damnedest | shotgun.

A nice evening, the way they've been having nice evenings, and the closer they get to dawn, the stronger the lure of sleep becomes, the stranger everything feels. It is taken for granted that they all return before sunrise— no formal curfew has been set, too aware of how uncomfortable that might feel, but these unspoken expectations had prompted Daniel to tell Louis, back in New York, that he was staying at his apartment. Courtesy. Understanding of the situation, and it—

Is different, because that strange feeling seems to exist separate from the fact that two do not become three even when the sky is starting to shift from black to grey. Easier for Daniel to get in contact with Louis, but he's still reached out to Lestat before, so he does, but,

could Louis text him? Call him, like on his phone, call him? and Daniel is standing there, frowning, his own phone in hand, hitting a button repeatedly, opening up Life360 (please let Lestat's lawyer have not told him to disable that one), but,

The exertion makes his nose bleed. They stand in the kitchen, curtains pulled tight. A few of Louis' staff members are there, Jeannie and Mark tucked away in their room, asleep. Daniel and Louis cannot leave the house.

But,

something is wrong.

Lestat had made no mention of sleeping elsewhere.

Louis and Daniel had spent the evening draped on the bed, an easy tangle, smoking and talking. Expecting interruption, eventually.

But Lestat had never come.

And now it is daylight and Louis cannot go anywhere to seek him.

Rachida has carried Louis' phone in so Louis can try, texting and then calling, and now—

Not pacing. Very still in the kitchen, trying to thread between anger and fear.

Daniel's nose begins to bleed, and the scent of fresh blood stirs Louis into motion. Crossing, reaching up to catch Daniel by the chin and knuckle away the blood as he asks, "What does it feel like right now, trying to reach him?"

Asking, in this roundabout way, if it feels like reaching after nothing.

A lurid swear word or five, but he lets Louis touch his face, deal with the red welling up under his nose. A blood vessel, overworked from strain, is already mending itself inside his sinuses. A tiny surprise that feels like nothing beneath the miasma of unease.

"Like there's a big rock covering him up and I can't push it out of the way."

Lestat, present in the world, but out of reach. His last recorded location is between here and the harbor, not far from the World's Tallest Filing Cabinet. Daniel had threatened to make them go, tomorrow. A joke about wondering if their absent third has gone to knock it down to spare them the horror of the outing attempts to manifest itself, but Daniel can't bring himself to make it. The wrong feeling is too pervasive.

"Straight to voicemail, on the phone." Which is annoying. Surely he'd pick up if it were Louis calling, if he's just hitting the ignore button on Daniel's caller ID, but if the phone's off, then of course he won't even see it.

Straight to voicemail. Present, but Daniel blocked out.

Louis' fingers tighten just slightly on Daniel's chin. Reflexive. A silent urge to hold him tightly, as if Daniel is liable to slip away too.

"He's always answered my calls," sounds flat, emotion compressed. Worry creasing Louis' face in spite of it.

He looks away from Daniel, hands dropping from his face once he's satisfied the blood is gone, once the impulse to dig claws into Daniel has passed. Light glows around the curtain, reminding Louis that they are very much contained here.

"Stop, for now," he advises. "We'll have to figure something else out."

There might have been an attack. A coven. There are Canadians to account for, as well as all the rest that are bent on harming Louis. What better way to punish Louis than to harm Lestat? Kidnap him, or contain him, it's not impossible, perhaps difficult.

Thinks of Armand. Feels like chewing on ash when he considers asking for his help.

Daniel heaves a sigh. Frustrated, worried. Maybe if it were midnight, he could push harder, he'd feel less exhausted from the pull of the sun alone. But if it were midnight, they wouldn't be doing this anyway. For a moment he's tempted by unhelpful thoughts, blaming himself for not asking after Lestat's whereabouts sooner, for just wasting time with Louis, ignoring the clock, but— as noted, unhelpful, and he shrugs it off.

"Okay. Best case scenario: he wore himself out doing whatever and lost track of time, and now he's deep asleep somewhere, probably still in Burlington, given the last place the tracking app puts him at. If that's what this is, how are we handling it? Work with me here on this, we'll get to other points after. Baseline, if it's best case scenario, how do we build from here."

Fiddling with his phone, more, meanwhile. Unaware that the both of them are thinking about contacting Armand. Daniel opts not to because he thinks it'd be insulting, running to him and reminding him once again that he's out with Louis and Lestat, that he gives a shit about Lestat, and all else.

Instead, he texts Raglan.

