It's nice. A little loose, because whatever those kids were selling is hitting halfway decent (he's still got the rest of that cocaine he picked up back in the city, but it's not that kind of a night). It'd be better if they drained somebody else who was high, but—
A refrain; not that kind of a night. Plus, memories. This gentle stir of memory is enough, without going any deeper.
"Because it's funny that the host's DVR had it," Daniel says. "Art curator movie, fucked up cartoon murders. And F is for Fake would have been way too on the nose, if they happened to have it."
A better film, but released in 1973, and relentlessly skewering the sale and collection of art? No. Velvet Buzzsaw is fucking stupid, and thus a much better choice. Any skewering is from the perspective of someone deep in this world; these are cartoon versions of people Louis has to have known, over the years. Maybe even ones he'd like to see get mauled by CGI monkeys.
Next to him on the bed, with enough space for Jesus between them, Daniel is comfortable. The smoke detector has been removed, and the window's open enough for just a bit of refreshing cold air. He is also wearing casual homey clothes, though with more layers, and socks. Not because of the weather, he's self-conscious, but that's all distant background noise. He's in a good, mellow mood.
They are not pitching themselves full-tilt into their worst shared habits. Yes, Louis knows any drug is better from the vein. But this is not necessarily about the best high.
It's about the ritual, passing the lit joint back and forth, fingers brushing on each rotation as this movie plays in the background. Louis hasn't seen it. He is trying to remember the last time he and Armand went to a cinema. Maybe New York. Maybe not. The impressions are blurry, and Louis wants to pick them all apart, but not tonight.
"So maybe next stop," regarding whatever For is for Fake might be. Louis hasn't seen it. Doesn't remember seeing it. "I would have expected you to pick something else."
Something aggressively terrible, to sharpen his wit upon.
The real drugs are the friends we made along the way, or something like that. Daniel just likes being here with Louis. Every minute they get to hang out, no stakes, no pressure, no interview, makes the world feel more real. Finally at the other side of fifty years of strangeness. Hey, we did it, we're friends, we get to have this. This, inconsequential bullshit, the things life is made up of.
"I watch everything," he says with a shrug. "I get caught in the, what's it called, choice paralysis circle of hell, if I don't just pick whatever I see first. When it comes to movies, anyway."
And so, here we are, with an art curator dark comedy.
"I used to go to theaters and hop around from movie to movie so I could sleep off hangovers. So I'd always have seen parts of everything that was out."
A humming sort of acknowledgement. Louis' head tips on the pillow, watching Daniel smoke. The movie plays on.
"Sounds nice."
Knowing it was probably not, or not entirely.
Maybe it's more that Louis would have liked to be there with him. No hangover to sleep off, but Daniel entitled to his own. The thought of them slouched together in cushioned seats, movies playing out in snippets. Louis likes that.
In another world, another life, Louis was there.
Here, now, Louis asks, "Would you want to do that when we go back to New York?"
See a dozen movies in a night. Chase the dawn back to Daniel's apartment. They have eternity. Why not do these things? Why not please themselves?
He laughs a little, "It was, actually. Not in an, 'I had a nice time' way, but it was better than nothing. There was a surrealist quality to it. And I can look back, now, and I know that nobody can really do that today. The world is meaner. I'd get kicked out, or turfed by the police, today. If I got let in at all. So it's charming, I guess."
People can be okay. Mortal en mass, human society. It's a bit worse these days, but maybe they'll come around again. Maybe Daniel will get to see it. So much of the despair and bitterness of the modern era has vanished, becoming immortal. He'll weather it. He'll see what comes next.
He hands the blunt back, sighs. It's a nice sigh.
"Yeah. I'd like that. Just fuck around for a few nights."
So much of Louis' past has taken on that quality. Bygone eras, relics in museums, stories relayed from the sidewalk in front of a place no longer called home. All parts of it, gone.
And maybe what Daniel describes would never have been accessible to Louis.
Doesn't matter so much in this moment. They are planning for the future. Daniel hands him the joint and their knuckles graze and Louis smiles at him.
"We only got the one together," and not even all of it. "Might be nice to have a few more this century."
What is partying with Daniel Molloy like? Is it as Louis remembers?
Is it the same when Daniel hunts?
They haven't spoken of it. Daniel's hunts. Maybe they should, before Louis inflicts himself on one of those nights out.
