Okay. Okay. He squeezes Louis' hand, tries to focus. Dead blood, right. All that.
Daniel stays where he is for a long moment, just getting his shit together. Coping with the things he can feel, and hear. Trying not to spiral thinking too hard about his future, his kids, getting back to New York without getting turned into a pile of ash. He needs to drink blood, and he needs to do it soon, or he'll go fucking bonkers.
Soon enough: they're out in the other room, and Daniel is contending with the sight of people Armand left. A strange feeling lances through him, perverse relief that they aren't tied up and terrified. The ancient vampire must have lobotomized them— Louis can probably hear the ragged thought, bordering on hysterical, Is this how I looked in that fucking apartment?
Daniel survived San Fransisco, these people aren't surviving Venice. Bad luck.
He's going to say something. Ask a philosophical question. Work it out. At the very least, point out it was stupid to put a clean shirt on before this. It flies out of his head, and he's not thinking, there's nothing, nothing but fangs in flesh and blood on his tongue, hot and horrible and alive.
That thought hooks in Louis' head. San Francisco. Daniel, pale and bloody, face blank while Louis stood at the window.
(What Louis looked like? Like Daniel? Had there been any difference?)
But San Francisco is pushed from Louis' mind as Daniel falls to drinking. Louis remembers it. Remembers how desperate he had been. How inelegant he had been, scrabbling across the hardwood, biting for veins.
The mortal doesn't struggle. Daniel's mind is a blank, plunged into the necessity of feeding. Impenetrable, in a way. Louis allows himself to be drawn in alongside Daniel, fingers trailing across Daniel's shoulders. Grazes bare skin at the nape of his neck as Louis sinks into his mind.
Louis can feel the mortal going, going. Life draining away. The echoing taste of blood rich in Daniel's mouth, an absence on Louis' tongue. Louis' fingers slipping through Daniel's hair, soft silver beneath his palm as Louis reaches to temper that grasping urge towards the last drops.
The drive to consume is too overwhelming to notice anything about the person he's killing— flashes he pays no mind to, they could be anything, skimming past him like spots in the distance on the highway. He gave a fuck about Louis, and that made it different. Daniel doesn't care about these people and just wants to get it overwith. That it feels good, filling him in an unearthly way, is something he can process later.
Louis' hand on him, strange, surreal. That soft voice in his head jolts him and he feels embarrassed about it for a moment, pulling away and—
Whatever he might have thought (laughing at him to put his shirt back on in '73, a mocking offer months ago) is gone, staring down at a person who he has now killed. The man - a human, a mortal, something Daniel isn't anymore - is fading away, greyish already. How much fucking blood did he have to take, to make someone lose color?
One person left, still alive. They sit there and see nothing, like a reformatted drive, blank. Daniel is more aware this time as he pushes their head back and leans down, but wishes he wasn't.
Louis would have drunk down four if he could have, that first night. He's drunk thousands since.
His fingers remain, Louis drawn along in Daniel's wake as he sinks teeth into the throat of this last mortal. Fingertips running along his scalp, grounding. Anchoring.
I'm here, whispers in the back of his head. Stay with me.
Drawing Daniel's attention, a step back from the life dwindling away between his jaws.
The last person drops and Daniel staggers back, this time feeling more sparks of their life— dull, bitter, a middling career in tourism customer service, a relationship that never resulted in marriage, a horrible feeling of a lifetime wasted and then, finally, a calming call to rest. The satisfaction of Finally, this rolls into him and Daniel can't help but feel an echo of it, even as something else takes over.
Fuck you, Armand.
Louis' hand on him feels crazy. All of this is making him cognizant of how long it's been since anyone's touched him in a way that hasn't been medical, or, recently thanks to Armand, gently threatening. He blames the resentful misery of this last victim.
Too many fucking emotions. He's dead, he's not dead, this can't be happening, this is very much happening.
Staring down at four bodies, the final one shivering their last. Blood on his mouth, a bit on the shirt, but it's not so bad. Too hungry to let anything go to waste. At least he feels more grounded, now, the thing inside of him demanding more, now, more, has shut up. He can still sense it, a creature that's grafted into himself like a fucked up horror movie monster, but it's been temporarily tamed.
"Okay."
