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?"
A hand turns out from the fold of his arms, hinting at something—something in the ribcage, reaching out. Beyond biology.
He has read Mr. Molloy's book quite a few times, remembers the careful framing of Armand's contributions, the observations, the disclaimers. Different treatment, the telling of Louis' telling of Lestat's telling of his own transformation. Odd, mediated layers. Like looking at his own memories through thick, distorted glass. How strange it had been to see in print. Among other things.
"After my changing," Lestat says, skipping to the end, because that is where the point lies, "he made his intentions clear to me. He would end his life. He would go into the fire. He wanted me to scatter the ashes to make sure it took."
A growl of engine, and he looks over. A semi-truck hurtling by beneath the lights of the road, a great behemoth of a thing. Some sights of this era still catch him, but he will not be distracted.
"I begged him not to do it. I felt I loved him then, was loved by him, despite all of it. Everything he had done. I felt I saw what he was, and I wanted to hold onto it. And then he left. Ha," mild, because he can feel something like old grief rise up, sting at his eyes, and that is ridiculous, dismissing it by shaking out his hair. "It's fucked. But yes. I wanted it. And Armand offered it."
And for a while, at least, he took it. Eventually. "Do you want him to get bored, fuck off?"
Sometimes, Daniel thinks about blowjobs when trucks like that pass. Because of hitchhiking.
Anyway. They're talking about something serious.
He absorbs this information with a kind of gravity; it settles in him, like lead. Lestat felt that he loved Magnus, even though Magnus had put him through unimaginable terror. A true abduction, and all the details Lestat has maybe never uttered aloud. Armand tortured Daniel, but Daniel got to forget for half a century. While their time in the Dubai penthouse could be considered, in a wry, comical way, torture, it was different.
Love is just a ghastly word, for how cutting it is. Daniel finds that it wields itself towards him like a knife.
Daniel looks at Lestat, and it's obvious that he doesn't know how to answer that question.
"I'm still working on that." A pause, and he shrugs, looks to one side. A self-aware cop-out, and yet, the truth. "What's real, what's the bond? Is there a difference? That's not— fucking rhetorical, by the way, if you happen to actually have an answer."
Lestat had a maker. Lestat has fledglings. Or had. One, at least, is still here. (Shows what Daniel knows.)
"Well that depends on your premise, monsieur journaliste."
Daniel and his little network of unreliable narrators. Their fucked up gothic romances. Well, Lestat supposes, Daniel is one of them, with his own. He wonders if he should be saying: the bond is real, and whatever it is you and Louis choose to be together, you will need to accept my undying and continued presence in his life. It would probably be jumping the gun. Maybe someone should.
But they are talking of Armand. So.
"What is real, what is the bond," Lestat continues, a minor bodily tip to the left and right to indicate this binary. "No difference, I think. The bond is real. It is not phantasm, or delusion. It is not even, it is not fair. It is entirely within Armand's power to manipulate the situation, to harm you, to use you. To, perhaps, fail to care for you as he should."
Like a parent, like a lover, some perverse combination of the two things. Lestat's voice glances light off these words, like touching the surface of waters that go far deeper. "But I believe it permits us something else, when embraced. Revelations. A kind of,"
and he pauses again, searching for the word. "A terrible sympathy."
Reaching for Magnus. Recoiling from Nicki. An odd pride, as he lay in a pool of sticky blood, Claudia's eyes blazing down at him.
An incredible bullet to fling himself into. Masterfully undodged. What do you mean, me and Louis?
Alas, alack.
Daniel thinks about all the times that Louis said Lestat never taught him anything, and he holds that up against what Lestat says now, about how he wanted Armand to teach him. To him it paints a picture of a man who learned, first and foremost, that learning itself was dangerous and nightmarish; maybe he did choose to censor on purpose, and maybe some of it was just ignorance and mistrust of what he'd been taught by a series of lunatics.
Like drawing lines between bubbles on his notes. The bond is real. Armand can still use it to manipulate him. If Armand were to use it, that makes it real. Was last night real?
It felt real. Terrible sympathy.
But that might not mean anything. A thing can be real, a thing can feel good, and still be bad. Heroin is real. Daniel nearly laughs aloud. He's ODed on Armand once already, dying in Dubai.
