"You are hammered, homegirl," Daniel informs Jeannie, and it makes both the mortals laugh. Grandpa saying funny words never gets old.
After this he decrees that Louis shall be spared, at least from their peer pressure — privately reserving the potential for Lestat to try and wrench something into existence — and he sits back to sip at more alcohol while Mark shifts around to hold his girlfriend and join in the chorus with her when it hits.
Readjusting his rings (one turned all the way in the opposite direction, one twisted at an angle at Jeannie's insistence) Louis doesn't look up immediately. Mind opening, a welcome, before Louis angles his body towards Daniel across Lestat's empty seat.
Gears turning, indistinct but unmistakable, as Louis weighs the question.
Yes, is tepid, certainly, but honest. I like seeing you all enjoying yourselves.
Aware that he is, to some extent, wall-flowering. Louis thinks he's entitled to hang back, to observe. But, just to be certain:
Lestat's return to the table could be motivated by spying Mark getting handsy for a moment there, or his intuition that Louis and Daniel are once again tangling about in psychic discourse, which is probably technically acceptable when Lestat himself is not at the table, but in this case, it's at least mostly the chorus.
"Je suis entrée comme un—"
The French does not actually map very well to Miley's lyrics, lost anyway in the way he has borderline teleported back, except there is certainly momentum that Louis will have to catch himself against, Lestat's arms around his shoulders from behind. And a peel of laughter losing the rest.
Hey what are we talking about gANG.
He swings himself around back into his chair with a sigh. He's hilarious. And definitely drank half of the vodka bottle while Louis was not drinking anything and Daniel was playing social musical chairs. A languid tipping towards Daniel as he says, "Are you singing after all?"
Instead of an answer formed in words, Daniel offers Louis the psychic version of squeezing his hand— it's clumsy, but he wants to show him. Just how happy he is. Overwhelming, stupid sentiment, seeing Louis out in the world, Louis doing goofy shit like picking a fight, Louis watching Lestat perform with a look of wonder, Louis getting his nails painted. Louis, safe, here, alive.
(Daniel does love him. Not the way Lestat does. But he does love him.)
And then, the wrecking ball of Lestat de Holyfuck—
He can't help his sudden laugh. Heeyyyy.
"The kids are going up," he says, a little loud over the rowdy chorus of a bar that's forgotten all about a thrown punch. "And then: yes."
Louis, shockingly sober thanks to the tempering presence of Rachida and Ramiz, possesses the reflexes to catch himself rather than be knocked out of his chair. The look he gives Lestat is affectionate, rather than annoyed.
And it lifts too to Daniel beyond him. Understands this sensation as an affirmative, feels it high in his chest. There's little else to do but let it sit, because getting overly sentimental in a Vermont karaoke bar is a recipe for some kind of disaster.
Still, some soft, sweet squeeze of emotion in answer. Louis is here because of Daniel. It is an undeniable truth.
"He won't say which song," Louis mock-complains to Lestat. Reaches over to touch his wrist, a little insurance against Lestat tipping too far in his seat.
"That is because Daniel has a sense of drama and showmanship," Lestat explains, very reasonable, and allows himself to tip even further as he turns his hand, anchors himself with Louis' offered touch.
Pivots to look at said showman. "Non? And you don't have to shout," a teaching moment, other hand coming up to hook over a shoulder, a little tap of a finger. "We can hear you just as well through any noise. Even with humans, you can make yours the only voice they care to hear. We barely require a microphone."
A timely thing to know if Daniel is fixing to woo the whole bar in a few minutes, he thinks. "But it's fun to hold," he adds.
"It's—" Oh? Oh. Yeah. He nods at Lestat, then looks back at Louis, shrugging. "Drama and showmanship."
He had only been derailing to try and drag Louis into more shenanigans, but sure, that too. Little telepathic fingers against his, still, reassuring. It's not the alcohol that's making him feel loser. The contentment of being here and it being real. Daniel isn't too social, not really, but once in a while? Pretty fucking cool, seeing something this way.
He confesses, about volume, "I don't think I'd been in a bar with anyone else in fifteen years, before you surprised me outside the train station."
