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."
Louis is correct. Lestat doesn't want to brush past him, doesn't want to apply force whatsoever. There is gore beneath his nails, drying blood pressed into the fine lines in his fingertips.
So: backwards, reeling away as if Louis has burned him (no, Louis was the one who was burned, charred skin lifting off muscle, he can see it so vividly), and the white-knuckled grip to his jacket snares him, and his vision whites out a moment where perhaps he does apply force anyway, does sink nails into Louis' arm to wrench away. Less strength than there should be, but nothing has dulled.
Slightly more obvious up close, the odd texture to his skin, bloodless and peeling like an allergic reaction. Of course, there is more to notice in the moment, like an armful of elder vampire twisting like a feral cat, saying, "I can't," and more keen to throw himself on the ground than submit to being made still.
Daniel is hesitant to box Lestat in, but he doesn't want him to decide to fly away, either, because then they're really fucked. But what can they do to stop him? He stands a bit behind, but doesn't reach out to try and hold on.
Instead—
"If you need time alone, we can give you space back at the rental. We just want you to be safe there, okay?"
They can work out whatever happened, but they can't work it out standing in an alleyway waiting for an audience.
"C'mon. You need to get cleaned up."
Like coaxing a feral cat into the carrier. Iiiinn to the car, Lestat.
Abruptly, Louis is bleeding. A split second's awareness, registered and shunted aside in favor of maintaining his hold. Louis is aware that even weakened, Lestat could shake him off if he truly wished. That the most he's done is this, deep gouges that tear Louis' jacket, the soft knit beneath, and it is nothing to Louis to hold fast.
"You can," Louis promises. His grip doesn't waver. Louis winds closer, holding on. Maybe Lestat will lean into him, stop trying to wrench out of Louis' grasp if Louis can just hold on long enough, until whatever panic in him has passed. Reassures, in low, worried tones, "You can, we got you. I got you."
What's the best way to do this? Put Lestat in the car? Get in and haul him in after? Would Lestat even allow it?
Helpless darting a glance over Lestat's shoulder to Daniel. A whisper between them, What can you get off him?
Hurt, Daniel had said. Hurt in his mind. Louis isn't even certain it will help to gather stray thoughts.
It feels like falling, like there is nothing he can do to stop it, like it would be a mercy if the process could hurry up and smash him into oblivion against the unyielding earth. But no, they cling, they coax, they prolong an inevitable thing.
Less focus on keeping his mind shut up tightly, and even at a glance, it might feel a demolished building. If memories are sorted into tiers, if trauma is layered in defensive patterns, if triggers are things that shatter walls, then it feels a little like all those structures have collapsed. Here, the scent of Louis' blood springs to mind a vision of a young man neither of them would recognise, laughing through a bloodied mouth, and Armand's voice: something else Louis and I share from you now.
Split seconds. Another, Louis' grasp on him now like the way he held him at the end of the feast, like the way his maker was so gentle, gathering him up in his frenzied state. Another, Daniel's voice, Louis' voice, speaking past, speaking to. Frail and stupid, this creature between them, either a phantom in the room, or the real thing, bleeding and gasping.
"But you hate me," comes out as a higher pitched whine than he intends, if he was intending anything at all. "You have hated so much of me. And I only wanted to make him go away from you."
The active struggle has paused, held in suspension. Not limp in Louis' arms, bound tightly in tension as if ready to spring aside, half-collapsed to the ground as if he could slide from Louis' grip through gravity alone. A wet choking sound on a struggled gasp inwards.
"I don't want to do it anymore," comes out as rage anew, voice hoarse with some attempt at volume, petering out immediately. "I can't watch you love another, I can't, I can't, just leave me here. I did this," a gasp in, a wild look thrown to Daniel. Daniel, who will be sensible. "I saw him here, he had come here, and I fought him. I did this."
Psychic shrapnel everywhere, in the blast radius of Lestat's mind. Daniel looks at him, in person, and in their heads, holding pieces of shattered glass that feel as though they cut his hands; he can't guess who he's looking at, but he recognizes Armand's fingerprints. It doesn't matter if he and Armand can't connect telepathically, he just knows him in an uncanny way, and for a moment he just stands there. Staring. Taking it in.
Maybe he and Lestat connect for a moment. Through the damage and the unraveling. Daniel gets it, suddenly, but he doesn't react.
