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.
A look flicked to the back of Daniel's head at this second denial, the flurry of memory overlapping. Guarded doubt. Lestat has all these things, now, these pieces of evidence, context, he could gather them all up and make his case, but it's an absurd thing to be arguing. An absurd thing to be denying.
He can feel it like a headache, as if he doesn't have enough of one, the possibility that he might be wrong after all, but it's too much. Twists from it as tasks are delegated. Negotiations closed.
Fresh blood, again. Lestat's focus drawn in almost the same moment Louis offers his arm, holds his breath as he is coaxed.
He might resist this too, but his fangs are already long in his mouth, saliva gathering. (Memories like savagely putting his fangs in Louis' throat as they fly. Of a ragged claw opening up a laceration on a thick pale neck, grey with dirt. Of Armand's skin piercing beneath his teeth.) Too old to be as helpless to hunger as would make this easier, too young to ignore it, Lestat lets out a ragged breath of resignation, but holds onto Louis' arm.
Lowers his head, sealing his mouth around the wound, drawing in what it gives him. Teeth in check.
There are several problems. Entirely too many. One of them, he supposes, is how deeply he and Louis care for each other; how even though they did talk about Lestat last night, they did so while spending time together in a way most would earmark as non-platonic, even if it was also non-romantic. There is something, and it occurs to him, somewhat unpleasantly, that it's possible Louis' silence is partly because Daniel is shutting a door without talking to him about it first. Quick on the heels of that thought is a distinct sense of revulsion at himself, that he'd even waste time considering it.
Blood, and Daniel not being responded to, and them doing that, and that's fine. Incidental, he reminds himself, and there's something bracing about it. Calming, orienting. He was alone in Dubai, figuring out a critical mystery while being antagonized and monitored and threatened; he was alone being transformed by someone who lost control of himself, he was alone leaning how to be dead, and that suits him, it suits him to be solitary in this car, too.
No one's asked him if he'd even want something like that. And he doesn't. Daniel was not ever looking for the third ex Mrs Molloy in retiree communities and 55+ dating apps. He doesn't want an immortal companion. Not even if it's Louis, maybe especially not Louis, because divorce is bad enough, he would prefer not to be murdered out of a relationship instead. Louis is out of his league, he cannot compete, he doesn't want that smoke, no thank you. He loves him, but he can't love him like that.
He parks in the garage. The door rolls down behind them, leaving them bathed in the temporary light on the ceiling, and he goes to open doors and make sure there are no mortals in the house— kicking Jeannie and Mark out in a hurry before he goes to start the water running in the oversized bath tub in the primary bedroom.
Back down, then, to help bully and/or coax Lestat upstairs into it.
"I'll still go get someone," he advises. More so to let Lestat know he won't be expected to sustain himself while contending with leaving Louis compromised, but also to let Louis know what his plans are.
Anger. Easiest, safest. Permitted to float to the surface while Louis vanishes beneath with any other emotion he is harboring. A well-worn vanishing act. Implosion. Louis, gone, even as Lestat puts his mouth over a slashed wound and drinks. Louis doesn't pull away. Doesn't caution him. Lestat is permitted to drink until he stops on his own.
The roving tendril of his mind, covertly seeking a recognizable blankness among the Many, persists throughout their trip back to the hotel.
Presently standing on the paved floor outside the car, Louis had listened as Daniel got out, entered the building, moved from hallway to room to room. Louis is looking at Lestat, eyes tracing from hurt to hurt to hurt, observing pale skin, misery. His owns wounds are knitting slowly, bleeding sluggishly, ignored. Louis has drawn up familiar chilly poise around himself, creating a kind of absence, remoteness like a veil drawn down over the roiling pulse of feeling in his chest. Has crossed on arm over his chest, lifted a hand to rest his chin on his knuckles. Containment, it is all containment.
He is present, but only to a point.
Listening, Louis hears Jeannie and Mark depart. Hears doors, footsteps. Lifts eyes to see Daniel re-entering, before looking again to Lestat.
What to do with the sentiment that manifests, immediately, to coalesce into: I don't want you to go.
Fretful, this need to have them both where Louis can see them. Safe, accounted for, beyond any ability of some malevolent being's ability to touch. (Where is Armand, now?) He has to hold this need behind his teeth, compressed behind the opaque veil Louis has drawn down over his mind, while Daniel's words settle.
"You don't need to play fetch," is just honest. There are options open to them. Staff who could collect a tourist. Louis' stores of blood. He so rarely interferes with Daniel and Lestat's hunting, but this is not a usual night, their usual rhythms.
Head turning, looking back to Lestat as he continues on, quiet: "Unless you want to go."
