"Tired," Louis replies, a half answer. Truthful. A little piece of whatever it is Louis has been working to drown in three novelty mugs' worth of blood. Followed by, "How are you feeling?"
"Not tired," Lestat says, on Daniel's behalf, watching from his slouch as they enter the room. "A good thing I brought his coffin out, so we can make sure it doesn't vibrate out a window."
A busy thinker, is Daniel Molloy.
He shifts to fold an arm over the edge of his coffin, resting chin in hand. His study of the youngest vampire could be unsettling, in the way a set of glacier-blue vampire eyeballs will induce, as well as a little sharp, scouring. But it's sympathetic, maybe, the flex of a smile beneath.
"I meant to ask where the blood on your hands came from. How generous that Louis left some for you."
He is tired, Daniel thinks. It's just the kind that's too on edge to actually rest, so what's the point? But then Lestat continues past where he might volley back in easy banter, and it visibly trips him up.
Pause, before—
"Mostly the guy in the passenger seat, I think."
'Mostly', 'I think', passive voice not because he's hiding anything, but because the speed of it all and the discomfort of processing it makes it difficult for him to go over his own actions. His mind flinches away, even though he knows he has to come to terms with it all, and that it all includes the fact that he, too, killed someone. Multiple someones.
Compartmentalizing. He doesn't want to hear advice about being a vampire. He can deal with it, he's just a little sad, is all.
"I was delayed," comes Louis' explanation, soft-voiced. "The chains were more durable than I'd have guessed."
Still broke, under enough applied pressure.
Louis' fingers gentle at the center of Daniel's back, a grounding pressure. Grounding for which of them? Who can say.
If they aren't going to get into their coffins, then Louis is returning the couch. He is not above taking Daniel with him.
And he wants to ask. To speak honestly about what it is to become the arbiter of such extreme violence. Louis had imparted some of it Daniel, but all things are different now.
Does Lestat have advice? Not really, says his head tip, watching Daniel, a flick of a glance to Louis. Still, he will say the thing out loud, which is, "It was murder," with a shrug. "Your first."
Because killing humans isn't murder.
He settles a little more into his coffin, a sort of signal that he will leave it alone if that is preferred. Not yet ducking back into music listening, fidgeting with his phone instead.
"It's fine. I'm just glad I didn't get caught underfoot in the midst of it."
Which is true. A much worse outcome would have been Daniel slipping on a banana peel and making everything worse. He didn't like what Louis did, but he knew better than to try and impede him once he went for it. He did not like killing anyone, but he prioritized their safety over his own discomfort.
Daniel published the book even though Louis didn't want him to, even though Armand-as-Rashid had angrily made it clear exactly what would happen (that is now happening). He's not going to sit back and refuse to help, if something is happening in front of him.
"Did she inject you with something, by the way?"
Louis. He does not particularly want to go sit down on the couch and indicate that he's willing to have a big conversation about feelings (he is not willing to do this), but he doesn't want to put up a big fuss, and so, he reluctantly goes.
It's fine prompts a flat look from Louis, who occupies the space on the couch alongside Daniel. Lifts the empty mug, testing the weight of it in hand, before setting it alongside them on the end table. Weighs the productivity of trying to corner Daniel into talking about this before offering an answer.
"Yes," Louis says. The collar of his chosen cardigan obscures the fading bruise, how savagely she had jammed her needle. A miracle it had not snapped under the force.
And then, clinically, "It didn't last as long as she had hoped."
Metabolized too quickly. Or Louis was stronger than whichever of her fledglings she had tested it on.
There is a quick little side eye for Daniel leveraging the direction of conversation onto the ways in which Louis suffered, or so it appears to him, and Lestat hadn't even set his teeth into the topic being avoided, not properly—but his attention inevitably draws to Louis, a fretful quick head to toe study to see if there is more he has missed.
"What was it?" is a little impatient prompt, snippy in the way that worry will cause him to be.
What did you say to me about avoidance? whispers into the back of Daniel's mind, Louis' gaze holding his for a long moment before his eyes swing back to Lestat in his coffin.