Okay??? Tries again.
"Okay." A breath. "I have a question, and I want to preface it with saying that I don't want to, and that I'm asking from a purely practical standpoint, considering the logistics and morals of it all. Given that there's no fucking reason to have turned me into a vampire, and how many people I will apparently have to eat, and there's apparently thousands more vampires around today than at any time in history— should I just torch myself? Or sit in a locked room and starve? I was dying anyway. I had a lot set up to just go."
Again, he doesn't want to, but it might be a decent fuck you to Armand. Oh yeah, jerk?
That was, probably (certainly), a question that shouldn't be posed to Louis, but Daniel doesn't have anyone else. He meant it, he doesn't want to, and yet there is a vicious self-loathing kind of practicality that puts the option on the table. It wouldn't be a heroic sacrifice, Daniel Molloy is not the type, but it would solve a swathe of problems that seem beyond overwhelming from his current vantage point.
Louis touches him again, sounds so shattered. It makes Daniel feel cared for in a way he hasn't in decades, but there's also a contrary part of him that's— you know, like, hey, you didn't even consider that from a logical standpoint.
Death has not changed him from being a weird asshole, apparently.
But Daniel makes himself crawl up out of his own bleak pragmatism, and reaches out to rest his hands on Louis' sides.
"Alright. Alright, Louis. I'm not going anywhere."
A moment where Louis simply looks back at him. Studying Daniel's face, fear in his own expression ebbing slowly into something near to relief. Breathes out.
In the coming days, weeks, he'll turn Daniel's question over and over in his head. In the moment though, Daniel touches him, and it is steadying. Eases the panic the had risen in him at the thought of Daniel walking into the sunlight.
"Stay," he repeats, soft. "We can figure all of it out, together."
Vampirism. The demands it was going to make of Daniel. How he'd answer them.
—Sounds a little lost, but sincere. Not his problem-causing Yeah.
Standing in a room, holding on to each other, surrounded by bodies. How much money has Louis blown, chasing after him? Where the fuck is Armand? What is he going to say to his kids? Is he ever going to see them again? (Does he care?)
"Do we... put these in a vat of acid, or some other horror film shit?"
It's Venice, though, maybe they just go out the window into the canal.
Louis' thumbs stroke over and over Daniel's cheeks. Smooth away the traces of blood. Find reassurance in the warmth of him, breathing and alive, caught up between Louis' hands.
"I'll take care of it."
Penance, maybe, for the number of bodies Armand dealt with on Louis' behalf. His turn now, to clean up.
"I'm not so far out of practice that it's beyond me."
Unfortunate facts, and please. Shit has to get way more traumatic than dying for Daniel Molloy to not want to know something. There's no fucking way Louis' going to magic anything else away while Daniel sits quietly in the other room.
So. The clean up.
Having something to do, no matter how gruesome, centers him. A project to work on, take mental notes on, even as he occasionally spaces out due to sensory overload, or looks spooked because his hands are steady and it's starting to sink in how much pain he isn't in anymore. Neurons repairing themselves, or the elusive, half-theoretical lifelong neurogenesis is happening now, erasing or otherwise outpacing the flawed ones. Armand gave Daniel his blood instead of medication, while they were traveling, and maybe it kept Daniel slightly more stable than nothing, but it hadn't healed him like this. A mortal can't properly benefit from death. The damned work best with the damned.
By the time they're finished he's nearing the ability to say I'm okay and mean it.
Rote work, for Louis. He is practiced still, even if it has been long decades since he cleaned up after his own meals. His patient, gentle direction guides Daniel through the most immediate aspects of the process. Wrapping, tying, obscuring. Corpses vanishing into rolled carpet and bedding, explanation and advice given while sending a handful of text messages. Security cameras, service lifts, all things Louis' staff knows to manage and Louis imparts to Daniel for whenever he might need to manage the process alone.
Which does beg the question—
"Whatever you want," is the truth, even if it sounds regretful in Louis' mouth.
He knows what he wants. To stay near to Daniel. Never let him out of sight again, never endure the frantic search while he slips farther and farther away.
They could go to Dubai. They could go to the States. They could go anywhere.
"You'll need to sleep," is true too. "And eat again before any prolonged travel."
