Disorienting, finding an incongruity. A sick swoop of a feeling, trying to walk down well-trod steps and finding one missing.

Daniel didn't have this in San Francisco. Had the raw, ripped open mess Louis bit into him and Armand had begrudgingly healed, late enough with little enough effort that the scar remained under the crusting blood. Louis hadn't touched Daniel at all in Dubai, not until he was leaving.

But he's touched him here. Remembers. Daniel's breath had hitched just this way. It could only have happened in the near present.

"Talking," comes slowly. "I dream of us talking so much."

Memories caught between two rooms, pastiches of burning and chilly serenity. Daniel old and young and old again, tape recorders and microphones and the slant of his smile a constant.

"Sometimes I—"

A pause. Louis' fingers continue their slow loop of progress around the bite.

"Sometimes you let me get close," Louis says quietly. "Sometimes."

Tempered with, "Sometimes you tell me I'm a monster. You leave."

But less, that last one. Less, since Armand had gone. Since Louis had left Dubai. Louis feels the chill of suspicion, of understanding.