"Have you felt that way for all of your fledglings?"
A tight smile. "I have only been a fledgling once. I have been a maker," a beat, mathematics occurring, decides to say, "a few times, and each one had its variations. I have felt what it is like to know my creation so well that we can't stand one another, can't exist together, but even so. The thread connects."
Perhaps Daniel will suppose he is speaking of Claudia, and it wouldn't be a wildly inaccurate place to land, even as his memory brings out something else, someone else. Even now, with two centuries practice at containment, it's difficult to make certain names escape his lips.
But they aren't speaking of Lestat, and it's with a sense of delicate application of claws when he supposes, "You find yourself drawn to him."
A beat, mathematics occurring. Daniel isn't the type to—
Yes he is, he is the type. So it's with effort that should be award-winning that he doesn't zero in on that hesitation with an icepick meant for interrogation. Maybe Lestat notices the way his eyes tick on with a little more intensity, noting something, maybe he doesn't. Brief, quicker than the pause, and it vanishes.
(Daniel thinks even faster now that he's dead. Something he hasn't asked about. Just figures he feels better, no longer dying of Parkinson's.)
Fortunately the suggestion about Armand is a good a conversational brick as anything. Daniel gives him a flat look and a tone to match with, "I'm a reporter, I find a lot of things."
Yes. And it's annoying.
"He knows the trick now, he can quit being a baby about it and go make somebody he actually gets along with. I just worry about his proximity to Louis. I know they've talked. Maybe more than I know. Louis' hard to read when he shuts down, but it's obvious when he's shutting down, so."
Daniel would be forgiven for dismissing the notion of heightened cerebral processing. Most of the vampires he's met and heard about are stupid.
Lestat possibly included, maybe, potentially, but all the same, something to the way he says, "I see," that does not sound convinced by, "An intrepid investigative spirit." One that circles and circles, the sense of something handled over and over, set down, picked back up. Armand has always known the trick. Had always hated the idea of it, particularly that of a maker and a fledgling as lovers. Armand, he would say, is hard to get along with.
But keys jangle. Louis, compromised by Armand's proximity, a proximity tied to Daniel. Louis, hard to read when he shuts down. All true.
"Do you recall that I was disappointed to learn you both had been keeping secrets from me?"
"I know he'll be mad. It's just all... fucked up. He and I agreed, there's just some shit Armand and I have to work out, but I didn't say 'That means I will occasionally talk to him in person, because he likes to follow me around sometimes.'"
Sometimes, Lestat is given to wonder if everything is actually about Lestat.
Many things are. Perhaps this is as well. This had begun, had it not, with Armand taking notice of him, all those many decades ago. With his refusing him, his leaving of Paris, pouring money and theatres and ex-boyfriends into his hands like a tithing. His coiling around Louis, whom he loves, whom Lestat loves. And now this, tumbled further down these points of connection, getting his little fangs in Louis' would-be fledgling.
Does not doubt, of course, the danger and harm leveled at Louis, the thought of which is enough to encourage his fangs to lengthen without a trace of blood in vicinity. Does not doubt that Daniel is attempting to manage a being far beyond his comprehension, and it may well destroy him.
But maybe it's all about Lestat, actually, as it always has been. This would be typical.
"Fortunate for you that the only way to prevent imminent disaster is to sit in a room with a vampire and have a series of conversations," he says. 'Fortunate' and 'convenient' are very similar, especially with his tone of voice. "And if you publish his book before I make my debut, my feelings will be hurt."
A tip of his head. They should at least start walking. The snow is imminent.
"You should tell Louis. And accept he will be more fearful for you than mad."
Wouldn't it be funny, if it turns out that Daniel comprehends Armand after all. And it's just his understanding of himself that he's struggling with. Why does he comprehend Armand. Why does he want to dissect him instead of refuse to ever see him again. Why can he stop and think What have we learned from this and why can't he just delete his number out of his phone.
A fun winter horror story.
"Better hustle on the album."
