Quiet in the passenger seat while they drive, thumbing back and forth across the screen of his phone. No answers, no messages, nothing. Turning over two different options in his mind, testing the quality of the pain each of them carries.
Staff released, sent back to their beds while Daniel and Louis set out to try their hand at tracking down one wayward vampire. A day of phone calls and increasingly obscure directives yielding only knowledge of where Lestat isn't. Awareness of vampires in the area going about their business, no sign of heightened activity from here.
Pulled from his reverie by the question Daniel puts to him, and Louis has to consider it. Turns towards his face towards Daniel, catching his face in the fading light.
Finds his way, pensively, to: "Yes."
Memories that run first towards the trial, the terrible thrill that stabbed through his chest as Lestat approached. He's here, he's here, he's here beating in his body, heartbeat reorienting around Lestat's even before he appeared on the stage.
"I don't know if that can be blocked," Louis admits after. A gap in his own knowledge, something he'd never asked Armand and Lestat had never explained.
There is no clawing in, no wrenching open, no sudden inpouring of smoke or cold ocean into his mind. No Armand. Of course there isn't. If Armand were strong enough to come for him now (if Armand were not rendered into psychic paste), if he had any inclination to do so, there was the whole daytime to do it in.
It isn't wholly what he is afraid of finding. Of happening.
His own mind feels heavy, hurt, wild. Power just that little bit beyond his ability to contain, to control, a little like he is a coin toss between exploding any mind he touches or imploding his own from the effort. Fingernails dig a little into his own scalp.
Here, maybe the sense of scuff marks at his defenses. Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
Out of nowhere, the sensation for Daniel might be a little like if a fast-moving car winged out from a blindspot and clipped him across the front with the attitude of a snipping: 'what.' Taillights disappearing off in the distance and all.
"Okay," he says, and finds himself wanting to think about Armand again. He doesn't let himself. "Good."
Louis should be able to find Lestat, if he's still in the city. And he has to be, doesn't he? Nevermind how easy it would be to just put a vampire into the back of a van and take off, totally safe from retribution until sundown. Lestat could be in a box in a moving truck in fucking Quebec right now.
No. They can't believe that, they have to—
Daniel swears and startles, tapping the brakes too hard. Someone behind them lays on their horn and Daniel swears again, awkwardly pulls to the side of the road along a strip of narrow sidewalk that is clearly not meant to be parked by. Angry autopilot slamming the car into park and scrambling out of it entirely, feeling uncomfortably like someone's poked him.
"Don't fucking what me after nothing all fucking—"
Daniel gets back into the car. Slams the door closed. Begins to move away from the curb.
"Where are you?"
Echoed in his head. 'Where are you?' He looks at Louis. Relief, and a new headache.
Louis, with a finger hooked still into the edge of Daniel's mind, startles at the abruptness of feeling that surges up in him. Startles, and then has to throw out a hand to brace himself against the dashboard as the car jolts to a stop.
"Daniel, what—"
Cut off by the slam of the car door.
Louis' seatbelt clicks, reeled in as Louis leans across the car to follow Daniel out the driver's side door. And then he abruptly has to retreat as the door opens and Daniel clambers back in.
"Daniel?"
Echoed by Louis winding closer, as if leaning bodily in against Daniel's shoulder. Complicating things, surely, by letting the question bleed into his mind: What's happening?
It's odd, the way two minds who can't touch each other other might feel it, when conversing with one that can. A shadow on the wall without shape, an invisible presence, Daniel's thoughts whirling around an absence. Louis, near, saying something, or saying nothing, he cannot know for sure. Remembers reaching into that void, saying I love you, and scraped aside.
An overwhelming urge of feeling, scattering all coherent thought. Louis, whom he wants so badly. Whom he has hurt so badly, and failed so often.
Daniel has asked him a question, but Lestat is gone from his mind, leaving behind only a fading pang of distress.
(Somewhere, renewed crying echoing in rusted metal.)
'Are you there? Are you okay?' Shouting at him, bolting after the psychic dust trail, come back you jerk!!
Daniel makes an attempt to bridge the sensation with Louis, but it's a slippery thing, like some screwy non-Newtonian fluid, but telepathic. Non-Newtonian Brain Power. It makes him feel like he's tipping sideways, inner ear turned inside out, so he stops, flinching away from the sensation. Christ, fuck this.
"Okay, I'm just—" pulling into a sidestreet, so they can wind around things without worrying too badly about getting into a car accident if Daniel gets jumpscared again. "Start looking. And 'looking'."
"Don't hurt yourself," Louis cautions. He's experienced car crashes, yes. But he isn't eager for Daniel to experience one, or to see how well his car would weather one.