"A paralytic," Louis answers. "My guess, anyway."
Easy to wave away, now that Louis has emerged more or less unscathed. Tired. Bruised, scraped, but a day's sleep will erase all of these things. And now he knows he can survive it. Can do better, when the next volley presents itself.
Wisely says none of this to Lestat, who probably won't find it comforting.
Phone abandoned in the cushioned interior of his coffin, Lestat folds an arm against the edge, rests his chin in hand. Displeased. Not finding it very easy to wave away at all.
He looks to Daniel, the kind of look a cat might fix on a human in silent accusation for there being rain outside. Do something.
'You scared the shit out of me and I'm still processing everything,' is all Daniel can offer Louis. He hopes it sounds sincere, because it is.
He doesn't want to talk about it. Doesn't know what he'll say. History informs him that he will fuck up talking about it badly and cause an argument. Not a fun one that he and Louis can spar over, but the kind that explain why he's never had a real relationship or even long-term friendship work out.
(Bonding topics, twice divorced, yeah yeah, sure, but none of Daniel's exes are here, or down the street, yearning.)
"Did it hurt? How long do you think it lasted?"
Don't look at him like that, Blondie, YOU'RE the one that wanted the sleepover.
"Could be anesthesia, muscle blocker type surgical drug, or a compound made from something like snake venom. Either way I don't know what the fuck a single syringe was supposed to do. Good thing she wasn't smarter."
Talk to me, doesn't care about the possibility of an argument. I'm not a stranger.
Words borrowed from Daniel, murmured between them.
Aloud, looking between Lestat's expression and Daniel, Louis senses this isn't exactly what Lestat had been hoping for.
Louis does give it consideration, these questions. The promises he'd made to Lestat, to say the hard things. To try.
"It hurt because she made it hurt. Her gift."
Which matters not at all now, because she is dead and gone.
"I don't think she was gambling. I think she expected it to hold," Louis says, hands folding in his lap. Hooking a leg up, ankle balancing on his knee. "Maybe our mutual friend will have found some trace of the syringe or it's case in the wreck."
And there is a certain restless quality in Lestat's glances between the two of them, keyed into the possibility of some secret offline conversation, if not so much that he can raise objection without sounding insane. His fingernails drum a little against his cheek.
"And so after you rushed into her embrace, you were chained, paralysed and tortured," Lestat says. You know, to be clear.
"For the record, if somebody ever threatens me again— that's a whatever, because first of all, she wasn't even on the podium for the scariest vampires who've ever tried to kill me,"
this is an affectionate joke, believe it or not
"Nothing happened to me. Watching you two go through any of that is what sucked. And— look, I'm not saying I don't want to talk about it ever," and now he is looking directly at Louis, not bothering to use telepathy. "I just need a minute. Is this what you guys wanted to talk about, in there?"
An affectionate joke that does an excellent job of reminding Louis of his breathtaking failures at protecting Daniel in the past.
Has to take a moment, wait out the nettled, defensive feeling that rises in the wake of their twined focus, Daniel's realignment. To silently double-down on a chosen course of action, a promise to himself that anyone threatening Daniel will need to die. No more trading on uncertainties.
"We don't have to talk," is only slightly clipped. But it's true, no one has to talk. Lestat hadn't assembled them out here for that. Louis is very aware of the drive behind this assembly, the fearful thing in Lestat that is soothed only by having everyone near to hand.
Lestat gives a scoff and a sigh in one, a peevish little assez under his breath, and only a little more pronounced as he continues with, "Nothing happened, we don't have to talk. Bon, then."
Focuses on Daniel, a little lean past his coffin. "Thank you for picking me up off the floor, and so quickly. I don't know what would have happened if you had not. But something still did happen," to Louis, "and I am not assured you did not take the first chance you could to go off alone and fight without us. Next time," raising a finger, a little point, "I would prefer your gratitude than your apologies for my participation."
And he flings himself back down into his coffin, all sulk.