They'd both felt too secure here. Louis' mistake more than Daniel's. Louis had picked the fight, started the war. Louis should have been more vigilant.

It had never occurred to him to worry about Lestat as a target. Lestat was older, powerful. Lestat could fly. Maybe had a few other tricks he'd never shared with Louis. Louis had thought attention would fall on Daniel before Lestat.

He's reaching out, sifting through the chatter of the Many. Just testing waters. Considering Armand, how it would go if Louis asked him to walk out into the sun to seek Lestat.

It makes him feel sick. Unhappy.

Some of it still on his face as Daniel begins his questions, methodical and maybe reassuring.

"We'd have to send mortals. You and I are trapped here."

And of course: "Mortals charged only with finding where he is. Not bringing him back."

Louis doesn't truly want to feed his staff to Lestat. Isn't sure what kind of state they'd find him in, whether he's hurt—

Breath freezing in his body at the concept of hurt.

"He's not dead. I'd know. I'd feel it."

Asserts this. Louis came close, once. He knows what that felt like. Worries that this is near to it, and if they can't find him, Louis will discover exactly what it is when one's maker departs this world.

"He's not dead," offered with firm, prompt agreement. "Like I said, just. Something blocking me from getting calls through, not nothing there."

The profoundly uneasy feeling in Daniel rises, like being lowered slowly into ice water. He believes that Louis would know if Lestat had truly died. It makes him think that he'd know, in turn, if Armand truly died. It makes him reflexively curl mental fingers around that silver thread. The ice-water feeling intensifies, but there is no psychic slack on the other end, no severed point.

Daniel feels strange over Lestat. Writing about him without his consent, using him like that, drawing him into this mess that, when boiled down to it, is maybe Daniel's fault. Now he might be hungover in somebody's basement with a crispy foot. Or worse. And he's certain he's feeling a reflective mood off of Louis, too.

If he keeps a kernel of his inner attention on that thread, it's his own business. No one can tell he's doing it.

"Baseline procedure, then, is send somebody out to carefully cruise the area where he last popped up on the," gestures with his phone, "thing. Do not approach anyone, do not get out of the car, just do some recon for peace of mind. We're putting a pin in that one up top."

On their invisible procedural board. Next, then.

"The 'what-ifs'. I think we can probably sweep 'what if he ate somebody who was high out of their mind and now he's stuck under someone's porch' into the previous category, and consider our options if he was attacked, and if he's currently being held against his will. Because the big factor there is: what if someone else is there with him?"

Knitting a new one, Louis had said of Armand and him. If that had been true, then it is surely severed, damaged. Maybe gone.

Louis is running fingers along the jagged absence of it. The stark void that is Armand, made moreso in contrast to the vibrant chaos of the Many. A weighing possibility. Reaching at all making Louis hate himself; Lestat would hate it, Daniel would hate it. Bu Louis is weighing it.

Bristles, even though Daniel is only speaking aloud what Louis had already been entertaining.

"Then I'll go get 'em," Louis says darkly, turning fully towards Daniel to offer this option. No, to offer an answer. Louis does not look as if he is interested in alternative approaches.

If someone has made the error of taking Lestat, then Louis will be happy to instruct them on their massive fuck up.

"I can do that. You gonna have to get him away, somewhere safe."

A small tell, illustrating a fear Louis is keeping close to his chest. What if Lestat is hurt? He must be hurt, if he is being kept. How would he be contained otherwise?

"We've got ten hours before we can think about that. Because everyone exploding into agonized, charred flesh won't get him anywhere."

Just in case Louis is thinking about renting a windowless van so they can go along, huddled in the back, nervous and half-asleep. Daniel is well-aware that he burns just as much now as he did fifty years ago, thanks to his very dramatic window demonstration in Dubai. Absolute disaster waiting to happen, and more than that, could easily be what someone wants them to do to make it easier to pick them off.

He receives a text. Daniel reads it, replies. Pings again, responds.

"And if that does turn out to be the case, we have to consider the danger of dealing with someone, or multiple someones, capable of containing Lestat. Because, yes, we do have to go get him, but ideally, we don't instantly die on the first swing. Right?"

Louis did not take out his phone. Little mental nudges, orders delivered smoothly into Rachida's mind to be doled out among their staff. Who is she comfortable sending? Who is most capable of doing reconnaissance without being eaten?

Ten hours.

Louis is tired. He is certain Daniel is tired. Louis doubts either of them could sleep, even if they should.