And what an indulgence, a luxury, to be playing with each others fingers, hands together over the table. So much of their courtship and their relationship afterwards was stymied and obscured in public. Separated by tables, by Louis relegated to long steps behind or assigned sections of this and that space.
Now, Lestat simply turns his hand to link into Louis' and there is nothing at all to it. Just a simple thing happening. Easy as Mark's arms around Jeannie.
Behind all of this, some absurd envy for Lestat and Daniel in a bar. But Louis holds that too in check.
"Really," Lestat says, to Daniel. Not quite a question. Surprise without disbelief. Flattering, maybe, as far as his sketchy mental image of a Daniel pre-vampire goes. But perhaps it makes sense, the way lonely people might find each other, make odd connections.
He means Daniel and Louis, of course.
But Louis asks this, and Lestat looks at him down the length of his arm. "Oh, when we began to travel together," he says, and it's true—he speaks at a normal volume that still somehow winds through with perfectly clarity the sounds of old speakers, bad singing, a crowd of people. "Hunting as well. It had," back to Daniel, "been some time for me as well."
Ayup. He shrugs at Lestat, hands spread. The older vampire is only familiar with him through his rejuvenated state, his celebration of his unlife— never met the dying, cranky man suffering from chronic pain who sat in Louis' penthouse. No friends, no reason to go out. Even before Parkinson's, even before the pandemic; illness and quarantine did not make him unpleasant, or distrustful, or disinclined to go bar crawling without a specific mission in mind. Bridge destruction has been a lifelong hobby.
It's nice to be here. It's nice to have fucking superpowers, and steady hands, and a spiraling career he's set on fire. Fun, in fact.
"Pleasant company," he says. "For a couple of old guys leaving the house for the first time in a while."
It's nothing Louis hasn't said before: he likes this, their friendship. He'd liked that Lestat was traveling with Daniel. He likes that they have this, a connection.
Louis can like it, and envy it at the same time. It doesn't take anything away from his expression softening, looking between them as his thumb strokes along Lestat's knuckles.
How small Louis' world has become. But even if it spins out beyond him, vast and crowded, Louis is certain there will be no one else he loves more than these two.
Aloud, he summarizes, "And now you're here."
The pair of them. Out in the world. Louis glossing over whatever has been obscured from him. Whatever adventures occupy Lestat and Daniel's time when Louis is apart from them, maybe better untold.
It's nice that Lestat can laugh about it now. He can laugh about it now because he is no longer in a half-flooded mold-infested cottage collecting cobwebs between throwing objects at his worst fledgling to make himself feel better. No, he is here instead, Louis holding his hand with a soft expression, and Daniel certainly could have told him to kick rocks outside of the train station that night.
Or he was too afraid to do so. Which is fine too, because it's fine now.
"You are here," Lestat says. "Lured down from your tower at last. And to think, all we had to do was ask."
There is a tiny crack in the proverbial door, in which Daniel could feel jealous— he's been trying to get Louis out of the tower for a while now, but it took Lestat to get Louis to do it. Do it pretty quickly, in fact.
But he doesn't push the door open. He's just grateful. It's clear they both need this, and Daniel is happy they're able to, happy Louis found a reason to shift, get a different perspective on the outside world. Dubai is an artificial bubble even if he did ever go down for a walk out among the humans.
"He was picking his moment, fashionably."
Helping.
And now— Ah! Jeannie and Mark are up. Daniel will do his level best not to take out his phone like somebody's dad, but he will fail in about thirty seconds.
By them both. An invitation made fairly stridently if Louis is recalling right, but he is not so eager to invoke it now when everyone is having a nice time and thinking not at all about vampires that would like to tear Louis apart.
And besides, Jeannie and Mark are going to sing.
Louis turns obediently towards the stage. A flash of memory: Claudia, rehearsing, looking out into the theater to find him. It twists hard in his chest.
Claudia would have liked karaoke, Louis is certain.
A mental detour that wards against the impulse to let go of Lestat's hand first. Louis retains it while Jeannie and Mark perform, and Daniel films, and the bar chatters and whoops and applauds around them.