Lestat should be able to tell, between telepathy and a dry tone, that Daniel is Making A Joke Again. He should be treading a little more carefully, probably. He'd been so alarmed when Lestat had become angry about their 'secret keeping'; but he'd been worried for Louis, as usual. Without him right here beside them, his better sense, the one that would otherwise remind him that Lestat is incredibly dangerous, is on vacation. Gone now to the same place it goes when Armand shows up, maybe.
He looks at him. Not walking just yet. Finally, moving, but also,
"What would you do? If you were me. We had something in common for a little while, but Magnus removed himself. What if he hadn't?"
The joke is accepted with grace and an exhale out to communicate amusement, and maybe it's a little like an elder lion allowing a cub to get his teeth into his tail. Moving it around to bait it, capable of sinking big fangs in otherwise.
Which makes the question complicated. He is not a fledgling any longer. He'd rejected Armand so ardently to begin with. Poised on stage and feeling a shadow cross his mind, as dark and cold as his maker that it had been like he'd come back to life, and that thing like love he had felt did not make an appearance.
But Lestat doesn't sit with the question for too long, doesn't let it tangle up. He gives a laugh, light, for this hypothetical. "All the annoying fledgling things, I'm sure. Demand to know the meaning of life. The meaning of my making. The things he did, the places he'd seen. That is," he adds, a look side long, "if I do not judge that the best thing would be is to chop his head off."
All very near and dear, these topics. He adds, "But I don't think I would. Even if I did judge that."
"Well." Well!! "I'm not in the chopping heads off line of work, anyway."
The attack at the Met lingers. Things he'd done, because he had to. Is that the line? Defending one of the very few people he gives a shit about? Where does that put Armand and what he's done, then? Not that it matters, materially. Daniel isn't capable of inflicting any kind of harm on Armand, aside from maybe some emotional bruising.
And he can't imagine himself trying to trick Armand into drinking dead blood, or some other fucking thing. He wonders if Lestat really didn't think they were going to go through with it. If it was more than hope. If it was this thought, too. That he wouldn't have cut Magnus' head off.
Daniel doesn't know, exactly, what intel he's trying to get out of Lestat. Or what impression he's trying to give him. He doesn't want Armand to die, or even go away forever. He wants the hostilities to stop, he wants to crack Armand's head open for answers, he wants Louis to be happy and safe, he wants to understand himself.
Yeah, yeah, he'd also like the moon, or whatever.
"At least we've got plenty of time to figure it out."
Daniel is funny. They're almost back to the truck stop.
And it's beginning to snow, little fine flakes of it, drifting in whimsical spirals.
Lestat glances at Daniel, this answer. Jokes, some more. He wonders, a little, what the interview was like. How friendly it was, or became. Wonders what a room is like with Armand and Daniel in it alone, a now repeated happening. Well, he concedes, they are likely to amuse each other. He has some dusty memories of enjoying the experience of amusing Armand, when it occurred.
Maybe Daniel would appreciate being asked if he would like someone else to chop Armand's head off, even if it is understood that he's merely the connective tissue between a monster and the person he loves, but Lestat doubts it. A talker, a thinker, not a person who solves problems through the destruction of things.
And the fledgling of said monster. As established, this matters.
"And at least you know better," he adds, "not to believe a word he says."
The interview. Dubai. Another world of three people, and the peripheral players drawn into their orbit. Hopefully no one with psychic powers ever shows Lestat any out of context highlights that would make him feel horrible about himself.
But it was funny, sometimes. Occasionally in ways that Daniel is not actually allowed to find funny. Dear, this is a Stein. Fuck you, Armand.
Here they are, creations of monsters. Doing their own monster things now, walking away from the corpse of someone who they'll never know anything about as a real person; just a slideshow, a museum of emotions, as he died.
"Mmm." A thoughtful, wry sound. "That's the trouble, with Armand. Sometimes he says something true."
"Ugh," is sympathetic, a dramatic little tipping back of his head. "And only so you'll pity him as well."
Terrible. At least Magnus was likely wholly incapable of being manipulative. At least Magnus is dead. Lestat would, he reflects, like to stop considering Magnus now, and gives an almost physical shiver as if to rid him of his mind for the evening, if not forever.
"Well, did we leave him in New York? Or are you going to be sneaking out again during our festive New England vacation?"
