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.
Daniel, giving him a pass. Louis tips a small smile up at the ceiling.
"You see me."
And it's enough. Enough that Daniel sees him, Louis as he is now.
It's a fear Louis has sometimes, when it is him and Lestat in a room together. They are both vastly different people than they'd been, and they are still very much the same. Easy to worry that Lestat looks at Louis and wishes for the person Louis had been once. That he finds the man he is now wanting.
Hey, man, it's not a pass, it's real acceptance. He can't bulldoze Louis into being completely healed with full self-esteem overnight. He'd have done it by now otherwise.
"I'd like to think I do," he says, of seeing Louis. "I hope so. I like that you let me."
Daniel cares about him so much.
And importantly:
"I see you. I like you. The person you are. The person I saw a little bit here and there, and get to see all the time now."
A careless oops, but a well-meaning one. (You know, sort of. Jeannie getting away blameless. Daniel is still curious.) Daniel loves Louis, he thinks he's great. Why wouldn't his employees think that? They basically live with him.
But of course. Louis hasn't been himself. And maybe not everyone sees as sharply as Daniel does. Which sucks, honestly. Louis deserves to be free from all of this— but he knows it'll take time.
Daniel will always seen him. Louis will always let him.
He's been twirling the gray curls at Daniel's nape between his fingers. Lifts his free hand to lay over Daniel's on his chest. Promising eternity. A clearer, less guilt-soaked assurance. Louis will be here. He isn't going anywhere.
Right now, he does not want to die.
"You gonna let me see you too?"
Louis could touch his mind. But he doesn't want to hunt for anything. He wants whatever Daniel is giving.
The promise washes over Daniel, warm. He's been disillusioned, about relationships. Platonic, romantic, familial. They don't last. In some fucked up way, it gives him hope seeing Louis reconnect with Lestat. Daniel screws everything up, but he might not ever screw up that bad. He can hope, anyway.
(This is positive about Lestat!! Shhh!!)
He wants Louis to stick around. He wants to be his friend, for that whole eternity.
"Don't you?" Maybe it sucks trying to figure people out, after Armand. (Armand. Who Daniel promised to spend time with.) "I dunno how mysterious I am. My employees all know way too much about me. Almost as much as you do."
"Fifty years is a long time," is a funny thing for a vampire to say.
Louis, alive for over a century, still young enough to weigh the passing years. Still young enough to look at nearly eighty years and feel the full weight of it rather than shrug it off easy.
"I was far away while you grew up."
So much of Daniel's life is on pages and television screens, yes. But Louis cannot believe that there were not things left out. That Daniel kept things for himself as Louis tried to keep things for himself.
And maybe Louis is entitled to none of it. Maybe he should simply be grateful. (He is. He is grateful for Daniel, always.)
Maybe it is only some quiet, anxious fear that Daniel is holding something obscured and away to avoid burdening Louis with it.
"Didn't feel like it. Felt like it went by pretty fast."
A blink. One minute he's signing divorce papers, handing them over to Alice, the next minute he's arguing with his youngest daughter about the car she wrecked. When did his knees start hurting? He didn't get enough time with knees that didn't hurt.
Until now.
"You'd have just watched me make stupid mistakes, over and over. You got the highlights. Everything about me that's worthwhile comes out best in writing, even if it's about other people. Probably especially thing."
Louis doesn't like it, the way Daniel says this about himself. Doesn't like the way he devalues his story, himself alongside it.
"Saying that like you ain't listened to me making the same mistakes over and over," Louis points out.
Daniel knows everything. Saw everything, even when Louis hadn't. But Louis can't exactly boast that kind of insight. Can't pretend he'd offer anything other than his own desires, the wish to know Daniel as Daniel knows him.
Nothing else, for a beat after that. Louis' eyes trace the crack in the ceiling, the shadows cast by the light.
"I don't want you to forget it all," he whispers. "I know you gonna be your own vampire, but don't lose the rest."
"You went through some shit, Louis, I was just an idiot."
Daniel sounds surprised. He is surprised. Louis had met him! Louis nearly killed him! Because Daniel was just an idiot. His own pause is one with widened eyes, trying to understand the moodiness of this topic. What does Louis think he was doing? Definitely not struggling against societal racism in the aftermath of slavery, or going across the country in the middle of a global war in search of safety and freedom, or dealing with what he dealt with in Paris.
Louis may have made mistakes, but it wasn't in a vacuum. He did the best he could, coped the only ways he was able.
