It doesn't take long. Moments, really, after the car has stopped, and the intuitive sense of his presence (more oppressive than it usually is, some aspect of himself still being tidied back between the lines) follows the sight of a figure landing on the road in front of the car. Elegant, dramatic—
Less dignity in the jog around to the door that would lead him to Louis. He is a sight since they last saw him, absolutely drenched in blood, soaked into his nice suit, hands gloved in drying gore, crimson up to his ears, higher in spatters. Wrenches open the door and enters with the uncomfortably bullish energy of a dog that doesn't realise it's about to get mud everywhere jumping in, oblivious.
Still a little glassily black eyed, fangs present, and this backseat is not designed to comfortably house three fully grown men which is why Louis has to take a knee to the thigh as Lestat insists on an embrace.
"Why did you do that," sounds agonised, angry, despite this tangle of limbs.
This doesn't sound like some badass, delusional assertion. There's tired, frustrated logic to it. But before any conversation can manifest, a big bloody mastiff is pawing into the car, and Daniel feels incredible relief that he hasn't lied to either of them, or himself. Everyone is fine.
Daniel knows why Louis did it but he keeps his mouth shut, because hollering at him is not going to help. Instead he looks forward, seeing the statue stillness of the mortal still in the driver's seat, expression a mask of blankness but knuckles very white on the wheel.
Yeah, makes sense.
"Out," Daniel tells him, and Rashid wastes no time. Daniel follows him, leaving Lestat and Louis in the car. Hopefully it looks enough like he's mind controlling a random jerk that it doesn't draw any attention— not that he thinks there's much of a chance of pulling Lestat away from what he's doing right this minute anyway.
(A few paces out,
"You're free, Double-oh-sixty-nine, fucking get out of here." A beat, and Rashid finally looks shaken. Daniel tells him, sincerely, Thank you, and agrees to talk to Raglan, and soon. Rashid has enough self-preservation not to glance back at the laptop as he makes his escape, handing the beat up car's keys to Daniel as he does.
All Louis' best intentions, all his exhaustion, is tested by Daniel's assertion. The impossibility of the gamble. The cost of guessing wrong. All of Louis recoiling against the thought of Daniel going up in flames.
Unbearable.
But Louis is saved from the impulse to argue the point by the appearance of Lestat, soaked in gore but unhurt, alive, tearful. Louis straightens up from Daniel's shoulder to facilitate the embrace, weather the dig of knee to thigh as he draws Lestat in close. Cradles a hand to the back of his head, cold titanium held carefully away from Lestat's nape.
Daniel is out of the car. Louis has an ear attuned to them, attentive to Daniel's movement on the other side of the door as he breathes out, relieved. Lestat is alright. Daniel is alright.
"I'm okay," he murmurs. "I'm fine."
Does not say: She was threatening you both.
"She's finished. You finished it."
Daniel hadn't said, but Louis doesn't need it spelled out for him. He'd lit her on fire. Lestat had ripped out of the truck and into the air. There are no mysteries as to what followed.
Drawn in closer, Lestat indulges in this full-bodied embrace for some several moments, letting relief shock through his system. The reality of Louis' heart beating, felt against him, the rise and fall of his breathing, the strength in his arms as he holds him in return. He is fine, and she is finished. Wills these things to be true. Pays zero mind to the human thrall that Daniel is shooing away outside.
Slowly eases back. That momentary flash of vision of the metal cuffs returning to him, and Lestat settles on the seat as he goes and collects Louis' wrists to look at. Jaw set, angry, as he carefully feels them over.
Some strange locking mechanism that evades his ability to simply snap them open with his mind. Magnetic, electronic. The material itself, chosen to be resisted by most vampires. Fortunately, Lestat is the world's most special vampire, and he sets about carefully testing the weak points, the hinges.
"I should have finished it slower," he mutters, almost sulky, as if tearing her limb from limb was not punishment enough for this indignity.
Louis gives over to this inspection, hands loose in Lestat's grip. Breath coming easier, even as Louis makes an effort to mask his own exhaustion. Aware of how he'd flexed his power, considering that he might expand on his own limitations. Grow stronger, faster.
But not tonight.
"I'm not sorry you finished and came back to us quickly," Louis counters, pragmatic. Easier to be so when the worst is behind them. He can consider how indignant he feels, how vengeful, tomorrow.