Moments of clarity. Breakthroughs can be tiny things, too. A tiny granule of sand, or sugar. And only so you'll pity him, immediately, ah, that's why Lestat and Armand were never going to get along. How fucking crazy must it drive someone, to be seen as trying to gain pity whenever you say something true. All the scalpels of honesty laid like snakes hiding under rocks. Pity? He imagines Armand's face, in response to an assertion like that. If Daniel spit it at him during an argument.
Jesus. What is he doing.
Daniel looks up at the snow.
"I didn't get him with a wildlife tracker. But we have tentative plans to reconvene after this stop on the tour, which implies he's got other plans this week. He's still got financial and real estate holdings, and like, recreational arson, or whatever, so. Hobbies I guess. Can't spend all his time staring into windows."
Soon, no more snow overhead; broken up by awnings sheltering gas pumps, and then, into the lobby of the rest stop.
Wry. Ignorant, too, to Daniel's moment of clarity, but perhaps Lestat would not feel moved to correct it even if he wasn't. He does not like Armand. He does not feel like affording him charity or charitable words, not after everything, and not very many even before everything. That he has not snarled and demanded Daniel reject Armand from his and therefore all of their lives is a self-centred thing, ultimately, rather than an extension of grace, save that he can forgive Daniel in specific a certain amount of ill-advised fascination.
Or can understand it. It isn't his thing to forgive. Louis, on the other hand—
Lestat doesn't dawdle and delay in order to ask what Daniel intends to do. Daniel will do as he will. He puts back on his glasses as they enter the bright lights of the truck stop interior, diverting now to the next pressing concern: have Louis and Mark run away together while his ad Daniel's backs were turned.
Daniel thinks that Lestat probably feels like shit over the trial, still, because who the fuck wouldn't? He thinks that he probably feels complicit, and that he worries if he puts his foot down about Armand, that it will open the door for Louis to put his foot down (again) about Lestat. Armand did a horrible thing, Armand lied about it, was the worst of it, but he couldn't have done it — to that dramatic extent, anyway — alone.
If Daniel were Louis, he doesn't know what he'd do. Sometimes he thinks he'd never speak to any of them again, no matter who held what percentage of the guilt pie. Sometimes he thinks it would have saved his marriage if Alice freaked the fuck out, killed the baby, and kept Daniel locked in a closet with no bathroom and only dog food to eat for a few weeks to drill it into his head that he had to stop stepping out on her.
No one's ever loved him that much. Enough to do something truly horrible. He probably shouldn't think in metrics like that, and so he buries it.
It'll be fine, probably. And if not they've got an eternity to sort it out.
Back inside:
No Louis, and a very sad Jeannie. No jk. They're all still there, presumably.
"I think Mark has finished," Louis answers, even-toned regardless of the appearance of his accent.
Evidence of the past however many minutes have been spent: Jeannie's phone open on the table between the three of them, lazy swiping through the wasteland of rural Grindr as Mark handles Louis' fingers. The bottle of polish on the table, brush between two of his knuckles. Matching paint on Louis' nails.
They strike a very familiar little picture. Jeannie leaning over the table, humming doubtfully about a burly man holding up a fish. Mark leaning into Louis, hip to hip, blowing over drying polish. Louis had looked up the moment the door opened. Mark is permitted to keep custody of his hands, fingers loose in Mark's grip as Louis' eyes run over Lestat and Daniel in turns. Spares Jeannie a shake of his head. No, pass on this fisherman.
"I've promised Jeannie we'll make a detour on the way back to see her apartment in greater detail."
Ha, ha. Whatever argument Jeannine's made, Louis has found it compelling enough to entertain.
Lestat hasn't learned about Grindr yet. When he does, it'll be an even sadder day for queer studies theorists and gay rights activists everywhere.
Currently he is considering a setback for how shamelessly all over Louis that Jeannie is allowing her boyfriend to be, which is an exaggeration, but only just. Hands on hips and not moving to slink back into the crammed little seat of the booth, he says, "And we are finished killing for our supper," like a pleasantly thrown bucket of cold water.
(It's fine. The two truckers that were down a table have moved on, and the waitress has her Airpods in while she cleans up another.)