Offered with a wistfulness that's only slightly a joke. Nobody even manufactures methaqualone, it's a rough life. Daniel has to just imagine how bonkers the high would be if he drained somebody who was loaded on it. He'll have to eventually settle for heroin, though uh, he won't be telling Louis that. Seems like a solo activity (minus whoever ends up drained).
Speaking (not really) of draining people,
"A polite not-quite-mauling instead, this time, maybe."
Jokes they can make with each other. I took a scoop out of your neck. He did indeed do that.
Louis remembers now. Louis has thought on it since, the things he knows that he hadn't for a long time. Daniel, on his couch that first night, tugging at the collar of his shirt to draw attention to the scar Louis left.
Here, now, Louis turns to look at him across the pillows. Finds the mark, still there on Daniel's throat and lets it reassure, underscore the joke.
"I'd be real gentle," Louis promises, grinning around a mouthful of smoke. "I've had some practice since then."
Damek, after all, has no scars at all. Louis has refined his technique. (Louis had guide rails, had a harness. What is that restraint now that he's cast those off?)
In 1973, Daniel would have just let him. To turn him, to just drink from him for the fuck of it— anything. He was there. Into it. Full send. He looks back and wants to die of embarrassment; he looks back and there's impossible fondness.
It's a fucked up thing, but it's their fucked up thing.
"Oh, I know." Dry, with a laugh as he adjust his positioning, half on his side. Not paying attention to the movie, but the movie's not the point. "You liked showing off."
They don't have to talk about Armand.
"And you did sort of freak me out with it." Sort of. Because Daniel was a little freaked out, and Daniel was a little turned on, and Daniel was very very curious and taking a million notes and running a dozen calculations, some of which Louis noticed. "But I believe you. Very gentle, if you ever chew on me again. Though, yeah, you didn't bring Damek, huh?"
Carefully chosen words. Let, invoking permission, implying a request.
Damek had been more than happy to enjoy a paid vacation in New York City. But Louis might have taken him in the wilds of Vermont, had things gone differently.
"I'm not expecting you to supplement my meals," feels like a thing to offer, assure. It's not Daniel's job to make sure Louis eats. He has a century under his belt. He has enough stock traveling with them.
Perhaps he will eat a tourist. Test the waters.
Regardless, none of it is Daniel's to worry about.
A minor fumble, and Daniel looks a smidge sheepish. Knowing, it seems, that he's offering something fairly intimate. But Louis is his friend, and he knows he's in a transitional phase.
"Just an option. And I trust you. Shit's weird, and whatever, so. You know." He shrugs. "It wouldn't make me uncomfortable. There. That sounded normal, right? Is there protocol about this sort of thing?"
Inside thoughts happening outside, but he trusts Louis with these, too.
Louis watches Daniel from behind little plumes of exhaled smoke. Lets himself feel the way the proposition appeals. To touch the edges of his affection for Daniel, map out something deep and enduring and tender that Louis has carried fr over fifty years.
"No protocol."
Though Louis admittedly has a skewed perspective. There is Lestat, and there is Armand, and Louis hasn't made a habit of indulging with anyone beyond the two of them.
Quiet stretching out between them. Louis studying Daniel, missing the sharp blue of his eyes. Finally, reaches out with his free hand to cup Daniel's cheek.
"Don't offer because you feel bad, or you pity me or something like that," Louis tells him, stipulating. "That's not what I want."
His eyes do a funny thing when Louis touches him. Wide with surprise, shifting paler despite maintaining that undead density, reminiscent of the watery blue-green he had while alive. He's pretty sure he hasn't just offered to suck Louis off (despite being intensely aware of what it can feel like, now, thanks to Armand), so this is just emotional significance.
Still. A feeling! He's grateful for the sliver of an edge being off, with the baby joint.
Daniel ends up laughing, though, when he recovers and hears that stipulation—
"You're mistaking me for somebody a lot more passive-aggressive if you think I'd offer anything out of pity. You're my friend, Louis."
Thumb running soft across Daniel's cheek, Louis smiling at little at him. Fond. Endlessly fond of Daniel. Daniel who makes this assertion and leaves Louis to ride out the complex wash of emotion it provokes.
They're friends. Louis was so careless with him.
"I know," at last, settling on the words. "We are."
Daniel is so important.
"I'm not starving," Louis promises. "I'm just figuring out how it's gonna be now."
What kind of hunter Louis will become. If he could ever take pleasure in the kill.
