Louis had been so badly burned. Exquisite, Armand had correctly described the pain. But Daniel says this and shakes loose a little sense memory: cool fingers, hesitantly set to his face.

"I'm not sure I realized you were really there at first."

The combination of the daytime, the newspaper-filtered light exacerbating his pain, lending a layer of unreality to the sense of Daniel on the bed beside him. It had taken everything in him to turn on the mattress towards him.

"I wanted you to run," slowly, feeling out the words. Truth. "I remember your blood, and how hurt you felt."

The scent of him had lingered, even when Daniel had been extricated from the bed and bidden to eat, drink. To live, so Armand could continue on with their sentence.

"I think I told you to try to sleep."

And maybe it would have felt like a joke too, offering Daniel actual sleep instead of what Armand had been pushing onto him. Rest like a sledgehammer, like a hand forcing Daniel's head down beneath the sea of his own exhaustion. Louis had been in too much pain to sleep, had been too overcome with the selfish comfort of Daniel laid alongside him in the ash-flecked sheets, but Daniel could have slept. Might have. Louis has trouble recalling what came next.