Nosy and not especially apologetic about it, Daniel has no qualms with eavesdropping even if he's not actively concentrating on it. But as luck would have it, an AIDSGATE print from the Silence = Death Project is on display, and for a while he stands in front of it, captured by old thoughts. And, uncomfortably, a few recent ones. Roy Travis, out of some oppression Olympics guilt that he didn't catch it, worlds that Daniel has vacationed in but never committed to. Is it allyship, or is it predatory? Is he lying to himself, or everyone else?
Louis and Lestat are still talking when he moves on. Putting it out of his head like quickly shutting a door. An easy mercenary rationalization that it's not cowardly because it's not the time to be doing any self-indulgent wallowing. Maybe later.
He finally finds the Rauschenberg, which he opts to stare at for a while. By the time he's joined—
"I think I might be mixing this guy up with somebody else?" A thumb, towards the split painting-sculpture. "Or is this just one of his more sedate ones?"
(It's one of his more sedate ones.)
But no matter what, they should skedaddle to some other part of the museum. Overnight shift change will happen soon, and nobody wants to be glimpsed on a camera. A jaunt through another exhibit, and then, past the cluttered long-aforementioned mezzanine, is the seductive allure of a modest door marked both 1) employees only and 2) emergency roof access.
Recovered from his self-indulgent wallowing, Lestat is content to walk over arm in arm and toss a glance to the artwork being gestured at. "Oh, lovely," he says, before Louis can confirm. "Will this guy of yours be coming back to finish his painting and collect his ladder? Quite careless, if not."
Back to form.
Quick, too, to make himself central to the orbit of the three of them, unable to bear the idea of trailing along like a spiraling comet. He releases Louis' arm to clatter nearer to Daniel by the time they're on their way, pointing out the Warhol Mona Lisa print, disdain for the piece itself smoothing the way for querying if Daniel had ever met the man or his hangers on, professes to have seen a movie that definitely never escaped containment from private viewings, let alone reaching New Orleans—
He continues to be the most okay as they go, mood tempering back to an equilibrium through the next exhibit, the mezzanine, the door that leads out to the rooftop that only requires a little bit of tampering for them to escape through.
It is a brisk near-winter evening. The layers of his suit and waistcoat are barely enough to withstand it, but, we suffer for fashion, and he grew up in colder climes. Lestat wanders for where the view of the city stands stark and glittering under a night sky, and cloud cover is rendered in oil painting brushstrokes of deep grey.
Still breathtaking large, this city. And he had imagined Paris overwhelming, back then.
Not something Louis is considering at this exact moment, unwilling to test the alchemy of Lestat and heights in this context. They have a lovely view to contemplate, one that Louis imagines will inspire less disagreement.
The city sprawls, bustling and glowing and ever-living, ever alert. Louis had loved New York, he remembers. He had liked their time spent here.
Armand ghosts at the edges of Louis' mind. Their time here, together. The apartment building, burned to the ground.
Louis turns away from the cityscape to observe Lestat's wandering, draw near to Daniel's side.
"Do you know any constellations?" is a little teasing, a nudge of an elbow knocking against Daniel's. Inviting attention upwards to the heavens rather than down at the busy streets below.
Go team fire escapes. Lestat can fly around by himself if he wants.
The architecture of the building looks even more interesting from this angle, wandering around in between the domes and points of decor. Evidence of employee hangouts sit here and there, a few folding chairs, an ash tray. Normalcy amongst something so fancy is always charming. The lit-up cityscape backdrop is as dazzling as it ever is— now and then, he marvels about being here, making it from a glorified farming town on the opposite coast.
A huff of a laugh for Louis. He bumps him back, and looks up.
"Not a one," he says, smiling. No fucking clue. "Orion, I guess. And it's crazy to get to see anything, you know? Did you ever a really visit a city before, notice you couldn't see the stars because of all the light pollution?"
Lestat turns, placing his hands back against the concrete edge and leaning there to consider them. A glance up at the sky.