Attention halved, the focus of his concern like a hand pressed to the center of Daniel's back. Some part of Louis fretful at having Daniel out of the car at all. Louis voices dips quieter, hands turning to interrupt Lestat's inspection.
"Are you hurt?" bypasses all the logistical questions that would be better discussed with Daniel in the car.
"No," is honest, if not accurate. It's hard to make out in the blood soaked rumpled state of his clothing, but there are tears here and there, evidence of scratches and bites, a pattern in the blood staining his face where she managed to get him across the cheek with some claws, but even a quick study will show the skin has healed already.
Superficial, unimportant. Lestat indulges the gesture by gripping Louis' hands, impressing upon him the truth of his words. "I'm alright, Louis. She wasn't much of a challenge after you were done with her."
Fond. Pleased, even. A formidable fledgling. His children are all great, actually, contrary to popular belief.
"We make a good team, non?"
See, isn't it so, the wisdom of all of them together? There is still a little glitch in him fretting that Louis was left alone for even this brief moment in time, that Louis went to it so willingly, but for now, Lestat can lift their tangled hands and smear a bloodied little kiss against Louis' knuckles, before he sets on the shackles in earnest.
"Hold still, now," as he gets his fingers beneath the metal. Focuses, and a sharp crack of breaking metal parts chimes brightly in the limited space. Lestat lets out a relieved breath, going for the second.
Newly freed, Louis' hand lifts to the blood on Lestat's face. Fingertips skimming Lestat's cheek, contenting himself with the certainty of healed skin beneath the blood.
"Thank you," a moment later, for the shattering of the cuff. The skin beneath is swollen, but already ebbing away. Not worth remarking upon. Lestat is permitted custody of the remaining shackle, Louis' fingers lingering, moving to map the most obvious topography of their scuffle.
A swirl of other things Louis could say. An apology. For the ruined suit. For dragging Lestat into all of this.
"I didn't think to collect the sword," is what Louis settles on. A little humor as Lestat attends the cuff.
A few minutes is probably already pushing it, and so Daniel is coming back to the car soon enough. He pokes his head in the back to make sure no one's exploded since he looked away, then closes the doors and moves around to the driver's seat.
In, door closed, seat belt on - the car will just make annoying ding sounds on a loop if he doesn't - engine started. They start rolling and he reaches out to close the abandoned laptop and set it on the floor. Talamasca is probably trying to remotely lock and wipe it already, but he's sure his guy will be able to crack it. Hah. His now.
Being a chauffeur is annoying, but. Here they are.
"Nobody wants anything from the drive-thru while we're out, right?"
A little humour is rewarded with a little laugh, Lestat slipping fingers beneath the metal once more, an uncomfortable tightness as he begins to apply pressure.
"A pity," he says, "it was going to go over my mantle."
Daniel, in the front seat, the car in motion. As anxious and fussed as Lestat might be at any given time for their being a little group of three rather than simply putting Louis over his shoulder and vanishing into the night, they have lingered in each other's company long enough for him to find something comforting in it. Some stupid coven-adjacent instinct, maybe, or perhaps it is just them, who they are, who he is, what each little configuration means.
Gross. He snaps open the second cuff, rattles it carelessly, drops it in the front seat. "These are quite particular," he tells Daniel, before listing back into his seat. Keeping Louis' hand. "For your sleuthing."
A split second where Louis thinks one of them should occupy the passenger. Recalls Daniel, at the airport. Settles for a little nudge of humor between their minds, a link of connection as Louis observes, "She was very prepared."
But surprised by Daniel. Underestimated Louis.
Fortunate that she's dead. Dead, and unable to carry news of Daniel throughout the vampiric grapevine.
His thumb runs circles over Lestat's knuckles, a small unconscious motion meant to soothe, though unclear if it's for Louis' beneath or Lestat's.
And then, suddenly: "We're going to have to smuggle Lestat back into the hotel."
Easier to be funny out loud than it is inside of his own head, right now, but he still manages to return the feeling to Louis, and then more, checking in, like squeezing his hand from afar. He had noticed his attention, when he was out of the car, and he gets it.
Clink. Weird shit. Sleuthing indeed.
"Employee parking elevator, noted."
Daniel sticks to side roads and loops around to avoid busy streets as best he can, not wanting to get pulled over for a fix-it ticket thanks to the windshield. None of them look pristine, though Daniel's bloody hands are minimal to Lestat's gore-bath look.
A few things he could say—
That wasn't so bad after all.
