Louis will get a brief mental illustration of what gives them away, which is: neon Las Vegas style signs pointing at eyes, nails, and the vibe, which to anyone in the know (which Mark is) is as obvious as anything. Sure, people can wear contacts and acrylics, but once you know what you're looking for, well.
Anyway,
"They said it just tasted like shitty pancakes and bacon."
They, because of course the mortals immediately got one. Daniel sits next to Lestat, putting a buffer between the Muppet pelt and anyone else, so Mark is obliged to sit next to Louis. Jeannie slings her enormous bucket bag (effectively the same size as if Jeannie sat there herself, full of Mary Poppins wonders, and also just a ton of shit) towards her partner so that she can squeeze next to her boss and show him things on her phone.
So: food, for the humans, and coffee for the not-humans if they want something bitter and warm to told between their hands, and Jeannie has updates relevant to everybody about the coverage of Roy's death. He's currently wanted for the harassment of several women in Florida, and a strong theory is that he's left somewhere to off himself. She also has some almost-viral videos of the Met incident saved, snagged before they were scrubbed off social media for 'copyright infringement', and also, she is put out that Daniel won't eat her landlord.
Mark is coming with them, he tells Louis over his girlfriend's deluge of news and complaints. They met while she was doing research for Daniel, you see.
Lestat, leaning past Daniel to inform Jeannie of this directly. There follows some conferring about how this can be done, technologically speaking, and somewhere Lestat's lawyer gets a spontaneous migraine as he freely hands his still-on-Daniel's-plan phone over to a journalist's millennial assistant to make it happen.
Mark, so far, can still live, Lestat briefly distracted from the threat of a good looking mortal sitting so closely to Louis by promise of footage of himself. The fun nail polish is also intriguing. But also,
"Why won't you?" To Daniel, about the landlord. Half-earnest, half-instinct towards sensing a bit and wishing to participate. "Is it the flavour?"
No immediate danger from the death of Armand's choice of puppet, a man who Louis would have happily taken apart solely for the way he spoke to and thought of Daniel. Safe too, from the very public spectacle of the near-kidnapping of the Met.
Louis ticks these things off as his body angles by degrees towards Mark, eyes moving over his face. Studying. Catching the strange scent of him, mortal and something other.
"What has he done to deserve being eaten?" Louis questions, attention divided between the unfolding of a bit and the witch with whom they will apparently be traveling.
"I just know that Miss Jeannie," Daniel says pointedly as Miss Jeannie HMMMMS? and transfers videos to Lestat's phone, "has had some extremely pointed, if very professionally worded, emails with this landlord, and if he vanishes, NYPD is putting her, as his most disgruntled tenant, top of the list of suspects."
She says that he doesn't know that, he says he does because he's an investigative reporter, and she asks if blaming him would help if she ever got questioned, and he informs her that this would not help.
Everyone here is very funny.
Jeannie talks a little about the slumlord status of her current apartment, and there's some chat about how she can definitely afford to move, but then no one will be willing to wield the Talk To A Manager role in the building. Mark is clearly smitten. Food arrives, and chatter wheels on, and Daniel does some texting, and they are all almost normal. The truck stop is decently busy, though most patrons are uninterested in the shitty diner, choosing to remain in the food court.
'Are you actually hungry?' is a mental query for Lestat.
Lestat puts forth an argument: the emails would be circumstantial at best. If there is no weapon, no bloody trail leading to her doorstep, no footage, no electronic transcripts directly referencing murder, no witnesses, no history of violent crime, a perfect alibi, then Jeannie would be perfectly fine. He watches true crime content sometimes, and adds, in Mark's direction, for research.
At the same time, an easy habit for multitasking, he tells Daniel: 'Starving.'
A flippant gesture as he slouches back, adding, "But Louis is an owner of property. You're asking he commit cannibalism, chéris."
Louis is quiet within the flow of conversation, content to absorb Daniel's logic and Jeannie's impassioned defense, the surprise of Lestat observing true crime. He has made a little examination of Mark's nail polish, lifting his hand to turn fingers in his own and consider the effect. Inquire in an undertone as to the name of the color, before turning a wide, sharp-toothed smile to the opposite side of the table.
How truthful is it, when Louis says, "Daniel never asked how I got all that property."
Maybe a little true. Maybe the paperwork is all correct, and the implicit bloodbath is real. Maybe none of it is, and Louis is playing.
