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lestat de lioncourt. ([personal profile] damnedest) wrote2024-07-27 03:00 pm
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-14 05:05 am (UTC)(link)
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."

Though Louis is hardly inconspicuous himself.
followups: by manual. (—0025.)

[personal profile] followups 2024-10-14 07:28 am (UTC)(link)
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."
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-14 10:57 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] followups 2024-10-15 04:12 am (UTC)(link)
"So you can steal a Ringgold?"

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-15 05:54 am (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] followups 2024-10-15 06:10 am (UTC)(link)
Well, a hose wouldn't hurt Lestat.

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-15 04:37 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
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[personal profile] followups 2024-10-15 09:58 pm (UTC)(link)
"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.

Alright. Argue about coffins without him, brb.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-15 10:50 pm (UTC)(link)
"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.

"We should replace this before we go."

However impractical it will be in Vermont.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-15 11:04 pm (UTC)(link)
A question Louis has been expecting. Deciding, maybe, what he should and shouldn't say about the long minutes held in the back of that box truck.

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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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-16 12:03 am (UTC)(link)
"Maybe."

There's something to it. Remembering Armand, that night together walking along the river. They're jealous of your freedom.

"Doesn't make them any less of an inconvenience," Louis says, light over the harsher dimensions of their evening. Of a thing Louis had expected to weather alone, and then had thought would never come to pass, and now must mitigate, so it never touches eiher of them again.

"I'm sorry this ruined your suit."
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-16 12:38 am (UTC)(link)
A soft ah of sound, as Louis withdraws. Releases Lestat to his ablutions, totes his mug back to his own room.

He doesn't mean to be long, but there is some time lost in examining the imprint of the near abduction on his body. Bruises blooming, wrists mottled dark. Blood and blood and blood, caked down his cheek and jaw, clinging to his throat. His hair, mussed where her fingers dug in.

Breathes out. Sets his jaw.

Boils a little under the hot spray, basks in the steam afterwards as he tends to his hair. Soothing, to oil and carefully twist the impression of her fingers out of his hair. Dresses in neutrals, dove-colored joggers, and a soft cream cardigan over another thin, slouchy t-shirt, deep vee-neck baring collarbones.

Louis emerges soon after, damp and washed clean of the night's events. Obligingly hauls his coffin out into the common area, where Rachida has left another steaming mug of blood, and the mangled remains of a VHS tape for Louis to smile over before sweeping it into the garbage and scraping together just enough strength to set it aflame without any fanfare.
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[personal profile] followups 2024-10-16 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
He set Lestat up with time with Louis, who did not want to be alone after a traumatic incident, and nobody asked to shower together? You centuries-old kids have zero game. This is agonizing.

But.

By the time everyone else is done sluicing off far more sludge, Daniel is pajamad and robed and pacing back and forth in his room between the new laptop and his existing one, on the phone with somebody. Not quite an argument, but he is definitely negotiating about a shit ass car he knows nobody actually wants, and being followed, and something about the history of wanting him to pay for expensive restaurants, you dickhead.

In any event, he's left the door open, but he hasn't moved his coffin, because he is busy. Trying to wrap up a few things before anyone comes to try and whisk him away.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-16 01:20 am (UTC)(link)
The door is open.

Lestat has not reappeared, but Louis can hear him. Is telling himself he's permitted to keep light tabs, at least until the next evening. Less worried about fledglings and more worried about what humans might desire be done in the aftermath.

Daniel is talking. Louis, and his massive mug of blood, silently slips in through the door.

He likes this, listening to Daniel. Doesn't attempt to interrupt, only makes himself comfortable on the single available seat in the room, and waits.
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[personal profile] followups 2024-10-16 03:04 am (UTC)(link)
After Louis sits down, Daniel walks over to him, smiles a little and reaches out to touch his face, holding there and stroking his thumb over his cheek. Checking in silently— and even without vampire hearing, the tinny voice through the phone is close enough to be overheard, a man complaining about how he's going to get demoted and shipped off to a remove office in rural Lithuania cleaning bogus witchcraft artefacts with a toothbrush if another public disaster happens around an asset he's supposed to be working with.

"I'm still not an asset," he tells the guy on the phone (who might sound familiar, like maybe he bought some Bacon paintings?). "We're doing business sometimes, that's it. You bought some of my time with this, and again, thanks—"

Banter, mostly. It's clear the man on the phone is looking for an angle but he's not finding one. Not anywhere near as good of a conversational assassin as Molloy, no matter how comfortable they sound with each other. Behind him, the cuffs Louis had on are sitting on a table with a lamp positioned directly over them, like he was taking photos of them. They had to come from somewhere.

'Be done with this one soon,' he tells Louis mind to mind.
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[personal profile] divorcing 2024-10-16 03:25 am (UTC)(link)
A slow breath out, tension easing out of his body as Louis' head tips into that touch. An answering flex of a smile working across Louis' face. Tired. Fond. All violence and danger aside, it comes so easily to be pleased by his presence, their closeness. How good it is, that Daniel is still here.

Don't give them an easy out on my account, Louis murmurs back. I like hearing you run circles around them.

Familiar voice. Not yet placed, though Louis is admittedly not overinvested in trying. Yet.
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[personal profile] followups 2024-10-16 05:21 am (UTC)(link)
'He's a little tiring,' Daniel admits about the guy on the phone, a wry edge to the telepathic words. Better to cut him off when Daniel has reached an acceptable point than let him spin.

A look up, when Lestat enters.

Schrödinger's PDA: if Louis kept his lean, or heaven forbid, reached a hand up to cover his, Daniel will have held the position. If not, a withdrawal after a moment to connect.

In any event: he wraps the call off with a pointed GoodBYE, Raglan, and he checks his phone to make sure the recording was working properly, and then goes to plug it into his laptop to transfer it. HmHm. He is the loungewear fashion cross between them, regular sweatpants and a long-sleeved sleep shirt with a faded band logo, ordinary blue plaid robe. Nothing luxury, but also, no scandalously exposed skin. Just the ankles. Anticipating company, he's even got slippers on. No free feet pics.

"I bet I can get the sword back."

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bow??

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