He considers saying: sometimes you stay in the same city, and remember to go outside after a decade or so, and you see the sky is brighter than it was. Considers his memory of what the sky was like in Auvergne, with the past so easily recalled tonight, a door cracked open. Decides this would not be very socially adept at him, and says instead, "Humanity's price for bringing the galaxies down to earth," with a gesture to indicate the glittering city behind him.
"I think you can see the bear one all the time," less poetic, distracted with finding his cigarettes. The little nest of chairs and ashtrays planting the mood in him for dry smoke in the cold air.
The bear one, the combined effect of Lestat and Daniel's irreverent approach to the cosmos, draws a laugh out of Louis. A laugh, a smile. A pluck of fingers at Daniel's sleeve so they might trail Lestat over to the collection of sun-bleached folding chairs.
Louis lifts an palm-sized ash tray, examines this little chipped novelty. The Statue of Liberty gleaming green from beneath a light film of ash and rain water. Gauche. Oddly lovely.
"See a bottle anywhere?" Louis questions.
Cheap liquor, certainly, if there is any. But the thought of it appeals to him. A nice interlude for their outing, sharing cigarettes and sharp-tasting liquor. Arguing about heavenly bodies, perhaps.
The stars aren't clear to him like they might be in the middle of nowhere, but he can see them now, faded points above his head, when before the night sky in this city was a violet haze over billions of lights. It was striking, and beautiful, and this is beautiful too. The lights are brighter if he focuses too long, the colors are more intense, everything dazzling and still there are stars, a predator's keen gaze adapting to runaway industrial progress.
It's honestly very cool.
"Do you know any constellations?" If Louis' going to laugh at them!
He looks around, peering about like maybe there's a hidden supply cache like in one of the video games his youngest spent the entirety of her community college years pursuing instead of coursework. If I were a very serious art museum's sneaky booze stash, where would I be. Well. Probably in the curator's office, they're like that.
"Alas, gentrification. No more porn theaters and the closest shitty bodega to a prestigious art institution is a shameful three blocks away."
More occupied with retrieving his little crumpled pack of Marlboros than hunting for opened bottles of vodka, Lestat summons a flare of the fire gift. A little ribbon of fire, more enthusiastic than a lighter, scorching the end of his cigarette.
Meets them that short distance, offering the pack out in a general way. Heckles as well;
"Can you even find the bear one?"
Not that he minds Louis laughing at him, and never has. Whether from some on purpose witticism or because he didn't mind sounding foolish and oblivious in the moment, it's all the same, and all worth the effort.
Collecting a cigarette, Louis offers a lofty: "Can find it just fine, thank you."
It's been over a hundred years since he and Paul were boys together, looking up at the sky from the rooftop. Louis feels out the edges of the memory. There is pain still, but it is isn't blinding. Doesn't steal his breath.
More than capable of lighting his own cigarette, Louis still lets it dangle, looking expectant. Someone can volunteer, surely.
"And I can't even test you, because you could make anything up and I wouldn't know."
Daniel is also more than capable of lighting his own cigarette ('thanks', at Lestat, as he frees one), because he has a lighter. Behold, the miracle of fire. And because of tag turn order, despite the reluctance to engage in any meta cuddling due to not being quite oblivious enough tonight, he gets to engage in some incidentally sexually coded visual language. Clickclack, easy, a Zippo that looks as old as he is, leaning over with it and its tiny flame for Louis' cigarette.
Lights his own after. Nice to not worry about lung disease, with these. A wonder he didn't die of cancer or literal brain rot or a million other things years ago.
A quick scope of the seats to check they're not full of rainwater and filth before Lestat sits down, kicking his feet up, all elegance in spite of the surroundings.
"So we should never go sailing," a sigh, like it was a possibility, "or else spend eternity hopelessly adrift, drinking the blood of porpoises and sea turtles."
Terrible fate. He tips his head to consider the current subject of conversation.
"Two centuries," he says, "and I think I am used to it, but only because I don't remember seeing how it was before." Indicates with a loose gesture, the night sky rendered in phosphorescent galactic colours that only vampiric eyes can see. As pretty and as wildly abstract as any painting beneath their feet. "But those first nights, I remember clearly. When the horror lifts its veil, and everything is beautiful beneath."
