"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.
Some humour there, wry, the way he sort of tips aside and forwards. Because: does he? Does anyone? Daniel better than most, one imagines. A swift and brutal education.
Lestat does not seem particularly like he is gearing up to kill him, anyway. That sharp analysis lessens as Daniel provides context. Dulls a little for the reminder of Daniel being an intrinsic, permanent connection to Louis. A flicking look up and down, lips pursed, and then a glance towards civilisation (such as it is), the lights of the truck stop. They are on a schedule.
They aren't going back, not yet.
"He's quite old," he says, a sigh that produces a little whorl of steam. "Patient for it. Entertaining the trade of easy torments for the future punishments." Looks back to Daniel. "He is wanting your attention?"
"For a human with a lot of mileage—" Daniel makes a gesture, shrugs. Agreement. "There's the person they are at work, the person they are at home, the person they are when they're angry. How many people, in somebody who's five centuries old?"
Armand's mileage is fucked. Quite old, patient, a house of mirrors, and all of them haunted.
"He says that."
About his attention. His attention in particular. But Daniel doesn't sound convinced. He allowed himself to be convinced, the last few times they spoke in person, or at least to dig into the idea of it. But he thinks of it now, thinks of it for the hundredth time playing over and over, Either you're a meaningless afterthought or I want you desperately, and he sees Armand's stricken, furious face, and he feels himself stumbling sharply away from understanding and into stupidity. Embarrassment. Nobody wants Daniel desperately. And he gave Armand a cute keychain, like a teenage girl. He should go check into a tanning salon and get it overwith. Zap.
"But I was there, when Louis said that the 'boy' had to live to be a symbol of their companionship. He was just saying fucking anything to get Armand to stop, but then Armand went and left me alive as a loose end for fifty years."
Not Lestat though, of course, but he doesn't want to spend his time convincing Daniel how much he means to Louis, actually. That seems like Louis' duty, and he has not gotten around to hating himself so much that he will be his own fledgling's wingman in this respect. This little fritz of frustration comes and goes, chin tucking in as he rewraps his coat around himself to keep out the chill.
It will snow soon. He can smell it. They will have to return then, lest the drift of ice from the sky triggers their Louisianian, Middle East-located mutual friend into searching for them. (He likes to think of Louis being delicate in this way, never mind how much snow the man has actually seen, so don't @ him.)
Armand is the problem at hand. As usual.
"You are his fledgling," Lestat says. "No matter where his desire lie, that is the inescapable thing. And he is your maker. It isn't like human family, human marriage, human loyalty. Biology, perhaps. Something stronger."
Maybe there will be studies. For now, he only has his sense of his own scattered litter, his own maker to go off.
"My condolences," he adds, a little curtsey motion with a hand at his side. "But at least you are shielded from him, ah?"
Louis was just saying shit is miles away from imo Louis does not care at all about me personally, but Daniel is distancing himself from significance. To him, it feels reasonable. Doesn't make any sense to have actually, secretly been a part of things all along. That's fucking crazy talk. And asserting himself as more important than he actually is, well—
Louis already laughed and said they never fucked, he's not in a huge hurry to get to the seriously emotionally significant version of that, alright. Daniel is following the line of this thing as coldly as he can, especially while feeling like he's potentially been duped. Even as he remembers that it felt easy and comfortable to sleep curled up with his maker.
What the fuck is he supposed to do.
"Mm." A sound of dry humor. Appreciative of the condolences, and of not being murdered yet. "Yeah, I can think all kinds of gossip about him in secret. I just..." Daniel shakes his head, shrugs helplessly. "You don't think he'll just get bored and fuck off?"
Something stronger than biology. Five hundred years.
Not so careless, not like he finds it all dreadfully funny, but a despairing kind of nihilist response to the prospect of Armand getting bored and fucking off about anything at all. A sigh out after, and then, to make sure he is clear, he adds, "No," with a tip of his head.
Speaking from experience.
Considers Daniel. The predicament itself, from what shadows and silhouettes of it he has a view of. A little shrug, then, offering out, "He has told you of our meeting. A sketchy little rendering." Lestat and his remarkable recovery, his inflaming rejections. All quite flattering, really, clown-based inaccuracies aside. "There was a part of me that wanted the things he was offering right as he said them. To teach me as Magnus had not. And whatever else went along with it."
It feels fraught to speak of, but Daniel is not asking, and somehow, it feels easier to give. Particularly when the man already holds some pieces of it, has published it. "Having a maker. I didn't trust it because of how I wanted it. He left you to your own devices, I recall."
The book, if Lestat recalls, had some commentary about Armand's rendering of that sketch. The writer reflected that of all the times one vampire or the other had accused Lestat of lying, this was noticeably spared; Mr Molloy had even directly challenged the vampire Armand on the subject of Lestat's transformation, and the creature had merely dismissed it. No commentary, no denial, and even the belittling had been minor, merely a bridge to move on. Interesting, dear readers.
And it tells Daniel: full horror, a thousand times worse than Louis knows.
"Mm. He said he'd give me a century. And then he didn't."
Timed right around when Louis started yelling out into the night. You know. Because it's not about Daniel. It's about the man who prompted all these threads to be woven together, the man Lestat crossed and ocean to fight for even after being nearly murdered by him, the man who prompted a trial born of nightmares and who burned it down. Daniel is just a bright young reporter with a point of view, writing it down.