Regardless—
"She asking me?" a question directed broadly, as Louis looks from Mark to Daniel to Jeannie, conversational. As if this is not a kind of delicate territory. As if Louis had not told Daniel across a polished table and silver platter that he had not killed for over twenty years.
"We already know," Daniel and Jeannie say at the same time, like a comedy act.
Not even Louis can hide from FOIA requests. Daniel does his homework and teaches his assistants how to do the same. He really wasn't respecting that NDA, Fake Rashid had been correct to be annoyed. Anyway, Jeannie insists she would never ask anyone besides her actual employer to eat somebody, but if Louis is looking to buy out some dickhead—
It could be delicate. Or it could just be people, being normal, being out and about. Not quite going out to see a shitty movie, but, you know. Mortals and vampires cannot live peacefully side by side, not all of them. But maybe a few.
And maybe that's enough?
'Do you mind babysitting?' this time, a query for Louis.
A widened smile, shark teeth sharper for a brief moment, then gone.
His thumbnail sets delicately to one of Mark's painted fingertips, making a little show of considering. Of course, with any acquisition, Louis likes to see what he's buying but he has made exceptions in the past—
I don't think they need a babysitter, is not declining, only putting a little point on something unspoken. Perhaps Louis is the one being baby-sat, kept company while Daniel and Lestat go out to hunt.
Mark is laughing as Jeannie pulls a face, describing the condition of the building. A fixer-upper, doesn't Louis like those...?
But I can stay with them. Go on ahead with him, they'll keep me busy.
What's the over-under on if they leave Louis alone, this so-called Mark will seduce him? Lestat's eyes tracking down to where this little hand play is happening, chin resting on his knitted together fingers, matter-of-factly sifting through the witch's mind to see where he falls on the common sex-food-home ternary, before, maybe, a slight buzz of static that is not overwhelming but does indicate this mortal knows he is being observed in this manner—
Past Daniel, Jeannie is trying to give Lestat back his phone. He snaps his focus in this direction, awarding her a bright smile, merci beaucoup, ma belle, he's never murdered anyone in his life.
Out loud: "Alright, scoot, kid, we're gonna get donuts—"
Sure, donuts. Minor commotion as Jeannie gets up to let the two immortal men out, some more chat, Mark offers to give Louis space and sit next to Jeannie, Jeannie says she's fine with her own entire bench, what color should Louis paint his nails?
"Keep an eye on him, he gets lonely." This instruction to the mortals, about Louis. And to Louis, Daniel sends, 'You'll let me know if you need, or want, anything?'
Declining the offer of space, scoffing at Daniel's instruction. Whatever mood Louis carried into the car, bore miles and miles in the passenger seat, there is no sign of it in the present moment. He favors Mark with a smile, fans out a hand indulgently for Jeannie's inspection. They can pass the time together, all three of them.
Of course, Louis lies, head tipped up to them as Lestat and Daniel extricate themselves from the booth.
"Have fun," sounds a little more like Be careful, but that can't be helped.
Is there any dignified way of getting out of a three-person booth bench from the far side? Lestat, who prefers to move with jungle cat grace at all times doing all things, is resigned to a little shuffling, not the least of which being preoccupied with the problem of
well, this "Mark", but also, leaving Louis behind in general, exclusion, certainly now that Louis has confessed to no longer hating the prospect of hunting together.
But it seems the other two vampires have organised some logistics, par for the course, so he slants a smile at him as if to assure him they will indeed have fun, before they move on out of the diner.
"They're too bold, your humans," Lestat tells Daniel, once they're out of earshot. He might be joking. Hard to tell, in this moment. "They might begin thinking all of our kind are as agreeable as we."
Louis gets to spend time with plucky humans, both of whom are sharper than they appear, but who are still only young mortals. Jeannie wanted to be a politician, but her spirit has been too ground down, and she can barely talk politics at all anymore without feeling on the verge of tears too quickly; easier, to think of horrors in the night. Mark isn't much of a witch, the spark only ever taking with any panache in the women in his family, of which there are few, though he is very educated about it, and does some alright protective rune tattoos.
Neither of them will end up immortal. Most people won't. Just how it is. Better that way.
"Are you agreeable?"
We have fun.
"All my better, older researchers quit when I doubled down on the book. My editor of thirty years dropped me. Jeannie stayed." Daniel shrugs. "They're making their own choices. I hope they don't end up killed for it."
