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."
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.
"Fuck the suit," also light, a little pat to Louis' hand. "I already have too many clothes to pack with me for when we go leave this place."
But he will get another, if Louis insists on feeling responsible for this latest diminishment to his wardrobe. Lestat, relatively used to abandoning or replacing this or that item thanks to too much blood. Just vampire things. He closes his fingers around Louis' hand.
Considers it. Admonishment for Louis going off on his own. But then, Louis kept fighting. Has not complained to them of their interference. Lestat studies his face, before drawing in a breath.
"She is beginning to itch. I am going to shower. I won't be long."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is certainly a moment mid-shower, while Lestat is listening to Louis' motions across the apartment floor beneath the sound of hissing water, that it occurs to him he could probably have gotten a co-bathing hurt-comfort situation out of this, and considers if killing himself is a proportionate reaction. Contents instead with a brisk scrubbing down that leaves him clean and his bathroom a fucking horror show nightmare, to be made someone else's problem tomorrow.
The blasting of his blow dryer follows the shuffling around of his coffin, and soon, the thump of it being set down near Louis' in the common area. Does the math (three minus two leaves one), and drifts in that direction he hears voices.
Appears at the doorway, also pyjama'd in sweatpants and a stolen band shirt with a slutty sliver of skin visible between the two. Messily dried hair has been tied back. Peeks in at the threshold, clawed hands gripping the frame, curious and not immediately about to fly off the handle about any private displays of affection he may or may not have missed. As far as anyone can tell.
'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.
Schrödinger says: Louis stayed, leaning in to Daniel's hand and the press of his finger. The mug balanced on one thigh. Listening. Enjoying these little jabs at the unknown caller's expense. Let this little point of contact anchor Louis into his body while Daniel engages in low stakes verbal combat.
Straightens without complaint when Daniel draws away. A soft breath of laughter for the invocation of the sword. Look, they can joke about it. Everything's fine, isn't it?
"A trade for the car?"
Because surely Daniel is keeping the laptop.
Louis reaches out a hand to Lestat, raising the mug back to his mouth. Drink enough, and it'll offset whatever lingering headache waits in the morning, surely.
It would almost be a relief to his own missed opportunity to recall to himself that Louis' interests lay elsewhere, his sources of comfort and steadiness, except Lestat is insane, and there is no relief to be found. Fingernails score little dots into the wood of the frame, but the moment passes, and he hadn't vanished immediately from the doorway before it has.
Fine, yes, we have jokes.
"If you would," he tells Daniel primly. "It might spare my nails from our next altercation." He had to scrape a lot of dead Irish flesh out from under his.
Gaze tracking to Louis' held out hand. A stubborn little split second of time before he caves, makes his way inside. He is also wearing slippers, being the oldest man here. Meets that hand with a brush of fingertips.
Looks him over. Lestat's wounds are visible and half-healed from a well timed gulp of semi-ancient blood as well as his own natural abilities, red markings up and down his arms, peeking from his collar, but he can guess that Louis' injuries run deeper, invisible.
Daniel will be bartering with information, access to other vampires, that sort of thing. Raglan is a con artist and thinks Molloy isn't aware— stupid, but hey, nobody's perfect. They'll figure something out. Talamasca is aware it has to give something to get something, and despite the fact that they're still salty about having given Daniel that script without actually getting anything in return, and having published the book despite the fact that Daniel continues to not act as an asset, they remain very willing to play ball.
He will get the sword for nothing, is what we're saying. They're handily retrieving and cleaning it off and keeping it socked away for safekeeping.
"They're cleaning it up, making it look like an indie movie stunt. A hotshot zoomer moving from YouTube analog horror to wanting 'real' reactions. Which," Daniel shrugs, makes an 'eh' gesture, "does not help my personal assertion that vampires are real, but does help us squeak out of law enforcement attention."
So, you know. Evens out.
"Are you still set on—?"
He points to the main room. Manages not to say blanket forts or something like that.
Amusement coloring Louis' expression as Daniel relays all of this. The soon-to-be abandoned car. The sword that will be another logistical difficulty for Rachida or for the young woman Lestat has chosen to manage his affairs in the present moment. The prospect of their escapades mythologized into a movie stunt.
Louis hooks into that little brush of fingers. Links Lestat's and keeps hold of his hand while Lestat inspects and Louis observes him in return. Marks out all the patches of healing skin, what's visible, what is no longer displayed.
Decides to hold a grudge. Has yet to feel inclined to volunteer anything further, just yet.
Is Lestat still set on them occupying the main room? Louis can guess the answer. Lifts the mug to his lips instead to drain the contents in long, unbroken swallows while Lestat responds.
Lestat's eyebrows hike up at this query. Set on what? His suggestion, which they have all agreed upon, that they keep each other safe through proximity? What could possibly have changed his mind? ?? ?
His other hand joins the one tangled with Louis', a little squeeze before letting him go, and he roams on over to Daniel's coffin. Bends, hooking his fingers into the handle at the end of it, hefting it up.
"Yes," airily, and sets about moving it out into the common space.
He kind of wants to argue and advocate for his own privacy — it's not like getting Louis here from the other side of planet Earth, there's a difference between safety in numbers and not wanting to feel babysat - but realizes that's petulant of him. Louis is fucked up even if he's not saying so, and Lestat is clearly feeling a way or thirty (twenty-five ways about Louis, easy, he thinks).
"I still have a few phone calls to make," he points out. "But I'll shut up at dawn."
... Maybe.