Softer: "I would pay your ticket, wherever you wished to go."
Because Please stay close sticks in his throat. Uncertain. What does Daniel want? To never see Louis again? To go be a vampire where it pleases him, keep his own company?
The idea of home feels daunting. His apartment is far from sun-proof. What if he shows up thirty minutes before dawn? He's got blackout curtains, but how good are they? Has his editor reported him missing? Fucking declared him dead? Has anyone besides Louis noticed? Should he just 'die' now, or go work on the book?
Because
he's still going to write the book. Obviously.
The impression he got is that Louis is no longer as enthusiastic about the idea of publishing it (the whole laptop fire and whore number thing), but yeah, no, he's not complying with that, and figures Louis owes him for leaving him with Armand anyway, so it's fine. They'll be even.
Speaking of Louis, Daniel looks at him, and wonders if the longing he thinks he hears in him is imaginary, or... fucking mind reading. What's that about.
"What if I wanted you to keep me company for a while because I'm fucking lost?"
A perk for Daniel, perhaps, is first hand experience of the way Louis shields his mind.
Which is to say, rarely. Which is to say, with only Daniel in the room, not at all.
Maybe it will come to Louis in time. Recall that Daniel is a vampire. Recall that Daniel is a reporter. But in the moment, it is as open as Louis' face, looking at Daniel as he asks this thing. The Yes forms there before Louis says:
"I'll stay as long as you like."
Maybe there are better choices for touchstones, for teachers, than Louis. Louis who is newly returned to the world. Louis, who had been sequestered for decades.
Louis, who Daniel is intimately aware has been far from an adept vampire.
It's fine. They have Lestat for all that Louis is incapable of.
"I want to stay," Louis amends. Before Daniel can second-guess him.
It's going to take a while for Daniel to really understand what he's experiencing, in his head. The feelings and senses manifesting in him now are indistinguishable from being able to read Louis in a new way, particularly while he's still half-grappling with half-willfully ignoring the fact that he can feel Armand in his head.
He doesn't know why - he's not a touchy person, neither is Louis, he doesn't think - but he reaches out and grabs the other man's hand again.
Not totally to support the older vampire. Daniel is also freefalling a little still.
"Let's get the fuck out of here first, then."
Staying can come after. Daniel crams everything he has left into his abused suitcase, startles a little at picking it up (! weighs nothing ? cool), and then they can just... get out, and away, and he will try not to stop every three feet and stare up at the sky or out at the ocean.
Louis does not relinquish his hold on Daniel's hand. The link of contact remains, soothing the fretful anxiety that Daniel might vanish. That Armand will simply take him, play keep away as effectively as he had before.
They've walked a little ways before Louis asks him, "Would you like to go back to New York?"
It would make sense to Louis, who couldn't bring himself to leave New Orleans for thirty years. May never have left New Orleans, if it had gone differently with Lestat then.
May go back still, because Lestat is in New Orleans. Might intend to stay in New Orleans, if not in the waterlogged cottage.
"I have to, if not immediately, then sooner rather than later. Even if only to get my shit out of the mail room."
Because Armand sent everything back there, apparently. Bought him a different suitcase and clothes on the fly. He's not one hundred percent sure what all is in the shit that Armand (allegedly) sent off to his Brooklyn apartment— the ruins of his laptop, at least, but who knows what else. A part of him is itching to know. Did Armand post a dead cat in there? It could be fucking anything, the guy's got every mental illness known to humanity and probably a few extra ones no clinician has ever been confronted with.
"I don't think New Orleans is practical," he says. "I know you're an almost-billionaire, but the infrastructure from flooding and bad politics basically ensures you're exposed or stuck on a floating piece of driftwood at high noon within a year."
No awareness of where he picked up thoughts about New Orleans from, or that Louis hasn't said any of that out loud. Has not quite fished out Lestat, but they aren't talking about people, they're talking about where to go.
It had taken Louis some time to develop the skill of delving in and out of people's minds. Longer to achieve any kind of mastery. (Whatever mastery Armand felt appropriate, felt permissible.) It does not immediately occur to him that Daniel can touch his mind as he pleases; isn't it overwhelming, the change?
Daniel hits a key combination anyway: New Orleans and infrastructure, New Orleans and flooding.