A sentiment that sounds borderline dismissive, but it's a real concern. The thing is—
"Do you really want to talk about how modern youth generations are too rooted in despair to fear gruesome deaths?"
A fluffy readjustment of his coat accompanies a sidelong smile in answer as to how agreeable he is. This Barbie has never been bad to be around in her life.
"No," Lestat says, next, flicking his attention back forwards, taking off his glasses, folding up the cheap plastic to pocket. He would hate to lose them in the imminent violences, casting a look around for some midnight snack options. Caffeinated truckers, black coffee and Red Bull, but who knows what other qualities this place will attract in the middle of the night. "I would have to talk about how in my day, gruesome death clogged the gutters. Existential dread, a rich man's game. Hence the guillotines."
Of course, ask a young human Lestat about it all, and he'd not have wanted to talk about any of that either.
"I could actually talk about that for quite a while," he admits. "But that's just me, I can talk about anything. How's the songwriting coming?"
Guillotines do sound nice, though. For comedic effect, Daniel does not shield very well when he imagines several presidential candidates and a few CEOs being beheaded as they head outside, towards rows of gasoline pumps.
It's not snowing out, but the weather seems like it might turn that way any moment. Freezing cold and just damp enough to have the threat of it in the air, fluffy clouds dotting a dark velvet sky hovering with potential. Beneath feet, parking lot asphalt sounds sharp, bits of grass peeking through the cracks sound crunchy. Daniel thinks they're looking for someone traveling alone, maybe taking a bit of a wander. He's gotten good at figuring out where cameras are through sound, though he does not yet have the ability to nudge them away.
He's a good listener about composing. Music is cool.
It's pleasant, the cold, after the relative warmth of a car, the keyboard growing hot where he'd balanced it across his thighs, the blasting heat inside the diner. It's been a long time since snow, enough that the idea of it has become romantic again.
Like guillotines, maybe. Lestat cannot provide Daniel any gory memory reels in playful reply, however. He'd hated to watch that kind of thing back when.
So. Songwriting.
"Well," he reports, as they scout around for their likeliest meal. In no particular rush to do so, despite his complaining. "Tonight, I have a melody to untangle. It exists somewhere, and I only need to discover it." A little gesture, hands lifting, fingers spidering after invisible keys. "Unfortunately for you both, lyric comes after."
So, no Lestat singing broken poetry in loops on the way to Canada, probably. They will be forced to make conversation to fill the void instead. His hands slip back into his coat pockets.
"I told Louis a long time ago that I would go on tour. He's taken me quite seriously."
"Oh, but I bet you could come up with something on the fly," he goads. How can Lestat argue in the face of Daniel's total faith in his artistic soul? C'monnn.
Poetry is rough, though. Daniel, a writer, has no knack for it. No artist's brush for his journalistic endeavors, just a sledgehammer and a knife. At least it worked well enough to pry Louis free of his prison.
(The warden of which now haunts Daniel.)
"You told me you want to be a rock star. Seems to follow the same track. Do you actually want to tour?"
He probably could. He made up his fair of stupid songs on stage two hundred something years ago, most of them never replicated, mostly for the best. Daniel's faith in his artistic soul is received without suspicion and no argument. All the same—
"It is said you need a music career before you begin touring," Lestat says. "I have a keyboard I purchased for two-hundred American dollars and the notions of a bridge to a chorus."
And yet, this doesn't sound self-deprecating—more fond, perhaps for Louis' likewise faith in him, perhaps for Louis humouring him. Sweet, either way.
"But yes. I do." He has a memory of them both, lake water clinging to them from the waist down, while they affirmed together that Lestat's story deserved an appropriately garish spotlight. Has this changed? Maybe, as he adds, "It will make everything we do now move faster, you know."
Daniel considers asking if he does actually want to do any of it. If without the book and Louis being in danger, would he prefer to just live quietly, and work on his relationship. If Daniel has fucked it all up.
But he doesn't particularly want to hear the answer. A rare instance of trapping himself with questions, a funny feeling he hasn't experienced in a while. Of course it's brought on by Lestat. Regardless, his pause before response goes on for longer than it should. Thinking of all that. Thinking of moving faster towards the promise he made Armand.
Thinking of Armand.
"Yeah."
He doesn't regret the book. Louis owed him, for leaving him there with Armand. They're even.
"Do you..."