A little flick of a glance to Louis, as if to assess whether or not he agrees, but a shift to Daniel. "Has the charm worn off yet, fledgling?"
Louis, inhaling a deep drag off his cigarette, circling to lean against the ledge. Watch Lestat. Watch Daniel.
Let his own thoughts wander to that first night. The descriptions he'd given to Daniel, a heady rush through experience after experience after experience. Lestat's face, silhouetted against the moon, impossibly beautiful. He'd glowed, Louis recalls. They'd been laughing, Louis stumbing, Lestat's hands steadying him as Louis tripped through the night.
Warmth in his expression, a reserved smile, but the silence maintains. It's for Daniel to answer. Louis flicks ash. Blows a ring of smoke. Waits.
Kind of amused, kind of eyerolling. Weirdest terminology, though he supposes they're as un-insulting as it can get.
"I'm kind of fucked if it has, right?"
No take-backs. He is stuck this way, unless he opens the curtains at high noon. Uninterested in romanticizing his experience, he has no words, even fake ones, for his first nights, and for whatever moment he was supposed to have realizing the world looked difference and being entranced by it. Daniel had other things to worry about at the time.
With no irony: it's fine. He figured it out. He likes this better than dying of Parkinson's. He likes this better than a lot of things.
"I have plenty of time to get bored of it all, eventually. Not in a hurry to get there."
A beat, a head tip, a miscalculation? Maybe? Not that Lestat was fishing for an answer in specific so much as he had anticipated a different one and finds what he gets instead differently interesting as a result—an evasion, of kinds, even as he confirms that the charm continues. Agreement, but held in reservation.
Is it because of Louis, standing here, rather than them alone? Some other thing? He could beam these queries or an impression of them into Daniel's head, past the constant veil he has pulled over his own mind, but perhaps there will be a better time to draw it out of him.
Very gently works the filtered end of his cigarette between his teeth with the quirk of a smile. "We can all keep each other entertained," Lestat says, "I'm sure."
Louis is looking at Daniel, recalling Dubai, his balcony, the profession: The vampire is bored.
Louis had been speaking of the collective.
Louis had been speaking of himself.
Daniel is omitting. Louis searches his face, but he too does not press. Does not reach after whatever it was Daniel found when he opened his eyes that first time.
"Daniel still intends a sequel, I assume," Louis offers. "So yes, I imagine we will keep each other busy for some time to the come."
Maybe Daniel still banks on the possibility that Louis likes him, likes talking to him. That perhaps a second book follows the first because Louis is starting fires, picking fights. Because the first book had been edited and a second book may not be.
You were still in the building, reminds Armand's voice in Louis' head. He flicks ash into the dark. Tucks this too away deep in his chest.
Dramatic old people. Daniel is fine, and he did mean both micro and macro, anyway. (It's not that it's traumatic, it's that it's his business, is all.) Having fun not dying, and having fun hanging out.
"Oh, I'm definitely putting out a purely fictionalized one as a sequel," he says, even though this is not true, because Daniel would explode and die, he cannot let any little obfuscation go, the most annoying kind of investigator, "just to confuse all the very angry vampires further."
In sentiment, Lestat is only as sincere as Daniel's proposition to get into YA vampire romance, but also: what is he, chopped liver, you guys. He is the most interesting girl in the world, sitting right here.
"Perhaps Broadway. Or an MTV special." Leans to tap ash, respectfully, into one of the touristy ashtrays available. "Vampires on ice."
A familiar, mirrored look reflected back to Daniel: You're so annoying, but deeply fond. Affectionate.
"I'd have thought you'd prefer a concept album."
As Louis straightens gracefully from his slanting lean to cross the space between the three of them. Settle in the chair alongside Lestat. Look up at Daniel expectantly.
The most interesting girl in the world who doesn't want a book, what the hell is Daniel supposed to do with Lestat on Ice. You can't interview somebody during their interpretive ice dance.