Why the fuck did you do that.
One of them came up in my research.
Daniel says none of it. Remains quiet, like a fucking taxi driver, still feeling distant from himself in his head, and lacking the motivation to pick a fight with Louis about a suicidal move. He's fine, Lestat's fine, everyone is fine, the hotel's not that far away, even if he suddenly has a pang of desire to go back to his apartment instead. It just means he's exhausted, is all.
"Well," when the hotel is around the corner, "I did like the Met, anyway."
Opens his mouth, closes it. He was going to say, he could fly his way to the balcony, they can let him in that way. Decides against it. He has had enough flying tonight.
Old instinct against appearing like too much of an alien, even now, having just flown all over the place, covered in gore, with Louis past a century, and Daniel suffering in bondage with a true eldritch creature. Still, the unease remains. Perhaps he is already that himself and doesn't know it.
Magnus, Marius, Armand. Maybe this Eimear, too, incapable of love, of being loved.
"Me too," about the Met. Squeezes Louis' hand. "All of it. Even the ladder."
It would be nice, to return to the state they were so rudely shaken from.
A mirroring effect: Lestat holds fast to Louis' hand, while Louis winds the slip of contact between him and Daniel tight, secure.
Answering the squeeze of Lestat's fingers with a tightening of his own.
"Perhaps we could consider the Brooklyn Museum then," Louis says. "Before we leave the city."
Ha, ha. (unless?)
As they come rolling to a stop by the curb, Louis is torn between simply languishing in the backseat, and getting into their shared room as quickly as possible. A moment of searching quiet, measuring up his own ability, what's left of his strength. Blood has dried tacky all across his cheek, chin and throat.
"We thinking they'll come reclaim the car?" is only a delaying tactic. Louis doesn't need to unravel his contact with either of them until they start moving.
No one is stopping at a curb, Daniel is moving them into the basement parking garage, which most locals don't make use of because most locals aren't stupid enough to have cars, but Daniel does and so he knows where it is. He pulls them up in a not-a-parking-space area by the service elevator, and sits there for a while, reaching out to check where various employees are milling about. No use leaping out drenched in blood only to have some part-timer from room service start screaming.
"I'll have somebody come get it," he says, about the car. "Pains in the ass, but it was very helpful to have dedicated stalkers, tonight."
You know. Just in case Louis was thinking of taking out Real Rashid's treachery on whoever shows up.
"Do you want to get your staff down here or should we just—?"
Lestat already climbing out of the door, hand slipping from Louis' grasp. A reflexive fixing of the sit of his ruined suit once on his feet, except that the button he was about to use to close his jacket is now missing, so, c'est la vie.
"We should leave the city," instead, reasserting this off-handed thing being said. "Lingering will invite scrutiny, even if we have bought ourselves a little time before another attempt is made."
He can't imagine the next group of villains will be eager to follow that act.
No comment on the Ringgold. (Louis would be thrilled to purchase one, for the record. Some things must be legally acquired.)
Relinquishing his grip on Lestat, Louis slides out after him. Beats a scattering of soot out of his jacket.
"Vermont," is not a question or contradiction, only assessing. The next stop on the tour. What kind of landscape would this present, should someone else take a run at Louis?
Presently, no one needs to entertain Louis' suspicions that he should return to Dubai. They're all tired.
"I'll have Rachida manage the security tapes," Louis murmurs, looking to Daniel. "Do you have everything you'd like out of the car?"
Assuming it will not be here should they return in six to eight hours.
Daniel has already scooped up the laptop and abhorrent cuffs; he leaves the keys tucked into the visor. Sticky fingers turned crumbly with blood. The empty car is environmental storytelling on its own, gruesome horror. He looks at it for a moment before turning away to bump the elevator button with his elbow, and thinks it will be a miracle if he doesn't start screaming the second he's alone.
Getting up into the apartment manages to be uneventful, a combination of decent luck, a mind trick or two, and an alert to Louis' staff to help clear the way. No presents from Armand await them in the little landing area outside the elevator, nor within the room itself. Lestat is moving with a long-limbed stride for his corner of the floor in anticipation for a long hot shower, and then pauses.
Pivots back, considering the common space. An option, perhaps. To catch up the other two—
"We should move our coffins into the same room," with a gesture to indicate a rounding up, spoken with the tone of someone who is expecting to be agreed with, and for this thing to be done with efficiency. He looks to Louis directly, Louis who has demonstrated a penchant for going off on his own and not sleeping in a coffin. "Safer, if we are all together."