It is a pleasant song with a pleasant melody, and Jeannie's voice is likewise pleasant. Also, she has been flattering enough, effusive enough in her praise for Lestat to reward this with his attention in kind. His current fill of vodka untouched on the table.
Not because he doesn't want to drink it, but Louis has the hand he would need to do so easily, and has perhaps forgotten.
Then he thinks, I would like to dance to this, and as was always so when such a thought occurred to him, in a time and place long lost to them both, it's enough for Lestat to get to his feet, turn, use his held hand to try to invite Louis up with him. And it only occurs to him once he is doing so that he might be shot down with real protest instead of the fake protest he is still, even now, used to batting side, on account of how they aren't actually together anymore, and perhaps never will be.
Well, he is quite charming. A way about him, he has read. Tonight's way is a silly smile and visible mischief inherent in asking Louis for a turn about the nearby patch of floor by the table in which no one else is dancing.
Plus he has fire powers and can self-immolate if he has to.
Real protest is not entirely off the table. There is some part of Louis that balks, a complex tangle of emotion at Lestat's light tug.
Aware they are in public.
Remembering New Orleans. Remembering their ball, but remembering beyond that. Remembering their home. Remembering Lestat drawing Louis into an embrace, a waltz. The years before Claudia, the years after, when she would join them and they three would dance together.
And now here, in a very public bar, Lestat rises to his feet and means to draw Louis after him. The intention is clear, familiar even after eighty years.
Maybe Louis' hesitance is clear too. Balking, a stretch where he looks into Lestat's face, fingers tightening around his before he permits himself to be drawn up onto his feet.
There is no home for them. No private parlour, no courtyard. Likely no grand parties in their future, Lestat imagines. He will take what opportunities are there.
And for a moment, he thinks Louis won't. But then he does.
He is rewarded with a pleased smile, a subtle one, Lestat positioning their hands like a waltz and his hand finding Louis' waist. He does not wind himself around him like he might if they were making something different of their lives, but it's a friendly intimacy that he sways Louis into.
And maybe this close, Louis can tell that Lestat, also, is quite aware of time, of place. Of behaving in a way even men who were only friends would not risk doing in polite society, once, or even impolite society. And isn't it pleasurable, to exist in this era? Was not Lestat always saying, how profoundly the world can change? He has seen it. They see it now, together.
It had been such a significant thing in New Orleans. Crossing the room. Walking into Lestat's arms. Kissing him, hearing the gasps of shock.
There are no appalled murmurs. Maybe a passing glance, this murmur, that shrug. They are noted, smiled over, dismissed. Another older couple gets up, rangy silver-haired man coaxing his sweet-faced partner along after him into their own waltz as Jeannie sings.
Louis' fingers come to rest at Lestat's neck, thumb running back and forth at the hinge of his jaw. They are farther apart than they once were, and Louis understands it. They are different. Lestat wants different things, but still perhaps wants this remembered intimacy. It takes a few long minutes, but Louis relaxes into the sway of their bodies.
Lestat twirls him, and brings Louis back, as he had always done before into his arms. Louis lets him. Touches him still, hand at his neck, fingers linked as Lestat leads.
There are things Louis could say that would fill the space between them with conversation. But Louis gives it up. He is content to look into Lestat's face, drink in the pleased expression there, while they move together through the last few verses of Jeannie and Mark's song choice.
Warms Daniel's heart despite the worry over domestic abuse. Some things, people can work out. Especially if those people are connected in a cosmic way, if the circumstances are beyond human. He hopes so, at least. He thinks Louis can be his own person and be healed and whole without Lestat, but it's clear to him that he'd be happiest with things mended.
Just a little bit of sneaky phone recording. Maybe a still photo or two. Subtle. Spy-like. No one will ever know, until someday, Daniel decides to send something to one of them.
The 60s pop duet eventually comes to a close with applause from the bar patrons, most of which are guilelessly charmed by a real live couple doing the cover. Daniel claps and whistles for them, and then, when Mark points to him, says "Oh fuck", as he had, of course, forgotten he's next.
But this is a problem for future Lestat. Present Lestat is enjoying himself, pleased to be indulged, executing little courtly turns to an irreverent love song while very little attention is paid them. The song closes, and it takes some remembering to recall himself and end the dance with an overly proper little bow over Louis' hand rather than anything else.