Doesn't bother with the seatbelt. Hand still on the dashboard, body turned to watch Daniel as Daniel drives. As Daniel tries to reach for Lestat. Louis is tucked into the back of his mind, a compact presence held neatly out of the way. Linked, because Louis needs to be, a point of connection while they drive and Louis tamps down any kind of feeling rising up within him.
Lestat closes off his mind. Or he thinks he does. It is less effective this time now that Daniel has any confidence in his nearness, his aliveness, and it's more akin to a turtle shrinking stubborn in its shell than confronting some gigantic impenetrable barrier. Some sense that Daniel could crack it open if he tried, and that it would hurt.
And Louis is right. There is no blocking off that intuitive sense of one another, and eventually, Louis will feel it like a cold change in the wind when wind around the correct block of buildings, pass by the correct alleyway.
A thing that goes both ways, of course, Lestat's choking sobs slowing as he feels the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.
"Just surprised me. I'm okay. I need you to play navigator."
Alright, maybe expressing his worry with frustration isn't helpful. When he tries next, reaching out against that closed door, banging on it like a nosy neighbor delivering missed mail and not taking no for an answer, 'We're on our way. If you can't talk, if you're hurt, just hold on.'
And it occurs to him this might be stupid of him. There might be someone else with Lestat, still. That possibility hasn't changed with the setting of the sun. He tries to keep his attention on driving, on Lestat, on listening to the Many. Spinning plates.
"Yes," Louis answers. Levered half over the console, hand on the driver's seat. And then, abruptly, "Turn here."
Courting more honking, inconsequential unless someone hits Daniel's car.
There is a brittle quality in Louis' body, tension wound so tight. Bracing, bracing, bracing. Uncertain if they are in pursuit or if they are honing in on a kidnapping. Maybe some echo of that refracts to Lestat, this anticipation of pain Louis carries with him as he and Daniel approach.
But he can feel Lestat. Something chilly, a kind of apprehension. Louis uses it as a guide, all the way to the point where they will inevitably need to exit the car.
Like words echoed down a long well, Daniel's call. Assurance, warning. He should tell Daniel he is alright, he doesn't need help, he doesn't need anyone to come for him, but cannot manage to string the thought together. Maybe because he is not alright, and would like help, and desperately wants someone to come for him. How many days, nights, did he spent after the masquerade wishing just that? Months and years, after a while.
What can Lestat say? Don't come here, he doesn't deserve it? The imagining almost breaks a laugh through the shuddered breathing, palms of his hands pressed over his eyes.
An indistinct hovel, this one. Flaking blue paint and rust. The scent of unpleasant amalgamated trash and then, that thing all vampires can detect, blood. And something else in the air, a kind of emanating sense of psychic fuck off that's been veering humans away all day, but can be likely brushed aside by sturdier creatures, easy as cobwebs.
A quick turn, but Daniel is locked in as the kids say, and getting better at applying new supernatural awareness to moving throughout the world. The doppler effect of an annoyed Subaru is forgotten as they go down an alley. Passing over some discarded fliers, a trash bag that didn't make it to a dumpster, a shoe.
Industrial offices, a few shitty apartments. He gets out and steps back to look up, doors and windows, seeing if there are any telltale breaks or pale faces peering out, if he can feel anyone unexpected watching them, hear any electronic hums. He smells car exhaust, and salty air, and garbage, and—
Blood? A stale, faint trace, cutting through the unease that makes his skin crawl.
Louis scents it too. It winds the anxiety and fear that might higher, a winch turning and turning and turning in his chest.
"Lestat," he says aloud, into the air.
Inviting. Invoking. Come to me, the old call and response.
The babble of the Many goes on too. Louis feels no break in it, nothing malevolent spinning around to attend them. They are alone here.
Louis looks to Daniel, uncertain. Begins to walk. Maybe has similar thoughts about the manhole, considering his trajectory, or maybe Louis feels the need to be a moving target stood out in the open.
How many feelings can he possibly feel all at the same time? Louis' gentle voice, familiar, breaking the miserable silence. His heartbeat, so close. Lestat imagines that if he pressed a hand to the side of his prison, it would reverberate.
A matter of time, then. He feels sick with this knowledge. A wild, last ditch effort—
'Take him,' in Daniel's mind. Soft but loud, like God whispering. Too much. He is trying. 'Why haven't you? Just go with him. Leave me here and go.'
The sheer selflessness and beautiful tragedy of this action breaks through his breathing, which will definitely give away his location anyway.