Easy, right? It can be. It can be casual, if they decide it is, and Louis deserves to have every option available to him while he figures it out. Daniel raises his hand to touch Louis' against his face, and gives him a reassuring squeeze.
"Maybe you're sick of me asking if you're doing okay, so I won't. But I give a fuck, is all. You're on my mind often. And I'm glad for that, because it means we're still here."
Louis and the long weeks where he does not, cannot eat. Louis worrying his companions. Louis, with a bowl of blood and no appetite for it.
Daniel should be spared it all.
Gently, Louis coaxes him across the mattress. He wants more than this bare slip of contact, though he doesn't yield it in the process.
"I think about you often," Louis tells him. Daniel's not the only one allowed to worry. But still, reassured: "I'm okay. I'm gonna keep on being okay."
And then, with a slanting smile, Louis reminds, "You can ask me anything. Would be a little late to start complaining."
Coaxed, Daniel goes, his expression curious. Eyebrows knitted just a little as he lets Louis direct where he ends up. Are they friends like this, more contact than just a touch to his face, the occasional hug? He wouldn't mind. Some traitorous little part of him tries to flicker to life, thinking about it, but he puts that away. A hundred reasons.
(Louis is worth getting his heart broken over, yes, but still, he'd prefer not to get his heart broken.)
"Hey," he huffs a laugh, "Interview's over. This is regular, consequence-of-knowing-me blunt busybody shit."
"And I'm telling you the blunt busybody bullshit is okay with me."
Even when it's annoying. Even when Daniel jabs at sensitive, tender parts of him. Even when Daniel pries past Louis' instincts to deflect and hide.
It's Daniel. Daniel has permission, always. Always.
Invited now to lean into Louis, to tangle chastely over the coverlet. They hadn't done this before, not in Dubai, not in San Francisco. (Not that Louis can remember, a thing that is always a question now.) But Louis invites him in now, head tipped back on the pillow to draw in a deep breath of smoke and hold it as Daniel settles.
"I'll remember you said that," is both fond and threatening.
Maybe it's not all the way new. Maybe Daniel really did lay next to him in that bed in Louis' shitty flop house of an apartment, but Louis would have been burned, and miserable, and they wouldn't have touched. Daniel would have looked at him and tried to say something helpful, and maybe they smiled at each other, mutual hostages; Louis shouldn't have picked him up, Daniel shouldn't have gone with him, but they each made a choice, and so, there they were, together.
Much more comfortable here. Stupid movie on, the last third of a rolled-up joint scored off some college kids. Lestat, somewhere on a business call, but still welcome to fling the door open and join them. Their mortal gang, asleep. (Armand, hopefully still in New York.)
"I didn't realize you were quite that hands-off with your staff."
Since Rachida through him under the bus, he might as well ask.
Louis dreams sometimes, vivid distortions that might be memory might be something else. Daniel lays beside him now and there is no pain. Louis' fingers skimmed his face, now toy with the curls at Daniel's nape. Comfortable. No one is burning, no one is bleeding.
Louis yields the joint.
Whatever question he'd been expecting, it hadn't been this. Daniel has had a long time to ask after his staff. Had thought the interest passed after Armand had been revealed, after Rashid had tipped his hand.
"They're my employees," is a little questioning, words wreathed in smoke. "We have a professional relationship."
Daniel takes a hit. Nearly done. They have a few more joints, and maybe they'll go through them, maybe they won't. In no hurry. They have eternity.
"Well,"
Well. The interview is over, but Daniel is still Daniel, and there's still so much about Louis to investigate. Daniel would like to be on Vampire Wikipedia and ask one million questions, forever. Did his previous canines fall out? Did his old fingernails fall out? Are you sure you can't turn into a bat?
(Are you sure you're okay? Will you be okay? Is it my fault?)
"Some of them seemed to live with you, and they know your most terrifying, compromising secrets. But you were not into karaoke with the help."
Enough so that there is no tension in Louis' body, still loose-limbed alongside Daniel, fingers steady in his hair. Amused, and letting Daniel see it.
"We don't socialize."
Obviously.
"Does that bother you?"
Confuse might be the better word. Or no, not that. Louis is trying to work it out, to decide if Daniel finds this incongruous or if he simply objects. Or both. Or if it is the difference in their lifestyles, their age. Louis with a handful of decades maintaining staff, choosing what was necessary to organize his life and maintain his businesses, what was a good use of his fortune and what was a foolish risk.