And gives his applause to the stage after, and while doing so, he steals Louis' seat. A strategic location so that he doesn't have to witness a mortal pawing at his ex-husband all night. A worse indignity than anything more substantial.
A cackle, though, at Daniel's realisation, and a bright and clear wolf whistle to urge him along as his name is called.
Displaced, Louis lingers briefly on his feet behind Daniel, palm coming down on one shoulder and squeezing hard.
The warmth of Lestat lingers, burning everywhere he touched. (He takes all the rest, and puts it carefully away to be examined later.)
"Time to give us a glimpse of that showmanship you been on about," Louis reminds, hand lifting so Louis might circle around his chair and take up Lestat's abandoned seat. Grinning, a little nudge of encouragement between their minds as Jeannie and Mark make their cacophonous return to the table.
He could do stand-up. Comedy would probably be fine. He had given a brief consideration to one of those spoken word tracks briefly popular in the 1990s when people were putting out semi-obscene comedy ones, you know, like Chris Rock and his champagne opinions, but he's pretty sure none of those pass the 'aged well' test. It's not the night to remind everyone he's a real-life boomer.
The mood in the room is not enthused to see him, speaking of being a boomer, but a few people definitely recognize the name plus his face, even if only from a promo in the window of the bookshop down the street. Mild curiosity. Maybe he'll sing a vampire song.
and it is, he sings the cher song
The twangy, bassy opening of Cake's obnoxious but catchy Short Skirt, Long Jacket is medium acceptable. Fun, not much real singing involved, funny. Daniel is medium okay at it. A couple people know when to shout repeats of the verses, and he encourages this. Only one minor fumble, saying 'allocutions' instead of 'allocations', which he does correct by speaking over the song, firmly, though he notes either would work in context. Anyway! Nails that shine like justice!!
There is a hasty exchange with Jeannie, the resident and most trustworthy zillennial, and then—
Incidentally also spylike, Lestat props his phone against the back of Louis' shoulder to peek the camera at the stage over the top, though there is still probably some visible sparkle from the case catching the light anyway. Whatever. Stealth mode journalism, recording Daniel's performance, a video which will also catch a low laugh from him at Daniel's smooth talk-singing correction, at the participatory shouts from a nearby table.
Also picks up a muttered complaint, "I don't know this song," to whoever might be listening.
A video which will also capture Louis laughing, soft and contained but unmistakable. Unmistakable, and deeply fond.
Daniel is so.
Himself.
So entirely unchanged, parted only from the disease that had been slowly killing him. Louis is so pleased about it. Had been pleased too, Daniel arriving in Dubai grown old and still sharp, still recognizable and familiar. This is not so far from that moment. An echo of that feeling, only now made more complex by present circumstances.
Explanation of the song is left in Jeannie's capable hands. Louis has hooked an ankle up over his knee, lounging back in his chair into the light, incidental touch required by Lestat's spycraft.
When he time comes, Louis is effusive in his applause. Whistles through two fingers, over the rest of the bar.
Daniel does a respectable bit of 'dancing', hands raised, side to side. Nothing that screams of wanting to recapture his youth, but he's playing along. No stage fright, even through the occasional laugh with his head ducked, incredulous at himself.
"Thank you, thank you," he still has the microphone, "I always knew in my heart I was destined to be a pop idol, and I'm here tonight in the Burlington Coat Factory, Vermont, to debut on this stage— yes, thank you,"
he is doing a bit, see, and this carries on for a minute as he walks as far away from the DJ as he can with the mic still plugged in, as said DJ participates gamely in the bit by trying to herd grandpa offstage, which he eventually does, after making a cartoonish bow.
Does not hop down, that would be pushing it. A normal retreat, passing the baton to whoever is after him, a young man agonizing between something by Johnny Cash and the siren song of Offspring's Pretty Fly for a White Guy.
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After this he decrees that Louis shall be spared, at least from their peer pressure — privately reserving the potential for Lestat to try and wrench something into existence — and he sits back to sip at more alcohol while Mark shifts around to hold his girlfriend and join in the chorus with her when it hits.