Yes, yes. Louis will wait ten hours. Press around the edges of the void that is Armand. Fret over the spun-thin tether between himself and Lestat. Listen to Daniel plan into the uncertainty of the present moment. Beyond that—

"Right," Louis agrees delicately. "I ain't planning to die. But I'm not going to sit on my heels neither."

Of course, a fight. Louis cannot imagine any occasion more deserving than one that threatened Lestat and Daniel.

"Do you think you'd be able to tell if any other vamps are in the area?"

Daniel just plain doesn't have the experience. He thinks, if he really pushed himself, he'd be able to find Louis from afar— the first person he ever reached out telepathically to speak to, who he can hook into from thousands of miles away. A light in the dark. Impressions of others, once he knows they're there. But to do it cold? He can't even tell where Lestat is.

Fucking annoying.

He opens his mouth to say something else, but his phone rings—

"Talamasca," he says to Louis, a head's up so he can listen in, and then answers. "Yeah?"

Raglan is drawling as usual, and accuses Daniel of bailing on their date. There's a curious lilt to his voice, and Daniel knows immediately that the other man doesn't have any answers to give him. Raglan isn't sure why he texted him, or why he wants to talk, especially at this hour. Fuck. He's going on about having bought a new tie—

"How many people do you have eyes on right now? Undead people. Vampires."

"Well, Molloy." A little scoff, because of course he's not going to just offer that up. "Fewer than last week. And that's not entirely a dig at that murder spree. We've been busy cleaning that up, and we do have other cases, you know—"

Crosstalk, Daniel pushes him for an answer, come on, it's morning, he's not going to chit chat for hours. The agent sighs, resigned, and explained that the incident at the Met has forced them to pull back from Daniel and his current traveling companions. It's dangerous, they're in the hole from that high profile coverup, and at least they're reasonably certain that Daniel will survive. Great, thinks Daniel. How fucking convenient.

"Can you just give me a headcount of the area over the past few weeks, at least? And badger me about favors later?"

"Oh, I guess."

Louis very politely does not reach to take the phone out of Daniel's hands to make his own demands. (Read: threats.)

His hand flattens over Daniel's chest, standing close, listening. Listening as the voice on the other end of the line chatters, overly familiar. It makes Louis want to bare his teeth.

But alright. Let Daniel use this source.

Louis' fingers curl into his shirt, knuckles pressing softly against Daniel's chest. Over the beat of his heart. Makes it into a metronome while Louis' eyes close and he splits his attention between the patter of conversation and opening his awareness to their surroundings.

Who is here? Who are they? Where are they?

Here is Daniel, warm and familiar and precious under his hand. Louis' consciousness lifts up and out of his body, picking up vampires like inkblots, blood splatter. Blinking like fireflies in the dark. Louis finds a cluster, a coven. Finds a few lone vampires, passing through.

A void, named Armand.

And where, where is Lestat? Louis can't feel him. An absence, painful.

Louis tightens his grip on Daniel's shirt, controlling his breathing, attention hooked into this collection while Daniel's contact hems and haws. Maybe gives up something useful.

Raglan offers up some preliminary theories as soft typing sounds happen in the background; he's going to send him a list instead of sit here and read it aloud. Daniel, in the meantime, sets a hand on Louis' side, offering what he hopes is reassurance. It's okay. Raglan is fine. He's a weasel but he's fine.

"It's cheating, by the way," Raglan winds around to. "Using someone else to pick off surveillance on your apartment."

"What?" —almost startled. Raglan, half-distracted as he is compiling notes, doesn't seem to notice.

"If you can ask the other one to stop popping our guys if he gets grabbed in a photo, I won't even ask for a favor later."

Daniel pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Don't bother him. Just leave him alone, he doesn't. Want to be bothered. Right now. Is he still in New York?"

"No clue. We stopped bothering him."

"Great. Good. So you're emailing me?"

"I'm emailing you."

And that's that. They say goodbyes, because Daniel isn't willing to offer any further context, though he's sure someone's in a car driving double the speed limit to get to Burlington and start an investigation already. That's fine with him— more potential help, at least in filling out points of data.

Call disconnected before Louis' patience snaps and he lifts the phone out of Daniel's hand.

It's for the best. It's for the best in this moment. Who can say how long Louis will feel that way, if he will have the same restraint for the next call.

Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. Louis' expression had shuttered closed, understanding immediately to whom this agent was referring. White knuckling his grip on Daniel in the wake of it, relaxing his hand only by sheer force of will.

"Let's see his list," Louis prompts in the wake of the call, filling the silence.

A strained note: "Yep."