What did Lestat think was going to happen! Besides arguing! This is what happens when you put people into a room! Daniel takes a breath and thinks like, sure, he can let this go, probably, that's what he wanted to do, right, he's just going to go to "sleep" and lay there and go insane until night rolls around again, and—
'You clearly WANT to talk. Or want me to.'
Echo of an echo, I'm not a stranger. Sneaky but fair, he has to concede.
"I am grateful," a point of correction. Clipping the tailend of Daniel's sure, but otherwise smoothly delivered. "It doesn't keep me from being sorry for what happened."
In which "what happened" is Lestat being clawed and bitten in the process of intervening.
Slow-growing awareness of his own temper, warming as Daniel says this thing to him. Of feeling something beyond nettled, veering towards affronted. His gaze slants to Daniel, leaving Lestat's prone form in coffin. Expression imperceptible as he looks back at his friend, and weighs this.
Has a cruel thing caught in his mouth. The beat of quiet is for the sole purpose of biing down on it, crushing the urge to say it into check.
I'm not a stranger, Louis repeats. I thought that meant something.
Is it only Louis' task to crack open his chest, let all the mess of his emotions spill out to be inspected and reformed?
Taking the highest and brattiest road, this expression of gratitude and reiterated apology goes ignored, Lestat taking his phone back up and navigating through various Spotify playlists. Fortunately, Daniel purchased him the second most expensive headphones in the store and will filter the volume just fine if the over-plush interior of the coffin didn't do the rest.
For a long (?) stretch of silence, it seems like maybe they can. Daniel even just sits there, and gets his phone out, and looks at the message, returns one. Stares at it, puts his phone away again—
'Yeah, the 'something' it means is that I am completely fucked up over you doing that because someone threatened me. My fucking fault that you got drugged and tortured. You walked away with some deranged psychopath after you just got your life back.'
And Daniel did vampire murder, and didn't hesitate because it was Louis, and isn't going to complain about the psychological reeling because it was for Louis. Louis, who didn't want to publish the book, who wants to get into a fight, who went and got tortured because some idiot made a threat that they had no reason to believe was even viable.
Two feet on the floor, stalled from further motion by Daniel's unexpected rejoinder.
A pause, Louis turning to look Daniel full in the face. He can hear just the barest hint of Lestat's chosen playlist. Insurmountable, for the immediate moment. Whatever complicated thing Louis' face does as he considers Lestat walling himself off with his Spotify account—
Well, something for the future.
In the present moment, Louis reaches to touch Daniel's face, cup his cheek. Feels the breadth of this thing he cannot say, because it is too much. Overwhelming. Words locked in his body because they mean everything. But some of it is there, as Louis' expression softens. As he touches Daniel's mind and this thing ebbs in alongside his reply.
You gave me my life back.
By completely demolishing his old one, but—
It's not your fault, what happened.
"We can talk tomorrow," Louis offers. Disinclined to let any part of this go, but more willing to give Daniel a day to process now that Daniel's cracked the door open. Comfortable with something near to a decided upon point for a future conversation. Louis had gotten a full night after Armand had sent a bomb into their room to make a point. It's fair.
As if all of Lestat's senses aren't keyed in to the two other vampires in the room, as if he were wholly focused on his phone, the music leaking from headphones. This time, he knows an unexpected flash of upset rather than the usual bruise he on purpose presses to make twinge, but sealed up tightly behind a taut expression and his eyes on his phone.
Sinks lower amongst his cushions, as he would for properly settling in. Reaches up, snagging a hand on the internal handle, coaxing the lid closed.
Takes a second to change gears again after deciding, alright fine, if Louis wants to be mean and get into an argument about it, let's fucking get into an argument about it— probably obvious on Daniel's face, telepathy or not, as Louis leans in to touch him. They've said plenty of awful shit to each other, why not more, when it means the most?
—distracted, by the coffin lid shutting.
Imagines the neon sign over the flat surface, You Two Are Being Annoying.
"Are you sure screaming about it wouldn't make us both feel better?"
This, too, is affectionate. Daniel sighs and stands up, so he can just give Louis a hug. Fuck all of this, alright, he just cares about him.