Another trap. Again: of course it's Lestat. Daniel sighs, then nods towards what looks like a decent potential victim. A truck driver decompressing after a radio argument with his dispatcher. Troubled employment, and an impending walk to blow off steam.
He might say, when I told Louis I was going on tour, when I told you I was going to be a rock star, I was a little fucked up. But this would imply he is currently fine, or is perhaps too confessional. And that he has some better plan. Some other contribution to make. Some other place to be.
He hears his own snowflake of a name echoed here and there out in the white-noise blizzard of the world and there is a part of him that, besides all of this present nonsense, would like to take it back.
Lestat might say these things but it's highly unlikely, and then all the less likely when he thinks he hears something. Feels something.
Not a new sound, a new feeling, but one that has been tapping at his hindbrain and does again. His instinct says Armand, but no, not directly. It's Daniel. Daniel, thinking of him in some way. It has happened before. It is happening incessantly this past evening.
He turns to look where Daniel nods. 'Bon,' like a chiming bell in the midst of Daniel's thoughts. 'Quick or slow?'
No need to rush so badly as to make a mess, but no time for leisure. This is fast food.
And during it all, Daniel is, yes, distracted. Haunted. When it comes time to actually do what they came out here for, he hesitates— not much, just for a split second, before he seems to recognize that saying something like Oh, I just don't have an appetite after all, will draw more scrutiny than he currently feels like dealing with. Fangs out, fangs in, blood.
There's no reason for him to not want to eat. He needs it. He's just—
Does it matter? He doesn't know. Wrong-footed, off-kilter, a little more tired than he says. Not unwell at all, maybe too well.
Quick but not hasty. Easy to chase prey somewhere discreet, and to take him down together, two wolves on a deer.
An unremarkable kill if neatly done, heads bowed as they drink. A shared hunt has a way of being a shared something else, where they briefly become two parts of one thing, pulling blood from a failing heart. Lestat comes up first, slicing open his fingers with his nails to close up the wound he'd made. Giving up the majority of the blood to the fledgling, whose hunger will be greater.
Watching Daniel, blood on his mouth, gathered pink between his teeth. Stroking the closing neck wound on their prey. When Daniel comes up next, he might catch Lestat's eye, find himself under the kind of scrutiny he'd been avoiding.
Lestat, moving his still bleeding hand to close this second mark too while the body between them is still in the process of dying.
And here they leave him, some guy who... had a heart attack, a heart attack in which all of the blood teleported out of his body. Look at them go. Making more work for the medical examiner field. Boosting the economy.
Daniel stands there for a while, and touches the back of his hand to his mouth. Hunger always makes something extra wake up in him, asking for a real hunt, real prey, more, more. He doesn't know if it's because he's a 'young' vampire, because he's just a vampire, or both. Maybe he'll always want more, because he always wants more of everything. Maybe it'll settle, in a year. In a decade. In a century.
Lestat is crouched over where he's been healing up a dying man, gazing up at Daniel with the sort of sobriety that is now always evident, either because they've been being foolish with the quality of their victims, hit a bar or two, or because Lestat is the correct amount of self-absorbed that means Daniel can, at least half the time, escape his attention.
Not now, any of those things. But he casts him a smile when he says, "Our last night in the city," as he takes his hands back from the corpse, absently wiping them of blood while his slashed fingers close up.
A bad confession to make. He's aware of that. Thinks back to a night, not the night in question, but one more; saying that if Lestat ever decides he's a threat, Daniel can't stop him, and Louis will eventually get over it. Daniel stares at dinner for a little while longer, at the phantom impressions of teeth, gone with Lestat's crime scene care.
"Yeah."
Frowning about it. (Either you're a meaningless afterthought or I want you desperately.) Easy to get swept up while he's alone with Armand. With distance, everything begins to twist. Armand is a liar, Armand has had five hundred years in which to practice being a liar. Daniel thinks he's good at telling the difference, but everyone wants to think that. If not about themselves, then about others, but the truth is no one's actually great at it. He just works with what he thinks he knows. And what the fuck does he know about Armand?
Inhale, exhale. Daniel sounds tired.
"He said he'd quit having tantrums for attention," no points for guessing that Armand did not phrase it this way, "if I saw him sometimes. And I know that's stupid. I know agreeing to it is wading into quicksand on purpose. Standing in front of him, it's like, sure, I'm doing this to put a stronger buffer between him and Louis, but standing here now, it's obvious I'm just giving him a more solid connection."