The blood is not nothing. It is comfort, first, even tainted with anger. His fledgling's blood, returned to him, and it feels too profound a thing to have thoughtlessly accepted in the back of a car, and yet. Lestat drinks, and doesn't take much more than what he can draw from an already healing wound. Denies the urge to bite down. Denies the urge to lick closed the lacerations he has caused.
The blood is not nothing but he needs more and he needs a coffin. And a bath, or whatever. Inside, he is finally shedding his jacket of feathers, letting it fall in a heap. Beneath, a too-small waistcoat, and this comes off too. Bruises, cuts, scrapes, and the wound at his side which is hard to make out for all the blood drying thick in and around.
He looks to Daniel when he tells him this, and considers what he might say. Gratitude feels like it's a galaxy away, still. Apologies, too, for the mess, here and otherwise. An argument. Explanation. Accusation.
Louis, from his remote and cool tower, suggests Daniel does not have to do this thing unless he is using it as an excuse to fuck off, which has Lestat scoff and realise he does not want to witness whatever this conversation is. He will go to the bathroom, sticky fingers leaving marks on the walls to steady himself.
"What I want," Daniel says calmly, "is for nobody to have to leave and be unaccounted for again, as soon as possible. I need you to stay with him, because he trusts you more than he trusts me. I can get this handled the fastest, and we don't have to involve anyone else. And then we're going to sit in here and figure it out."
So everybody just chill, okay.
"Please." A gesture after Lestat. And then, privately: 'He needs you. I don't know how much help I can be even with seeing into his head.'
Daniel will not be bolting anywhere, no matter that he would really like to know what the fuck is up with Armand right now. He'll be cleaning off his car as best he can in a pinch, and then going to yank a tourist or two. No need to subject anyone's employees to potential kidnapping charges when a vampire can move faster than eyes can track.
He does call Armand when he's out. But of course the line's dead. What did he expect?
Louis wants to argue. But he has said his piece, and Daniel says his, and Daniel gets in his bloody car and goes. Louis stands long minutes in the empty garage, breathing in the cold air before punching the door closed.
Follows the bloody fingerprints down the hallway, the pulse of misery and pain Lestat trails in his wake.
The door is ajar. Louis lets himself in, calling softly, "Lestat," pitched over the sound of rushing water.
Lestat is found kneeling outside the tub, an arm folded and balanced on the edge as it fills with water. His breathing has heightened and his face turned from the door, and it would be understandable, given history, to assume he has resumed crying again. Not quite, though, something else, tense the way he holds his body, the air in his lungs.
Then, at a different angle, it's easier to see the way he has fingers buried in the wound at his side. Fishing around in there, discomfort plain in the hitch of his breathing, eyes tightly closed, a sheen of sweat now painting bare shoulders, his brow.
"A moment, chéri," has the audacity to carry a little dry humour to it. I'll be with you in a second, just digging a loose claw out of my innards.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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'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.
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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.
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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."
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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?"
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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.
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"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."
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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.
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He can feel it like a headache, as if he doesn't have enough of one, the possibility that he might be wrong after all, but it's too much. Twists from it as tasks are delegated. Negotiations closed.
Fresh blood, again. Lestat's focus drawn in almost the same moment Louis offers his arm, holds his breath as he is coaxed.
He might resist this too, but his fangs are already long in his mouth, saliva gathering. (Memories like savagely putting his fangs in Louis' throat as they fly. Of a ragged claw opening up a laceration on a thick pale neck, grey with dirt. Of Armand's skin piercing beneath his teeth.) Too old to be as helpless to hunger as would make this easier, too young to ignore it, Lestat lets out a ragged breath of resignation, but holds onto Louis' arm.
Lowers his head, sealing his mouth around the wound, drawing in what it gives him. Teeth in check.
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There are several problems. Entirely too many. One of them, he supposes, is how deeply he and Louis care for each other; how even though they did talk about Lestat last night, they did so while spending time together in a way most would earmark as non-platonic, even if it was also non-romantic. There is something, and it occurs to him, somewhat unpleasantly, that it's possible Louis' silence is partly because Daniel is shutting a door without talking to him about it first. Quick on the heels of that thought is a distinct sense of revulsion at himself, that he'd even waste time considering it.
Blood, and Daniel not being responded to, and them doing that, and that's fine. Incidental, he reminds himself, and there's something bracing about it. Calming, orienting. He was alone in Dubai, figuring out a critical mystery while being antagonized and monitored and threatened; he was alone being transformed by someone who lost control of himself, he was alone leaning how to be dead, and that suits him, it suits him to be solitary in this car, too.