Maybe screaming about it would be easier. A lancing of all the stress Louis knows they are all three feeling. But instead, there is this.
Daniel puts arms around him. Louis breathes out. Leans into him, holds on. Tucks his face in against the bend of Daniel's neck and stays there a moment, eyes closed.
He doesn't regret any part of what he did. What he risked. Doesn't risk the toll it's taken on him, what has been staved off by a little blood and will be managed by rest after.
The argument they aren't having is still swirling in the air. Not gone, but staved off. (Maybe.) Lestat's coffin, closing. (The tightening in Louis' chest to observe it.) Daylight rising outside the window. They'll leave soon. Louis is alright.
He makes himself be the one to straighten first from the embrace.
Unless Louis wants to try very hard to reignite it tomorrow, it's probably defused— Daniel didn't want to talk anyway, he'll shelve it, compartmentalize, move on. Who knows what move on will entail. Maybe find a new game plan, maybe nothing. Tomorrow is a new night.
"Yeah, yeah." Fine!! "Goodnight, Louis. You too, Blondie."
Sulking but not forgotten.
Bedtime. Sure. He can pretend. Daniel does a last sweep to make sure he has the right phone charging brick (and to double-check curtains and screens), and then closes himself away in his coffin, sufficiently cowed into giving up the appearance of anything else, today. Into the casket, and the daytime world of anxiety texting, since he's never actually going to be able to get any fucking sleep.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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"Tired," Louis replies, a half answer. Truthful. A little piece of whatever it is Louis has been working to drown in three novelty mugs' worth of blood. Followed by, "How are you feeling?"
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A busy thinker, is Daniel Molloy.
He shifts to fold an arm over the edge of his coffin, resting chin in hand. His study of the youngest vampire could be unsettling, in the way a set of glacier-blue vampire eyeballs will induce, as well as a little sharp, scouring. But it's sympathetic, maybe, the flex of a smile beneath.
"I meant to ask where the blood on your hands came from. How generous that Louis left some for you."
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Pause, before—
"Mostly the guy in the passenger seat, I think."
'Mostly', 'I think', passive voice not because he's hiding anything, but because the speed of it all and the discomfort of processing it makes it difficult for him to go over his own actions. His mind flinches away, even though he knows he has to come to terms with it all, and that it all includes the fact that he, too, killed someone. Multiple someones.
Compartmentalizing. He doesn't want to hear advice about being a vampire. He can deal with it, he's just a little sad, is all.
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Still broke, under enough applied pressure.
Louis' fingers gentle at the center of Daniel's back, a grounding pressure. Grounding for which of them? Who can say.
If they aren't going to get into their coffins, then Louis is returning the couch. He is not above taking Daniel with him.
And he wants to ask. To speak honestly about what it is to become the arbiter of such extreme violence. Louis had imparted some of it Daniel, but all things are different now.
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Because killing humans isn't murder.
He settles a little more into his coffin, a sort of signal that he will leave it alone if that is preferred. Not yet ducking back into music listening, fidgeting with his phone instead.
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Which is true. A much worse outcome would have been Daniel slipping on a banana peel and making everything worse. He didn't like what Louis did, but he knew better than to try and impede him once he went for it. He did not like killing anyone, but he prioritized their safety over his own discomfort.
Daniel published the book even though Louis didn't want him to, even though Armand-as-Rashid had angrily made it clear exactly what would happen (that is now happening). He's not going to sit back and refuse to help, if something is happening in front of him.
"Did she inject you with something, by the way?"
Louis. He does not particularly want to go sit down on the couch and indicate that he's willing to have a big conversation about feelings (he is not willing to do this), but he doesn't want to put up a big fuss, and so, he reluctantly goes.
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"Yes," Louis says. The collar of his chosen cardigan obscures the fading bruise, how savagely she had jammed her needle. A miracle it had not snapped under the force.
And then, clinically, "It didn't last as long as she had hoped."
Metabolized too quickly. Or Louis was stronger than whichever of her fledglings she had tested it on.
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"What was it?" is a little impatient prompt, snippy in the way that worry will cause him to be.