"Hey." He rubs his chest, a little faux-shake. "Hey. I was a weird human. You know that. I'm not going to forget, I just... I lived it. I'm not a student at Berkley anymore, but I still was. Same with being somebody's husband. Working at the New York Times. Those things have been behind me for a long while. Doesn't mean they're gone."
His hand is still where it's laid on Louis' chest. No tremor. He's not sick and dying anymore. And Louis...
"You're still yourself. I know you are. Everyone changes, even people who aren't vampires with their heads fucked by some jerk."
What a gift, the way Daniel gives Louis these things. He speaks with such conviction. Daniel has had a lifetime in which he helped shape the world. He used that gift to reshape Louis' entire life, shatter his present into a new form. He says these things now with weight behind them, and Louis is so fond of that quality in him. Pleased, just as he is pleased each time he takes a step back and observes all the familiar pieces of Daniel, still intact despite what Armand had done.
"I'm not trying to get you to comfort me," is a little rueful, a little embarrassed for having provoked this response.
Daniel's hand pressed down over Louis' dead heart, Louis watching the unfamiliar bloom of color in his eyes.
"Just want you to know you were always something, even when we met. I saw it in you."
Which must be true, or else Louis would have just eaten him rather than messing around with the tape recorder. There had been something there, something so immediate and vital that Louis couldn't do anything but respond to the spark of it.
And see what Daniel made of that spark, fifty years on.
It's all something. All important. Pieces of foundation that a millennia of life can be built upon. The vampire Daniel will become rising from the human he'd been.
It matters more to Louis. Louis, who cares so much about a history. Who was driven to restless disquiet when he sensed the wrongness of his own recollection, fearful of missing pieces and events wrenched out of joint.
"Tough shit, I'm making the executive decision to offer comfort anyway, because you're my friend."
Cope. Not that Daniel has had friends who are just friends who hold on to each other in bed like this, but that's fine, too. He's not a university student anymore, he's not a reporter for a newspaper anymore, he's not human anymore. He's the same person, just here, now, like this, learning to do new things, with new people. Not just having superpowers. This part, this is the most special. It's beyond anything he's experienced before. Maybe he couldn't, before being transformed.
(Yes he could have he's just a closeted literal boomer, but look.)
"I know you did. I believe you. Even if I think you were a little preemptively loopy."
Teasing, along with this comfort. So curious as to why Louis thinks he's a vampire. So curious as to why Louis thinks there was anything but a total dumbass happening with 20 year old Daniel Molloy. See. He's the same guy. Sass.
"We'd been drinking," Louis offers, prim for a split second before he breaks into a grin.
No, it wasn't the alcohol.
It had just been the giddy high of their connection, and the electric, adrenaline of anticipation. Of knowing that they could speak to each other, that Louis could say all the things he'd kept locked up in his chest and Daniel would hear him, understand him. Would ask questions, listen when Louis answered.
All things Daniel must know, so Louis says none of them. Instead:
"You wanna come see New Orleans with us after all this?"
All this spanning anywhere from "the end of the book tour" to "the end of this war." Us operating on the foregone conclusion that Lestat would agree to accomapny them.
New Orleans was a likely place for angry vampires to look. Louis knows it. The tour at least puts them on the move, keeps Louis out of sight.
A spark. Something. Daniel isn't so sure about it, honestly, but he doesn't hold his own uncertainty against Louis. The way he sees it, Louis did desperately need someone to talk to. It had been a long time, decades, since Miss Lily. But he wasn't going to genuinely pursue her any more than he was Daniel.
Despite that, he's glad they met. Despite all of it, he's glad they met. He can't tell Armand he'd endure it again just to get here, Armand would take it the wrong way, but he can trust Louis with it. Unspoken, just felt. It was worth it.
Eyebrows go up.
"I'd love to visit New Orleans with you, but no way am I third wheeling an emotionally significant revisit. You two deserve that time to yourselves."
'Us', they've clearly talked about it. C'mon. Bro code. He can't do that to Lestat. Speaking of—
(No, Louis has not spoken this whim aloud to anyone else.)
"You're not third wheeling," is maybe an early tell for how Louis is going to answer the latter question.
But he does mean it. Daniel has a place, always, with Louis. And he suspects the same is true for Lestat. Daniel belongs with them. Louis' fingers lay over Daniel's, holding his hand there at his chest, pressing down a little harder, instructive. Yes, he means this.