"It surprised me a little," he corrects. "Not that I think everybody needs to be as overlapped as writers with editors and assistants. This whole writing gig, it's stupid, it's a lot of disemboweling yourself creatively in public, so." Daniel shrugs. Gets a little personal. Work from home on hell.
But—
"A funny incident, somebody drunk at a Christmas party, I dunno. I figured you'd have had something. You, at least. You like people. You're not just this scary vampire. I didn't know they hadn't seen... you."
Louis lets them stay there, quiet. Daniel will wait for him. Louis knows that. Daniel will pry relentlessly after answers, yes, but he's given Louis room to breathe. Maybe led him, kited Louis towards answers Daniel sensed before Louis could parse them out.
The amusement goes. Turns pensive. Feels their breath, rising and falling in time.
"I didn't want them to see me," Louis says at last. Corrects himself: "I don't want them to see me."
A thing Louis hasn't looked directly at in twenty years, at least.
He gives Louis proverbial space. No carrot this time. He just wants to know, because Louis is his friend; that Daniel is bad at not driving all of his friends away because he's annoying and over-curious and pushy is just a part of knowing Daniel. He thinks this is lowkey.
That answer gives him pause. It makes sense, but it also makes something in Daniel ache. Bittersweet. Louis deserves to be seen, but Louis' relationship with his own identity has been profoundly fucked over.
Daniel lays a hand on his chest. Returning the affectionate touch to his own face.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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A refrain; not that kind of a night. Plus, memories. This gentle stir of memory is enough, without going any deeper.
"Because it's funny that the host's DVR had it," Daniel says. "Art curator movie, fucked up cartoon murders. And F is for Fake would have been way too on the nose, if they happened to have it."
A better film, but released in 1973, and relentlessly skewering the sale and collection of art? No. Velvet Buzzsaw is fucking stupid, and thus a much better choice. Any skewering is from the perspective of someone deep in this world; these are cartoon versions of people Louis has to have known, over the years. Maybe even ones he'd like to see get mauled by CGI monkeys.
Next to him on the bed, with enough space for Jesus between them, Daniel is comfortable. The smoke detector has been removed, and the window's open enough for just a bit of refreshing cold air. He is also wearing casual homey clothes, though with more layers, and socks. Not because of the weather, he's self-conscious, but that's all distant background noise. He's in a good, mellow mood.
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They are not pitching themselves full-tilt into their worst shared habits. Yes, Louis knows any drug is better from the vein. But this is not necessarily about the best high.
It's about the ritual, passing the lit joint back and forth, fingers brushing on each rotation as this movie plays in the background. Louis hasn't seen it. He is trying to remember the last time he and Armand went to a cinema. Maybe New York. Maybe not. The impressions are blurry, and Louis wants to pick them all apart, but not tonight.
"So maybe next stop," regarding whatever For is for Fake might be. Louis hasn't seen it. Doesn't remember seeing it. "I would have expected you to pick something else."
Something aggressively terrible, to sharpen his wit upon.
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"I watch everything," he says with a shrug. "I get caught in the, what's it called, choice paralysis circle of hell, if I don't just pick whatever I see first. When it comes to movies, anyway."
And so, here we are, with an art curator dark comedy.
"I used to go to theaters and hop around from movie to movie so I could sleep off hangovers. So I'd always have seen parts of everything that was out."
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"Sounds nice."
Knowing it was probably not, or not entirely.
Maybe it's more that Louis would have liked to be there with him. No hangover to sleep off, but Daniel entitled to his own. The thought of them slouched together in cushioned seats, movies playing out in snippets. Louis likes that.
In another world, another life, Louis was there.
Here, now, Louis asks, "Would you want to do that when we go back to New York?"
See a dozen movies in a night. Chase the dawn back to Daniel's apartment. They have eternity. Why not do these things? Why not please themselves?
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People can be okay. Mortal en mass, human society. It's a bit worse these days, but maybe they'll come around again. Maybe Daniel will get to see it. So much of the despair and bitterness of the modern era has vanished, becoming immortal. He'll weather it. He'll see what comes next.
He hands the blunt back, sighs. It's a nice sigh.
"Yeah. I'd like that. Just fuck around for a few nights."
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And maybe what Daniel describes would never have been accessible to Louis.
Doesn't matter so much in this moment. They are planning for the future. Daniel hands him the joint and their knuckles graze and Louis smiles at him.
"We only got the one together," and not even all of it. "Might be nice to have a few more this century."
What is partying with Daniel Molloy like? Is it as Louis remembers?