MTV special has merit, though.
"Rock musicals are a thing," he notes. "Talk us through your Act I. An illustrious birth? In medias res, decades into your adventures?"
Alright, alright, he sits.
(Meanwhile: a few blocks away, perhaps near the liquor store they can't easily reach, something observes three vampires dicking around on a museum roof.)
"That too," breezily, at Louis' suggestion. An artful splay of his fingers, cigarette still caught securely as Lestat explains, "But I require a visual medium as accompaniment."
Otherwise, what a travesty.
A thoughtful hum after the concept of a rock musical, blowing a stream of smoke skywards as he considers. "What was the first song for Jesus Christ Superstar?" That he looks to Louis is perhaps the wrong direction. "That one begins mid-adventures, skips the Christmas era. And anyway," a shrug, "a vampire's story only properly begins when they are made."
(Triangulation. Another pair wait in a car a block in another direction, and at a psychic summon, they slither out from it, silent compared to the slam of metal doors which is, anyway, lost in a city that does not sleep.)
"Pyrotechnics," thinking out loud. A little morbid, but he's allowed.
A flex of a smile, even if the memory itself is now complicated. All good memories of the past seventy-seven years are now, cast in uncertainty or mired in the magnitude of the foundational lie from which seventy-seven years of companionship had risen.
Still, a memory: tickets tucked into the breast pocket of Louis' coat, joining a crowd, leaning forward at the overture in spite of himself. The twitch of smile on Armand's face, though Louis isn't certain now if it had been approval of some stage direction or something else, some private amusement.
Lestat says Pyrotechnics and Louis' smile widens slightly, gives a shake of his head. Yes, morbid. Doubtful that Lestat will be dissuaded from the concept if it truly appeals, so—
"Heaven on Their Minds," Louis supplies, a quiet side contribution to a conversation that feels to be winding to a specific topic.
Daniel, interviewing Lestat. Louis has not thought about it at length, but has the sense he should remove himself from any earnest discussions of the prospect. Lestat deserves his odyssey without the weight of Louis in the room, interfere even in that small way.
(They will scale the sides of this building, force their way inside, and paint the walls with his blood, Armand had said. Louis had not contradicted him.
Here and now, the walls of the Met are infinitely scale-able, architecture lending itself to the ambitious. ]
"I've seen that one, but I don't remember it," Daniel says gamely. "I think I've seen it, anyway. I was out of my mind. Could have been Godspell."
Or, like, literally anything. There are whole books he doesn't remember writing. Cocaine, man. Meanwhile, Lestat sidewinding his way into a comparison to Jesus is pretty funny.
"Both of them got shit for not featuring the resurrection of Christ, though, right? There's a vampire joke in there somewhere."
Speaking of pyrotechnics. Clickclick, from not too far away, but far further than a human could hear. A failed attempt. Another clickclick, and a tiny sound, fire catching to cloth. A tiny thing, but possibly enough of a tell; a barely-there warning, before the Molotov is sailing through the air. (Missing pieces of this would-be narrative. A vodka bottle.) Again, from further away than a human would be able to throw it. Giving this prong of the pincer breathing room so that they themselves are not in immediate dangers of singed fingers. An athletic hurl up, up, with enough force that it gains unreasonable speed on the downward curve aimed directly at the trio of trespassing undead.
Lestat has pivoted a look to Louis, meanwhile, amusement clear in his expression as he assesses the likelihood of Louis developing a love for musical theatre and how well this can be exploited. It's a good thing, too, because otherwise he would not have caught the sight of a streak of flame hurtling past the edge of the rooftop. If he had to rely on his ears alone, he might not have caught it in time.
His expression empties out, tense, a baffled look upwards. Instinct, next, something like raising his matchlock towards the quail spooked out of hiding from the brush, save that the only thing that moves is a finger before the Molotov explodes into a fireball high above. Glass rains down in all directions, some stinging spatters of flame, but the most of it more powerfully vaporised than the shred of burning fabric would have induced.