Daniel will be sensible.
Sure.
He feels numb. He tries, and tries again, to prioritize the things he's reacting to emotionally. (Where's Armand?) They have to clarify this. Misunderstandings are stupid teenage drama. (Where's Armand?) Lestat is being a drama queen, but he's dangerous when he's upset, and he's already clawing senselessly into Louis. (Where's Armand?)
Confirmation of the thing Louis had suspected, had already more or less decided for himself.
And Louis stiffens, grip tightening on Lestat. (A happy reflex, when the alternative was Louis' hands dropping away entirely.) His breath goes shallow, looking again at these wounds, what's been done.
Again, Daniel had said: He's hurt. In his head.
Armand. Armand hurt Lestat.
Lestat says other things. Louis doesn't hear them.
Can't say anything. Goes so terrible still instead, holding Lestat and watching Daniel and reaching silently, imperceptibly, out into the void that should be Armand. Seeking.
Get in the car, Lestat, which is an easy thing to refuse. Fuck you, no, don't tell me what to do, you're not my real drag mom.
But he is hanging off of the determined grasp Louis has on him, looking at Daniel, and perhaps it's intended that he should hear before you fuck everything up even worse at the end of it. It is what he fills in as Louis goes silent, anyway, a thought ringing loud enough in his head he may as well say it. Tears gather, streak through sweat and blood, a shuddered gasping of creaking breaths.
And then movement. Pulls against Louis' grasp on him, but this time in the direction of the open door. Moving like he is expecting to do it without help or guidance, like he might splay across the backseat rather than be joined there.
What should he do? Pick a fight with him, tell him to suck it the fuck up and sleep it off? There's a temptation to. Pull the sort of shit that landed him with multiple estranged family units, make it worse. But he does, in fact, want Lestat to get in the fucking car, and so he helps, and encourages Louis to get into the back with him.
'It's a mess in there,' comes his assessment of Lestat's head, for Louis. 'And he thinks we're together, romantically.'
Did Armand convince him? Why would Armand do it? Just to hurt Lestat, or is there some other surprise waiting for Daniel, another psychic trap, this time deliberate, meant to punish him for having lured Armand into doing something he might not have otherwise done back in his apartment? He feels strangely numb as he closes the door once the other two vampires are packed away. He stares at his car, bloody handprints and all, and thinks: great, can't even go through a gas station car wash with that.
For once he violates his own rule about not being a chauffeur, and gets into the driver's seat. Driving away from the scene of whatever-it-was makes that uneasy feeling in his stomach return tenfold. An instinct that crawls up his spine and makes him nauseous, like he was close to something critical and is just missing it. But he can't— he can't, right now, he has to at least get Lestat handled. They were here looking for Lestat, they found him, they haven't missed anything.
Louis feels the fight go out of Lestat. Yields, permits him to crawl across the backseat and stands alongside the Toyota while Daniel says other things. A very tangible stretch where Louis very clearly veers towards stubborn denial.
Perhaps Louis will not get in the car. Perhaps he has had enough.
Perhaps there is something else he should be doing with the remaining hours of night.
Daniel touches his mind. Relays these findings, what he has gleaned from touching Lestat's mind.
Louis says nothing.
But lifts his head, eyes finding Daniel's. Searching. Whatever Louis finds there is enough to see him into the backseat, obliging Lestat to draw up his legs to accommodate Louis' presence. Still bleeding sluggishly into a now-ruined sweater, flushed with anger, silence spinning out and out and out before Louis finds something to say.
I can't help his head.
Louis can't touch Lestat's mind. Can't help draw him out of whatever pain Armand had beaten into him.
A thought that would occur as certain to Lestat if they weren't, if they were merely quiet, but the quiet feels corrosive. Louis' quiet, always. Lestat has said all of these things in a blur and has submitted to going where they would prefer he did and now it is quiet, for him, save for whatever it is they must be saying.
He leans against the closed door, an ungrateful bundle of feathers and tangled blonde curls, sure to leave streaks of blood and filth all over the upholstery, and snarls out into the cab, "You may as well have your conversations where I can hear them," voice ragged.
A darting, wild eyed look that he snaps back out the window. "It won't make any difference."
If Daniel weren't so disoriented, he might find it funny. Lestat is a rollercoaster. Determined to burn up goodwill, then charm it back.
This is pretty bad, though.