Triggers a flutter of memory:
Car window grinding down, Louis' face turning into the passing breeze.
A hurricane rattling shutters.
Lestat's eyes widening as Louis crosses a damp, low-lit little room.
In this present moment, Louis slanting a look sideways at Daniel. A twist in his chest, thinking so immediately of Armand. How Armand must have known and perhaps shared some opinion on it with Daniel.
"It still feels like home," Louis admits, before saying, more practically, "I still own property in New York. And California."
A healthy real estate portfolio is nothing to sneeze at.
Daniel has heard about the tricks of vampire 'gifts' (focus on the mind like a bodily sound, find the flaw in something to set aflame), and Daniel is pretty fucking quick, and Daniel is the only fledgling of a half-millennia old vampire. It's definitely an oops, stumbling into things and people and heads he's not meaning to, and the minute he notices he'll reel it in. Or try to.
(That'll be the thing, probably. Hunger he can cope with, to a degree, with his experience in the trenches of addiction. But the cascade of variables - power plus a potentially inherited knack plus curiosity plus his inherent journalistic aggression - will equal a harder impulse to control.)
If he gets an impression of Lestat as he looks back over at Louis, he doesn't realize what it is; doesn't even realize what he's doing. There are other people out at night, wandering in the late hours and scoping out scenery or heading towards early shifts at bakeries and so on— one of them is thinking loudly about a fight with her husband that turned violent, and Daniel flinches and looks over his shoulder, trying to sort out what jumped into his head.
"I, uh."
Christ. What the fuck. (Tired of thinking What the fuck.)
The uh draws attention. Louis is already keeping Daniel in his periphery, unable to quite look away. His presence still a miracle, still exceptional. Louis wants to hold fast to him, cling against the prospect of Daniel slipping away.
But there is a moment where Louis finds himself uncertain. Tests the porous edges of that memory, all that had come before or after now suspect.
"Yes," Louis says at last. Testing the answer, knowing it to be true. "The building's been renovated."
Modernized. Is now handled by a property manager.
The floor still slants to the north. Louis knows this without any reason to still have possession of that fact. He hasn't set foot there in years.
"I can have a direct flight for us to New York," hooked onto the tailed end of this. "We can make arrangements for things you'll need when we get there."
The floor slants to the north. Something they should have taken care of before selling. He wonders if that's more Armand's style; flipping and reselling. Not a landlord. Not a capitalist. Louis became one and Armand started eating them. He can hear him saying it, he can see, in a muddy, disoriented blink of recall, the vampire who is now his maker leaning down and touching fingertips to a blood puddle that's been slowly oozing Oregonward. He doesn't know if it's a real part of a memory or just a fabrication when his gaze moves up to watch Armand put his fingers in his mouth as he stared blankly at the tape recorder.
So
having a normal time, tonight.
"That's funny."
He still has it. Daniel can go see it. Check if it's haunted or not. (With what? The ghost of things he can't remember? A poltergeist made of the junkie who should have died in the 70s?)
"What were you doing before this?"
New Orleans, something about New Orleans. Something about having to get home before the baby wakes up, but something something, he doesn't speak Italian. What? Daniel rubs the bridge of his nose.
This little motion hooks Louis' attention. Remembered from the interview, the myriad of things it signaled. Exasperation, at Louis or at Armand. Headaches, sometimes. Pain, sometimes.
Is Louis being exasperating? Not at this exact moment. But the rest —
"I was in New Orleans," Louis answers, truthful because what reason does he have to obscure this? "I wanted to go home."
To open the car window, to turn his face out into the night and feel all things familiar carried to him on the air.
"I wanted to find Lestat," is true too. "And I did."
And now he is here. His fingers soft in the bend of Daniel's elbow, keeping him near as they navigate the ebb and flow of mortal foot traffic. As Louis draws him off to a small fountain, a place to sit. Watches Daniel's face, assessing. Worrying.
Is it surprising? A little, despite the fact that Armand had made it clear that's where Louis was, had berated Daniel for sending Louis back to someone who will eventually beat Louis half-dead again. Despite that, it's almost uplifting. Louis got to put some things together, get a resolution, for good or ill.
"Is he okay?"