Expecting a trap, deciding Lestat is worth the danger, anticipating some other power come to avenge those killed in New York. Maybe Armand saw something and decided it was too much trouble after all. Five hundred years, why throw it away on an accident? Daniel can go ahead and die for Louis and Lestat, in some shitty alley in Vermont, if he's so determined to spend all this time with them.
But nothing happens. Vampires don't materialize at either end of the side street, no one flings a door open to reveal a Saw movie setup with Lestat in the middle of it. Daniel pushes a window open, gently crunching the lock, and there's nothing in the dark building except boxes of paper supplies and some empty rat traps, and—
Huh?
He freezes, then turns around, frowning. He looks to Louis first, as though there might be an explanation there. But of course Louis couldn't have heard it.
"He's right here somewhere," he says aloud, and then, puzzled, 'What are you talking about? Are you alright?'
It smells like blood, still. It twists something in Daniel's stomach, puts something in the back of his teeth, like familiarity.
He had levered up the manhole covered, cast a skeptical look downwards. As bewildered as Daniel by the absence of sprung trap, no one but the two of them and the sense of Lestat nearby, obscured but present.
Straightening, Louis looks to Daniel, then once more around the narrow strip of alley in which they stand.
Maybe the sound of Lestat's breath turned erratic would have given him away eventually. But Louis' gaze settles on the dumpster and the possibility twists up like a knife into his ribs.
A terrible parallel, a slip backwards into the past. Louis had sent him to the dump, and how long has Lestat stayed there?
Says, "Daniel," but falters on the explanation.
Instead, Louis crosses over and hooks fingers into the jagged lid of the dumpster, levers it quietly open rather than ripping it free in haste.
'Daniel,' an echo, pleading him to just understand.
An urge to run, as soon as the lid tilts up. Barrel his way out in the blink of an eye, disappear. But even the idea of it makes him feel queasy, lightheaded. His strength bled out into clothing, stacks of cardboard, feeding insects and vermin instead.
No running. An end to cowardice, then. Inside, the container is half-filled, and Lestat has, at some stage, managed to claw his way up enough to lean a shoulder against the side. He is dressed as he had been when he left the other night, bristling now with tattered feathers, red corduroy now muddy with deeper crimsons drying to rustier tones. His skin is paper white and ashy between smears and trickles of blood, which is everywhere, hair tangled and streaked with it.
His blood. And, to a discerning nose, Armand's.
Serious injury is not so obvious on first glance, but being beaten to shit is an easier assessment once overhead and ambient light slant inside. Lestat looks up, sees Louis, and feels so glad for it despite everything that it evokes a fresh bout of sobbing.
The sound of the manhole cover being abandoned echoes in him like the sound of his name, Louis' strangled attempt to communicate, Lestat's pained mental grasping. Daniel finds himself feeling almost disoriented— and for no good reason, nothing has happened to him, he's been perfectly safe, perfectly fine, so why does it feel like this? Why does it feel like his fight-or-flight instinct has had a heel on its throat since last night?
For a strange moment he thinks he might reach out and pull Louis away. There might be something horrible in there. The trap after all. Lestat trying to warn them away. Or it's—
It can't be. He's losing it, to think Armand is here, too. Louis would have said something.
He forces himself to move. One foot after the other, until he's beside Louis at the dumpster, helping him (he doesn't need help) push the lid up until it's leaning back against the alley wall. Contents exposed, rubbish and rot and one very fucked up vampire.
It should be another startle. But Daniel just stares dumbly, struggling to believe what he's looking at. One heartbeat, and another, reality falling into place: someone did this to Lestat, there wasn't a drunken escapade, he's been here all day, festering and alone, blocking them out from exhaustion or misery.
"Okay," he says, and he sounds very far away from himself. "Okay. Let's get him out."
Seventy-seven years, drinking from Armand. Louis scents his blood, mingled with Lestat's.
A cold certainty, swept to the back of his mind as he looks down at Lestat. Processes how hurt he is. Draws his own conclusions, comes to what feels clear: someone has hurt Lestat, maybe a whole coven, maybe someone older and crueler than they've yet encountered.
And Lestat has been here. For hours. Alone.
Again.
Louis draws in an unsteady breath. Whole body gone cold, as if frozen. Stirred only by Daniel, entreating.
It is as if floodgates have opened. Louis can feel so much. Overwhelming. The same breathless awareness of Lestat mingled with all the rest, all Lestat's misery, his sobs echoing.
Instead of navigating the process of hitching upwards to try and tug Lestat out, Louis gives in to frustrated panic and wrenches the front panel of the dumpster down, bending metal with a loud screech. Easier for them to reach in, draw Lestat out, rather than jostling him in the process of tugging him upwards between them.