"It's not much of a conversation," he says. "We're both confused. We've been looking for you since last night, and you've been stuck there all day, and now you're saying a bunch of shit that doesn't make any sense."
Not a lot for Louis and Daniel to communicate to each other besides mutual question marks.
A bad habit to get into, permitting Daniel to field Lestat's accusations. Louis is thinking this even as he maintains his silence, attention split between the searching tendril of his own mind moving among the Many, seeking Armand and the light touch of his mind to Daniel's.
And Lestat, a raw nerve radiating pain. It hurts to look at him. But Louis does, turning his head as Lestat speaks and feeling a rush of anger all over again.
Armand did this. Armand hurt him.
Words cycling around and around Louis' head, with all the other things Armand has put there. Scars. Wounds.
Worry, for what shape the damage will take in Lestat. Louis can do so little for him.
A slightly defensive shrinking into his seat, that he is not making sense. Maybe not. The hysterics have ebbed, a necessary draining of energy when no one is yelling right back at him. He glances to Louis, finds it startling when eye contact is made, enough to look back out the window.
"He was here," after a moment. "I went out to hunt and found him instead, wandering around."
Reluctant to state it plainly, a pause, swallowing around a fresh blood taste as he clears his throat. Is it shame? Did Armand not deserve it? He leans his head against the glass of the window. Tolerates the vibrating rattle of it. It doesn't matter, he supposes.
"I started it, the fight we had. I was angry to see him. Angry that he wouldn't leave Louis in peace." It was Daniel, anyway, who was quite sure that all of this was about Louis. But so too is Lestat, without that encouragement. Why wouldn't it be about Louis, and in extension, be about himself? "I told him he needed to leave us all alone. He disagreed. We spoke on the subject. We fought until dawn."
And then the sun. This, Lestat keeps to himself. Too strange to say out loud. "I shook free of him. I fled. I found my refuge."
Daniel tries to look at Louis through the rear-view mirror (where's Armand?), but it's touch and go while he has to pay attention to driving. Hoping to avoid cops or pedestrians, anyone who might notice the blood on the car. A little help? Sitting there silently, not even dying that they're in a relationship.
Ugh, man.
(Where's Armand?)
He wasn't still in New York. He followed them, to keep an eye on them — Louis, sure, Louis should be free of Armand, but it had been Daniel who told him that they could spend time together after all of this. (Where the fuck is he.)
"Okay, well." That was so stupid, that was so fucking stupid, why would you do that. "Okay." Trying again, oof. "We're gonna get you cleaned up and sort it out. No one's leaving you behind. That was never in the cards. Louis and I aren't dating, by the way."
Does Armand think that? ... Does it matter? Armand apparently presented it that way. Daniel's stomach drops further. He's so fucking stupid. Dumber than Lestat, actually.
And Louis remains silent, inscrutable, looking between Lestat and Daniel.
He is thinking. Turns over Lestat's injuries, the way his pain had felt, like an exposed nerve. How he'd sobbed. Begged.
Armand still unreachable.
Quietly: "We need blood. You'll need to drink."
Because Louis can't say any of the other things that come most immediately to him. Can't say You shouldn't have done that. Can't say Leave him to me.
Also can't say I'm going to return every wound he gave you.
And so, Louis offers this practicality instead. Lestat needs blood. He needs rest. It's what he'd recommended himself, when Armand had walked a mine-trapped puppet into their hotel in New York.
Little fragments, still bleeding from him. Armand's dazed look, morning light slanting off his face, the rivers of blood streaming from his nose, mouth, blood-slick black curls like a halo around him. More. The sound of Louis' voice parsed through his Pixel, asking Lestat what he thinks of Daniel, and the innocuous words, I was going to offer it to him. This Gift, which come with such a gut-churning sinking feeling that Louis may as well have said We're getting married. Even finer splinters of thought, the reverberation of pained groaning through a closed wall. Armand crouching over a puddle of blood, running north. The static on a tape recorder.
And maybe none of this makes it to Daniel through the cheese grater of Lestat's mind, but it all comes up so ready and easy that his eyes immediately fill with tears at the twinned sensation of the pair of them, again, extending these kindnesses, aNd for wHaT, and the laughable denial that they aren't dating.
And blood. Merde, but he is hungry.
"I would prefer not to quibble over the technicalities over what you both are or are not doing together," he says, miserably, princessy, while trying not to have fangs to lisp through. "S'il te plaît."