And Louis misses New Orleans, as much as he believes he should be moving farther and farther from it. That he should be putting himself together in new surroundings, circle back when he is certain he's something like whole.
Louis isn't sure what that will feel like. It's been a long time.
"I'm not complaining," Daniel assures him, as he flexes his fingers up briefly into that hand-hold. Reassuring. "I'm just saying."
Sometimes a third wheel is a third wheel. Daniel isn't sore about it, he's an old man who's done plenty of third wheeling, chaperoning, date-crashing, wing-manning. Don't worry about it. He wants to make it clear that it's a fine distinction, and that he doesn't feel left out, preemptively or otherwise.
If Louis needs an old man security blanket to go on a date, well... maybe. He's not the best 'leave room for Jesus' enforcer.
"Yes, you seem alright. I'm not asking about alright, I'm asking for gossip. I didn't give you my cigarettes so you could stand awkwardly in the cold for fifteen minutes, did I?"
A century removed from Grace, rolling her eyes at him over Lestat. Who else has Louis truly gossiped about him with? Who else that would name their association for what it was and say it without scorn in their voice?
Never. No one. Not even his sister.
Louis is a long way away from gossiping, even as a recipient of Bricktop's complaints or the way his girls sighed after this and that gentleman.
"We ain't been awkward," Louis protests. "We're friends. We do like friends do, these days."
Louis has had a lot of time to consider it. He wasn't ready. Still isn't ready. No one's to blame for it. Lestat isn't obligated to wait on Louis. Louis can't ask.
"We smoked, we talked. We came back in so he could watch Jeannie. He likes her. The singing helps it along."
Probably useful for that to be the case, if Daniel interviews Lestat. Jeannie would surely be helping in that process.
"That's very sweet about Jeannie," he says. "But friends? I don't think I've ever had a friend who I looked at the way you two look at each other. Every time one of you turns your head, the other one's staring like you're cartoon characters with big, wet, heart-shaped eyes."
Yeah he said wet. Lestat cries a lot.
"I know you've got serious things to work through with him. But it... I dunno, I just hope for good things, for you guys. And fun things, too, even if you're apparently squandering all the alone time I'm trying to give you like nerds."
Such fond exasperation in Louis' face, watching Daniel's eyebrows go up. A passing urge to put his palm over Daniel's entire face, block him out.
But the urge passes. So does some of the levity, playfulness ebbing into tenderness. Daniel, wishing good things for Louis even after all that's happened. Daniel, who says these things to Louis as if they are set in stone.
Laces his fingers through Daniels, eyes moving over Daniel's face. Expression turning thoughtful, as he casts around for an answer.
"I am having a good time," Louis tells him. "I'm having a real good time traveling with you two."
Speaking of third wheels, what is Louis? Tagging along when maybe he shouldn't be.
"This is a good thing. Being with you, being with him. But I can't be..."
A pause. Thumbing over Daniel's knuckles.
"It's like I don't know myself now. Got all these pieces that I don't recognize, got pieces missing, I think. And if I go back to him, I'll never fix it. I'll fit it all into him instead."
And Daniel has to understand it. He's heard all that Louis has to say about Lestat. The way gravity shifts between them, how easy it has always been for Louis to be drawn into him. Even when Lestat was a dream, a memory, a fragment.
Maybe Daniel's the one playing too fast and loose with it. He was terrified over Louis' safety when Lestat lost his temper, and he's been terrified over Louis shutting down— a shift, to this hope, in part because of that, because of Lestat's infectious magnetism making Louis seem so much less dreary.
(Maybe Daniel's looking to cover his own ass. His own stupid fucking mistakes. How could he have agreed to do what's agreed to, when Louis is right here, Louis who's been hurt the most of anyone, holding on to his hand like this?)
Affection is tangible, like a spilled drink; Daniel is clumsy with this, still. He does understand. And he cares so much about Louis. Stupid, how much.
"Alright," he says, soft. "I do get it."
Daniel's being too much. Wants him to show the great person he is to his employees, wants him to be happy with Lestat. Wants him to be happy, so Daniel can make up for demolishing Louis' life. It's better this way, but it's still in pieces. He could break it, but he can't fix it. He's fixing himself, a worse person, he's making shameful progress with Armand, an infinitely worse person, so why the fuck can't he fix Louis.
"You're just.. you know. Probably the most important person, to me. Ever. I'm going to want you to be happy, all the fucking time, and be real annoying about it."