This question comes out slower than is normal, for Daniel. He feels like he's speaking underwater, suddenly, trying to be heard over a crowd. Voices, thoughts, impressions trickle in, then flood, then stop, then surge up again like a wave, and the water is too loud, and a woman walking by is thinking in Spanish which means he actually understands her, and Louis is worried about being exasperating but Daniel doesn't know why he'd say that, and, and, and,
his hand over his forehead, now. He wants to know about Lestat, but also:
It had been days for him, for this skill to manifest. Longer for it to become something that needed to be managed, curbed. (And then something that made feeding intolerable, much to Lestat's chagrin.) It has been hours, for Daniel.
The earlier question discarded for the moment. They can talk later about New Orleans, Lestat, anything Daniel likes.
Here, now, Louis takes Daniel's face in his heads.
"You can hear them?" Louis questions, worry creasing across his face as he draws them these last few steps. The fountain perhaps a mistake. There are others milling about here, humans enjoying the scenery, children playing, lovers chattering, an elderly couple with their little dog. Not ideal, but they are here.
Focus on me like a little tug at corner of Daniel's mind as Louis opens his own head to him. Makes himself an eclipse, all-encompassing, a shelter in which only there is only the quiet patter of his own thoughts, the subdued flow of emotion, running alongside Daniel's presence. Stay here.
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Just as Louis doesn't have to be here at all. Didn't have to chase after Daniel. Didn't have to stay once Daniel was found.
His fingers lace through Daniel's.
"I want to be there with you," Louis murmurs. "I'll pull you back."
The mortals were there to drink, but Louis can make himself a tether. Keep Daniel from drowning.
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Daniel stays where he is for a long moment, just getting his shit together. Coping with the things he can feel, and hear. Trying not to spiral thinking too hard about his future, his kids, getting back to New York without getting turned into a pile of ash. He needs to drink blood, and he needs to do it soon, or he'll go fucking bonkers.
Soon enough: they're out in the other room, and Daniel is contending with the sight of people Armand left. A strange feeling lances through him, perverse relief that they aren't tied up and terrified. The ancient vampire must have lobotomized them— Louis can probably hear the ragged thought, bordering on hysterical, Is this how I looked in that fucking apartment?
Daniel survived San Fransisco, these people aren't surviving Venice. Bad luck.
He's going to say something. Ask a philosophical question. Work it out. At the very least, point out it was stupid to put a clean shirt on before this. It flies out of his head, and he's not thinking, there's nothing, nothing but fangs in flesh and blood on his tongue, hot and horrible and alive.
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(What Louis looked like? Like Daniel? Had there been any difference?)
But San Francisco is pushed from Louis' mind as Daniel falls to drinking. Louis remembers it. Remembers how desperate he had been. How inelegant he had been, scrabbling across the hardwood, biting for veins.
The mortal doesn't struggle. Daniel's mind is a blank, plunged into the necessity of feeding. Impenetrable, in a way. Louis allows himself to be drawn in alongside Daniel, fingers trailing across Daniel's shoulders. Grazes bare skin at the nape of his neck as Louis sinks into his mind.
Louis can feel the mortal going, going. Life draining away. The echoing taste of blood rich in Daniel's mouth, an absence on Louis' tongue. Louis' fingers slipping through Daniel's hair, soft silver beneath his palm as Louis reaches to temper that grasping urge towards the last drops.
Daniel, comes as a murmur. On to the next now.
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Louis' hand on him, strange, surreal. That soft voice in his head jolts him and he feels embarrassed about it for a moment, pulling away and—
Whatever he might have thought (laughing at him to put his shirt back on in '73, a mocking offer months ago) is gone, staring down at a person who he has now killed. The man - a human, a mortal, something Daniel isn't anymore - is fading away, greyish already. How much fucking blood did he have to take, to make someone lose color?
One person left, still alive. They sit there and see nothing, like a reformatted drive, blank. Daniel is more aware this time as he pushes their head back and leans down, but wishes he wasn't.
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Louis would have drunk down four if he could have, that first night. He's drunk thousands since.
His fingers remain, Louis drawn along in Daniel's wake as he sinks teeth into the throat of this last mortal. Fingertips running along his scalp, grounding. Anchoring.
I'm here, whispers in the back of his head. Stay with me.