A kaleidoscope. Lestat may get the impression that Daniel is sticking his hand into those broken pieces, trying to make sense of it, but being unable to find his footing. He has to skitter away to be able to drive without slamming them into oncoming traffic.
But this, too: Daniel and Lestat, phone shopping, helping him pick out headphones. Lestat had asked a question and Daniel had answered. Honestly. It's still the truth. He doesn't understand this shift now, or why Lestat finds it so believable, or why Armand would push it. Daniel feels—
More than he should, really. A little bit betrayed. Does he really seem like the kind of person who'd pull this? (Did Armand really put this in Lestat's head? After—)
Louis, still not helping. Thanks, bud.
"It's not a technicality." His voice sounds flat. He'd say We talked about you last night, we talked about how I went out of my way to try to give you two time to fool around, but what if that makes Louis (who is still not helping) feel weird, and violated. Christ.
Fortunately, Burlington isn't very big, and they'll be back at the rental house soon.
"You two are going to go inside, and I'll go grab something. No negotiations, that's what's happening."
In the space of time between Lestat's rejoinder and Daniel's rebuttal, Louis has rolled back one ruined sleeve. The gouges Lestat made are half-healed, easy to reopen. Louis makes a neat slash across his wrist, and offers the fresh swell of blood wordlessly over to Lestat.
Prompts, "Go on," only to coax, to head off any questions about how whether or not he is serious in his offering.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
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."
no subject
So: backwards, reeling away as if Louis has burned him (no, Louis was the one who was burned, charred skin lifting off muscle, he can see it so vividly), and the white-knuckled grip to his jacket snares him, and his vision whites out a moment where perhaps he does apply force anyway, does sink nails into Louis' arm to wrench away. Less strength than there should be, but nothing has dulled.
Slightly more obvious up close, the odd texture to his skin, bloodless and peeling like an allergic reaction. Of course, there is more to notice in the moment, like an armful of elder vampire twisting like a feral cat, saying, "I can't," and more keen to throw himself on the ground than submit to being made still.
no subject
Instead—
"If you need time alone, we can give you space back at the rental. We just want you to be safe there, okay?"
They can work out whatever happened, but they can't work it out standing in an alleyway waiting for an audience.
"C'mon. You need to get cleaned up."
Like coaxing a feral cat into the carrier. Iiiinn to the car, Lestat.
no subject
"You can," Louis promises. His grip doesn't waver. Louis winds closer, holding on. Maybe Lestat will lean into him, stop trying to wrench out of Louis' grasp if Louis can just hold on long enough, until whatever panic in him has passed. Reassures, in low, worried tones, "You can, we got you. I got you."
What's the best way to do this? Put Lestat in the car? Get in and haul him in after? Would Lestat even allow it?
Helpless darting a glance over Lestat's shoulder to Daniel. A whisper between them, What can you get off him?
Hurt, Daniel had said. Hurt in his mind. Louis isn't even certain it will help to gather stray thoughts.
no subject
Less focus on keeping his mind shut up tightly, and even at a glance, it might feel a demolished building. If memories are sorted into tiers, if trauma is layered in defensive patterns, if triggers are things that shatter walls, then it feels a little like all those structures have collapsed. Here, the scent of Louis' blood springs to mind a vision of a young man neither of them would recognise, laughing through a bloodied mouth, and Armand's voice: something else Louis and I share from you now.
Split seconds. Another, Louis' grasp on him now like the way he held him at the end of the feast, like the way his maker was so gentle, gathering him up in his frenzied state. Another, Daniel's voice, Louis' voice, speaking past, speaking to. Frail and stupid, this creature between them, either a phantom in the room, or the real thing, bleeding and gasping.
"But you hate me," comes out as a higher pitched whine than he intends, if he was intending anything at all. "You have hated so much of me. And I only wanted to make him go away from you."
The active struggle has paused, held in suspension. Not limp in Louis' arms, bound tightly in tension as if ready to spring aside, half-collapsed to the ground as if he could slide from Louis' grip through gravity alone. A wet choking sound on a struggled gasp inwards.
"I don't want to do it anymore," comes out as rage anew, voice hoarse with some attempt at volume, petering out immediately. "I can't watch you love another, I can't, I can't, just leave me here. I did this," a gasp in, a wild look thrown to Daniel. Daniel, who will be sensible. "I saw him here, he had come here, and I fought him. I did this."