Lestat looks directly to Louis, holding a heavy, oversized mug of blood. Rachida is already near vanished, the click of her heels the only sign of her before a door closes and she is truly gone.
Louis, streaked in blood and ash. Louis, whose exhaustion is clearer now than it was before the door to this ostensibly safe room closed behind them.
Says nothing, immediately. Looks sideways to Daniel.
Perhaps has some insight that Daniel will not be thrilled by this suggestion, but willing to wait and be surprised by him.
"So somebody has an easy shot with a rocket launcher?"
—Oops sorry too fast not helpful. Daniel holds his hands up. RE-DO, MY BAD.
"Ignore that." His mouth happens. Moving on. "I have to take a shower and make like fifty phone calls before I even think about any of that. Half of which you two should think about investing in as well. And Does Louis even have a coffin?"
Instinct to say Fuck no successfully overruled for now. Daniel does not want to have an actual sleepover, the idea of it brushing unpleasantly against his sense of privacy. But on the other hand—
Before he steps out, he moves closer to Lestat, and touches his arm.
"Thank you."
For the record. A pause before he withdraws, silently checking. Are you alright? It was just, a lot, that violence. Watching Louis get dragged away, voluntarily this time. A moment of recognizing the ordeal, no matter how soundly it's been handled. Maybe Lestat needs them to be in one place for his own mental health, and that, Daniel can probably talk himself into.
When Louis chooses silence, first, Lestat's expression hardens into sullen angles, a brief tangle of feeling that Daniel's first statement puts a hatchet through. Arms folding, listening to all these words and none of them are what a good idea, Lestat, you're so smart, but as a professional at getting his own way, does not detect a fuck no either.
Forming up an argument put on hold with that little gesture and word of gratitude, some tense thing in him easing a fraction. Enough that an itemised list of logical reasons why sleeping as a group is set aside in favour of a pleading look that confirms that yes, Lestat would personally feel better if they were not to retire to separate rooms.
Daniel is permitted to go, Lestat answering his thanks with a little hum to convey Of course. Any time.
And, to Louis, "Do you have a coffin?" He had promised, signed in triplicate, that he would retrieve his.
"It's been placed in my room," as requested, as promised. It's here. Louis and his complex feelings about it are irrelevant to the discussion.
Takes a swallow from his mug. Sterile, this blood. But it does its job, will mitigate whatever after effects might have stuck annoyingly overnight.
Louis crosses closer. Puts two fingers through a vicious tear across the front of Lestat's suit and feels his chest tighten. Guilty. Reassured, still, by the warmth of skin beneath. Can hear Daniel moving, finds comfort in that too.
Lestat flicks a glance down at the mug of blood being held as Louis approaches, initially unmoving from his stance and posture before he unfolds his arms. Goes to take the mug from Louis' hands, bringing it up to peer into. Sips from.
Tastes like blood. But like how he would expect dead blood to taste, bitter, lifeless. Doesn't make a face, but doesn't take another, wiping teeth with tongue to get rid of it. Swallows.
Diminishing. It doesn't work, a coolly unimpressed expression flickering across his face. Of course she injured Lestat, she was attempting to stop him from killing her, and he begrudges not at all the deep tracks she raked into his body in her final miserable moments. It's all that came before that is the sin.
But Louis relents, says the thing, and he puts a hand over Louis'.
"I wouldn't be surprised to know if half of your enemies are simply jealous for your audacities," he says, semi-joking, semi-not. A conspiring quiet, as if said enemies were across the room, "Angered they didn't do it first."
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Less dignity in the jog around to the door that would lead him to Louis. He is a sight since they last saw him, absolutely drenched in blood, soaked into his nice suit, hands gloved in drying gore, crimson up to his ears, higher in spatters. Wrenches open the door and enters with the uncomfortably bullish energy of a dog that doesn't realise it's about to get mud everywhere jumping in, oblivious.
Still a little glassily black eyed, fangs present, and this backseat is not designed to comfortably house three fully grown men which is why Louis has to take a knee to the thigh as Lestat insists on an embrace.
"Why did you do that," sounds agonised, angry, despite this tangle of limbs.
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This doesn't sound like some badass, delusional assertion. There's tired, frustrated logic to it. But before any conversation can manifest, a big bloody mastiff is pawing into the car, and Daniel feels incredible relief that he hasn't lied to either of them, or himself. Everyone is fine.