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"A paralytic," Louis answers. "My guess, anyway."
Easy to wave away, now that Louis has emerged more or less unscathed. Tired. Bruised, scraped, but a day's sleep will erase all of these things. And now he knows he can survive it. Can do better, when the next volley presents itself.
Wisely says none of this to Lestat, who probably won't find it comforting.
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He looks to Daniel, the kind of look a cat might fix on a human in silent accusation for there being rain outside. Do something.
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He doesn't want to talk about it. Doesn't know what he'll say. History informs him that he will fuck up talking about it badly and cause an argument. Not a fun one that he and Louis can spar over, but the kind that explain why he's never had a real relationship or even long-term friendship work out.
(Bonding topics, twice divorced, yeah yeah, sure, but none of Daniel's exes are here, or down the street, yearning.)
"Did it hurt? How long do you think it lasted?"
Don't look at him like that, Blondie, YOU'RE the one that wanted the sleepover.
"Could be anesthesia, muscle blocker type surgical drug, or a compound made from something like snake venom. Either way I don't know what the fuck a single syringe was supposed to do. Good thing she wasn't smarter."
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Words borrowed from Daniel, murmured between them.
Aloud, looking between Lestat's expression and Daniel, Louis senses this isn't exactly what Lestat had been hoping for.
Louis does give it consideration, these questions. The promises he'd made to Lestat, to say the hard things. To try.
"It hurt because she made it hurt. Her gift."
Which matters not at all now, because she is dead and gone.
"I don't think she was gambling. I think she expected it to hold," Louis says, hands folding in his lap. Hooking a leg up, ankle balancing on his knee. "Maybe our mutual friend will have found some trace of the syringe or it's case in the wreck."
Since apparently Rashid is just around now.
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And there is a certain restless quality in Lestat's glances between the two of them, keyed into the possibility of some secret offline conversation, if not so much that he can raise objection without sounding insane. His fingernails drum a little against his cheek.
"And so after you rushed into her embrace, you were chained, paralysed and tortured," Lestat says. You know, to be clear.
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>:(
"For the record, if somebody ever threatens me again— that's a whatever, because first of all, she wasn't even on the podium for the scariest vampires who've ever tried to kill me,"
this is an affectionate joke, believe it or not
"Nothing happened to me. Watching you two go through any of that is what sucked. And— look, I'm not saying I don't want to talk about it ever," and now he is looking directly at Louis, not bothering to use telepathy. "I just need a minute. Is this what you guys wanted to talk about, in there?"
Like what is going on, fellas.
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Has to take a moment, wait out the nettled, defensive feeling that rises in the wake of their twined focus, Daniel's realignment. To silently double-down on a chosen course of action, a promise to himself that anyone threatening Daniel will need to die. No more trading on uncertainties.
"We don't have to talk," is only slightly clipped. But it's true, no one has to talk. Lestat hadn't assembled them out here for that. Louis is very aware of the drive behind this assembly, the fearful thing in Lestat that is soothed only by having everyone near to hand.
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Focuses on Daniel, a little lean past his coffin. "Thank you for picking me up off the floor, and so quickly. I don't know what would have happened if you had not. But something still did happen," to Louis, "and I am not assured you did not take the first chance you could to go off alone and fight without us. Next time," raising a finger, a little point, "I would prefer your gratitude than your apologies for my participation."
And he flings himself back down into his coffin, all sulk.
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Brittle, yet trying.
What did Lestat think was going to happen! Besides arguing! This is what happens when you put people into a room! Daniel takes a breath and thinks like, sure, he can let this go, probably, that's what he wanted to do, right, he's just going to go to "sleep" and lay there and go insane until night rolls around again, and—
'You clearly WANT to talk. Or want me to.'
Echo of an echo, I'm not a stranger. Sneaky but fair, he has to concede.
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In which "what happened" is Lestat being clawed and bitten in the process of intervening.
Slow-growing awareness of his own temper, warming as Daniel says this thing to him. Of feeling something beyond nettled, veering towards affronted. His gaze slants to Daniel, leaving Lestat's prone form in coffin. Expression imperceptible as he looks back at his friend, and weighs this.