So. There it is.
no subject
Maybe he and Lestat connect for a moment. Through the damage and the unraveling. Daniel gets it, suddenly, but he doesn't react.
Daniel will be sensible.
Sure.
He feels numb. He tries, and tries again, to prioritize the things he's reacting to emotionally. (Where's Armand?) They have to clarify this. Misunderstandings are stupid teenage drama. (Where's Armand?) Lestat is being a drama queen, but he's dangerous when he's upset, and he's already clawing senselessly into Louis. (Where's Armand?)
"Get in the car, Lestat."
Disappointed.
no subject
And Louis stiffens, grip tightening on Lestat. (A happy reflex, when the alternative was Louis' hands dropping away entirely.) His breath goes shallow, looking again at these wounds, what's been done.
Again, Daniel had said: He's hurt. In his head.
Armand. Armand hurt Lestat.
Lestat says other things. Louis doesn't hear them.
Can't say anything. Goes so terrible still instead, holding Lestat and watching Daniel and reaching silently, imperceptibly, out into the void that should be Armand. Seeking.
no subject
But he is hanging off of the determined grasp Louis has on him, looking at Daniel, and perhaps it's intended that he should hear before you fuck everything up even worse at the end of it. It is what he fills in as Louis goes silent, anyway, a thought ringing loud enough in his head he may as well say it. Tears gather, streak through sweat and blood, a shuddered gasping of creaking breaths.
And then movement. Pulls against Louis' grasp on him, but this time in the direction of the open door. Moving like he is expecting to do it without help or guidance, like he might splay across the backseat rather than be joined there.
no subject
'It's a mess in there,' comes his assessment of Lestat's head, for Louis. 'And he thinks we're together, romantically.'
Did Armand convince him? Why would Armand do it? Just to hurt Lestat, or is there some other surprise waiting for Daniel, another psychic trap, this time deliberate, meant to punish him for having lured Armand into doing something he might not have otherwise done back in his apartment? He feels strangely numb as he closes the door once the other two vampires are packed away. He stares at his car, bloody handprints and all, and thinks: great, can't even go through a gas station car wash with that.
For once he violates his own rule about not being a chauffeur, and gets into the driver's seat. Driving away from the scene of whatever-it-was makes that uneasy feeling in his stomach return tenfold. An instinct that crawls up his spine and makes him nauseous, like he was close to something critical and is just missing it. But he can't— he can't, right now, he has to at least get Lestat handled. They were here looking for Lestat, they found him, they haven't missed anything.
no subject
Perhaps Louis will not get in the car. Perhaps he has had enough.
Perhaps there is something else he should be doing with the remaining hours of night.
Daniel touches his mind. Relays these findings, what he has gleaned from touching Lestat's mind.
Louis says nothing.
But lifts his head, eyes finding Daniel's. Searching. Whatever Louis finds there is enough to see him into the backseat, obliging Lestat to draw up his legs to accommodate Louis' presence. Still bleeding sluggishly into a now-ruined sweater, flushed with anger, silence spinning out and out and out before Louis finds something to say.
I can't help his head.
Louis can't touch Lestat's mind. Can't help draw him out of whatever pain Armand had beaten into him.
You'll have to try.
no subject
A thought that would occur as certain to Lestat if they weren't, if they were merely quiet, but the quiet feels corrosive. Louis' quiet, always. Lestat has said all of these things in a blur and has submitted to going where they would prefer he did and now it is quiet, for him, save for whatever it is they must be saying.
He leans against the closed door, an ungrateful bundle of feathers and tangled blonde curls, sure to leave streaks of blood and filth all over the upholstery, and snarls out into the cab, "You may as well have your conversations where I can hear them," voice ragged.
A darting, wild eyed look that he snaps back out the window. "It won't make any difference."
no subject
This is pretty bad, though.
"It's not much of a conversation," he says. "We're both confused. We've been looking for you since last night, and you've been stuck there all day, and now you're saying a bunch of shit that doesn't make any sense."
Not a lot for Louis and Daniel to communicate to each other besides mutual question marks.
"What happened?"
no subject
A bad habit to get into, permitting Daniel to field Lestat's accusations. Louis is thinking this even as he maintains his silence, attention split between the searching tendril of his own mind moving among the Many, seeking Armand and the light touch of his mind to Daniel's.