Of course, he should have done more to conceal himself. Misled Daniel when he first acknowledged him. Taken some blood, gotten to his feet. Of course, if Lestat did not want to be rescued, he would have rescued himself. If he truly felt undeserving—
And he does. He is. The certainty of this chokes him. And it is just like him, isn't it, to allow all of this to happen. By now, every knifing insult, every sharpened memory Armand has run through him has collapsed together into a miserable miasma of loathing. They will learn the truth of how he has come to be here and say, of course, of course, and regret having looked.
The metal bends, tears. Well. So much for his shelter.
Compressed trash slides out, and Lestat almost with it save for a hand flung out to grip the edge of the dumpster to steady himself. His other still grips at the wound at his side. Breathing is still a terrible struggle, erratic flutters in between tears. Knows an impulse to retreat further into the corner, but doesn't make it that far.
Unhelpful in the way a wilder injured creature might be, but equally without much capability to stop the assistance, especially whilst crying out what little blood is left inside of his body.
Take him, leave me here and go, Armand's blood, Lestat looks like something very old and very powerful put him through a fine sieve, Armand isn't texting him back—
Louis shreds the dumpster. That's one way. Lestat is crying, and it's not just from pain, he's sure, there's some kind of breakdown happening, but why wouldn't there be? Left like this all day, baking in the garbage, and Daniel thinks of the way Louis 'spared' Lestat in New Orleans, and it churns his stomach in sympathy.
"Jesus." The shock finally hitting him. Horrific wounds and decorative feathers. "I'll pull the car closer—"
A flicker, getting better at moving quicker-than-human, pulling his hardworking but unimpressive 4runner nearer, back door opened for ease of shuffling Lestat in, once Louis is able to scrape him up. He returns to help, standing at Louis' shoulder, prepared to wade in over garbage and sheared metal to help gather the elder vampire.
It is very good that Daniel is here. Louis has just enough presence of mind to spare for that, gratitude running alongside the rage simmering deep in his body, catching at every single detail like kindling. Lestat, a wreck. Bloody, crying, clinging to the side of a dumpster even as Louis extends hands to him.
"Come on," Louis is coaxing, having kicked aside trash bags, moving closer, reaching further. "Come on, we got you."
Louis isn't crying. Detached so far from the impulse to scream, to destroy the rest of the dumpster, to find anyone who had ever touched Lestat and tear them apart, burn them, grind them into the earth.
Compresses it all down, crushes it deep into his body so his voice can be steady as he says, "Lestat, please. You can't stay here."
They're so close. All Lestat would have to do is relax enough to lean in, and he is certain Louis would have his arms around him. Easy as gravity.
Easy as them falling into each other in New Orleans, but he understands why, now, how they could hold each other like they never had before. The stakes are gone. Louis is no longer in real danger of being trapped by him, by his love. An easy expenditure, this kindness. None of these thoughts articulate themselves to Lestat in coherent order. He remembers squirming rats in his fingers and the scent of the brackish bayou. Remembers long nights, peeling wallpaper, moths eating cloth, wood turning soft. Remembers imagining Louis' pretty face on the other side of a coffin lid.
He isn't reading Daniel's mind, but his mind has been flayed open, a pulsing and over sensitive organ with nerve endings that spill invisibly all around, and he can sense it. The idea of Lestat being left here. How delicate it will work out to be, these kindnesses.
You can't stay here, and Lestat makes a sound. Pained, in time with his weeping, but a gasp of something else. A laugh, nearly, and a flash of his teeth. "Certainly not," voice thick, hoarse, breathless.
The avalanche continues as Lestat makes to move. Aware of hands reaching for them. He doesn't reach back. A slip of motion, close to tumbling to the alleyway floor, and hands catch him, an arm, a shoulder—
"Stop," choked out, and a surge of movement, clumsy, a stumbling forwards and away to recklessly careen out of range of attempts to assist. A half collapse against the car, grasping hands laying bloody fingerprints on the paintwork, window glass. "Stop it. Just leave me alone. I told you to take him," is slanted to Daniel, past one feathery shoulder. "Why can't you just— both of you, it's ridiculous, this is ridiculous—"
He's laughing. They should be too. He is moving away from the open back door, near-breaking the wing mirror in his effort to start down the alleyway. Soon, he will run out of car to lean against, but he'll figure it out once he gets there.