Lestat is standing already when the sound of scrabbling claws and boots nears them from the opposite side of the building, drawing his focus before a second flaming bottle chases the last.
Dubai was so, so quiet. (Quiet for Louis, from his high perch.) New York is noise and life and movement. Louis does not hear the bottle. He sees Lestat's expression change, and something in his body comes alert, bright and hot, sharpening everything around them as Lestat's hand lifts.
Glass clatters to the rooftop. Catches in Louis' hair as he pivots, already in motion, moving towards the scrabbling sound of claws. A brief moment in time as Louis turns reveals bared fangs, the hiss of fury lost as he blurs across the space.
No need for anyone to exert themselves. Louis can so kindly assist with a hand up. Whether the limb remains attached after, however—
All of it, so fast. An explosion overhead, Louis bolting. Hissing and the sound of collision and sudden smells of blood and kerosene. Daniel backs up from the shrapnel, further when he realizes another projectile is on its way — stars, pretty and interesting, but he's used to looking at those; he is less used to having to track things moving like this, even though he's capable, now. A flash of disorienting compensation as his brain accepts it and questions it at once.
Weird!
Behind him, THUNKCRACK, and Daniel turns to see a vampire, fangs out and eyes sulfur-yellow, having leapt from whence the bottles came.
"Tibor Halilovic," he says, recognizing the guy from his tracking after getting into the phone he confiscated from his would-be assailant back in Atlanta. It makes the vampire pause, an obvious mental stutter - why the fuck does the writer know who he is, why is he saying so, what the hell - and Daniel moves away, lightning-fast. Because what else is he going to do? A couple bar fights that were just the cost of doing business back in the day, a few punches thrown on principle here and there. As noted early in the evening, I think I'd have just fallen over and died from any expectation of martial prowess.
He tells himself not to get cornered. Tries to do a headcount. Four? Two sets of two. He casts about mentally, searching for more.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Nosy and not especially apologetic about it, Daniel has no qualms with eavesdropping even if he's not actively concentrating on it. But as luck would have it, an AIDSGATE print from the Silence = Death Project is on display, and for a while he stands in front of it, captured by old thoughts. And, uncomfortably, a few recent ones. Roy Travis, out of some oppression Olympics guilt that he didn't catch it, worlds that Daniel has vacationed in but never committed to. Is it allyship, or is it predatory? Is he lying to himself, or everyone else?
Louis and Lestat are still talking when he moves on. Putting it out of his head like quickly shutting a door. An easy mercenary rationalization that it's not cowardly because it's not the time to be doing any self-indulgent wallowing. Maybe later.
He finally finds the Rauschenberg, which he opts to stare at for a while. By the time he's joined—
"I think I might be mixing this guy up with somebody else?" A thumb, towards the split painting-sculpture. "Or is this just one of his more sedate ones?"
(It's one of his more sedate ones.)
But no matter what, they should skedaddle to some other part of the museum. Overnight shift change will happen soon, and nobody wants to be glimpsed on a camera. A jaunt through another exhibit, and then, past the cluttered long-aforementioned mezzanine, is the seductive allure of a modest door marked both 1) employees only and 2) emergency roof access.
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Back to form.
Quick, too, to make himself central to the orbit of the three of them, unable to bear the idea of trailing along like a spiraling comet. He releases Louis' arm to clatter nearer to Daniel by the time they're on their way, pointing out the Warhol Mona Lisa print, disdain for the piece itself smoothing the way for querying if Daniel had ever met the man or his hangers on, professes to have seen a movie that definitely never escaped containment from private viewings, let alone reaching New Orleans—
He continues to be the most okay as they go, mood tempering back to an equilibrium through the next exhibit, the mezzanine, the door that leads out to the rooftop that only requires a little bit of tampering for them to escape through.
It is a brisk near-winter evening. The layers of his suit and waistcoat are barely enough to withstand it, but, we suffer for fashion, and he grew up in colder climes. Lestat wanders for where the view of the city stands stark and glittering under a night sky, and cloud cover is rendered in oil painting brushstrokes of deep grey.
