Ignores Daniel at first, or seems to, holding Louis' intent focus right up until that Okay?, and Lestat wavers.
His look over to Daniel has gone traitorously glossy, rose-tinged. In the secondhand account of arguments with Lestat, there was never an awful lot of if you're unhappy, we can change things in either direction, and he tenses against it as he had tensed against the transaction of kindnesses in a mobile store.
Restless, arms folding once again. "Is it not so? Without any throats to demonstrably tear open." Sulkier, now, a little flick of his hand. "I do not want to eavesdrop to learn things. And there would have been nothing I could hear if you were both fit enough to speak in your minds."
A sore point. And there is, of course, another element to all of this, but he finds himself guarding it jealously (ha) once more.
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"You've been having a good time, too. That much has to be true."
An appeal to emotion. Come on, man, you loved stealing a guitar and accidentally getting high after murdering four people! They're building friendships. Learning about each other, be it for the first time, or how they are, now, so many years removed from brutal wounds.
He nearly continues, but— ah, fucking Christ, speaking of feeling raw. Daniel doesn't quite sway on his feet, but it's still an odd fuzzy moment before he sits down in a chair. Extremely annoying, and he says nothing about it. Whatever.
"I didn't know you well enough to feel comfortable talking to you about it. Maybe we should have re-evaluated. Before Armand pulled this bullshit."
Daniel doesn't know if that's true. Lestat's reactivity here is sensitive enough to make him think that the ideal is still to keep it under wraps— but that's not possible, so there's no sense dwelling on it, and defending it is just asking for a bad fight. Pushing forward as-is. It's fine.
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Silent still, biting down on his fear, on the anger that is so much easier to reach for.
He knows he is not truly angry at Lestat. Maybe not even at Armand. Maybe it is as simple as having had a mirror held up to himself, and being shown his failures, his short-comings, the terrible cost of them. (You were still in the building.) Armand has ever possessed an insight, honed over seventy-seven years of companionship. Maybe Louis is only angry with himself.
(Whose voice does Louis mind speak in, when this insight comes to mind?)
The tension in Louis' face breaks as Daniel wavers. Sits. A flex of worry, the protesting creak of wood as Louis' hands grip briefly tighter against the impulse to cross back to him.
Holds his place against that impulse. Daniel's tired of being coddled, however justified Louis' concerns may be. Looks from Daniel, now seated, to Lestat, and back again. Moderating the temptation of his temper in the wake of Daniel's conciliatory offerings once more when he offers, "What do you want to learn, Lestat?"
Voice flattened into blank syllables, tightly controlled into neutrality.
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It's possible his anger could disintegrate altogether if it was only Daniel here, feelings Validated and ego Stroked, Lestat's lessening physical presence less a sign of retreat as it is a relaxing of the stranglehold he can have over the gravity of a room. He gives a skeptical little exhale for the idea of Daniel not knowing him very well, given the circumstances of their acquaintance, but alright, yes—
And then something in Louis' question, his chosen tone, like a needle. A slightly watery but intent zigzagging study follows, Lestat half-pivoting on a heel to regard him. Mouth tense once more.
"That the gremlin leaves dead birds on Daniel's doorstep, when we all share a doorstep now. That you spoke to him, that he destroyed something that belonged to you both. I can't protect either of you if I don't know these things. I don't understand why I don't know these things."
And something else. The measure of hurt Armand levied at Louis, shared with Daniel and not Lestat. But this, he pushes aside as he adds, tearfully, "I have no secrets from either of you."
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Oh god, is he crying? He's crying. He glances at Louis, but finds Louis a statue, slowly destroying the back of a chair. Ah, fuck, all of this.
"It sucks to talk about, and I don't think either of us wanted to. I didn't. I just wanted Armand to get bored and stop, and I thought drawing more attention to it would provoke him more. Turns out that was a bad call. I can't do anything about it now but make different ones from here forward."
Maybe Louis' conversation with Armand was the catalyst, but maybe it was inevitable. They can't know, and assigning blame won't do anything. He looks at Louis again, trying to assess if he's okay, but he really doesn't seem to be. It twists that note of worry in him tighter.
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And it twists something Louis, though he holds his place. Remains where he stands, straight-backed behind his chosen chair.
Of course Louis has had the thought. Perhaps if he had not reached out to Armand, Armand would not have dug a bomb into Roy Travis' skull and sent him to New York to make a point. Because Armand was making a point. Might have made it another way if he and Louis had not spoken, if Louis had maintained totality of silence between them since he left.
Strips the accelerant from his tone, leaving his voice as measured as it must be on the first of Daniel's Dubai recordings where they nest in the cloud when he tacks on his offering to Daniel's explanation.
"I wanted to protect you. Both of you."
Unspoken: he failed, catastrophically.
Daniel has a migraine. Lestat is upset. A human's head caved in. A poor showing for Louis' hopes of keeping Armand's rebuttal's contained.
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And he doesn't quite recognise this, what he sees in Louis now. Hears. Louis and his fiery rage and great well of sensitivity, who suffers and laughs, ever prepared to match Lestat, whether to yell back at him or go to him at first sign of distress, to plead or negotiate or tell him to fuck off. And why shouldn't he be different? It's been eighty years. Lestat is different as well. They are not companions anymore. Louis stands with a chair between them like a shield.
Daniel with his migraine, speaking sense. A mistake, perhaps, and there is no changing what has happened, the decisions that were made, and the only option available is to move forwards differently, and there is the quiet, barely conscious knowledge in Lestat that he is making it worse, but also, he has ceased to start feeling better, so maybe everyone should get to feel worse too.
So he smiles, and sweeps a gesture about the room, and says, "And see how well that turned out," in a certain kind of hush cruelty that the slight thickness of his voice doesn't mitigate.
A fast snap, then, turned on Daniel, voice hiking back up in volume; "You think you have tricked the devil once that you can do it again. I assure you, my clever friend, he will not allow it. And a man who has survived the tedium of half a millennia is not predisposed to becoming bored with anything, least of all the one fledgling he has made in his long, miserable, empty life. You are both,"
a vividly angry look cast back to Louis, "children, who have no idea," now he's yelling, "of the forces you are toying with. Armand, the rest of the vampire world, tu amènes tous les monstres à ta porte. And my task is to watch it happen. Va te faire foutre."
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"If you're not going to accept apologies and explanations—" he says, not actually raising his voice but turning his tone hard, stern. Unflinching and leveling Lestat with an unimpressed look. "Then people aren't going to want to offer them to you. Did you want us to come in here and make up some bullshit instead of answering you honestly?"
Who knows. He's a loose cannon. He could grab either one of them and do fuck-knows-what, and if he does it to Louis, it's going to be devastating and Daniel is going to blame himself for not ditching the guy and never saying anything to Louis about it, and if he does it to Daniel, well, who cares really, except Louis, who will probably end up super fucked up over it.
He has a thought, then, that makes him feel fucking insane. He hates it. He moves away from it so fast as to barely be aware of it, though maybe he'll scream about it later when he's alone. If he's ever alone again, Jesus Christ. This hotel really is a psychological horror film.
"What do you want to do, Lestat?"
Pick. Talk or freak out.
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