But it would be unfair. Daniel saved him. It's not Daniel's task to bear all the ways Louis is alien to himself now, an overgrown garden, a structure fallen into disrepair. Louis needs to tear it all apart, see what fits into his body and what must be burned. Inventory what's missing. (Impossible, unless he seeks Armand, coaxes him into honest generosity.) Become something recognizable to himself, before he can be anything to anyone but especially before he can be something to Lestat if Lestat will still have him.
Thinks, not for the first time, that he's overstayed his welcome. Become a burden. Daniel says this and Louis feels his assurances like smoldering coals in his chest. Important. They are important to each other.
Louis can't say the words he feels warming in his body in response, even if they're true. (Because they are true, and so important, too big for his body and this moment and the room they're in and maybe the state of Vermont.) But he feels it. Love. Tightens his grip on Daniel's hand, considers that he can't even promise happiness, not really. They both know Louis isn't exactly built for happiness, not in any kind of lasting way.
"You make me happy," is what Louis can offer. "You being here with me, forever, that makes me happy."
Years passing by and Daniel untouched by that passage. Decades to do more of this, smoking joints, watching bad movies. Talking, about everything and anything. Annoying, but Daniel has permission to annoy Louis however, whenever he wants. Why would Louis ever deny him?
"Another two hundred years, right?" he reminds, soft. "Another book, another couple lifetimes."
Big promises. Reasons for Louis to keep on living.
The silky fabric of the pillowcase whispers as Louis turns his head further, direct eye contact, so Louis can relay to him: "You're important to me. Always have been. Always gonna be."
Whatever doubts Daniel has about it. Louis chose him. Daniel had been a light in the dark, even then.
"I'm okay. We're gonna be okay."
A quiet offering. Louis' alright. Holding together. It won't be such an effort forever.
An unfair question, unasked, that would have offered an unfair answer; best to paper over it. Daniel does and he doesn't get it. What he gets, he gets because Louis told him, and he's choosing empathy, and he's prioritizing how much he cares for Louis. Twenty-year-old Daniel wouldn't have gotten it, or worse, he'd be split down the middle with not getting it and deliberately bulldozing past it because who the fuck cares, think about all the cool shit you're missing by hesitating. And part of that is still there. It's behind him, but it's still him. Like he used to be a student, like he used to work at a newspaper, and so on.
He gets it. Because he wants to get it. He doesn't want to be the person who encourages Louis off the cliff edge because he's curious about what's on the other side, doesn't want to enable him into hurting himself more just to find fulfillment. Even though he's also, still, the person who will go home with some guy he just met in a bar, get high, ask to see the fangs again, give the creature who tortured him a key to his apartment, ask to be threatened with immolation so he knows what pyrokinesis feels like.
The L-word (is it lesbians?), lurking, sitting on both of their shoulders. Being here forever, with each other. Daniel is glad it was Armand, so he can talk to Louis anywhere, at any time. Daniel is angry it was Armand, because he knows how fucking bad it hurt Louis.
"You definitely don't want another book," he teases softly. Shifts their hands a bit as Louis turns, so he can squeeze his. Feels really good not to be trembling.
"As many lifetimes as we can get. Let's just... go to some shitty theaters, check out up and coming artists, waste time."
Which means, really: I like that you got time to waste. A shorthand around the worry Louis had been turning over his head more and more across the tail end of the interview. It had never been absent, his awareness of Daniel's mortality, it had only been less consuming. And then it had become impossible to ignore, looming large in Louis' consciousness.
Daniel could die. Daniel could be gone.
Louis would have given him the Gift. Drank him near to death, fed him from his own wrist. Would have done like Claudia had done, made it something gentle and vibrant, let it be love made tangible.
But that's not what had happened.
"I'd do another book with you," Louis is telling him now, watching Daniel's face. Steady hands, strong pulse. The fascinating boy, made healthy and whole again. "Maybe make you wait another fifty years so I got something worth saying."
Let Daniel write about their war, about whatever their world becomes. Let him have Louis' voice on tapes again, saying all the things he wouldn't say to anyone other than Daniel. Argue around and around the truth, whatever the truth is then. Louis would give him that. He can give him very little else these days, it feels like.
"Pretty much everything you say is worth hearing," Daniel tells him, small smile on his face. He's ever been entranced by Louis— from silly flirtations meant to lure in prey, to his serious, tear-streaked confessions. Even when Daniel was spacing out, during the interview, it was because he was preoccupied trying to unwrap the mystery he could tell Louis was in the middle of.