It feels like trying to hold onto a fish that's found its strength again after sitting resigned in a bucket. Or maybe it's just that Daniel loses his sea legs, overwhelmed by the radiation spilling out of Lestat's head. That feels like trying to fumble over a badly bleeding wound, worse than whatever's going on with his side and leaving seeping traces of blood everywhere, the ground, his car—
"He's hurt," Daniel tells Louis, and, obviously, so he clarifies: "In his head. I don't know what he's talking about."
Armand is involved, though. He's known for long minutes now, but having to think it plainly turns his stomach cold. Fuck. Fuck. If he closes his hand around his phone will he find a text back? Is Armand fine? Why is he worried about Armand. Stop it.
Talking around Lestat isn't exactly courteous, but Daniel doesn't know what to do about it. Yeah, man, it is ridiculous just trying to squirm away in this state, and more ridiculous is the notion that Daniel is going to take Louis anywhere. He approaches cautiously, but thinks Louis will have better luck actually trying to corral him.
The longer they are here, the longer Louis has to look at Lestat and feel the agony coming off in waves, the more certain Louis is.
Armand did this. Armand might have had help, but isn't that always the way? A coven to orchestrate a lynching, a coven to absorb Louis' fury after. How likely is it to be something else now?
Lestat goes staggering down the alley, slipping from Louis' hands and leaving his palms bloody. Speaking around sobs, and now hysterics. Unsteady on his feet. Going to fall, Louis thinks, seconds before Daniel is explaining, relaying this assessment. Louis locks eyes with him, hooking a touch like linked fingers in at the edge of his mind. Stolen comforts, as Louis strides briskly after Lestat.
Hard to decide on a place to put his hands, where is least likely to exacerbate injuries. But Louis does catch him up, gentle but firm, by his uninjured hip. Holding on, making a blockade out of his body.
Gambling on Lestat being reluctant to brush him aside. On being too weak to brush him aside. Dangerous, but better Louis than Daniel, who has been hurt enough on Louis' behalf.
"Lestat," again, appealing. White-knuckling where his fingers curl tight in ruined fabric. "You need to drink. You need rest. Let us help you."
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Staff released, sent back to their beds while Daniel and Louis set out to try their hand at tracking down one wayward vampire. A day of phone calls and increasingly obscure directives yielding only knowledge of where Lestat isn't. Awareness of vampires in the area going about their business, no sign of heightened activity from here.
Pulled from his reverie by the question Daniel puts to him, and Louis has to consider it. Turns towards his face towards Daniel, catching his face in the fading light.
Finds his way, pensively, to: "Yes."
Memories that run first towards the trial, the terrible thrill that stabbed through his chest as Lestat approached. He's here, he's here, he's here beating in his body, heartbeat reorienting around Lestat's even before he appeared on the stage.
"I don't know if that can be blocked," Louis admits after. A gap in his own knowledge, something he'd never asked Armand and Lestat had never explained.
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It isn't wholly what he is afraid of finding. Of happening.
His own mind feels heavy, hurt, wild. Power just that little bit beyond his ability to contain, to control, a little like he is a coin toss between exploding any mind he touches or imploding his own from the effort. Fingernails dig a little into his own scalp.
Here, maybe the sense of scuff marks at his defenses. Lestat, Lestat, Lestat.
Out of nowhere, the sensation for Daniel might be a little like if a fast-moving car winged out from a blindspot and clipped him across the front with the attitude of a snipping: 'what.' Taillights disappearing off in the distance and all.
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Louis should be able to find Lestat, if he's still in the city. And he has to be, doesn't he? Nevermind how easy it would be to just put a vampire into the back of a van and take off, totally safe from retribution until sundown. Lestat could be in a box in a moving truck in fucking Quebec right now.
No. They can't believe that, they have to—
Daniel swears and startles, tapping the brakes too hard. Someone behind them lays on their horn and Daniel swears again, awkwardly pulls to the side of the road along a strip of narrow sidewalk that is clearly not meant to be parked by. Angry autopilot slamming the car into park and scrambling out of it entirely, feeling uncomfortably like someone's poked him.
"Don't fucking what me after nothing all fucking—"
Daniel gets back into the car. Slams the door closed. Begins to move away from the curb.
"Where are you?"
Echoed in his head. 'Where are you?' He looks at Louis. Relief, and a new headache.
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"Daniel, what—"
Cut off by the slam of the car door.
Louis' seatbelt clicks, reeled in as Louis leans across the car to follow Daniel out the driver's side door. And then he abruptly has to retreat as the door opens and Daniel clambers back in.
"Daniel?"
Echoed by Louis winding closer, as if leaning bodily in against Daniel's shoulder. Complicating things, surely, by letting the question bleed into his mind: What's happening?
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An overwhelming urge of feeling, scattering all coherent thought. Louis, whom he wants so badly. Whom he has hurt so badly, and failed so often.