If he's going to get decapitated, he might as well just explain.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
see discord img
Anyway,
"They said it just tasted like shitty pancakes and bacon."
They, because of course the mortals immediately got one. Daniel sits next to Lestat, putting a buffer between the Muppet pelt and anyone else, so Mark is obliged to sit next to Louis. Jeannie slings her enormous bucket bag (effectively the same size as if Jeannie sat there herself, full of Mary Poppins wonders, and also just a ton of shit) towards her partner so that she can squeeze next to her boss and show him things on her phone.
So: food, for the humans, and coffee for the not-humans if they want something bitter and warm to told between their hands, and Jeannie has updates relevant to everybody about the coverage of Roy's death. He's currently wanted for the harassment of several women in Florida, and a strong theory is that he's left somewhere to off himself. She also has some almost-viral videos of the Met incident saved, snagged before they were scrubbed off social media for 'copyright infringement', and also, she is put out that Daniel won't eat her landlord.
Mark is coming with them, he tells Louis over his girlfriend's deluge of news and complaints. They met while she was doing research for Daniel, you see.
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Lestat, leaning past Daniel to inform Jeannie of this directly. There follows some conferring about how this can be done, technologically speaking, and somewhere Lestat's lawyer gets a spontaneous migraine as he freely hands his still-on-Daniel's-plan phone over to a journalist's millennial assistant to make it happen.
Mark, so far, can still live, Lestat briefly distracted from the threat of a good looking mortal sitting so closely to Louis by promise of footage of himself. The fun nail polish is also intriguing. But also,
"Why won't you?" To Daniel, about the landlord. Half-earnest, half-instinct towards sensing a bit and wishing to participate. "Is it the flavour?"
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Louis ticks these things off as his body angles by degrees towards Mark, eyes moving over his face. Studying. Catching the strange scent of him, mortal and something other.
"What has he done to deserve being eaten?" Louis questions, attention divided between the unfolding of a bit and the witch with whom they will apparently be traveling.
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She says that he doesn't know that, he says he does because he's an investigative reporter, and she asks if blaming him would help if she ever got questioned, and he informs her that this would not help.
Everyone here is very funny.
Jeannie talks a little about the slumlord status of her current apartment, and there's some chat about how she can definitely afford to move, but then no one will be willing to wield the Talk To A Manager role in the building. Mark is clearly smitten. Food arrives, and chatter wheels on, and Daniel does some texting, and they are all almost normal. The truck stop is decently busy, though most patrons are uninterested in the shitty diner, choosing to remain in the food court.
'Are you actually hungry?' is a mental query for Lestat.
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At the same time, an easy habit for multitasking, he tells Daniel: 'Starving.'
A flippant gesture as he slouches back, adding, "But Louis is an owner of property. You're asking he commit cannibalism, chéris."
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How truthful is it, when Louis says, "Daniel never asked how I got all that property."
Maybe a little true. Maybe the paperwork is all correct, and the implicit bloodbath is real. Maybe none of it is, and Louis is playing.
Regardless—
"She asking me?" a question directed broadly, as Louis looks from Mark to Daniel to Jeannie, conversational. As if this is not a kind of delicate territory. As if Louis had not told Daniel across a polished table and silver platter that he had not killed for over twenty years.
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Not even Louis can hide from FOIA requests. Daniel does his homework and teaches his assistants how to do the same. He really wasn't respecting that NDA, Fake Rashid had been correct to be annoyed. Anyway, Jeannie insists she would never ask anyone besides her actual employer to eat somebody, but if Louis is looking to buy out some dickhead—
It could be delicate. Or it could just be people, being normal, being out and about.
Not quite going out to see a shitty movie, but, you know.Mortals and vampires cannot live peacefully side by side, not all of them. But maybe a few.And maybe that's enough?
'Do you mind babysitting?' this time, a query for Louis.
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His thumbnail sets delicately to one of Mark's painted fingertips, making a little show of considering. Of course, with any acquisition, Louis likes to see what he's buying but he has made exceptions in the past—
I don't think they need a babysitter, is not declining, only putting a little point on something unspoken. Perhaps Louis is the one being baby-sat, kept company while Daniel and Lestat go out to hunt.
Mark is laughing as Jeannie pulls a face, describing the condition of the building. A fixer-upper, doesn't Louis like those...?
But I can stay with them. Go on ahead with him, they'll keep me busy.