"But we won't need another interview, because I'll be around for all this shit, huh?"
It'll have to be some other kind of collaboration. If Louis ever takes pictures again, maybe that. Documentation of a vampire's exploration. Every city is a night city, when you live in the dark.
"Maybe a podcast. You can come on and be exasperated at me."
"A podcast," Louis says, rolling the word off his tongue, testing the idea of it. Envisioning Daniel with a microphone, a platform from which he can say anything he likes. "So long as you don't stop writing, I'll come on whenever you want."
Selfish, maybe. He'd miss Daniel's prose.
But it'd be a loss, Louis thinks, if Daniel gave it up entirely.
Louis laces their fingers together more securely. Savors the promise that Daniel will be there, be close, witness everything the coming years will bring. They can wander together even after the tour ends, spend the time, no need for long decades apart. The future unfurling ahead of them, whatever they make of it.
Dreamy thoughts. Louis is fighting a war. Louis is trying to sort through the wreckage of his own mind, fit himself into his own body again.
It makes him feel good to know that Louis is still willing to read his work, despite his understandable discomfort around the published interview. He does wonder a little, knowing how Louis is still working on himself, it reading it eventually might actually help give him some perspective. If he might find something worthwhile in sifting through Daniel's reflections on what he's said.
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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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"You see me."
And it's enough. Enough that Daniel sees him, Louis as he is now.
It's a fear Louis has sometimes, when it is him and Lestat in a room together. They are both vastly different people than they'd been, and they are still very much the same. Easy to worry that Lestat looks at Louis and wishes for the person Louis had been once. That he finds the man he is now wanting.
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"I'd like to think I do," he says, of seeing Louis. "I hope so. I like that you let me."
Daniel cares about him so much.
And importantly:
"I see you. I like you. The person you are. The person I saw a little bit here and there, and get to see all the time now."
A careless oops, but a well-meaning one. (You know, sort of. Jeannie getting away blameless. Daniel is still curious.) Daniel loves Louis, he thinks he's great. Why wouldn't his employees think that? They basically live with him.
But of course. Louis hasn't been himself. And maybe not everyone sees as sharply as Daniel does. Which sucks, honestly. Louis deserves to be free from all of this— but he knows it'll take time.
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Daniel will always seen him. Louis will always let him.
He's been twirling the gray curls at Daniel's nape between his fingers. Lifts his free hand to lay over Daniel's on his chest. Promising eternity. A clearer, less guilt-soaked assurance. Louis will be here. He isn't going anywhere.
Right now, he does not want to die.
"You gonna let me see you too?"
Louis could touch his mind. But he doesn't want to hunt for anything. He wants whatever Daniel is giving.
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(This is positive about Lestat!! Shhh!!)
He wants Louis to stick around. He wants to be his friend, for that whole eternity.
"Don't you?" Maybe it sucks trying to figure people out, after Armand. (Armand. Who Daniel promised to spend time with.) "I dunno how mysterious I am. My employees all know way too much about me. Almost as much as you do."
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Louis, alive for over a century, still young enough to weigh the passing years. Still young enough to look at nearly eighty years and feel the full weight of it rather than shrug it off easy.
"I was far away while you grew up."
So much of Daniel's life is on pages and television screens, yes. But Louis cannot believe that there were not things left out. That Daniel kept things for himself as Louis tried to keep things for himself.
And maybe Louis is entitled to none of it. Maybe he should simply be grateful. (He is. He is grateful for Daniel, always.)
Maybe it is only some quiet, anxious fear that Daniel is holding something obscured and away to avoid burdening Louis with it.
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A blink. One minute he's signing divorce papers, handing them over to Alice, the next minute he's arguing with his youngest daughter about the car she wrecked. When did his knees start hurting? He didn't get enough time with knees that didn't hurt.
Until now.
"You'd have just watched me make stupid mistakes, over and over. You got the highlights. Everything about me that's worthwhile comes out best in writing, even if it's about other people. Probably especially thing."
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Louis doesn't like it, the way Daniel says this about himself. Doesn't like the way he devalues his story, himself alongside it.
"Saying that like you ain't listened to me making the same mistakes over and over," Louis points out.