Swirling thoughts. He knows Armand has been in his apartment, obviously. Obviously. Thinking a little bit too hard about Armand wearing his pajamas, about giving him his spare key to keep him from doing whatever-it-was he was doing to break in. Probably just telekinetically undoing the lock from the other side of the front door, like an alien.

Killing Talamasca lurkers, though?

(He shouldn't appreciate it, right?)

Daniel gets a hold of himself and looks back at his phone, tapping it with his thumb, waiting for an email notification.

"That obnoxious jerk helped me get the script," he says. "And then got me out of Dubai. So. You know."

Kind of obliged to put up with him.

Edited (energetically???) 2025-02-17 05:28 (UTC)

Daniel's mind is busy. Always churning. This close, Daniel's heart beating beneath his knuckles, Louis wants to find it only a comfort. Just feeling, not delving any further than the surface flutter of thought and question.

If he senses any part of Armand—

Louis puts it away.

"It's not altruism."

Sharply, brushing aside the implication Daniel leaves hanging between them.

"If he wants to send me a bill, he's welcome to it."

They'd been happy enough to watch, hadn't they? Spiders, observing and hoarding what they found. And Daniel was only in that position because of Louis. Louis should have gotten him out.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there," is insufficient. Louis offers it anyway, a little less heated.

Daniel is fine. Totally fine. It's fine. He's frustrated, he's worried about Lestat, but he's fine, and after the initial what the fuck, he settles. Something to be asked about later. He's not going to peel off now in the middle of this and text Armand, who is surely still awake, who doesn't seem to sleep much at all, and shove it in Louis' face that he's able to. Unhelpful.

(Unhelpful, but he still turns their connection over in his head. Half-expects a text to come his way for it. Worrying it like an itch.)

"It's not altruism," he agrees, calm in contrast to that sharpness. "But altruism wouldn't have been productive. And wouldn't be now."

Altruists never have any worthwhile information.

"You know we're past that. We have to focus on Lestat, today. Let's figure out who we're going to ask to go out, and fix them up with a phone they can have on a Zoom call with us."

Are they past it? Maybe Daniel is. Louis isn't. But he can't keep dragging Daniel back to that room, to Louis' absence in the worst moment. It would be selfish, damaging. And it is a distraction, in the moment.

So—

"Rachida is deciding,"

Delegating.

"I thought you'd rather Jeannie and Mark stay here."

Louis can afford to lose a handful of staff to vampires, if it comes to that. Daniel has a staff of two. Of one, really. He's not obligated to risk them. Louis can shoulder it.

Daniel moves the hand at Louis' side up, over his chest, a mirror of the earlier touch. A silent thank-you for the consideration about Jeannie and Mark, who would go out and look— Jeannie because she's fearless, Mark because he'll feel an obligation to, being whatever barely-there witch he is. But they're his friends, too. Kids. If they're going to die for hanging out with vampires, it should at least not be something Daniel sent them out to do.

"Alright."

Rachida is deciding.

"Hey." He squeezes Louis' shoulder. "Lestat'll be okay. He's gotten out of some pretty insane jams, it sounds like. And this is just Vermont."

Rachida is sending a handful of security staff out into the daylight with strict instructions on keeping a healthy distance, on not engaging, on information gathering.

She's very thorough, Louis knows. But she and Louis are both aware all the precautions in the world might not matter.

Beyond their room, down in the parking lot, a few car doors slam. Engines start. Daniel says this thing and Louis looks up into his face. Sets his hand over Daniel's at his chest, presses down. (Sense memory of all the times he did so with Lestat, over thirty years of their life together. Remembers all the things he had never been able to say. Still has not said.)

"Maybe."

Sick with the fear that Daniel might be wrong. That whatever has happened is terrible in a way Louis can't yet discern.

"You should try to sleep a little," tacks away from the enormity of this fear. "Before you try to reach him again."

And that is what scares Louis the most. Daniel can't reach him. Something, someone, blocking them both from contact. Alive, but isolated. And Louis is of so little use; he can't touch Lestat's mind, can't feel him. It's all on Daniel, who has already shouldered so much.

Woah woah woah woah hey hey hey hey. Those dudes aren't going anywhere without effectively livestreaming back to them, in the event Louis or Daniel notices something that the humans don't. It's like nobody else in this outfit has ever had to do shady surveillance on anyone for a story before. Be so for real, besties.