"I'm driving," he adds, with the clack of car keys in hand that had at some point been in Daniel's pocket but are now in Lestat's palm.
God only knows why Jeannie has Grindr on her phone. Maybe to look for closeted Republican politicians, maybe to find thirds for nights on the weekend. But Louis' input is surely nothing short of electric.
Crosschatter, then, everyone picking up their thinks. Daniel should have a quip about his yoinked car keys, but he finds himself unable to make one—
It's just cool, is all. Seeing Louis out and having a nice time with anybody else, but particularly mortals. Getting his nails painted and hanging out. In the world. A fucking part of it, not locked away in that coffin of a tower with the warden who now haunts Daniel. He realizes he's rooted to the spot and giving him an odd look, and he makes himself move. Ehhem. He's fine, he's being extremely normal. But he still ends up patting Louis on the shoulder as they head out.
'I'm just happy for you,' is a quick, nerdy note, in case he thinks Daniel is staring because he's got something on his face, or whatever.
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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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He has read Mr. Molloy's book quite a few times, remembers the careful framing of Armand's contributions, the observations, the disclaimers. Different treatment, the telling of Louis' telling of Lestat's telling of his own transformation. Odd, mediated layers. Like looking at his own memories through thick, distorted glass. How strange it had been to see in print. Among other things.
"After my changing," Lestat says, skipping to the end, because that is where the point lies, "he made his intentions clear to me. He would end his life. He would go into the fire. He wanted me to scatter the ashes to make sure it took."
A growl of engine, and he looks over. A semi-truck hurtling by beneath the lights of the road, a great behemoth of a thing. Some sights of this era still catch him, but he will not be distracted.
"I begged him not to do it. I felt I loved him then, was loved by him, despite all of it. Everything he had done. I felt I saw what he was, and I wanted to hold onto it. And then he left. Ha," mild, because he can feel something like old grief rise up, sting at his eyes, and that is ridiculous, dismissing it by shaking out his hair. "It's fucked. But yes. I wanted it. And Armand offered it."
And for a while, at least, he took it. Eventually. "Do you want him to get bored, fuck off?"
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Anyway. They're talking about something serious.
He absorbs this information with a kind of gravity; it settles in him, like lead. Lestat felt that he loved Magnus, even though Magnus had put him through unimaginable terror. A true abduction, and all the details Lestat has maybe never uttered aloud. Armand tortured Daniel, but Daniel got to forget for half a century. While their time in the Dubai penthouse could be considered, in a wry, comical way, torture, it was different.
Love is just a ghastly word, for how cutting it is. Daniel finds that it wields itself towards him like a knife.
Daniel looks at Lestat, and it's obvious that he doesn't know how to answer that question.
"I'm still working on that." A pause, and he shrugs, looks to one side. A self-aware cop-out, and yet, the truth. "What's real, what's the bond? Is there a difference? That's not— fucking rhetorical, by the way, if you happen to actually have an answer."
Lestat had a maker. Lestat has fledglings. Or had. One, at least, is still here. (Shows what Daniel knows.)
no subject
Daniel and his little network of unreliable narrators. Their fucked up gothic romances. Well, Lestat supposes, Daniel is one of them, with his own. He wonders if he should be saying: the bond is real, and whatever it is you and Louis choose to be together, you will need to accept my undying and continued presence in his life. It would probably be jumping the gun. Maybe someone should.
But they are talking of Armand. So.
"What is real, what is the bond," Lestat continues, a minor bodily tip to the left and right to indicate this binary. "No difference, I think. The bond is real. It is not phantasm, or delusion. It is not even, it is not fair. It is entirely within Armand's power to manipulate the situation, to harm you, to use you. To, perhaps, fail to care for you as he should."
Like a parent, like a lover, some perverse combination of the two things. Lestat's voice glances light off these words, like touching the surface of waters that go far deeper. "But I believe it permits us something else, when embraced. Revelations. A kind of,"
and he pauses again, searching for the word. "A terrible sympathy."
Reaching for Magnus. Recoiling from Nicki. An odd pride, as he lay in a pool of sticky blood, Claudia's eyes blazing down at him.