Daniel knows everything. Saw everything, even when Louis hadn't. But Louis can't exactly boast that kind of insight. Can't pretend he'd offer anything other than his own desires, the wish to know Daniel as Daniel knows him.
Nothing else, for a beat after that. Louis' eyes trace the crack in the ceiling, the shadows cast by the light.
"I don't want you to forget it all," he whispers. "I know you gonna be your own vampire, but don't lose the rest."
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Daniel sounds surprised. He is surprised. Louis had met him! Louis nearly killed him! Because Daniel was just an idiot. His own pause is one with widened eyes, trying to understand the moodiness of this topic. What does Louis think he was doing? Definitely not struggling against societal racism in the aftermath of slavery, or going across the country in the middle of a global war in search of safety and freedom, or dealing with what he dealt with in Paris.
Louis may have made mistakes, but it wasn't in a vacuum. He did the best he could, coped the only ways he was able.
"Hey." He rubs his chest, a little faux-shake. "Hey. I was a weird human. You know that. I'm not going to forget, I just... I lived it. I'm not a student at Berkley anymore, but I still was. Same with being somebody's husband. Working at the New York Times. Those things have been behind me for a long while. Doesn't mean they're gone."
His hand is still where it's laid on Louis' chest. No tremor. He's not sick and dying anymore. And Louis...
"You're still yourself. I know you are. Everyone changes, even people who aren't vampires with their heads fucked by some jerk."
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"I'm not trying to get you to comfort me," is a little rueful, a little embarrassed for having provoked this response.
Daniel's hand pressed down over Louis' dead heart, Louis watching the unfamiliar bloom of color in his eyes.
"Just want you to know you were always something, even when we met. I saw it in you."
Which must be true, or else Louis would have just eaten him rather than messing around with the tape recorder. There had been something there, something so immediate and vital that Louis couldn't do anything but respond to the spark of it.
And see what Daniel made of that spark, fifty years on.
It's all something. All important. Pieces of foundation that a millennia of life can be built upon. The vampire Daniel will become rising from the human he'd been.
It matters more to Louis. Louis, who cares so much about a history. Who was driven to restless disquiet when he sensed the wrongness of his own recollection, fearful of missing pieces and events wrenched out of joint.
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Cope. Not that Daniel has had friends who are just friends who hold on to each other in bed like this, but that's fine, too. He's not a university student anymore, he's not a reporter for a newspaper anymore, he's not human anymore. He's the same person, just here, now, like this, learning to do new things, with new people. Not just having superpowers. This part, this is the most special. It's beyond anything he's experienced before. Maybe he couldn't, before being transformed.
(Yes he could have he's just a closeted literal boomer, but look.)
"I know you did. I believe you. Even if I think you were a little preemptively loopy."
Teasing, along with this comfort. So curious as to why Louis thinks he's a vampire. So curious as to why Louis thinks there was anything but a total dumbass happening with 20 year old Daniel Molloy. See. He's the same guy. Sass.
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No, it wasn't the alcohol.
It had just been the giddy high of their connection, and the electric, adrenaline of anticipation. Of knowing that they could speak to each other, that Louis could say all the things he'd kept locked up in his chest and Daniel would hear him, understand him. Would ask questions, listen when Louis answered.
All things Daniel must know, so Louis says none of them. Instead:
"You wanna come see New Orleans with us after all this?"
All this spanning anywhere from "the end of the book tour" to "the end of this war." Us operating on the foregone conclusion that Lestat would agree to accomapny them.
New Orleans was a likely place for angry vampires to look. Louis knows it. The tour at least puts them on the move, keeps Louis out of sight.
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Despite that, he's glad they met. Despite all of it, he's glad they met. He can't tell Armand he'd endure it again just to get here, Armand would take it the wrong way, but he can trust Louis with it. Unspoken, just felt. It was worth it.
Eyebrows go up.
"I'd love to visit New Orleans with you, but no way am I third wheeling an emotionally significant revisit. You two deserve that time to yourselves."
'Us', they've clearly talked about it. C'mon. Bro code. He can't do that to Lestat. Speaking of—
"How are you guys? Honestly."
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"You're not third wheeling," is maybe an early tell for how Louis is going to answer the latter question.
But he does mean it. Daniel has a place, always, with Louis. And he suspects the same is true for Lestat. Daniel belongs with them. Louis' fingers lay over Daniel's, holding his hand there at his chest, pressing down a little harder, instructive. Yes, he means this.