But—
"You still wanted that? Even though you only knew it through Magnus?"
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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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Some humour there, wry, the way he sort of tips aside and forwards. Because: does he? Does anyone? Daniel better than most, one imagines. A swift and brutal education.
Lestat does not seem particularly like he is gearing up to kill him, anyway. That sharp analysis lessens as Daniel provides context. Dulls a little for the reminder of Daniel being an intrinsic, permanent connection to Louis. A flicking look up and down, lips pursed, and then a glance towards civilisation (such as it is), the lights of the truck stop. They are on a schedule.
They aren't going back, not yet.
"He's quite old," he says, a sigh that produces a little whorl of steam. "Patient for it. Entertaining the trade of easy torments for the future punishments." Looks back to Daniel. "He is wanting your attention?"
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Armand's mileage is fucked. Quite old, patient, a house of mirrors, and all of them haunted.
"He says that."
About his attention. His attention in particular. But Daniel doesn't sound convinced. He allowed himself to be convinced, the last few times they spoke in person, or at least to dig into the idea of it. But he thinks of it now, thinks of it for the hundredth time playing over and over, Either you're a meaningless afterthought or I want you desperately, and he sees Armand's stricken, furious face, and he feels himself stumbling sharply away from understanding and into stupidity. Embarrassment. Nobody wants Daniel desperately. And he gave Armand a cute keychain, like a teenage girl. He should go check into a tanning salon and get it overwith. Zap.
"But I was there, when Louis said that the 'boy' had to live to be a symbol of their companionship. He was just saying fucking anything to get Armand to stop, but then Armand went and left me alive as a loose end for fifty years."
So. You know. It's not about Daniel.
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Not Lestat though, of course, but he doesn't want to spend his time convincing Daniel how much he means to Louis, actually. That seems like Louis' duty, and he has not gotten around to hating himself so much that he will be his own fledgling's wingman in this respect. This little fritz of frustration comes and goes, chin tucking in as he rewraps his coat around himself to keep out the chill.
It will snow soon. He can smell it. They will have to return then, lest the drift of ice from the sky triggers their Louisianian, Middle East-located mutual friend into searching for them. (He likes to think of Louis being delicate in this way, never mind how much snow the man has actually seen, so don't @ him.)
Armand is the problem at hand. As usual.
"You are his fledgling," Lestat says. "No matter where his desire lie, that is the inescapable thing. And he is your maker. It isn't like human family, human marriage, human loyalty. Biology, perhaps. Something stronger."
Maybe there will be studies. For now, he only has his sense of his own scattered litter, his own maker to go off.
"My condolences," he adds, a little curtsey motion with a hand at his side. "But at least you are shielded from him, ah?"
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Louis already laughed and said they never fucked, he's not in a huge hurry to get to the seriously emotionally significant version of that, alright. Daniel is following the line of this thing as coldly as he can, especially while feeling like he's potentially been duped. Even as he remembers that it felt easy and comfortable to sleep curled up with his maker.
What the fuck is he supposed to do.
"Mm." A sound of dry humor. Appreciative of the condolences, and of not being murdered yet. "Yeah, I can think all kinds of gossip about him in secret. I just..." Daniel shakes his head, shrugs helplessly. "You don't think he'll just get bored and fuck off?"
Something stronger than biology. Five hundred years.
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Not so careless, not like he finds it all dreadfully funny, but a despairing kind of nihilist response to the prospect of Armand getting bored and fucking off about anything at all. A sigh out after, and then, to make sure he is clear, he adds, "No," with a tip of his head.
Speaking from experience.
Considers Daniel. The predicament itself, from what shadows and silhouettes of it he has a view of. A little shrug, then, offering out, "He has told you of our meeting. A sketchy little rendering." Lestat and his remarkable recovery, his inflaming rejections. All quite flattering, really, clown-based inaccuracies aside. "There was a part of me that wanted the things he was offering right as he said them. To teach me as Magnus had not. And whatever else went along with it."
It feels fraught to speak of, but Daniel is not asking, and somehow, it feels easier to give. Particularly when the man already holds some pieces of it, has published it. "Having a maker. I didn't trust it because of how I wanted it. He left you to your own devices, I recall."
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(Editor's note, 'cool' is sarcasm.)
The book, if Lestat recalls, had some commentary about Armand's rendering of that sketch. The writer reflected that of all the times one vampire or the other had accused Lestat of lying, this was noticeably spared; Mr Molloy had even directly challenged the vampire Armand on the subject of Lestat's transformation, and the creature had merely dismissed it. No commentary, no denial, and even the belittling had been minor, merely a bridge to move on. Interesting, dear readers.
And it tells Daniel: full horror, a thousand times worse than Louis knows.
"Mm. He said he'd give me a century. And then he didn't."
Timed right around when Louis started yelling out into the night. You know. Because it's not about Daniel. It's about the man who prompted all these threads to be woven together, the man Lestat crossed and ocean to fight for even after being nearly murdered by him, the man who prompted a trial born of nightmares and who burned it down. Daniel is just a bright young reporter with a point of view, writing it down.
But—
"You still wanted that? Even though you only knew it through Magnus?"
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