Daniel has asked him a question, but Lestat is gone from his mind, leaving behind only a fading pang of distress.
(Somewhere, renewed crying echoing in rusted metal.)
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'Are you there? Are you okay?' Shouting at him, bolting after the psychic dust trail, come back you jerk!!
Daniel makes an attempt to bridge the sensation with Louis, but it's a slippery thing, like some screwy non-Newtonian fluid, but telepathic. Non-Newtonian Brain Power. It makes him feel like he's tipping sideways, inner ear turned inside out, so he stops, flinching away from the sensation. Christ, fuck this.
"Okay, I'm just—" pulling into a sidestreet, so they can wind around things without worrying too badly about getting into a car accident if Daniel gets jumpscared again. "Start looking. And 'looking'."
Pushes, harder— 'Lestat.'
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What does it mean, Lestat, only for a second?
It's proof of life. That's something.
"Don't hurt yourself," Louis cautions. He's experienced car crashes, yes. But he isn't eager for Daniel to experience one, or to see how well his car would weather one.
Doesn't bother with the seatbelt. Hand still on the dashboard, body turned to watch Daniel as Daniel drives. As Daniel tries to reach for Lestat. Louis is tucked into the back of his mind, a compact presence held neatly out of the way. Linked, because Louis needs to be, a point of connection while they drive and Louis tamps down any kind of feeling rising up within him.
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And Louis is right. There is no blocking off that intuitive sense of one another, and eventually, Louis will feel it like a cold change in the wind when wind around the correct block of buildings, pass by the correct alleyway.
A thing that goes both ways, of course, Lestat's choking sobs slowing as he feels the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.
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Alright, maybe expressing his worry with frustration isn't helpful. When he tries next, reaching out against that closed door, banging on it like a nosy neighbor delivering missed mail and not taking no for an answer, 'We're on our way. If you can't talk, if you're hurt, just hold on.'
And it occurs to him this might be stupid of him. There might be someone else with Lestat, still. That possibility hasn't changed with the setting of the sun. He tries to keep his attention on driving, on Lestat, on listening to the Many. Spinning plates.
"Harbor, you think? By that disturbance?"
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Courting more honking, inconsequential unless someone hits Daniel's car.
There is a brittle quality in Louis' body, tension wound so tight. Bracing, bracing, bracing. Uncertain if they are in pursuit or if they are honing in on a kidnapping. Maybe some echo of that refracts to Lestat, this anticipation of pain Louis carries with him as he and Daniel approach.
But he can feel Lestat. Something chilly, a kind of apprehension. Louis uses it as a guide, all the way to the point where they will inevitably need to exit the car.
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What can Lestat say? Don't come here, he doesn't deserve it? The imagining almost breaks a laugh through the shuddered breathing, palms of his hands pressed over his eyes.
An indistinct hovel, this one. Flaking blue paint and rust. The scent of unpleasant amalgamated trash and then, that thing all vampires can detect, blood. And something else in the air, a kind of emanating sense of psychic fuck off that's been veering humans away all day, but can be likely brushed aside by sturdier creatures, easy as cobwebs.
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Industrial offices, a few shitty apartments. He gets out and steps back to look up, doors and windows, seeing if there are any telltale breaks or pale faces peering out, if he can feel anyone unexpected watching them, hear any electronic hums. He smells car exhaust, and salty air, and garbage, and—
Blood? A stale, faint trace, cutting through the unease that makes his skin crawl.
Door, window, surely not the manhole?
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Louis scents it too. It winds the anxiety and fear that might higher, a winch turning and turning and turning in his chest.
"Lestat," he says aloud, into the air.
Inviting. Invoking. Come to me, the old call and response.
The babble of the Many goes on too. Louis feels no break in it, nothing malevolent spinning around to attend them. They are alone here.
Louis looks to Daniel, uncertain. Begins to walk. Maybe has similar thoughts about the manhole, considering his trajectory, or maybe Louis feels the need to be a moving target stood out in the open.
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A matter of time, then. He feels sick with this knowledge. A wild, last ditch effort—
'Take him,' in Daniel's mind. Soft but loud, like God whispering. Too much. He is trying. 'Why haven't you? Just go with him. Leave me here and go.'
The sheer selflessness and beautiful tragedy of this action breaks through his breathing, which will definitely give away his location anyway.
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But nothing happens. Vampires don't materialize at either end of the side street, no one flings a door open to reveal a Saw movie setup with Lestat in the middle of it. Daniel pushes a window open, gently crunching the lock, and there's nothing in the dark building except boxes of paper supplies and some empty rat traps, and—
Huh?