And Louis misses New Orleans, as much as he believes he should be moving farther and farther from it. That he should be putting himself together in new surroundings, circle back when he is certain he's something like whole.
Louis isn't sure what that will feel like. It's been a long time.
"He and I, we're alright. Don't we seem alright?"
Inviting the opinion Daniel might give anyway.
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Sometimes a third wheel is a third wheel. Daniel isn't sore about it, he's an old man who's done plenty of third wheeling, chaperoning, date-crashing, wing-manning. Don't worry about it. He wants to make it clear that it's a fine distinction, and that he doesn't feel left out, preemptively or otherwise.
If Louis needs an old man security blanket to go on a date, well... maybe. He's not the best 'leave room for Jesus' enforcer.
"Yes, you seem alright. I'm not asking about alright, I'm asking for gossip. I didn't give you my cigarettes so you could stand awkwardly in the cold for fifteen minutes, did I?"
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A century removed from Grace, rolling her eyes at him over Lestat. Who else has Louis truly gossiped about him with? Who else that would name their association for what it was and say it without scorn in their voice?
Never. No one. Not even his sister.
Louis is a long way away from gossiping, even as a recipient of Bricktop's complaints or the way his girls sighed after this and that gentleman.
"We ain't been awkward," Louis protests. "We're friends. We do like friends do, these days."
Louis has had a lot of time to consider it. He wasn't ready. Still isn't ready. No one's to blame for it. Lestat isn't obligated to wait on Louis. Louis can't ask.
"We smoked, we talked. We came back in so he could watch Jeannie. He likes her. The singing helps it along."
Probably useful for that to be the case, if Daniel interviews Lestat. Jeannie would surely be helping in that process.
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Eyebrows go up higher.
"That's very sweet about Jeannie," he says. "But friends? I don't think I've ever had a friend who I looked at the way you two look at each other. Every time one of you turns your head, the other one's staring like you're cartoon characters with big, wet, heart-shaped eyes."
Yeah he said wet. Lestat cries a lot.
"I know you've got serious things to work through with him. But it... I dunno, I just hope for good things, for you guys. And fun things, too, even if you're apparently squandering all the alone time I'm trying to give you like nerds."
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But the urge passes. So does some of the levity, playfulness ebbing into tenderness. Daniel, wishing good things for Louis even after all that's happened. Daniel, who says these things to Louis as if they are set in stone.
Laces his fingers through Daniels, eyes moving over Daniel's face. Expression turning thoughtful, as he casts around for an answer.
"I am having a good time," Louis tells him. "I'm having a real good time traveling with you two."
Speaking of third wheels, what is Louis? Tagging along when maybe he shouldn't be.
"This is a good thing. Being with you, being with him. But I can't be..."
A pause. Thumbing over Daniel's knuckles.
"It's like I don't know myself now. Got all these pieces that I don't recognize, got pieces missing, I think. And if I go back to him, I'll never fix it. I'll fit it all into him instead."
And Daniel has to understand it. He's heard all that Louis has to say about Lestat. The way gravity shifts between them, how easy it has always been for Louis to be drawn into him. Even when Lestat was a dream, a memory, a fragment.
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(Maybe Daniel's looking to cover his own ass. His own stupid fucking mistakes. How could he have agreed to do what's agreed to, when Louis is right here, Louis who's been hurt the most of anyone, holding on to his hand like this?)
Affection is tangible, like a spilled drink; Daniel is clumsy with this, still. He does understand. And he cares so much about Louis. Stupid, how much.
"Alright," he says, soft. "I do get it."
Daniel's being too much. Wants him to show the great person he is to his employees, wants him to be happy with Lestat. Wants him to be happy, so Daniel can make up for demolishing Louis' life. It's better this way, but it's still in pieces. He could break it, but he can't fix it. He's fixing himself, a worse person, he's making shameful progress with Armand, an infinitely worse person, so why the fuck can't he fix Louis.
"You're just.. you know. Probably the most important person, to me. Ever. I'm going to want you to be happy, all the fucking time, and be real annoying about it."
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But it would be unfair. Daniel saved him. It's not Daniel's task to bear all the ways Louis is alien to himself now, an overgrown garden, a structure fallen into disrepair. Louis needs to tear it all apart, see what fits into his body and what must be burned. Inventory what's missing. (Impossible, unless he seeks Armand, coaxes him into honest generosity.) Become something recognizable to himself, before he can be anything to anyone but especially before he can be something to Lestat if Lestat will still have him.