Still breathtaking large, this city. And he had imagined Paris overwhelming, back then.
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Not something Louis is considering at this exact moment, unwilling to test the alchemy of Lestat and heights in this context. They have a lovely view to contemplate, one that Louis imagines will inspire less disagreement.
The city sprawls, bustling and glowing and ever-living, ever alert. Louis had loved New York, he remembers. He had liked their time spent here.
Armand ghosts at the edges of Louis' mind. Their time here, together. The apartment building, burned to the ground.
Louis turns away from the cityscape to observe Lestat's wandering, draw near to Daniel's side.
"Do you know any constellations?" is a little teasing, a nudge of an elbow knocking against Daniel's. Inviting attention upwards to the heavens rather than down at the busy streets below.
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The architecture of the building looks even more interesting from this angle, wandering around in between the domes and points of decor. Evidence of employee hangouts sit here and there, a few folding chairs, an ash tray. Normalcy amongst something so fancy is always charming. The lit-up cityscape backdrop is as dazzling as it ever is— now and then, he marvels about being here, making it from a glorified farming town on the opposite coast.
A huff of a laugh for Louis. He bumps him back, and looks up.
"Not a one," he says, smiling. No fucking clue. "Orion, I guess. And it's crazy to get to see anything, you know? Did you ever a really visit a city before, notice you couldn't see the stars because of all the light pollution?"
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He considers saying: sometimes you stay in the same city, and remember to go outside after a decade or so, and you see the sky is brighter than it was. Considers his memory of what the sky was like in Auvergne, with the past so easily recalled tonight, a door cracked open. Decides this would not be very socially adept at him, and says instead, "Humanity's price for bringing the galaxies down to earth," with a gesture to indicate the glittering city behind him.
"I think you can see the bear one all the time," less poetic, distracted with finding his cigarettes. The little nest of chairs and ashtrays planting the mood in him for dry smoke in the cold air.
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Louis lifts an palm-sized ash tray, examines this little chipped novelty. The Statue of Liberty gleaming green from beneath a light film of ash and rain water. Gauche. Oddly lovely.
"See a bottle anywhere?" Louis questions.
Cheap liquor, certainly, if there is any. But the thought of it appeals to him. A nice interlude for their outing, sharing cigarettes and sharp-tasting liquor. Arguing about heavenly bodies, perhaps.
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It's honestly very cool.
"Do you know any constellations?" If Louis' going to laugh at them!
He looks around, peering about like maybe there's a hidden supply cache like in one of the video games his youngest spent the entirety of her community college years pursuing instead of coursework. If I were a very serious art museum's sneaky booze stash, where would I be. Well. Probably in the curator's office, they're like that.
"Alas, gentrification. No more porn theaters and the closest shitty bodega to a prestigious art institution is a shameful three blocks away."
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Meets them that short distance, offering the pack out in a general way. Heckles as well;
"Can you even find the bear one?"
Not that he minds Louis laughing at him, and never has. Whether from some on purpose witticism or because he didn't mind sounding foolish and oblivious in the moment, it's all the same, and all worth the effort.
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It's been over a hundred years since he and Paul were boys together, looking up at the sky from the rooftop. Louis feels out the edges of the memory. There is pain still, but it is isn't blinding. Doesn't steal his breath.
More than capable of lighting his own cigarette, Louis still lets it dangle, looking expectant. Someone can volunteer, surely.
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Daniel is also more than capable of lighting his own cigarette ('thanks', at Lestat, as he frees one), because he has a lighter. Behold, the miracle of fire. And because of tag turn order, despite the reluctance to engage in any meta cuddling due to not being quite oblivious enough tonight, he gets to engage in some incidentally sexually coded visual language. Clickclack, easy, a Zippo that looks as old as he is, leaning over with it and its tiny flame for Louis' cigarette.
Lights his own after. Nice to not worry about lung disease, with these. A wonder he didn't die of cancer or literal brain rot or a million other things years ago.
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"So we should never go sailing," a sigh, like it was a possibility, "or else spend eternity hopelessly adrift, drinking the blood of porpoises and sea turtles."