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Past Daniel, Jeannie is trying to give Lestat back his phone. He snaps his focus in this direction, awarding her a bright smile, merci beaucoup, ma belle, he's never murdered anyone in his life.
'Well?' is for Daniel.
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Out loud: "Alright, scoot, kid, we're gonna get donuts—"
Sure, donuts. Minor commotion as Jeannie gets up to let the two immortal men out, some more chat, Mark offers to give Louis space and sit next to Jeannie, Jeannie says she's fine with her own entire bench, what color should Louis paint his nails?
"Keep an eye on him, he gets lonely." This instruction to the mortals, about Louis. And to Louis, Daniel sends, 'You'll let me know if you need, or want, anything?'
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Of course, Louis lies, head tipped up to them as Lestat and Daniel extricate themselves from the booth.
"Have fun," sounds a little more like Be careful, but that can't be helped.
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well, this "Mark", but also, leaving Louis behind in general, exclusion, certainly now that Louis has confessed to no longer hating the prospect of hunting together.
But it seems the other two vampires have organised some logistics, par for the course, so he slants a smile at him as if to assure him they will indeed have fun, before they move on out of the diner.
"They're too bold, your humans," Lestat tells Daniel, once they're out of earshot. He might be joking. Hard to tell, in this moment. "They might begin thinking all of our kind are as agreeable as we."
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Neither of them will end up immortal. Most people won't. Just how it is. Better that way.
"Are you agreeable?"
We have fun.
"All my better, older researchers quit when I doubled down on the book. My editor of thirty years dropped me. Jeannie stayed." Daniel shrugs. "They're making their own choices. I hope they don't end up killed for it."
A sentiment that sounds borderline dismissive, but it's a real concern. The thing is—
"Do you really want to talk about how modern youth generations are too rooted in despair to fear gruesome deaths?"
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"No," Lestat says, next, flicking his attention back forwards, taking off his glasses, folding up the cheap plastic to pocket. He would hate to lose them in the imminent violences, casting a look around for some midnight snack options. Caffeinated truckers, black coffee and Red Bull, but who knows what other qualities this place will attract in the middle of the night. "I would have to talk about how in my day, gruesome death clogged the gutters. Existential dread, a rich man's game. Hence the guillotines."
Of course, ask a young human Lestat about it all, and he'd not have wanted to talk about any of that either.
"What would you like to talk about, Daniel?"
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Guillotines do sound nice, though. For comedic effect, Daniel does not shield very well when he imagines several presidential candidates and a few CEOs being beheaded as they head outside, towards rows of gasoline pumps.
It's not snowing out, but the weather seems like it might turn that way any moment. Freezing cold and just damp enough to have the threat of it in the air, fluffy clouds dotting a dark velvet sky hovering with potential. Beneath feet, parking lot asphalt sounds sharp, bits of grass peeking through the cracks sound crunchy. Daniel thinks they're looking for someone traveling alone, maybe taking a bit of a wander. He's gotten good at figuring out where cameras are through sound, though he does not yet have the ability to nudge them away.
He's a good listener about composing. Music is cool.
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Like guillotines, maybe. Lestat cannot provide Daniel any gory memory reels in playful reply, however. He'd hated to watch that kind of thing back when.
So. Songwriting.
"Well," he reports, as they scout around for their likeliest meal. In no particular rush to do so, despite his complaining. "Tonight, I have a melody to untangle. It exists somewhere, and I only need to discover it." A little gesture, hands lifting, fingers spidering after invisible keys. "Unfortunately for you both, lyric comes after."
So, no Lestat singing broken poetry in loops on the way to Canada, probably. They will be forced to make conversation to fill the void instead. His hands slip back into his coat pockets.
"I told Louis a long time ago that I would go on tour. He's taken me quite seriously."
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Poetry is rough, though. Daniel, a writer, has no knack for it. No artist's brush for his journalistic endeavors, just a sledgehammer and a knife. At least it worked well enough to pry Louis free of his prison.
(The warden of which now haunts Daniel.)
"You told me you want to be a rock star. Seems to follow the same track. Do you actually want to tour?"
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"It is said you need a music career before you begin touring," Lestat says. "I have a keyboard I purchased for two-hundred American dollars and the notions of a bridge to a chorus."
And yet, this doesn't sound self-deprecating—more fond, perhaps for Louis' likewise faith in him, perhaps for Louis humouring him. Sweet, either way.