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Alas, alack.
Daniel thinks about all the times that Louis said Lestat never taught him anything, and he holds that up against what Lestat says now, about how he wanted Armand to teach him. To him it paints a picture of a man who learned, first and foremost, that learning itself was dangerous and nightmarish; maybe he did choose to censor on purpose, and maybe some of it was just ignorance and mistrust of what he'd been taught by a series of lunatics.
Like drawing lines between bubbles on his notes. The bond is real. Armand can still use it to manipulate him. If Armand were to use it, that makes it real. Was last night real?
It felt real. Terrible sympathy.
But that might not mean anything. A thing can be real, a thing can feel good, and still be bad. Heroin is real. Daniel nearly laughs aloud. He's ODed on Armand once already, dying in Dubai.
"Have you felt that way for all of your fledglings?"
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Poor Felix.
A tight smile. "I have only been a fledgling once. I have been a maker," a beat, mathematics occurring, decides to say, "a few times, and each one had its variations. I have felt what it is like to know my creation so well that we can't stand one another, can't exist together, but even so. The thread connects."
Perhaps Daniel will suppose he is speaking of Claudia, and it wouldn't be a wildly inaccurate place to land, even as his memory brings out something else, someone else. Even now, with two centuries practice at containment, it's difficult to make certain names escape his lips.
But they aren't speaking of Lestat, and it's with a sense of delicate application of claws when he supposes, "You find yourself drawn to him."
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Yes he is, he is the type. So it's with effort that should be award-winning that he doesn't zero in on that hesitation with an icepick meant for interrogation. Maybe Lestat notices the way his eyes tick on with a little more intensity, noting something, maybe he doesn't. Brief, quicker than the pause, and it vanishes.
(Daniel thinks even faster now that he's dead. Something he hasn't asked about. Just figures he feels better, no longer dying of Parkinson's.)
Fortunately the suggestion about Armand is a good a conversational brick as anything. Daniel gives him a flat look and a tone to match with, "I'm a reporter, I find a lot of things."
Yes. And it's annoying.
"He knows the trick now, he can quit being a baby about it and go make somebody he actually gets along with. I just worry about his proximity to Louis. I know they've talked. Maybe more than I know. Louis' hard to read when he shuts down, but it's obvious when he's shutting down, so."
A shrug. One thing follows the other.
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Lestat possibly included, maybe, potentially, but all the same, something to the way he says, "I see," that does not sound convinced by, "An intrepid investigative spirit." One that circles and circles, the sense of something handled over and over, set down, picked back up. Armand has always known the trick. Had always hated the idea of it, particularly that of a maker and a fledgling as lovers. Armand, he would say, is hard to get along with.
But keys jangle. Louis, compromised by Armand's proximity, a proximity tied to Daniel. Louis, hard to read when he shuts down. All true.
"Do you recall that I was disappointed to learn you both had been keeping secrets from me?"
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Ham to ham combat happening here, folks.
"I know he'll be mad. It's just all... fucked up. He and I agreed, there's just some shit Armand and I have to work out, but I didn't say 'That means I will occasionally talk to him in person, because he likes to follow me around sometimes.'"
Maybe he should have.
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Sometimes, Lestat is given to wonder if everything is actually about Lestat.
Many things are. Perhaps this is as well. This had begun, had it not, with Armand taking notice of him, all those many decades ago. With his refusing him, his leaving of Paris, pouring money and theatres and ex-boyfriends into his hands like a tithing. His coiling around Louis, whom he loves, whom Lestat loves. And now this, tumbled further down these points of connection, getting his little fangs in Louis' would-be fledgling.
Does not doubt, of course, the danger and harm leveled at Louis, the thought of which is enough to encourage his fangs to lengthen without a trace of blood in vicinity. Does not doubt that Daniel is attempting to manage a being far beyond his comprehension, and it may well destroy him.
But maybe it's all about Lestat, actually, as it always has been. This would be typical.
"Fortunate for you that the only way to prevent imminent disaster is to sit in a room with a vampire and have a series of conversations," he says. 'Fortunate' and 'convenient' are very similar, especially with his tone of voice. "And if you publish his book before I make my debut, my feelings will be hurt."