Daniel knows why Louis did it but he keeps his mouth shut, because hollering at him is not going to help. Instead he looks forward, seeing the statue stillness of the mortal still in the driver's seat, expression a mask of blankness but knuckles very white on the wheel.
Yeah, makes sense.
"Out," Daniel tells him, and Rashid wastes no time. Daniel follows him, leaving Lestat and Louis in the car. Hopefully it looks enough like he's mind controlling a random jerk that it doesn't draw any attention— not that he thinks there's much of a chance of pulling Lestat away from what he's doing right this minute anyway.
(A few paces out,
"You're free, Double-oh-sixty-nine, fucking get out of here." A beat, and Rashid finally looks shaken. Daniel tells him, sincerely, Thank you, and agrees to talk to Raglan, and soon. Rashid has enough self-preservation not to glance back at the laptop as he makes his escape, handing the beat up car's keys to Daniel as he does.
Sigh.)
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Unbearable.
But Louis is saved from the impulse to argue the point by the appearance of Lestat, soaked in gore but unhurt, alive, tearful. Louis straightens up from Daniel's shoulder to facilitate the embrace, weather the dig of knee to thigh as he draws Lestat in close. Cradles a hand to the back of his head, cold titanium held carefully away from Lestat's nape.
Daniel is out of the car. Louis has an ear attuned to them, attentive to Daniel's movement on the other side of the door as he breathes out, relieved. Lestat is alright. Daniel is alright.
"I'm okay," he murmurs. "I'm fine."
Does not say: She was threatening you both.
"She's finished. You finished it."
Daniel hadn't said, but Louis doesn't need it spelled out for him. He'd lit her on fire. Lestat had ripped out of the truck and into the air. There are no mysteries as to what followed.
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Slowly eases back. That momentary flash of vision of the metal cuffs returning to him, and Lestat settles on the seat as he goes and collects Louis' wrists to look at. Jaw set, angry, as he carefully feels them over.
Some strange locking mechanism that evades his ability to simply snap them open with his mind. Magnetic, electronic. The material itself, chosen to be resisted by most vampires. Fortunately, Lestat is the world's most special vampire, and he sets about carefully testing the weak points, the hinges.
"I should have finished it slower," he mutters, almost sulky, as if tearing her limb from limb was not punishment enough for this indignity.
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But not tonight.
"I'm not sorry you finished and came back to us quickly," Louis counters, pragmatic. Easier to be so when the worst is behind them. He can consider how indignant he feels, how vengeful, tomorrow.
Attention halved, the focus of his concern like a hand pressed to the center of Daniel's back. Some part of Louis fretful at having Daniel out of the car at all. Louis voices dips quieter, hands turning to interrupt Lestat's inspection.
"Are you hurt?" bypasses all the logistical questions that would be better discussed with Daniel in the car.
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Superficial, unimportant. Lestat indulges the gesture by gripping Louis' hands, impressing upon him the truth of his words. "I'm alright, Louis. She wasn't much of a challenge after you were done with her."
Fond. Pleased, even. A formidable fledgling. His children are all great, actually, contrary to popular belief.
"We make a good team, non?"
See, isn't it so, the wisdom of all of them together? There is still a little glitch in him fretting that Louis was left alone for even this brief moment in time, that Louis went to it so willingly, but for now, Lestat can lift their tangled hands and smear a bloodied little kiss against Louis' knuckles, before he sets on the shackles in earnest.
"Hold still, now," as he gets his fingers beneath the metal. Focuses, and a sharp crack of breaking metal parts chimes brightly in the limited space. Lestat lets out a relieved breath, going for the second.
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"Thank you," a moment later, for the shattering of the cuff. The skin beneath is swollen, but already ebbing away. Not worth remarking upon. Lestat is permitted custody of the remaining shackle, Louis' fingers lingering, moving to map the most obvious topography of their scuffle.
A swirl of other things Louis could say. An apology. For the ruined suit. For dragging Lestat into all of this.
"I didn't think to collect the sword," is what Louis settles on. A little humor as Lestat attends the cuff.
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In, door closed, seat belt on - the car will just make annoying ding sounds on a loop if he doesn't - engine started. They start rolling and he reaches out to close the abandoned laptop and set it on the floor. Talamasca is probably trying to remotely lock and wipe it already, but he's sure his guy will be able to crack it. Hah. His now.