Terrible fate. He tips his head to consider the current subject of conversation.
"Two centuries," he says, "and I think I am used to it, but only because I don't remember seeing how it was before." Indicates with a loose gesture, the night sky rendered in phosphorescent galactic colours that only vampiric eyes can see. As pretty and as wildly abstract as any painting beneath their feet. "But those first nights, I remember clearly. When the horror lifts its veil, and everything is beautiful beneath."
A little flick of a glance to Louis, as if to assess whether or not he agrees, but a shift to Daniel. "Has the charm worn off yet, fledgling?"
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Louis, inhaling a deep drag off his cigarette, circling to lean against the ledge. Watch Lestat. Watch Daniel.
Let his own thoughts wander to that first night. The descriptions he'd given to Daniel, a heady rush through experience after experience after experience. Lestat's face, silhouetted against the moon, impossibly beautiful. He'd glowed, Louis recalls. They'd been laughing, Louis stumbing, Lestat's hands steadying him as Louis tripped through the night.
Warmth in his expression, a reserved smile, but the silence maintains. It's for Daniel to answer. Louis flicks ash. Blows a ring of smoke. Waits.
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Kind of amused, kind of eyerolling. Weirdest terminology, though he supposes they're as un-insulting as it can get.
"I'm kind of fucked if it has, right?"
No take-backs. He is stuck this way, unless he opens the curtains at high noon. Uninterested in romanticizing his experience, he has no words, even fake ones, for his first nights, and for whatever moment he was supposed to have realizing the world looked difference and being entranced by it. Daniel had other things to worry about at the time.
With no irony: it's fine. He figured it out. He likes this better than dying of Parkinson's. He likes this better than a lot of things.
"I have plenty of time to get bored of it all, eventually. Not in a hurry to get there."
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Is it because of Louis, standing here, rather than them alone? Some other thing? He could beam these queries or an impression of them into Daniel's head, past the constant veil he has pulled over his own mind, but perhaps there will be a better time to draw it out of him.
Very gently works the filtered end of his cigarette between his teeth with the quirk of a smile. "We can all keep each other entertained," Lestat says, "I'm sure."
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Louis had been speaking of the collective.
Louis had been speaking of himself.
Daniel is omitting. Louis searches his face, but he too does not press. Does not reach after whatever it was Daniel found when he opened his eyes that first time.
"Daniel still intends a sequel, I assume," Louis offers. "So yes, I imagine we will keep each other busy for some time to the come."
Maybe Daniel still banks on the possibility that Louis likes him, likes talking to him. That perhaps a second book follows the first because Louis is starting fires, picking fights. Because the first book had been edited and a second book may not be.
You were still in the building, reminds Armand's voice in Louis' head. He flicks ash into the dark. Tucks this too away deep in his chest.
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"Oh, I'm definitely putting out a purely fictionalized one as a sequel," he says, even though this is not true, because Daniel would explode and die, he cannot let any little obfuscation go, the most annoying kind of investigator, "just to confuse all the very angry vampires further."
It'd be funny, though.
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In sentiment, Lestat is only as sincere as Daniel's proposition to get into YA vampire romance, but also: what is he, chopped liver, you guys. He is the most interesting girl in the world, sitting right here.
"Perhaps Broadway. Or an MTV special." Leans to tap ash, respectfully, into one of the touristy ashtrays available. "Vampires on ice."
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"I'd have thought you'd prefer a concept album."
As Louis straightens gracefully from his slanting lean to cross the space between the three of them. Settle in the chair alongside Lestat. Look up at Daniel expectantly.
Well? Sit.
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MTV special has merit, though.
"Rock musicals are a thing," he notes. "Talk us through your Act I. An illustrious birth? In medias res, decades into your adventures?"
Alright, alright, he sits.
(Meanwhile: a few blocks away, perhaps near the liquor store they can't easily reach, something observes three vampires dicking around on a museum roof.)
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Otherwise, what a travesty.