Is it the same when Daniel hunts?
They haven't spoken of it. Daniel's hunts. Maybe they should, before Louis inflicts himself on one of those nights out.
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Offered with a wistfulness that's only slightly a joke. Nobody even manufactures methaqualone, it's a rough life. Daniel has to just imagine how bonkers the high would be if he drained somebody who was loaded on it. He'll have to eventually settle for heroin, though uh, he won't be telling Louis that. Seems like a solo activity (minus whoever ends up drained).
Speaking (not really) of draining people,
"A polite not-quite-mauling instead, this time, maybe."
Jokes they can make with each other. I took a scoop out of your neck. He did indeed do that.
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Louis remembers now. Louis has thought on it since, the things he knows that he hadn't for a long time. Daniel, on his couch that first night, tugging at the collar of his shirt to draw attention to the scar Louis left.
Here, now, Louis turns to look at him across the pillows. Finds the mark, still there on Daniel's throat and lets it reassure, underscore the joke.
"I'd be real gentle," Louis promises, grinning around a mouthful of smoke. "I've had some practice since then."
Damek, after all, has no scars at all. Louis has refined his technique. (Louis had guide rails, had a harness. What is that restraint now that he's cast those off?)
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It's a fucked up thing, but it's their fucked up thing.
"Oh, I know." Dry, with a laugh as he adjust his positioning, half on his side. Not paying attention to the movie, but the movie's not the point. "You liked showing off."
They don't have to talk about Armand.
"And you did sort of freak me out with it." Sort of. Because Daniel was a little freaked out, and Daniel was a little turned on, and Daniel was very very curious and taking a million notes and running a dozen calculations, some of which Louis noticed. "But I believe you. Very gentle, if you ever chew on me again. Though, yeah, you didn't bring Damek, huh?"
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Carefully chosen words. Let, invoking permission, implying a request.
Damek had been more than happy to enjoy a paid vacation in New York City. But Louis might have taken him in the wilds of Vermont, had things gone differently.
"I'm not expecting you to supplement my meals," feels like a thing to offer, assure. It's not Daniel's job to make sure Louis eats. He has a century under his belt. He has enough stock traveling with them.
Perhaps he will eat a tourist. Test the waters.
Regardless, none of it is Daniel's to worry about.
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A minor fumble, and Daniel looks a smidge sheepish. Knowing, it seems, that he's offering something fairly intimate. But Louis is his friend, and he knows he's in a transitional phase.
"Just an option. And I trust you. Shit's weird, and whatever, so. You know." He shrugs. "It wouldn't make me uncomfortable. There. That sounded normal, right? Is there protocol about this sort of thing?"
Inside thoughts happening outside, but he trusts Louis with these, too.
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Louis watches Daniel from behind little plumes of exhaled smoke. Lets himself feel the way the proposition appeals. To touch the edges of his affection for Daniel, map out something deep and enduring and tender that Louis has carried fr over fifty years.
"No protocol."
Though Louis admittedly has a skewed perspective. There is Lestat, and there is Armand, and Louis hasn't made a habit of indulging with anyone beyond the two of them.
Quiet stretching out between them. Louis studying Daniel, missing the sharp blue of his eyes. Finally, reaches out with his free hand to cup Daniel's cheek.
"Don't offer because you feel bad, or you pity me or something like that," Louis tells him, stipulating. "That's not what I want."
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Still. A feeling! He's grateful for the sliver of an edge being off, with the baby joint.
Daniel ends up laughing, though, when he recovers and hears that stipulation—
"You're mistaking me for somebody a lot more passive-aggressive if you think I'd offer anything out of pity. You're my friend, Louis."
(Daniel is the regular kind of aggressive.)
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They're friends. Louis was so careless with him.
"I know," at last, settling on the words. "We are."
Daniel is so important.
"I'm not starving," Louis promises. "I'm just figuring out how it's gonna be now."
What kind of hunter Louis will become. If he could ever take pleasure in the kill.
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Easy, right? It can be. It can be casual, if they decide it is, and Louis deserves to have every option available to him while he figures it out. Daniel raises his hand to touch Louis' against his face, and gives him a reassuring squeeze.
"Maybe you're sick of me asking if you're doing okay, so I won't. But I give a fuck, is all. You're on my mind often. And I'm glad for that, because it means we're still here."
Not a bad or inconvenient preoccupation at all.
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Louis and the long weeks where he does not, cannot eat. Louis worrying his companions. Louis, with a bowl of blood and no appetite for it.