Being a chauffeur is annoying, but. Here they are.
"Nobody wants anything from the drive-thru while we're out, right?"
Deadpan. Let's fucking get out of here.
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"A pity," he says, "it was going to go over my mantle."
Daniel, in the front seat, the car in motion. As anxious and fussed as Lestat might be at any given time for their being a little group of three rather than simply putting Louis over his shoulder and vanishing into the night, they have lingered in each other's company long enough for him to find something comforting in it. Some stupid coven-adjacent instinct, maybe, or perhaps it is just them, who they are, who he is, what each little configuration means.
Gross. He snaps open the second cuff, rattles it carelessly, drops it in the front seat. "These are quite particular," he tells Daniel, before listing back into his seat. Keeping Louis' hand. "For your sleuthing."
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But surprised by Daniel. Underestimated Louis.
Fortunate that she's dead. Dead, and unable to carry news of Daniel throughout the vampiric grapevine.
His thumb runs circles over Lestat's knuckles, a small unconscious motion meant to soothe, though unclear if it's for Louis' beneath or Lestat's.
And then, suddenly: "We're going to have to smuggle Lestat back into the hotel."
Though Louis is hardly inconspicuous himself.
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Clink. Weird shit. Sleuthing indeed.
"Employee parking elevator, noted."
Daniel sticks to side roads and loops around to avoid busy streets as best he can, not wanting to get pulled over for a fix-it ticket thanks to the windshield. None of them look pristine, though Daniel's bloody hands are minimal to Lestat's gore-bath look.
A few things he could say—
That wasn't so bad after all.
Why the fuck did you do that.
One of them came up in my research.
Daniel says none of it. Remains quiet, like a fucking taxi driver, still feeling distant from himself in his head, and lacking the motivation to pick a fight with Louis about a suicidal move. He's fine, Lestat's fine, everyone is fine, the hotel's not that far away, even if he suddenly has a pang of desire to go back to his apartment instead. It just means he's exhausted, is all.
"Well," when the hotel is around the corner, "I did like the Met, anyway."
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Old instinct against appearing like too much of an alien, even now, having just flown all over the place, covered in gore, with Louis past a century, and Daniel suffering in bondage with a true eldritch creature. Still, the unease remains. Perhaps he is already that himself and doesn't know it.
Magnus, Marius, Armand. Maybe this Eimear, too, incapable of love, of being loved.
"Me too," about the Met. Squeezes Louis' hand. "All of it. Even the ladder."
It would be nice, to return to the state they were so rudely shaken from.
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Answering the squeeze of Lestat's fingers with a tightening of his own.
"Perhaps we could consider the Brooklyn Museum then," Louis says. "Before we leave the city."
Ha, ha. (unless?)
As they come rolling to a stop by the curb, Louis is torn between simply languishing in the backseat, and getting into their shared room as quickly as possible. A moment of searching quiet, measuring up his own ability, what's left of his strength. Blood has dried tacky all across his cheek, chin and throat.
"We thinking they'll come reclaim the car?" is only a delaying tactic. Louis doesn't need to unravel his contact with either of them until they start moving.
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They're friends.
No one is stopping at a curb, Daniel is moving them into the basement parking garage, which most locals don't make use of because most locals aren't stupid enough to have cars, but Daniel does and so he knows where it is. He pulls them up in a not-a-parking-space area by the service elevator, and sits there for a while, reaching out to check where various employees are milling about. No use leaping out drenched in blood only to have some part-timer from room service start screaming.
"I'll have somebody come get it," he says, about the car. "Pains in the ass, but it was very helpful to have dedicated stalkers, tonight."
You know. Just in case Louis was thinking of taking out Real Rashid's treachery on whoever shows up.
"Do you want to get your staff down here or should we just—?"
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Lestat already climbing out of the door, hand slipping from Louis' grasp. A reflexive fixing of the sit of his ruined suit once on his feet, except that the button he was about to use to close his jacket is now missing, so, c'est la vie.
"We should leave the city," instead, reasserting this off-handed thing being said. "Lingering will invite scrutiny, even if we have bought ourselves a little time before another attempt is made."
He can't imagine the next group of villains will be eager to follow that act.
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Relinquishing his grip on Lestat, Louis slides out after him. Beats a scattering of soot out of his jacket.
"Vermont," is not a question or contradiction, only assessing. The next stop on the tour. What kind of landscape would this present, should someone else take a run at Louis?