Has a cruel thing caught in his mouth. The beat of quiet is for the sole purpose of biing down on it, crushing the urge to say it into check.
I'm not a stranger, Louis repeats. I thought that meant something.
Is it only Louis' task to crack open his chest, let all the mess of his emotions spill out to be inspected and reformed?
Aloud: "We can leave it for tonight."
Unhooks ankle from knee, makes to stand.
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For a long (?) stretch of silence, it seems like maybe they can. Daniel even just sits there, and gets his phone out, and looks at the message, returns one. Stares at it, puts his phone away again—
'Yeah, the 'something' it means is that I am completely fucked up over you doing that because someone threatened me. My fucking fault that you got drugged and tortured. You walked away with some deranged psychopath after you just got your life back.'
And Daniel did vampire murder, and didn't hesitate because it was Louis, and isn't going to complain about the psychological reeling because it was for Louis. Louis, who didn't want to publish the book, who wants to get into a fight, who went and got tortured because some idiot made a threat that they had no reason to believe was even viable.
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A pause, Louis turning to look Daniel full in the face. He can hear just the barest hint of Lestat's chosen playlist. Insurmountable, for the immediate moment. Whatever complicated thing Louis' face does as he considers Lestat walling himself off with his Spotify account—
Well, something for the future.
In the present moment, Louis reaches to touch Daniel's face, cup his cheek. Feels the breadth of this thing he cannot say, because it is too much. Overwhelming. Words locked in his body because they mean everything. But some of it is there, as Louis' expression softens. As he touches Daniel's mind and this thing ebbs in alongside his reply.
You gave me my life back.
By completely demolishing his old one, but—
It's not your fault, what happened.
"We can talk tomorrow," Louis offers. Disinclined to let any part of this go, but more willing to give Daniel a day to process now that Daniel's cracked the door open. Comfortable with something near to a decided upon point for a future conversation. Louis had gotten a full night after Armand had sent a bomb into their room to make a point. It's fair.
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As if all of Lestat's senses aren't keyed in to the two other vampires in the room, as if he were wholly focused on his phone, the music leaking from headphones. This time, he knows an unexpected flash of upset rather than the usual bruise he on purpose presses to make twinge, but sealed up tightly behind a taut expression and his eyes on his phone.
Sinks lower amongst his cushions, as he would for properly settling in. Reaches up, snagging a hand on the internal handle, coaxing the lid closed.
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—distracted, by the coffin lid shutting.
Imagines the neon sign over the flat surface, You Two Are Being Annoying.
"Are you sure screaming about it wouldn't make us both feel better?"
This, too, is affectionate. Daniel sighs and stands up, so he can just give Louis a hug. Fuck all of this, alright, he just cares about him.
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Maybe screaming about it would be easier. A lancing of all the stress Louis knows they are all three feeling. But instead, there is this.
Daniel puts arms around him. Louis breathes out. Leans into him, holds on. Tucks his face in against the bend of Daniel's neck and stays there a moment, eyes closed.
He doesn't regret any part of what he did. What he risked. Doesn't risk the toll it's taken on him, what has been staved off by a little blood and will be managed by rest after.
The argument they aren't having is still swirling in the air. Not gone, but staved off. (Maybe.) Lestat's coffin, closing. (The tightening in Louis' chest to observe it.) Daylight rising outside the window. They'll leave soon. Louis is alright.
He makes himself be the one to straighten first from the embrace.
"You can scream at me tomorrow."
Putting a pin in this.
"It's late now. You need sleep."
Growing fledglings, etc.
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"Yeah, yeah." Fine!! "Goodnight, Louis. You too, Blondie."
Sulking but not forgotten.
Bedtime. Sure. He can pretend. Daniel does a last sweep to make sure he has the right phone charging brick (and to double-check curtains and screens), and then closes himself away in his coffin, sufficiently cowed into giving up the appearance of anything else, today. Into the casket, and the daytime world of anxiety texting, since he's never actually going to be able to get any fucking sleep.
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bow??
🎀