A thoughtful hum after the concept of a rock musical, blowing a stream of smoke skywards as he considers. "What was the first song for Jesus Christ Superstar?" That he looks to Louis is perhaps the wrong direction. "That one begins mid-adventures, skips the Christmas era. And anyway," a shrug, "a vampire's story only properly begins when they are made."
(Triangulation. Another pair wait in a car a block in another direction, and at a psychic summon, they slither out from it, silent compared to the slam of metal doors which is, anyway, lost in a city that does not sleep.)
"Pyrotechnics," thinking out loud. A little morbid, but he's allowed.
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Still, a memory: tickets tucked into the breast pocket of Louis' coat, joining a crowd, leaning forward at the overture in spite of himself. The twitch of smile on Armand's face, though Louis isn't certain now if it had been approval of some stage direction or something else, some private amusement.
Lestat says Pyrotechnics and Louis' smile widens slightly, gives a shake of his head. Yes, morbid. Doubtful that Lestat will be dissuaded from the concept if it truly appeals, so—
"Heaven on Their Minds," Louis supplies, a quiet side contribution to a conversation that feels to be winding to a specific topic.
Daniel, interviewing Lestat. Louis has not thought about it at length, but has the sense he should remove himself from any earnest discussions of the prospect. Lestat deserves his odyssey without the weight of Louis in the room, interfere even in that small way.
(They will scale the sides of this building, force their way inside, and paint the walls with his blood, Armand had said. Louis had not contradicted him.
Here and now, the walls of the Met are infinitely scale-able, architecture lending itself to the ambitious. ]
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Or, like, literally anything. There are whole books he doesn't remember writing. Cocaine, man. Meanwhile, Lestat sidewinding his way into a comparison to Jesus is pretty funny.
"Both of them got shit for not featuring the resurrection of Christ, though, right? There's a vampire joke in there somewhere."
Speaking of pyrotechnics. Clickclick, from not too far away, but far further than a human could hear. A failed attempt. Another clickclick, and a tiny sound, fire catching to cloth. A tiny thing, but possibly enough of a tell; a barely-there warning, before the Molotov is sailing through the air. (Missing pieces of this would-be narrative. A vodka bottle.) Again, from further away than a human would be able to throw it. Giving this prong of the pincer breathing room so that they themselves are not in immediate dangers of singed fingers. An athletic hurl up, up, with enough force that it gains unreasonable speed on the downward curve aimed directly at the trio of trespassing undead.
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His expression empties out, tense, a baffled look upwards. Instinct, next, something like raising his matchlock towards the quail spooked out of hiding from the brush, save that the only thing that moves is a finger before the Molotov explodes into a fireball high above. Glass rains down in all directions, some stinging spatters of flame, but the most of it more powerfully vaporised than the shred of burning fabric would have induced.
Lestat is standing already when the sound of scrabbling claws and boots nears them from the opposite side of the building, drawing his focus before a second flaming bottle chases the last.
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Glass clatters to the rooftop. Catches in Louis' hair as he pivots, already in motion, moving towards the scrabbling sound of claws. A brief moment in time as Louis turns reveals bared fangs, the hiss of fury lost as he blurs across the space.
No need for anyone to exert themselves. Louis can so kindly assist with a hand up. Whether the limb remains attached after, however—
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Weird!
Behind him, THUNKCRACK, and Daniel turns to see a vampire, fangs out and eyes sulfur-yellow, having leapt from whence the bottles came.
"Tibor Halilovic," he says, recognizing the guy from his tracking after getting into the phone he confiscated from his would-be assailant back in Atlanta. It makes the vampire pause, an obvious mental stutter - why the fuck does the writer know who he is, why is he saying so, what the hell - and Daniel moves away, lightning-fast. Because what else is he going to do? A couple bar fights that were just the cost of doing business back in the day, a few punches thrown on principle here and there. As noted early in the evening, I think I'd have just fallen over and died from any expectation of martial prowess.
He tells himself not to get cornered. Tries to do a headcount. Four? Two sets of two. He casts about mentally, searching for more.
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ldpdl update.
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bow??
🎀