He freezes, then turns around, frowning. He looks to Louis first, as though there might be an explanation there. But of course Louis couldn't have heard it.
"He's right here somewhere," he says aloud, and then, puzzled, 'What are you talking about? Are you alright?'
It smells like blood, still. It twists something in Daniel's stomach, puts something in the back of his teeth, like familiarity.
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He had levered up the manhole covered, cast a skeptical look downwards. As bewildered as Daniel by the absence of sprung trap, no one but the two of them and the sense of Lestat nearby, obscured but present.
Straightening, Louis looks to Daniel, then once more around the narrow strip of alley in which they stand.
Maybe the sound of Lestat's breath turned erratic would have given him away eventually. But Louis' gaze settles on the dumpster and the possibility twists up like a knife into his ribs.
A terrible parallel, a slip backwards into the past. Louis had sent him to the dump, and how long has Lestat stayed there?
Says, "Daniel," but falters on the explanation.
Instead, Louis crosses over and hooks fingers into the jagged lid of the dumpster, levers it quietly open rather than ripping it free in haste.
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An urge to run, as soon as the lid tilts up. Barrel his way out in the blink of an eye, disappear. But even the idea of it makes him feel queasy, lightheaded. His strength bled out into clothing, stacks of cardboard, feeding insects and vermin instead.
No running. An end to cowardice, then. Inside, the container is half-filled, and Lestat has, at some stage, managed to claw his way up enough to lean a shoulder against the side. He is dressed as he had been when he left the other night, bristling now with tattered feathers, red corduroy now muddy with deeper crimsons drying to rustier tones. His skin is paper white and ashy between smears and trickles of blood, which is everywhere, hair tangled and streaked with it.
His blood. And, to a discerning nose, Armand's.
Serious injury is not so obvious on first glance, but being beaten to shit is an easier assessment once overhead and ambient light slant inside. Lestat looks up, sees Louis, and feels so glad for it despite everything that it evokes a fresh bout of sobbing.
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For a strange moment he thinks he might reach out and pull Louis away. There might be something horrible in there. The trap after all. Lestat trying to warn them away. Or it's—
It can't be. He's losing it, to think Armand is here, too. Louis would have said something.
He forces himself to move. One foot after the other, until he's beside Louis at the dumpster, helping him (he doesn't need help) push the lid up until it's leaning back against the alley wall. Contents exposed, rubbish and rot and one very fucked up vampire.
It should be another startle. But Daniel just stares dumbly, struggling to believe what he's looking at. One heartbeat, and another, reality falling into place: someone did this to Lestat, there wasn't a drunken escapade, he's been here all day, festering and alone, blocking them out from exhaustion or misery.
"Okay," he says, and he sounds very far away from himself. "Okay. Let's get him out."
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A cold certainty, swept to the back of his mind as he looks down at Lestat. Processes how hurt he is. Draws his own conclusions, comes to what feels clear: someone has hurt Lestat, maybe a whole coven, maybe someone older and crueler than they've yet encountered.
And Lestat has been here. For hours. Alone.
Again.
Louis draws in an unsteady breath. Whole body gone cold, as if frozen. Stirred only by Daniel, entreating.
It is as if floodgates have opened. Louis can feel so much. Overwhelming. The same breathless awareness of Lestat mingled with all the rest, all Lestat's misery, his sobs echoing.
Instead of navigating the process of hitching upwards to try and tug Lestat out, Louis gives in to frustrated panic and wrenches the front panel of the dumpster down, bending metal with a loud screech. Easier for them to reach in, draw Lestat out, rather than jostling him in the process of tugging him upwards between them.
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And he does. He is. The certainty of this chokes him. And it is just like him, isn't it, to allow all of this to happen. By now, every knifing insult, every sharpened memory Armand has run through him has collapsed together into a miserable miasma of loathing. They will learn the truth of how he has come to be here and say, of course, of course, and regret having looked.
The metal bends, tears. Well. So much for his shelter.
Compressed trash slides out, and Lestat almost with it save for a hand flung out to grip the edge of the dumpster to steady himself. His other still grips at the wound at his side. Breathing is still a terrible struggle, erratic flutters in between tears. Knows an impulse to retreat further into the corner, but doesn't make it that far.
Unhelpful in the way a wilder injured creature might be, but equally without much capability to stop the assistance, especially whilst crying out what little blood is left inside of his body.
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Louis shreds the dumpster. That's one way. Lestat is crying, and it's not just from pain, he's sure, there's some kind of breakdown happening, but why wouldn't there be? Left like this all day, baking in the garbage, and Daniel thinks of the way Louis 'spared' Lestat in New Orleans, and it churns his stomach in sympathy.