Daniel should be spared it all.
Gently, Louis coaxes him across the mattress. He wants more than this bare slip of contact, though he doesn't yield it in the process.
"I think about you often," Louis tells him. Daniel's not the only one allowed to worry. But still, reassured: "I'm okay. I'm gonna keep on being okay."
And then, with a slanting smile, Louis reminds, "You can ask me anything. Would be a little late to start complaining."
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(Louis is worth getting his heart broken over, yes, but still, he'd prefer not to get his heart broken.)
"Hey," he huffs a laugh, "Interview's over. This is regular, consequence-of-knowing-me blunt busybody shit."
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Even when it's annoying. Even when Daniel jabs at sensitive, tender parts of him. Even when Daniel pries past Louis' instincts to deflect and hide.
It's Daniel. Daniel has permission, always. Always.
Invited now to lean into Louis, to tangle chastely over the coverlet. They hadn't done this before, not in Dubai, not in San Francisco. (Not that Louis can remember, a thing that is always a question now.) But Louis invites him in now, head tipped back on the pillow to draw in a deep breath of smoke and hold it as Daniel settles.
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Maybe it's not all the way new. Maybe Daniel really did lay next to him in that bed in Louis' shitty flop house of an apartment, but Louis would have been burned, and miserable, and they wouldn't have touched. Daniel would have looked at him and tried to say something helpful, and maybe they smiled at each other, mutual hostages; Louis shouldn't have picked him up, Daniel shouldn't have gone with him, but they each made a choice, and so, there they were, together.
Much more comfortable here. Stupid movie on, the last third of a rolled-up joint scored off some college kids. Lestat, somewhere on a business call, but still welcome to fling the door open and join them. Their mortal gang, asleep. (Armand, hopefully still in New York.)
"I didn't realize you were quite that hands-off with your staff."
Since Rachida through him under the bus, he might as well ask.
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Louis dreams sometimes, vivid distortions that might be memory might be something else. Daniel lays beside him now and there is no pain. Louis' fingers skimmed his face, now toy with the curls at Daniel's nape. Comfortable. No one is burning, no one is bleeding.
Louis yields the joint.
Whatever question he'd been expecting, it hadn't been this. Daniel has had a long time to ask after his staff. Had thought the interest passed after Armand had been revealed, after Rashid had tipped his hand.
"They're my employees," is a little questioning, words wreathed in smoke. "We have a professional relationship."
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"Well,"
Well. The interview is over, but Daniel is still Daniel, and there's still so much about Louis to investigate. Daniel would like to be on Vampire Wikipedia and ask one million questions, forever. Did his previous canines fall out? Did his old fingernails fall out? Are you sure you can't turn into a bat?
(Are you sure you're okay? Will you be okay? Is it my fault?)
"Some of them seemed to live with you, and they know your most terrifying, compromising secrets. But you were not into karaoke with the help."
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Enough so that there is no tension in Louis' body, still loose-limbed alongside Daniel, fingers steady in his hair. Amused, and letting Daniel see it.
"We don't socialize."
Obviously.
"Does that bother you?"
Confuse might be the better word. Or no, not that. Louis is trying to work it out, to decide if Daniel finds this incongruous or if he simply objects. Or both. Or if it is the difference in their lifestyles, their age. Louis with a handful of decades maintaining staff, choosing what was necessary to organize his life and maintain his businesses, what was a good use of his fortune and what was a foolish risk.
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But—
"A funny incident, somebody drunk at a Christmas party, I dunno. I figured you'd have had something. You, at least. You like people. You're not just this scary vampire. I didn't know they hadn't seen... you."
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Nothing, right away.
Louis lets them stay there, quiet. Daniel will wait for him. Louis knows that. Daniel will pry relentlessly after answers, yes, but he's given Louis room to breathe. Maybe led him, kited Louis towards answers Daniel sensed before Louis could parse them out.
The amusement goes. Turns pensive. Feels their breath, rising and falling in time.
"I didn't want them to see me," Louis says at last. Corrects himself: "I don't want them to see me."
A thing Louis hasn't looked directly at in twenty years, at least.
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That answer gives him pause. It makes sense, but it also makes something in Daniel ache. Bittersweet. Louis deserves to be seen, but Louis' relationship with his own identity has been profoundly fucked over.
Daniel lays a hand on his chest. Returning the affectionate touch to his own face.
"Alright," he says softly. Accepting.
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