A tip of his head. They should at least start walking. The snow is imminent.
"You should tell Louis. And accept he will be more fearful for you than mad."
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A fun winter horror story.
"Better hustle on the album."
Lestat should be able to tell, between telepathy and a dry tone, that Daniel is Making A Joke Again. He should be treading a little more carefully, probably. He'd been so alarmed when Lestat had become angry about their 'secret keeping'; but he'd been worried for Louis, as usual. Without him right here beside them, his better sense, the one that would otherwise remind him that Lestat is incredibly dangerous, is on vacation. Gone now to the same place it goes when Armand shows up, maybe.
He looks at him. Not walking just yet. Finally, moving, but also,
"What would you do? If you were me. We had something in common for a little while, but Magnus removed himself. What if he hadn't?"
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Which makes the question complicated. He is not a fledgling any longer. He'd rejected Armand so ardently to begin with. Poised on stage and feeling a shadow cross his mind, as dark and cold as his maker that it had been like he'd come back to life, and that thing like love he had felt did not make an appearance.
But Lestat doesn't sit with the question for too long, doesn't let it tangle up. He gives a laugh, light, for this hypothetical. "All the annoying fledgling things, I'm sure. Demand to know the meaning of life. The meaning of my making. The things he did, the places he'd seen. That is," he adds, a look side long, "if I do not judge that the best thing would be is to chop his head off."
All very near and dear, these topics. He adds, "But I don't think I would. Even if I did judge that."
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The attack at the Met lingers. Things he'd done, because he had to. Is that the line? Defending one of the very few people he gives a shit about? Where does that put Armand and what he's done, then? Not that it matters, materially. Daniel isn't capable of inflicting any kind of harm on Armand, aside from maybe some emotional bruising.
And he can't imagine himself trying to trick Armand into drinking dead blood, or some other fucking thing. He wonders if Lestat really didn't think they were going to go through with it. If it was more than hope. If it was this thought, too. That he wouldn't have cut Magnus' head off.
Daniel doesn't know, exactly, what intel he's trying to get out of Lestat. Or what impression he's trying to give him. He doesn't want Armand to die, or even go away forever. He wants the hostilities to stop, he wants to crack Armand's head open for answers, he wants Louis to be happy and safe, he wants to understand himself.
Yeah, yeah, he'd also like the moon, or whatever.
"At least we've got plenty of time to figure it out."
Daniel is funny. They're almost back to the truck stop.
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Lestat glances at Daniel, this answer. Jokes, some more. He wonders, a little, what the interview was like. How friendly it was, or became. Wonders what a room is like with Armand and Daniel in it alone, a now repeated happening. Well, he concedes, they are likely to amuse each other. He has some dusty memories of enjoying the experience of amusing Armand, when it occurred.
Maybe Daniel would appreciate being asked if he would like someone else to chop Armand's head off, even if it is understood that he's merely the connective tissue between a monster and the person he loves, but Lestat doubts it. A talker, a thinker, not a person who solves problems through the destruction of things.
And the fledgling of said monster. As established, this matters.
"And at least you know better," he adds, "not to believe a word he says."
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But it was funny, sometimes. Occasionally in ways that Daniel is not actually allowed to find funny. Dear, this is a Stein. Fuck you, Armand.
Here they are, creations of monsters. Doing their own monster things now, walking away from the corpse of someone who they'll never know anything about as a real person; just a slideshow, a museum of emotions, as he died.
"Mmm." A thoughtful, wry sound. "That's the trouble, with Armand. Sometimes he says something true."
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Terrible. At least Magnus was likely wholly incapable of being manipulative. At least Magnus is dead. Lestat would, he reflects, like to stop considering Magnus now, and gives an almost physical shiver as if to rid him of his mind for the evening, if not forever.
"Well, did we leave him in New York? Or are you going to be sneaking out again during our festive New England vacation?"
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Moments of clarity. Breakthroughs can be tiny things, too. A tiny granule of sand, or sugar. And only so you'll pity him, immediately, ah, that's why Lestat and Armand were never going to get along. How fucking crazy must it drive someone, to be seen as trying to gain pity whenever you say something true. All the scalpels of honesty laid like snakes hiding under rocks. Pity? He imagines Armand's face, in response to an assertion like that. If Daniel spit it at him during an argument.