Thinks, not for the first time, that he's overstayed his welcome. Become a burden. Daniel says this and Louis feels his assurances like smoldering coals in his chest. Important. They are important to each other.
Louis can't say the words he feels warming in his body in response, even if they're true. (Because they are true, and so important, too big for his body and this moment and the room they're in and maybe the state of Vermont.) But he feels it. Love. Tightens his grip on Daniel's hand, considers that he can't even promise happiness, not really. They both know Louis isn't exactly built for happiness, not in any kind of lasting way.
"You make me happy," is what Louis can offer. "You being here with me, forever, that makes me happy."
Years passing by and Daniel untouched by that passage. Decades to do more of this, smoking joints, watching bad movies. Talking, about everything and anything. Annoying, but Daniel has permission to annoy Louis however, whenever he wants. Why would Louis ever deny him?
"Another two hundred years, right?" he reminds, soft. "Another book, another couple lifetimes."
Big promises. Reasons for Louis to keep on living.
The silky fabric of the pillowcase whispers as Louis turns his head further, direct eye contact, so Louis can relay to him: "You're important to me. Always have been. Always gonna be."
Whatever doubts Daniel has about it. Louis chose him. Daniel had been a light in the dark, even then.
"I'm okay. We're gonna be okay."
A quiet offering. Louis' alright. Holding together. It won't be such an effort forever.
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He gets it. Because he wants to get it. He doesn't want to be the person who encourages Louis off the cliff edge because he's curious about what's on the other side, doesn't want to enable him into hurting himself more just to find fulfillment. Even though he's also, still, the person who will go home with some guy he just met in a bar, get high, ask to see the fangs again, give the creature who tortured him a key to his apartment, ask to be threatened with immolation so he knows what pyrokinesis feels like.
The L-word (is it lesbians?), lurking, sitting on both of their shoulders. Being here forever, with each other. Daniel is glad it was Armand, so he can talk to Louis anywhere, at any time. Daniel is angry it was Armand, because he knows how fucking bad it hurt Louis.
"You definitely don't want another book," he teases softly. Shifts their hands a bit as Louis turns, so he can squeeze his. Feels really good not to be trembling.
"As many lifetimes as we can get. Let's just... go to some shitty theaters, check out up and coming artists, waste time."
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Which means, really: I like that you got time to waste. A shorthand around the worry Louis had been turning over his head more and more across the tail end of the interview. It had never been absent, his awareness of Daniel's mortality, it had only been less consuming. And then it had become impossible to ignore, looming large in Louis' consciousness.
Daniel could die. Daniel could be gone.
Louis would have given him the Gift. Drank him near to death, fed him from his own wrist. Would have done like Claudia had done, made it something gentle and vibrant, let it be love made tangible.
But that's not what had happened.
"I'd do another book with you," Louis is telling him now, watching Daniel's face. Steady hands, strong pulse. The fascinating boy, made healthy and whole again. "Maybe make you wait another fifty years so I got something worth saying."
Let Daniel write about their war, about whatever their world becomes. Let him have Louis' voice on tapes again, saying all the things he wouldn't say to anyone other than Daniel. Argue around and around the truth, whatever the truth is then. Louis would give him that. He can give him very little else these days, it feels like.
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"But we won't need another interview, because I'll be around for all this shit, huh?"
It'll have to be some other kind of collaboration. If Louis ever takes pictures again, maybe that. Documentation of a vampire's exploration. Every city is a night city, when you live in the dark.
"Maybe a podcast. You can come on and be exasperated at me."
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Selfish, maybe. He'd miss Daniel's prose.
But it'd be a loss, Louis thinks, if Daniel gave it up entirely.
Louis laces their fingers together more securely. Savors the promise that Daniel will be there, be close, witness everything the coming years will bring. They can wander together even after the tour ends, spend the time, no need for long decades apart. The future unfurling ahead of them, whatever they make of it.
Dreamy thoughts. Louis is fighting a war. Louis is trying to sort through the wreckage of his own mind, fit himself into his own body again.
"Dedicate something to me. Your next one."
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It makes him feel good to know that Louis is still willing to read his work, despite his understandable discomfort around the published interview. He does wonder a little, knowing how Louis is still working on himself, it reading it eventually might actually help give him some perspective. If he might find something worthwhile in sifting through Daniel's reflections on what he's said.
Someday, maybe.
"Even if it's about something totally weird?"
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