To Louis,
'Are you having a good time? Honest.'
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Gears turning, indistinct but unmistakable, as Louis weighs the question.
Yes, is tepid, certainly, but honest. I like seeing you all enjoying yourselves.
Aware that he is, to some extent, wall-flowering. Louis thinks he's entitled to hang back, to observe. But, just to be certain:
Are you happy, Daniel?
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"Je suis entrée comme un—"
The French does not actually map very well to Miley's lyrics, lost anyway in the way he has borderline teleported back, except there is certainly momentum that Louis will have to catch himself against, Lestat's arms around his shoulders from behind. And a peel of laughter losing the rest.
Hey what are we talking about gANG.
He swings himself around back into his chair with a sigh. He's hilarious. And definitely drank half of the vodka bottle while Louis was not drinking anything and Daniel was playing social musical chairs. A languid tipping towards Daniel as he says, "Are you singing after all?"
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(Daniel does love him. Not the way Lestat does. But he does love him.)
And then, the wrecking ball of Lestat de Holyfuck—
He can't help his sudden laugh. Heeyyyy.
"The kids are going up," he says, a little loud over the rowdy chorus of a bar that's forgotten all about a thrown punch. "And then: yes."
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And it lifts too to Daniel beyond him. Understands this sensation as an affirmative, feels it high in his chest. There's little else to do but let it sit, because getting overly sentimental in a Vermont karaoke bar is a recipe for some kind of disaster.
Still, some soft, sweet squeeze of emotion in answer. Louis is here because of Daniel. It is an undeniable truth.
"He won't say which song," Louis mock-complains to Lestat. Reaches over to touch his wrist, a little insurance against Lestat tipping too far in his seat.
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Pivots to look at said showman. "Non? And you don't have to shout," a teaching moment, other hand coming up to hook over a shoulder, a little tap of a finger. "We can hear you just as well through any noise. Even with humans, you can make yours the only voice they care to hear. We barely require a microphone."
A timely thing to know if Daniel is fixing to woo the whole bar in a few minutes, he thinks. "But it's fun to hold," he adds.
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He had only been derailing to try and drag Louis into more shenanigans, but sure, that too. Little telepathic fingers against his, still, reassuring. It's not the alcohol that's making him feel loser. The contentment of being here and it being real. Daniel isn't too social, not really, but once in a while? Pretty fucking cool, seeing something this way.
He confesses, about volume, "I don't think I'd been in a bar with anyone else in fifteen years, before you surprised me outside the train station."
Still getting his socializing sea legs back.
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And what an indulgence, a luxury, to be playing with each others fingers, hands together over the table. So much of their courtship and their relationship afterwards was stymied and obscured in public. Separated by tables, by Louis relegated to long steps behind or assigned sections of this and that space.
Now, Lestat simply turns his hand to link into Louis' and there is nothing at all to it. Just a simple thing happening. Easy as Mark's arms around Jeannie.
Behind all of this, some absurd envy for Lestat and Daniel in a bar. But Louis holds that too in check.
"When was this?" he inquires. Invites details.
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He means Daniel and Louis, of course.
But Louis asks this, and Lestat looks at him down the length of his arm. "Oh, when we began to travel together," he says, and it's true—he speaks at a normal volume that still somehow winds through with perfectly clarity the sounds of old speakers, bad singing, a crowd of people. "Hunting as well. It had," back to Daniel, "been some time for me as well."
In case Daniel had somehow failed to notice.
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It's nice to be here. It's nice to have fucking superpowers, and steady hands, and a spiraling career he's set on fire. Fun, in fact.
"Pleasant company," he says. "For a couple of old guys leaving the house for the first time in a while."
They are friends, see.
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Louis can like it, and envy it at the same time. It doesn't take anything away from his expression softening, looking between them as his thumb strokes along Lestat's knuckles.
How small Louis' world has become. But even if it spins out beyond him, vast and crowded, Louis is certain there will be no one else he loves more than these two.
Aloud, he summarizes, "And now you're here."