Presently, no one needs to entertain Louis' suspicions that he should return to Dubai. They're all tired.
"I'll have Rachida manage the security tapes," Louis murmurs, looking to Daniel. "Do you have everything you'd like out of the car?"
Assuming it will not be here should they return in six to eight hours.
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Daniel has already scooped up the laptop and abhorrent cuffs; he leaves the keys tucked into the visor. Sticky fingers turned crumbly with blood. The empty car is environmental storytelling on its own, gruesome horror. He looks at it for a moment before turning away to bump the elevator button with his elbow, and thinks it will be a miracle if he doesn't start screaming the second he's alone.
Anyway.
"Vermont," he agrees.
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Getting up into the apartment manages to be uneventful, a combination of decent luck, a mind trick or two, and an alert to Louis' staff to help clear the way. No presents from Armand await them in the little landing area outside the elevator, nor within the room itself. Lestat is moving with a long-limbed stride for his corner of the floor in anticipation for a long hot shower, and then pauses.
Pivots back, considering the common space. An option, perhaps. To catch up the other two—
"We should move our coffins into the same room," with a gesture to indicate a rounding up, spoken with the tone of someone who is expecting to be agreed with, and for this thing to be done with efficiency. He looks to Louis directly, Louis who has demonstrated a penchant for going off on his own and not sleeping in a coffin. "Safer, if we are all together."
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Louis, streaked in blood and ash. Louis, whose exhaustion is clearer now than it was before the door to this ostensibly safe room closed behind them.
Says nothing, immediately. Looks sideways to Daniel.
Perhaps has some insight that Daniel will not be thrilled by this suggestion, but willing to wait and be surprised by him.
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—Oops sorry too fast not helpful. Daniel holds his hands up. RE-DO, MY BAD.
"Ignore that." His mouth happens. Moving on. "I have to take a shower and make like fifty phone calls before I even think about any of that. Half of which you two should think about investing in as well. And Does Louis even have a coffin?"
Instinct to say Fuck no successfully overruled for now. Daniel does not want to have an actual sleepover, the idea of it brushing unpleasantly against his sense of privacy. But on the other hand—
Before he steps out, he moves closer to Lestat, and touches his arm.
"Thank you."
For the record. A pause before he withdraws, silently checking. Are you alright? It was just, a lot, that violence. Watching Louis get dragged away, voluntarily this time. A moment of recognizing the ordeal, no matter how soundly it's been handled. Maybe Lestat needs them to be in one place for his own mental health, and that, Daniel can probably talk himself into.
Alright. Argue about coffins without him, brb.
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Forming up an argument put on hold with that little gesture and word of gratitude, some tense thing in him easing a fraction. Enough that an itemised list of logical reasons why sleeping as a group is set aside in favour of a pleading look that confirms that yes, Lestat would personally feel better if they were not to retire to separate rooms.
Daniel is permitted to go, Lestat answering his thanks with a little hum to convey Of course. Any time.
And, to Louis, "Do you have a coffin?" He had promised, signed in triplicate, that he would retrieve his.
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Takes a swallow from his mug. Sterile, this blood. But it does its job, will mitigate whatever after effects might have stuck annoyingly overnight.
Louis crosses closer. Puts two fingers through a vicious tear across the front of Lestat's suit and feels his chest tighten. Guilty. Reassured, still, by the warmth of skin beneath. Can hear Daniel moving, finds comfort in that too.
"We should replace this before we go."
However impractical it will be in Vermont.
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Tastes like blood. But like how he would expect dead blood to taste, bitter, lifeless. Doesn't make a face, but doesn't take another, wiping teeth with tongue to get rid of it. Swallows.
"Did she hurt you?" he asks, instead.
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He receives back his cup. Drinks again, palm flattening over Lestat's chest. The fabric is saturated with blood, drying slowly.
"Not the way she hurt you."
Diminishing. He's alright. He's tired.
And yet, Louis promised.
So he tries: "But she did hurt me. She wanted that very much, I think."
Louis, who said too much. Spilled all of their secrets out for humanity's inspection. Who broke the Great Laws, again.
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But Louis relents, says the thing, and he puts a hand over Louis'.
"I wouldn't be surprised to know if half of your enemies are simply jealous for your audacities," he says, semi-joking, semi-not. A conspiring quiet, as if said enemies were across the room, "Angered they didn't do it first."
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bow??
🎀