And Lestat, a raw nerve radiating pain. It hurts to look at him. But Louis does, turning his head as Lestat speaks and feeling a rush of anger all over again.
Armand did this. Armand hurt him.
Words cycling around and around Louis' head, with all the other things Armand has put there. Scars. Wounds.
Worry, for what shape the damage will take in Lestat. Louis can do so little for him.
no subject
"He was here," after a moment. "I went out to hunt and found him instead, wandering around."
Reluctant to state it plainly, a pause, swallowing around a fresh blood taste as he clears his throat. Is it shame? Did Armand not deserve it? He leans his head against the glass of the window. Tolerates the vibrating rattle of it. It doesn't matter, he supposes.
"I started it, the fight we had. I was angry to see him. Angry that he wouldn't leave Louis in peace." It was Daniel, anyway, who was quite sure that all of this was about Louis. But so too is Lestat, without that encouragement. Why wouldn't it be about Louis, and in extension, be about himself? "I told him he needed to leave us all alone. He disagreed. We spoke on the subject. We fought until dawn."
And then the sun. This, Lestat keeps to himself. Too strange to say out loud. "I shook free of him. I fled. I found my refuge."
no subject
Ugh, man.
(Where's Armand?)
He wasn't still in New York. He followed them, to keep an eye on them — Louis, sure, Louis should be free of Armand, but it had been Daniel who told him that they could spend time together after all of this. (Where the fuck is he.)
"Okay, well." That was so stupid, that was so fucking stupid, why would you do that. "Okay." Trying again, oof. "We're gonna get you cleaned up and sort it out. No one's leaving you behind. That was never in the cards. Louis and I aren't dating, by the way."
Does Armand think that? ... Does it matter? Armand apparently presented it that way. Daniel's stomach drops further. He's so fucking stupid. Dumber than Lestat, actually.
no subject
He is thinking. Turns over Lestat's injuries, the way his pain had felt, like an exposed nerve. How he'd sobbed. Begged.
Armand still unreachable.
Quietly: "We need blood. You'll need to drink."
Because Louis can't say any of the other things that come most immediately to him. Can't say You shouldn't have done that. Can't say Leave him to me.
Also can't say I'm going to return every wound he gave you.
And so, Louis offers this practicality instead. Lestat needs blood. He needs rest. It's what he'd recommended himself, when Armand had walked a mine-trapped puppet into their hotel in New York.
no subject
And maybe none of this makes it to Daniel through the cheese grater of Lestat's mind, but it all comes up so ready and easy that his eyes immediately fill with tears at the twinned sensation of the pair of them, again, extending these kindnesses, aNd for wHaT, and the laughable denial that they aren't dating.
And blood. Merde, but he is hungry.
"I would prefer not to quibble over the technicalities over what you both are or are not doing together," he says, miserably, princessy, while trying not to have fangs to lisp through. "S'il te plaît."
no subject
But this, too: Daniel and Lestat, phone shopping, helping him pick out headphones. Lestat had asked a question and Daniel had answered. Honestly. It's still the truth. He doesn't understand this shift now, or why Lestat finds it so believable, or why Armand would push it. Daniel feels—
More than he should, really. A little bit betrayed. Does he really seem like the kind of person who'd pull this? (Did Armand really put this in Lestat's head? After—)
Louis, still not helping. Thanks, bud.
"It's not a technicality." His voice sounds flat. He'd say We talked about you last night, we talked about how I went out of my way to try to give you two time to fool around, but what if that makes Louis (who is still not helping) feel weird, and violated. Christ.
Fortunately, Burlington isn't very big, and they'll be back at the rental house soon.
"You two are going to go inside, and I'll go grab something. No negotiations, that's what's happening."
no subject
In the space of time between Lestat's rejoinder and Daniel's rebuttal, Louis has rolled back one ruined sleeve. The gouges Lestat made are half-healed, easy to reopen. Louis makes a neat slash across his wrist, and offers the fresh swell of blood wordlessly over to Lestat.
Prompts, "Go on," only to coax, to head off any questions about how whether or not he is serious in his offering.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
cw wound grossness
ew gross
(no subject)
cw wound grossness
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
enjoy tag of nothing
(no subject)
(no subject)
tag of nothing, redux.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
sorry this is so many words
w o w
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
sneaks in a tag forgive
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)