The pair of them. Out in the world. Louis glossing over whatever has been obscured from him. Whatever adventures occupy Lestat and Daniel's time when Louis is apart from them, maybe better untold.
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Or he was too afraid to do so. Which is fine too, because it's fine now.
"You are here," Lestat says. "Lured down from your tower at last. And to think, all we had to do was ask."
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But he doesn't push the door open. He's just grateful. It's clear they both need this, and Daniel is happy they're able to, happy Louis found a reason to shift, get a different perspective on the outside world. Dubai is an artificial bubble even if he did ever go down for a walk out among the humans.
"He was picking his moment, fashionably."
Helping.
And now— Ah! Jeannie and Mark are up. Daniel will do his level best not to take out his phone like somebody's dad, but he will fail in about thirty seconds.
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By them both. An invitation made fairly stridently if Louis is recalling right, but he is not so eager to invoke it now when everyone is having a nice time and thinking not at all about vampires that would like to tear Louis apart.
And besides, Jeannie and Mark are going to sing.
Louis turns obediently towards the stage. A flash of memory: Claudia, rehearsing, looking out into the theater to find him. It twists hard in his chest.
Claudia would have liked karaoke, Louis is certain.
A mental detour that wards against the impulse to let go of Lestat's hand first. Louis retains it while Jeannie and Mark perform, and Daniel films, and the bar chatters and whoops and applauds around them.
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Not because he doesn't want to drink it, but Louis has the hand he would need to do so easily, and has perhaps forgotten.
Then he thinks, I would like to dance to this, and as was always so when such a thought occurred to him, in a time and place long lost to them both, it's enough for Lestat to get to his feet, turn, use his held hand to try to invite Louis up with him. And it only occurs to him once he is doing so that he might be shot down with real protest instead of the fake protest he is still, even now, used to batting side, on account of how they aren't actually together anymore, and perhaps never will be.
Well, he is quite charming. A way about him, he has read. Tonight's way is a silly smile and visible mischief inherent in asking Louis for a turn about the nearby patch of floor by the table in which no one else is dancing.
Plus he has fire powers and can self-immolate if he has to.
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Aware they are in public.
Remembering New Orleans. Remembering their ball, but remembering beyond that. Remembering their home. Remembering Lestat drawing Louis into an embrace, a waltz. The years before Claudia, the years after, when she would join them and they three would dance together.
And now here, in a very public bar, Lestat rises to his feet and means to draw Louis after him. The intention is clear, familiar even after eighty years.
Maybe Louis' hesitance is clear too. Balking, a stretch where he looks into Lestat's face, fingers tightening around his before he permits himself to be drawn up onto his feet.
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And for a moment, he thinks Louis won't. But then he does.
He is rewarded with a pleased smile, a subtle one, Lestat positioning their hands like a waltz and his hand finding Louis' waist. He does not wind himself around him like he might if they were making something different of their lives, but it's a friendly intimacy that he sways Louis into.
And maybe this close, Louis can tell that Lestat, also, is quite aware of time, of place. Of behaving in a way even men who were only friends would not risk doing in polite society, once, or even impolite society. And isn't it pleasurable, to exist in this era? Was not Lestat always saying, how profoundly the world can change? He has seen it. They see it now, together.
The chorus hits. He twirls him.
enjoy a tag of nothing
There are no appalled murmurs. Maybe a passing glance, this murmur, that shrug. They are noted, smiled over, dismissed. Another older couple gets up, rangy silver-haired man coaxing his sweet-faced partner along after him into their own waltz as Jeannie sings.
Louis' fingers come to rest at Lestat's neck, thumb running back and forth at the hinge of his jaw. They are farther apart than they once were, and Louis understands it. They are different. Lestat wants different things, but still perhaps wants this remembered intimacy. It takes a few long minutes, but Louis relaxes into the sway of their bodies.
Lestat twirls him, and brings Louis back, as he had always done before into his arms. Louis lets him. Touches him still, hand at his neck, fingers linked as Lestat leads.
There are things Louis could say that would fill the space between them with conversation. But Louis gives it up. He is content to look into Lestat's face, drink in the pleased expression there, while they move together through the last few verses of Jeannie and Mark's song choice.
eats it
They're a thing, or they're working on it.
