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.
Crosschatter. Some exchanged promises between Louis and Jeannie, some smiles between Mark and Louis, a flutter of fingers to better display Mark's handiwork.
And awareness, of course, of Daniel. Daniel looking at him this way while Lestat jangles keys and Louis thinks briefly of New Orleans, of their private drives in the dark where Louis could occupy the passenger seat and Lestat drive them where he wished. Tender, these moments where past and present overlap and Louis must weather the effect.
No argument; he does not crave a turn behind the wheel. Files out alongside the rest, lagging to fall into step alongside Daniel. Lean into the quick pat of his hand, smile softly back at him.
You gave this to me.
As if Daniel might have forgotten.
Would Louis have wrenched free without him? Louis doesn't know. Doesn't think so. He'd needed help, and Daniel had come when he'd called.
Lestat finds himself leading the way, fidgeting with the keys to find the little—
Cheep-chirp, the car unlocks.
A glance in a reflection, maybe perhaps to share this victory in surmounting the obstacles of modern technology yet again, and manages not to stare moonily where his vampiric companions lag a little behind together. Shared looks, little gestures, likely words, because Lestat has taken to assuming they speak secretly with each other constantly, and that's enough of that.
Leaves the problem of the keyboard taking up the backseat to the two to figure out, whether it or one of them lands in the front seat. But he will of course take whatever happens personally.
For now, Lestat turns on the engine, letting it warm. Considers the dashboard, the absence of a car lighter socket which he confirms with some roaming fingers on his way to the radio, the cord for a phone. This he can occupy himself with, connecting his phone.
Goodbye, to Mark and Jeannie, though they will from now on be taking the same route, so they may well be pacing each other until Burlington. To the car, and Lestat's possession of it. Daniel contemplates the weather as he moves the keyboard to the back compartment of the small SUV, and whether or not Lestat might need tire chains like a sixteen year old first learning how to deal with power steering vs slick roads.
Nah it'll be fine.
Anyway. Shuffling done, he goes around and—
Pauses again, but only briefly. Losing his nerve to do something mushier in Louis' general direction, though maybe it's there on his face for a second. He does love him. (Not like Lestat and Louis, like he'd said, all the way back in the fucking mall, which already feels like a lifetime ago, and he is holding to that, because the alternatives are pathetic.) Embarrassing to experience feelings, did you know that.
Another shoulder touch, instead, before he nudges Louis to take the front passenger seat again.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
And awareness, of course, of Daniel. Daniel looking at him this way while Lestat jangles keys and Louis thinks briefly of New Orleans, of their private drives in the dark where Louis could occupy the passenger seat and Lestat drive them where he wished. Tender, these moments where past and present overlap and Louis must weather the effect.
No argument; he does not crave a turn behind the wheel. Files out alongside the rest, lagging to fall into step alongside Daniel. Lean into the quick pat of his hand, smile softly back at him.
You gave this to me.
As if Daniel might have forgotten.
Would Louis have wrenched free without him? Louis doesn't know. Doesn't think so. He'd needed help, and Daniel had come when he'd called.
Thank you.
no subject
Cheep-chirp, the car unlocks.
A glance in a reflection, maybe perhaps to share this victory in surmounting the obstacles of modern technology yet again, and manages not to stare moonily where his vampiric companions lag a little behind together. Shared looks, little gestures, likely words, because Lestat has taken to assuming they speak secretly with each other constantly, and that's enough of that.
Leaves the problem of the keyboard taking up the backseat to the two to figure out, whether it or one of them lands in the front seat. But he will of course take whatever happens personally.
For now, Lestat turns on the engine, letting it warm. Considers the dashboard, the absence of a car lighter socket which he confirms with some roaming fingers on his way to the radio, the cord for a phone. This he can occupy himself with, connecting his phone.
Chappell Roan understands his predicament.
no subject
Nah it'll be fine.
Anyway. Shuffling done, he goes around and—
Pauses again, but only briefly. Losing his nerve to do something mushier in Louis' general direction, though maybe it's there on his face for a second. He does love him. (Not like Lestat and Louis, like he'd said, all the way back in the fucking mall, which already feels like a lifetime ago, and he is holding to that, because the alternatives are pathetic.) Embarrassing to experience feelings, did you know that.
Another shoulder touch, instead, before he nudges Louis to take the front passenger seat again.
Off they go.