Drawing Daniel's attention, a step back from the life dwindling away between his jaws.
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Fuck you, Armand.
Louis' hand on him feels crazy. All of this is making him cognizant of how long it's been since anyone's touched him in a way that hasn't been medical, or, recently thanks to Armand, gently threatening. He blames the resentful misery of this last victim.
Too many fucking emotions. He's dead, he's not dead, this can't be happening, this is very much happening.
Staring down at four bodies, the final one shivering their last. Blood on his mouth, a bit on the shirt, but it's not so bad. Too hungry to let anything go to waste. At least he feels more grounded, now, the thing inside of him demanding more, now, more, has shut up. He can still sense it, a creature that's grafted into himself like a fucked up horror movie monster, but it's been temporarily tamed.
"Okay."
Okay??? Tries again.
"Okay." A breath. "I have a question, and I want to preface it with saying that I don't want to, and that I'm asking from a purely practical standpoint, considering the logistics and morals of it all. Given that there's no fucking reason to have turned me into a vampire, and how many people I will apparently have to eat, and there's apparently thousands more vampires around today than at any time in history— should I just torch myself? Or sit in a locked room and starve? I was dying anyway. I had a lot set up to just go."
Again, he doesn't want to, but it might be a decent fuck you to Armand. Oh yeah, jerk?
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And Daniel says this thing. Asks this question.
Louis' whole body flinches away from what he invokes.
"No," is so raw. Louis reaches for him again, hands lifting to bracket Daniel's face. "No, Daniel."
Thumb at the corner of Daniel's mouth, over that smear of blood. Holding on.
"Don't go."
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Louis touches him again, sounds so shattered. It makes Daniel feel cared for in a way he hasn't in decades, but there's also a contrary part of him that's— you know, like, hey, you didn't even consider that from a logical standpoint.
Death has not changed him from being a weird asshole, apparently.
But Daniel makes himself crawl up out of his own bleak pragmatism, and reaches out to rest his hands on Louis' sides.
"Alright. Alright, Louis. I'm not going anywhere."
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In the coming days, weeks, he'll turn Daniel's question over and over in his head. In the moment though, Daniel touches him, and it is steadying. Eases the panic the had risen in him at the thought of Daniel walking into the sunlight.
"Stay," he repeats, soft. "We can figure all of it out, together."
Vampirism. The demands it was going to make of Daniel. How he'd answer them.
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—Sounds a little lost, but sincere. Not his problem-causing Yeah.
Standing in a room, holding on to each other, surrounded by bodies. How much money has Louis blown, chasing after him? Where the fuck is Armand? What is he going to say to his kids? Is he ever going to see them again? (Does he care?)
"Do we... put these in a vat of acid, or some other horror film shit?"
It's Venice, though, maybe they just go out the window into the canal.
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Louis' thumbs stroke over and over Daniel's cheeks. Smooth away the traces of blood. Find reassurance in the warmth of him, breathing and alive, caught up between Louis' hands.
"I'll take care of it."
Penance, maybe, for the number of bodies Armand dealt with on Louis' behalf. His turn now, to clean up.
"I'm not so far out of practice that it's beyond me."
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Unfortunate facts, and please. Shit has to get way more traumatic than dying for Daniel Molloy to not want to know something. There's no fucking way Louis' going to magic anything else away while Daniel sits quietly in the other room.
So. The clean up.
Having something to do, no matter how gruesome, centers him. A project to work on, take mental notes on, even as he occasionally spaces out due to sensory overload, or looks spooked because his hands are steady and it's starting to sink in how much pain he isn't in anymore. Neurons repairing themselves, or the elusive, half-theoretical lifelong neurogenesis is happening now, erasing or otherwise outpacing the flawed ones. Armand gave Daniel his blood instead of medication, while they were traveling, and maybe it kept Daniel slightly more stable than nothing, but it hadn't healed him like this. A mortal can't properly benefit from death. The damned work best with the damned.
By the time they're finished he's nearing the ability to say I'm okay and mean it.
A deep breath.
"What now?"
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Which does beg the question—
"Whatever you want," is the truth, even if it sounds regretful in Louis' mouth.
He knows what he wants. To stay near to Daniel. Never let him out of sight again, never endure the frantic search while he slips farther and farther away.
