Louis is not his maker. Should he have been? Daniel can see so much into him, and it washes over and through him right now, not coherent enough to sift through and read or make notes. It will come to shore later, his analytical mind will want to pin every little thing, but right now he's in a raging flood. He needs this or he'll die, an instinct tells him, and so he indulges, and takes more, and the ravenous maw with thousands of jagged teeth and a seductive whisper tells him to keep going.

In fiction, vampires are bats, and spirits, and wolves. This is something else, some other order of thing, demonic and angelic at once. Unearthly. Here-but-not.

And Louis—

The flinch at seeing him open his wrist comes back. It hits him, in the wave of feeling. Daniel won't drain him, he won't do this even if Louis is caught in a trap of despair. He recognizes that Louis is clinging onto him and has tears on his face, and he shifts, pulling his mouth away from his friend's wrist and grabbing at his side, then more, scrambling at him until he can hold him. Fierce and sorrowful but thankful.

Stay with me, he thinks, and he means here in this world on this plane of existence. Don't go. The thought echoes, out of his control, away from him and into Louis.