Jesus. What is he doing.
Daniel looks up at the snow.
"I didn't get him with a wildlife tracker. But we have tentative plans to reconvene after this stop on the tour, which implies he's got other plans this week. He's still got financial and real estate holdings, and like, recreational arson, or whatever, so. Hobbies I guess. Can't spend all his time staring into windows."
Soon, no more snow overhead; broken up by awnings sheltering gas pumps, and then, into the lobby of the rest stop.
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Wry. Ignorant, too, to Daniel's moment of clarity, but perhaps Lestat would not feel moved to correct it even if he wasn't. He does not like Armand. He does not feel like affording him charity or charitable words, not after everything, and not very many even before everything. That he has not snarled and demanded Daniel reject Armand from his and therefore all of their lives is a self-centred thing, ultimately, rather than an extension of grace, save that he can forgive Daniel in specific a certain amount of ill-advised fascination.
Or can understand it. It isn't his thing to forgive. Louis, on the other hand—
Lestat doesn't dawdle and delay in order to ask what Daniel intends to do. Daniel will do as he will. He puts back on his glasses as they enter the bright lights of the truck stop interior, diverting now to the next pressing concern: have Louis and Mark run away together while his ad Daniel's backs were turned.
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If Daniel were Louis, he doesn't know what he'd do. Sometimes he thinks he'd never speak to any of them again, no matter who held what percentage of the guilt pie. Sometimes he thinks it would have saved his marriage if Alice freaked the fuck out, killed the baby, and kept Daniel locked in a closet with no bathroom and only dog food to eat for a few weeks to drill it into his head that he had to stop stepping out on her.
No one's ever loved him that much. Enough to do something truly horrible. He probably shouldn't think in metrics like that, and so he buries it.
It'll be fine, probably. And if not they've got an eternity to sort it out.
Back inside:
No Louis, and a very sad Jeannie. No jk. They're all still there, presumably.
"Ready to hit the road, kids?"
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Evidence of the past however many minutes have been spent: Jeannie's phone open on the table between the three of them, lazy swiping through the wasteland of rural Grindr as Mark handles Louis' fingers. The bottle of polish on the table, brush between two of his knuckles. Matching paint on Louis' nails.
They strike a very familiar little picture. Jeannie leaning over the table, humming doubtfully about a burly man holding up a fish. Mark leaning into Louis, hip to hip, blowing over drying polish. Louis had looked up the moment the door opened. Mark is permitted to keep custody of his hands, fingers loose in Mark's grip as Louis' eyes run over Lestat and Daniel in turns. Spares Jeannie a shake of his head. No, pass on this fisherman.
"I've promised Jeannie we'll make a detour on the way back to see her apartment in greater detail."
Ha, ha. Whatever argument Jeannine's made, Louis has found it compelling enough to entertain.
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Currently he is considering a setback for how shamelessly all over Louis that Jeannie is allowing her boyfriend to be, which is an exaggeration, but only just. Hands on hips and not moving to slink back into the crammed little seat of the booth, he says, "And we are finished killing for our supper," like a pleasantly thrown bucket of cold water.
(It's fine. The two truckers that were down a table have moved on, and the waitress has her Airpods in while she cleans up another.)
"I'm driving," he adds, with the clack of car keys in hand that had at some point been in Daniel's pocket but are now in Lestat's palm.
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Crosschatter, then, everyone picking up their thinks. Daniel should have a quip about his yoinked car keys, but he finds himself unable to make one—
It's just cool, is all. Seeing Louis out and having a nice time with anybody else, but particularly mortals. Getting his nails painted and hanging out. In the world. A fucking part of it, not locked away in that coffin of a tower with the warden who now haunts Daniel. He realizes he's rooted to the spot and giving him an odd look, and he makes himself move. Ehhem. He's fine, he's being extremely normal. But he still ends up patting Louis on the shoulder as they head out.
'I'm just happy for you,' is a quick, nerdy note, in case he thinks Daniel is staring because he's got something on his face, or whatever.
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