Handy that the next person he has to call lives in another timezone. From the tone of the conversation, this one is somehow weirder than the secret agent librarians. Following up with the ex-roommate of the secret child of a disgraced priest, who swears he knows, via other priests, about an ex-exorcist (what a title) who lives in Singapore and who executed a vampire by chaining him to a boulder in the water and waiting for nature to take its course in the sun. Are you shitting me, Daniel asks aloud, as this guy explains that it was meant to be ecologically friendly, because it was near a coral reef and something something, nutrients, and clearly this is a fake story, but Daniel wants to run down all these leads anyway. Because a Molotov cocktail and a shitty van are a world away from the sophistication of those cuffs, and somebody out there is manufacturing items to restrain vampires.
Can all this wait? He doesn't know. They were just dicking around at a museum. The book tour is nearly over. Maybe it can't.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
"Fuck the suit," also light, a little pat to Louis' hand. "I already have too many clothes to pack with me for when we go leave this place."
But he will get another, if Louis insists on feeling responsible for this latest diminishment to his wardrobe. Lestat, relatively used to abandoning or replacing this or that item thanks to too much blood. Just vampire things. He closes his fingers around Louis' hand.
Considers it. Admonishment for Louis going off on his own. But then, Louis kept fighting. Has not complained to them of their interference. Lestat studies his face, before drawing in a breath.
"She is beginning to itch. I am going to shower. I won't be long."
no subject
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.
no subject
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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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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"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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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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The blasting of his blow dryer follows the shuffling around of his coffin, and soon, the thump of it being set down near Louis' in the common area. Does the math (three minus two leaves one), and drifts in that direction he hears voices.
Appears at the doorway, also pyjama'd in sweatpants and a stolen band shirt with a slutty sliver of skin visible between the two. Messily dried hair has been tied back. Peeks in at the threshold, clawed hands gripping the frame, curious and not immediately about to fly off the handle about any private displays of affection he may or may not have missed. As far as anyone can tell.
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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."
no subject
Straightens without complaint when Daniel draws away. A soft breath of laughter for the invocation of the sword. Look, they can joke about it. Everything's fine, isn't it?
"A trade for the car?"
Because surely Daniel is keeping the laptop.
Louis reaches out a hand to Lestat, raising the mug back to his mouth. Drink enough, and it'll offset whatever lingering headache waits in the morning, surely.
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Fine, yes, we have jokes.
"If you would," he tells Daniel primly. "It might spare my nails from our next altercation." He had to scrape a lot of dead Irish flesh out from under his.
Gaze tracking to Louis' held out hand. A stubborn little split second of time before he caves, makes his way inside. He is also wearing slippers, being the oldest man here. Meets that hand with a brush of fingertips.
Looks him over. Lestat's wounds are visible and half-healed from a well timed gulp of semi-ancient blood as well as his own natural abilities, red markings up and down his arms, peeking from his collar, but he can guess that Louis' injuries run deeper, invisible.
"Have the spy librarians said anything of use?"
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Daniel will be bartering with information, access to other vampires, that sort of thing. Raglan is a con artist and thinks Molloy isn't aware— stupid, but hey, nobody's perfect. They'll figure something out. Talamasca is aware it has to give something to get something, and despite the fact that they're still salty about having given Daniel that script without actually getting anything in return, and having published the book despite the fact that Daniel continues to not act as an asset, they remain very willing to play ball.
He will get the sword for nothing, is what we're saying. They're handily retrieving and cleaning it off and keeping it socked away for safekeeping.
"They're cleaning it up, making it look like an indie movie stunt. A hotshot zoomer moving from YouTube analog horror to wanting 'real' reactions. Which," Daniel shrugs, makes an 'eh' gesture, "does not help my personal assertion that vampires are real, but does help us squeak out of law enforcement attention."
So, you know. Evens out.
"Are you still set on—?"
He points to the main room. Manages not to say blanket forts or something like that.
no subject
Louis hooks into that little brush of fingers. Links Lestat's and keeps hold of his hand while Lestat inspects and Louis observes him in return. Marks out all the patches of healing skin, what's visible, what is no longer displayed.
Decides to hold a grudge. Has yet to feel inclined to volunteer anything further, just yet.
Is Lestat still set on them occupying the main room? Louis can guess the answer. Lifts the mug to his lips instead to drain the contents in long, unbroken swallows while Lestat responds.
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His other hand joins the one tangled with Louis', a little squeeze before letting him go, and he roams on over to Daniel's coffin. Bends, hooking his fingers into the handle at the end of it, hefting it up.
"Yes," airily, and sets about moving it out into the common space.
no subject
He kind of wants to argue and advocate for his own privacy — it's not like getting Louis here from the other side of planet Earth, there's a difference between safety in numbers and not wanting to feel babysat - but realizes that's petulant of him. Louis is fucked up even if he's not saying so, and Lestat is clearly feeling a way or thirty (twenty-five ways about Louis, easy, he thinks).
"I still have a few phone calls to make," he points out. "But I'll shut up at dawn."
... Maybe.
Handy that the next person he has to call lives in another timezone. From the tone of the conversation, this one is somehow weirder than the secret agent librarians. Following up with the ex-roommate of the secret child of a disgraced priest, who swears he knows, via other priests, about an ex-exorcist (what a title) who lives in Singapore and who executed a vampire by chaining him to a boulder in the water and waiting for nature to take its course in the sun. Are you shitting me, Daniel asks aloud, as this guy explains that it was meant to be ecologically friendly, because it was near a coral reef and something something, nutrients, and clearly this is a fake story, but Daniel wants to run down all these leads anyway. Because a Molotov cocktail and a shitty van are a world away from the sophistication of those cuffs, and somebody out there is manufacturing items to restrain vampires.
Can all this wait? He doesn't know. They were just dicking around at a museum. The book tour is nearly over. Maybe it can't.
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bow??
🎀