No one's asked him if he'd even want something like that. And he doesn't. Daniel was not ever looking for the third ex Mrs Molloy in retiree communities and 55+ dating apps. He doesn't want an immortal companion. Not even if it's Louis, maybe especially not Louis, because divorce is bad enough, he would prefer not to be murdered out of a relationship instead. Louis is out of his league, he cannot compete, he doesn't want that smoke, no thank you. He loves him, but he can't love him like that.
He parks in the garage. The door rolls down behind them, leaving them bathed in the temporary light on the ceiling, and he goes to open doors and make sure there are no mortals in the house— kicking Jeannie and Mark out in a hurry before he goes to start the water running in the oversized bath tub in the primary bedroom.
Back down, then, to help bully and/or coax Lestat upstairs into it.
"I'll still go get someone," he advises. More so to let Lestat know he won't be expected to sustain himself while contending with leaving Louis compromised, but also to let Louis know what his plans are.
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Anger. Easiest, safest. Permitted to float to the surface while Louis vanishes beneath with any other emotion he is harboring. A well-worn vanishing act. Implosion. Louis, gone, even as Lestat puts his mouth over a slashed wound and drinks. Louis doesn't pull away. Doesn't caution him. Lestat is permitted to drink until he stops on his own.
The roving tendril of his mind, covertly seeking a recognizable blankness among the Many, persists throughout their trip back to the hotel.
Presently standing on the paved floor outside the car, Louis had listened as Daniel got out, entered the building, moved from hallway to room to room. Louis is looking at Lestat, eyes tracing from hurt to hurt to hurt, observing pale skin, misery. His owns wounds are knitting slowly, bleeding sluggishly, ignored. Louis has drawn up familiar chilly poise around himself, creating a kind of absence, remoteness like a veil drawn down over the roiling pulse of feeling in his chest. Has crossed on arm over his chest, lifted a hand to rest his chin on his knuckles. Containment, it is all containment.
He is present, but only to a point.
Listening, Louis hears Jeannie and Mark depart. Hears doors, footsteps. Lifts eyes to see Daniel re-entering, before looking again to Lestat.
What to do with the sentiment that manifests, immediately, to coalesce into: I don't want you to go.
Fretful, this need to have them both where Louis can see them. Safe, accounted for, beyond any ability of some malevolent being's ability to touch. (Where is Armand, now?) He has to hold this need behind his teeth, compressed behind the opaque veil Louis has drawn down over his mind, while Daniel's words settle.
"You don't need to play fetch," is just honest. There are options open to them. Staff who could collect a tourist. Louis' stores of blood. He so rarely interferes with Daniel and Lestat's hunting, but this is not a usual night, their usual rhythms.
Head turning, looking back to Lestat as he continues on, quiet: "Unless you want to go."
So.
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The blood is not nothing but he needs more and he needs a coffin. And a bath, or whatever. Inside, he is finally shedding his jacket of feathers, letting it fall in a heap. Beneath, a too-small waistcoat, and this comes off too. Bruises, cuts, scrapes, and the wound at his side which is hard to make out for all the blood drying thick in and around.
He looks to Daniel when he tells him this, and considers what he might say. Gratitude feels like it's a galaxy away, still. Apologies, too, for the mess, here and otherwise. An argument. Explanation. Accusation.
Louis, from his remote and cool tower, suggests Daniel does not have to do this thing unless he is using it as an excuse to fuck off, which has Lestat scoff and realise he does not want to witness whatever this conversation is. He will go to the bathroom, sticky fingers leaving marks on the walls to steady himself.
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So everybody just chill, okay.
"Please." A gesture after Lestat. And then, privately: 'He needs you. I don't know how much help I can be even with seeing into his head.'
Daniel will not be bolting anywhere, no matter that he would really like to know what the fuck is up with Armand right now. He'll be cleaning off his car as best he can in a pinch, and then going to yank a tourist or two. No need to subject anyone's employees to potential kidnapping charges when a vampire can move faster than eyes can track.
He does call Armand when he's out. But of course the line's dead. What did he expect?
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Louis wants to argue. But he has said his piece, and Daniel says his, and Daniel gets in his bloody car and goes. Louis stands long minutes in the empty garage, breathing in the cold air before punching the door closed.
Follows the bloody fingerprints down the hallway, the pulse of misery and pain Lestat trails in his wake.
The door is ajar. Louis lets himself in, calling softly, "Lestat," pitched over the sound of rushing water.
cw wound grossness
Then, at a different angle, it's easier to see the way he has fingers buried in the wound at his side. Fishing around in there, discomfort plain in the hitch of his breathing, eyes tightly closed, a sheen of sweat now painting bare shoulders, his brow.
"A moment, chéri," has the audacity to carry a little dry humour to it. I'll be with you in a second, just digging a loose claw out of my innards.
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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