"But yes. I do." He has a memory of them both, lake water clinging to them from the waist down, while they affirmed together that Lestat's story deserved an appropriately garish spotlight. Has this changed? Maybe, as he adds, "It will make everything we do now move faster, you know."
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Daniel considers asking if he does actually want to do any of it. If without the book and Louis being in danger, would he prefer to just live quietly, and work on his relationship. If Daniel has fucked it all up.
But he doesn't particularly want to hear the answer. A rare instance of trapping himself with questions, a funny feeling he hasn't experienced in a while. Of course it's brought on by Lestat. Regardless, his pause before response goes on for longer than it should. Thinking of all that. Thinking of moving faster towards the promise he made Armand.
Thinking of Armand.
"Yeah."
He doesn't regret the book. Louis owed him, for leaving him there with Armand. They're even.
"Do you..."
Another trap. Again: of course it's Lestat. Daniel sighs, then nods towards what looks like a decent potential victim. A truck driver decompressing after a radio argument with his dispatcher. Troubled employment, and an impending walk to blow off steam.
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He hears his own snowflake of a name echoed here and there out in the white-noise blizzard of the world and there is a part of him that, besides all of this present nonsense, would like to take it back.
Lestat might say these things but it's highly unlikely, and then all the less likely when he thinks he hears something. Feels something.
Not a new sound, a new feeling, but one that has been tapping at his hindbrain and does again. His instinct says Armand, but no, not directly. It's Daniel. Daniel, thinking of him in some way. It has happened before. It is happening incessantly this past evening.
He turns to look where Daniel nods. 'Bon,' like a chiming bell in the midst of Daniel's thoughts. 'Quick or slow?'
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No need to rush so badly as to make a mess, but no time for leisure. This is fast food.
And during it all, Daniel is, yes, distracted. Haunted. When it comes time to actually do what they came out here for, he hesitates— not much, just for a split second, before he seems to recognize that saying something like Oh, I just don't have an appetite after all, will draw more scrutiny than he currently feels like dealing with. Fangs out, fangs in, blood.
There's no reason for him to not want to eat. He needs it. He's just—
Does it matter? He doesn't know. Wrong-footed, off-kilter, a little more tired than he says. Not unwell at all, maybe too well.
He thinks about Armand.
He thinks about Louis.
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An unremarkable kill if neatly done, heads bowed as they drink. A shared hunt has a way of being a shared something else, where they briefly become two parts of one thing, pulling blood from a failing heart. Lestat comes up first, slicing open his fingers with his nails to close up the wound he'd made. Giving up the majority of the blood to the fledgling, whose hunger will be greater.
Watching Daniel, blood on his mouth, gathered pink between his teeth. Stroking the closing neck wound on their prey. When Daniel comes up next, he might catch Lestat's eye, find himself under the kind of scrutiny he'd been avoiding.
Lestat, moving his still bleeding hand to close this second mark too while the body between them is still in the process of dying.
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Daniel stands there for a while, and touches the back of his hand to his mouth. Hunger always makes something extra wake up in him, asking for a real hunt, real prey, more, more. He doesn't know if it's because he's a 'young' vampire, because he's just a vampire, or both. Maybe he'll always want more, because he always wants more of everything. Maybe it'll settle, in a year. In a decade. In a century.
Still no snow. Not yet.
"I'm being obvious, huh."
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Not now, any of those things. But he casts him a smile when he says, "Our last night in the city," as he takes his hands back from the corpse, absently wiping them of blood while his slashed fingers close up.
Stands. "You met him then."
He hasn't cheated, per se. It only makes sense.
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"Yeah."
Frowning about it. (Either you're a meaningless afterthought or I want you desperately.) Easy to get swept up while he's alone with Armand. With distance, everything begins to twist. Armand is a liar, Armand has had five hundred years in which to practice being a liar. Daniel thinks he's good at telling the difference, but everyone wants to think that. If not about themselves, then about others, but the truth is no one's actually great at it. He just works with what he thinks he knows. And what the fuck does he know about Armand?
Inhale, exhale. Daniel sounds tired.
"He said he'd quit having tantrums for attention," no points for guessing that Armand did not phrase it this way, "if I saw him sometimes. And I know that's stupid. I know agreeing to it is wading into quicksand on purpose. Standing in front of him, it's like, sure, I'm doing this to put a stronger buffer between him and Louis, but standing here now, it's obvious I'm just giving him a more solid connection."
If he's going to get decapitated, he might as well just explain.
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