Once that's set up, Daniel leaves Rachida's tablet set up on the coffee table, displaying a feed from the passenger seat of their intel squad's vehicle, observing the area and occasionally hearing chat about where to go. What are they going to do, exactly, if they notice something suspicious? Well. That's a bridge they'll cross, etc, but at least it doesn't mean they're staring at a wall anxiously all day. They can stare anxiously at this instead, and give further directions if something does pop up.

"I'm an expert at daytime naps already, don't worry." One more perk of being Legitimately Old, versus the way the rest of the vampires have culturally appropriated Old Man status. "You have to get rest, too, though. In case you need to be on high alert the second the sun goes down."

"I'm older than you, Daniel," Louis reminds patiently. "I can rest tomorrow."

Rachida has left them with two mugs of blood. A tablet to watch this entire process in it's excruciating totality.

Louis thumbs over the little flares of a coven, of wayward vampires. Dismissing them in turn, skeptical of their involvement. Nice to know where and who circulates in this space, but Louis senses nothing malevolent. Maybe that would change if they recognized him, but—

No. They are moving unaware. No sign of circling wagons. Whatever is holding Lestat is something else. A different kind of fight to manage.

The connection between Louis and Armand is all shattered glass, razor wire, sharp points tangling around what once was. Louis toys with it anyway. Does not ask Daniel, but wonders if he'll have to seek help. If this is someone whose age outstrips Lestat, someone capable of posing a real problem. Who else would be able to hold him? Who else would be able to block them from touching Lestat's mind? Someone old.

Louis is thinking on his own contingencies. Considering that he will need to drink something livelier than a donation before he goes.

"Try," is the encouragement he offers Daniel. "I'll wake you if something happens, I promise."

Because Daniel loves Louis, and doesn't want to actively antagonize him right now, he doesn't mention that he remembers those weeks in Dubai, where Louis tapped out several times due to the shifting schedule accommodating Daniel's mortal day-night cycle. Easy to blame Armand, sure, but Daniel still thinks of it, and worries.

"Just ... hang out down here, with me. Yeah?"

He sits on the sofa, of which there is more than one of. The nice thing about renting a ridiculous house instead of contending with the too-slim options for hotels is that they have a living room that's been overtuned for luxury house parties. Daniel can crash out and Louis can pace around the little screen, currently glowing with morning daylight and quiet streets as their 'agents' take a roundabout route to get to the last pinged address, not wanting to roll directly into a trap, if they're being lured. Picking smarter angles, taking stock of the atmosphere.

When this all blows over into a loud argument about over-indulgence, this will be funny. Maybe. Daniel lays back, considers Louis, and considers the off-kilter feeling that refuses to shake free. What the fuck is it.

There is an impulse to pace, yes.

But Daniel summons him down, and Louis finds his way to settling. Lets Daniel lean into him while Louis watches the screen, wavering over what to hope for. Lestat, alive, above all. The details, Louis finds himself less picky over. His fingers find their way back into Daniel's hair as he watches his own staff make progress, come across—

Wreckage.

Louis watches the images pan across the screen. A crater, a destroyed bench. The contingent of confused police, circling. They've roped off the street, Louis observes.

Fear claws up his spine.

The staff comes back together to regroup. Louis makes good on his promise, gently shakes Daniel awake to report their findings.

"I think they should search the area. Ask questions."

But Daniel will surely have some ideas. Louis hires the best, with a wide array of questionable skill, but seeking wayward vampires was not part of the repetoire.

Drifting in and out. Daniel is a little aware, in between bouts of something near true sleep; his phone pings, and he forwards the email from Raglan to Louis, so that he can sift through it and see if he sees anyone familiar, anyone that can be matched to voices he's heard out in the Many. There are notes about the NYC 'coven', that they've always been extremely independent and disinclined to tangle with drama; this includes a telephoto-lens picture of Armand on a park bench with a woman with short hair, middle of the day. Daniel assumes the photographer is dead, now, which under normal circumstances would be a little funny.

(Brief spike of anxiety. Are there pictures of Armand at Daniel's book signings, in there? He and Armand getting in a cab to go back to his apartment? But there aren't any. Just what he asked for, nothing more.)

Jolting awake when roomba squad returns. Alright, okay. Blearily catching up, scrubbing through the feed of the weird area—

"Why, so the police can come back here and ask us why we have a suit squad that's infringing on their work?"

You GUYS.

"Gimme a minute." Thinking, flopped back on the sofa with his knees up, staring at the tablet still as it's held a few inches from his face. "What's out there, like cafes and photo-op spots at the harbor, shit like that?"

Polling the staff who went out there. He sifts through Google Maps.

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