"Jesus." The shock finally hitting him. Horrific wounds and decorative feathers. "I'll pull the car closer—"
A flicker, getting better at moving quicker-than-human, pulling his hardworking but unimpressive 4runner nearer, back door opened for ease of shuffling Lestat in, once Louis is able to scrape him up. He returns to help, standing at Louis' shoulder, prepared to wade in over garbage and sheared metal to help gather the elder vampire.
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"Come on," Louis is coaxing, having kicked aside trash bags, moving closer, reaching further. "Come on, we got you."
Louis isn't crying. Detached so far from the impulse to scream, to destroy the rest of the dumpster, to find anyone who had ever touched Lestat and tear them apart, burn them, grind them into the earth.
Compresses it all down, crushes it deep into his body so his voice can be steady as he says, "Lestat, please. You can't stay here."
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Easy as them falling into each other in New Orleans, but he understands why, now, how they could hold each other like they never had before. The stakes are gone. Louis is no longer in real danger of being trapped by him, by his love. An easy expenditure, this kindness. None of these thoughts articulate themselves to Lestat in coherent order. He remembers squirming rats in his fingers and the scent of the brackish bayou. Remembers long nights, peeling wallpaper, moths eating cloth, wood turning soft. Remembers imagining Louis' pretty face on the other side of a coffin lid.
He isn't reading Daniel's mind, but his mind has been flayed open, a pulsing and over sensitive organ with nerve endings that spill invisibly all around, and he can sense it. The idea of Lestat being left here. How delicate it will work out to be, these kindnesses.
You can't stay here, and Lestat makes a sound. Pained, in time with his weeping, but a gasp of something else. A laugh, nearly, and a flash of his teeth. "Certainly not," voice thick, hoarse, breathless.
The avalanche continues as Lestat makes to move. Aware of hands reaching for them. He doesn't reach back. A slip of motion, close to tumbling to the alleyway floor, and hands catch him, an arm, a shoulder—
"Stop," choked out, and a surge of movement, clumsy, a stumbling forwards and away to recklessly careen out of range of attempts to assist. A half collapse against the car, grasping hands laying bloody fingerprints on the paintwork, window glass. "Stop it. Just leave me alone. I told you to take him," is slanted to Daniel, past one feathery shoulder. "Why can't you just— both of you, it's ridiculous, this is ridiculous—"
He's laughing. They should be too. He is moving away from the open back door, near-breaking the wing mirror in his effort to start down the alleyway. Soon, he will run out of car to lean against, but he'll figure it out once he gets there.
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"He's hurt," Daniel tells Louis, and, obviously, so he clarifies: "In his head. I don't know what he's talking about."
Armand is involved, though. He's known for long minutes now, but having to think it plainly turns his stomach cold. Fuck. Fuck. If he closes his hand around his phone will he find a text back? Is Armand fine? Why is he worried about Armand. Stop it.
Talking around Lestat isn't exactly courteous, but Daniel doesn't know what to do about it. Yeah, man, it is ridiculous just trying to squirm away in this state, and more ridiculous is the notion that Daniel is going to take Louis anywhere. He approaches cautiously, but thinks Louis will have better luck actually trying to corral him.
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The longer they are here, the longer Louis has to look at Lestat and feel the agony coming off in waves, the more certain Louis is.
Armand did this. Armand might have had help, but isn't that always the way? A coven to orchestrate a lynching, a coven to absorb Louis' fury after. How likely is it to be something else now?
Lestat goes staggering down the alley, slipping from Louis' hands and leaving his palms bloody. Speaking around sobs, and now hysterics. Unsteady on his feet. Going to fall, Louis thinks, seconds before Daniel is explaining, relaying this assessment. Louis locks eyes with him, hooking a touch like linked fingers in at the edge of his mind. Stolen comforts, as Louis strides briskly after Lestat.
Hard to decide on a place to put his hands, where is least likely to exacerbate injuries. But Louis does catch him up, gentle but firm, by his uninjured hip. Holding on, making a blockade out of his body.
Gambling on Lestat being reluctant to brush him aside. On being too weak to brush him aside. Dangerous, but better Louis than Daniel, who has been hurt enough on Louis' behalf.
"Lestat," again, appealing. White-knuckling where his fingers curl tight in ruined fabric. "You need to drink. You need rest. Let us help you."
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cw wound grossness
ew gross
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cw wound grossness
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enjoy tag of nothing
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tag of nothing, redux.
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sorry this is so many words
w o w
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sneaks in a tag forgive
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