Louis takes Daniel's thanks into the next room with him, where he can feel some quiet anguish for it. For arriving late. For this being the best he can offer. He sits with it, while water runs in the next room. While Daniel washes off the doused blood of his transformation.

Swathed in towels, emerging in a cloud of steam, Daniel can almost be mistaken for the mortal he'd been in Dubai.

But his eyes. His eyes cannot be masked.

Louis had loved Daniel's eyes. He has been thinking of this, sat at the foot of the bed, task put to him completed. Louis has had so much time to think of all the ways he was fond of Daniel, all the things that appealed. He is thinking of them now, taking stock the way a man standing in the remnants of a scorched building might anxiously put fingers to what's most valuable.

Daniel is himself still. But his eyes—

Is this what Grace had felt, when she'd taken Louis' glasses from him and found not their shared brown but gleaming green?

"No clown suit," Louis reassures. "Only your usual fare, without the addition of spilled blood."

Spoken aloud knowing that Daniel is hungry still. Louis had been hungry. Claudia had been hungry. (Had Madeleine? Louis had felt her, but she had been gone from him so quickly. Claudia would have known.)

"Better?" Louis questions, a slight smile on his face signaling some awareness of how absurd the question is.