Warms Daniel's heart despite the worry over domestic abuse. Some things, people can work out. Especially if those people are connected in a cosmic way, if the circumstances are beyond human. He hopes so, at least. He thinks Louis can be his own person and be healed and whole without Lestat, but it's clear to him that he'd be happiest with things mended.
Just a little bit of sneaky phone recording. Maybe a still photo or two. Subtle. Spy-like. No one will ever know, until someday, Daniel decides to send something to one of them.
The 60s pop duet eventually comes to a close with applause from the bar patrons, most of which are guilelessly charmed by a real live couple doing the cover. Daniel claps and whistles for them, and then, when Mark points to him, says "Oh fuck", as he had, of course, forgotten he's next.
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But this is a problem for future Lestat. Present Lestat is enjoying himself, pleased to be indulged, executing little courtly turns to an irreverent love song while very little attention is paid them. The song closes, and it takes some remembering to recall himself and end the dance with an overly proper little bow over Louis' hand rather than anything else.
And gives his applause to the stage after, and while doing so, he steals Louis' seat. A strategic location so that he doesn't have to witness a mortal pawing at his ex-husband all night. A worse indignity than anything more substantial.
A cackle, though, at Daniel's realisation, and a bright and clear wolf whistle to urge him along as his name is called.
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The warmth of Lestat lingers, burning everywhere he touched. (He takes all the rest, and puts it carefully away to be examined later.)
"Time to give us a glimpse of that showmanship you been on about," Louis reminds, hand lifting so Louis might circle around his chair and take up Lestat's abandoned seat. Grinning, a little nudge of encouragement between their minds as Jeannie and Mark make their cacophonous return to the table.
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The mood in the room is not enthused to see him, speaking of being a boomer, but a few people definitely recognize the name plus his face, even if only from a promo in the window of the bookshop down the street. Mild curiosity. Maybe he'll sing a vampire song.
and it is, he sings the cher song
The twangy, bassy opening of Cake's obnoxious but catchy Short Skirt, Long Jacket is medium acceptable. Fun, not much real singing involved, funny. Daniel is medium okay at it. A couple people know when to shout repeats of the verses, and he encourages this. Only one minor fumble, saying 'allocutions' instead of 'allocations', which he does correct by speaking over the song, firmly, though he notes either would work in context. Anyway! Nails that shine like justice!!
no subject
Incidentally also spylike, Lestat props his phone against the back of Louis' shoulder to peek the camera at the stage over the top, though there is still probably some visible sparkle from the case catching the light anyway. Whatever. Stealth mode journalism, recording Daniel's performance, a video which will also catch a low laugh from him at Daniel's smooth talk-singing correction, at the participatory shouts from a nearby table.
Also picks up a muttered complaint, "I don't know this song," to whoever might be listening.
no subject
Daniel is so.
Himself.
So entirely unchanged, parted only from the disease that had been slowly killing him. Louis is so pleased about it. Had been pleased too, Daniel arriving in Dubai grown old and still sharp, still recognizable and familiar. This is not so far from that moment. An echo of that feeling, only now made more complex by present circumstances.
Explanation of the song is left in Jeannie's capable hands. Louis has hooked an ankle up over his knee, lounging back in his chair into the light, incidental touch required by Lestat's spycraft.
When he time comes, Louis is effusive in his applause. Whistles through two fingers, over the rest of the bar.
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"Thank you, thank you," he still has the microphone, "I always knew in my heart I was destined to be a pop idol, and I'm here tonight in the Burlington Coat Factory, Vermont, to debut on this stage— yes, thank you,"
he is doing a bit, see, and this carries on for a minute as he walks as far away from the DJ as he can with the mic still plugged in, as said DJ participates gamely in the bit by trying to herd grandpa offstage, which he eventually does, after making a cartoonish bow.
Does not hop down, that would be pushing it. A normal retreat, passing the baton to whoever is after him, a young man agonizing between something by Johnny Cash and the siren song of Offspring's Pretty Fly for a White Guy.
When he returns—
"Never again."
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elbows an extra tag in here
owie
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yet another tag of nothing
nothing but uwu eyes
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