They could go to Dubai. They could go to the States. They could go anywhere.
"You'll need to sleep," is true too. "And eat again before any prolonged travel."
Softer: "I would pay your ticket, wherever you wished to go."
Because Please stay close sticks in his throat. Uncertain. What does Daniel want? To never see Louis again? To go be a vampire where it pleases him, keep his own company?
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The idea of home feels daunting. His apartment is far from sun-proof. What if he shows up thirty minutes before dawn? He's got blackout curtains, but how good are they? Has his editor reported him missing? Fucking declared him dead? Has anyone besides Louis noticed? Should he just 'die' now, or go work on the book?
Because
he's still going to write the book. Obviously.
The impression he got is that Louis is no longer as enthusiastic about the idea of publishing it (the whole laptop fire and whore number thing), but yeah, no, he's not complying with that, and figures Louis owes him for leaving him with Armand anyway, so it's fine. They'll be even.
Speaking of Louis, Daniel looks at him, and wonders if the longing he thinks he hears in him is imaginary, or... fucking mind reading. What's that about.
"What if I wanted you to keep me company for a while because I'm fucking lost?"
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Which is to say, rarely. Which is to say, with only Daniel in the room, not at all.
Maybe it will come to Louis in time. Recall that Daniel is a vampire. Recall that Daniel is a reporter. But in the moment, it is as open as Louis' face, looking at Daniel as he asks this thing. The Yes forms there before Louis says:
"I'll stay as long as you like."
Maybe there are better choices for touchstones, for teachers, than Louis. Louis who is newly returned to the world. Louis, who had been sequestered for decades.
Louis, who Daniel is intimately aware has been far from an adept vampire.
It's fine. They have Lestat for all that Louis is incapable of.
"I want to stay," Louis amends. Before Daniel can second-guess him.
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He doesn't know why - he's not a touchy person, neither is Louis, he doesn't think - but he reaches out and grabs the other man's hand again.
Not totally to support the older vampire. Daniel is also freefalling a little still.
"Let's get the fuck out of here first, then."
Staying can come after. Daniel crams everything he has left into his abused suitcase, startles a little at picking it up (! weighs nothing ? cool), and then they can just... get out, and away, and he will try not to stop every three feet and stare up at the sky or out at the ocean.
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Louis does not relinquish his hold on Daniel's hand. The link of contact remains, soothing the fretful anxiety that Daniel might vanish. That Armand will simply take him, play keep away as effectively as he had before.
They've walked a little ways before Louis asks him, "Would you like to go back to New York?"
It would make sense to Louis, who couldn't bring himself to leave New Orleans for thirty years. May never have left New Orleans, if it had gone differently with Lestat then.
May go back still, because Lestat is in New Orleans. Might intend to stay in New Orleans, if not in the waterlogged cottage.
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Because Armand sent everything back there, apparently. Bought him a different suitcase and clothes on the fly. He's not one hundred percent sure what all is in the shit that Armand (allegedly) sent off to his Brooklyn apartment— the ruins of his laptop, at least, but who knows what else. A part of him is itching to know. Did Armand post a dead cat in there? It could be fucking anything, the guy's got every mental illness known to humanity and probably a few extra ones no clinician has ever been confronted with.
"I don't think New Orleans is practical," he says. "I know you're an almost-billionaire, but the infrastructure from flooding and bad politics basically ensures you're exposed or stuck on a floating piece of driftwood at high noon within a year."
No awareness of where he picked up thoughts about New Orleans from, or that Louis hasn't said any of that out loud. Has not quite fished out Lestat, but they aren't talking about people, they're talking about where to go.
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Daniel hits a key combination anyway: New Orleans and infrastructure, New Orleans and flooding.
Triggers a flutter of memory:
Car window grinding down, Louis' face turning into the passing breeze.
A hurricane rattling shutters.
Lestat's eyes widening as Louis crosses a damp, low-lit little room.
In this present moment, Louis slanting a look sideways at Daniel. A twist in his chest, thinking so immediately of Armand. How Armand must have known and perhaps shared some opinion on it with Daniel.
"It still feels like home," Louis admits, before saying, more practically, "I still own property in New York. And California."
A healthy real estate portfolio is nothing to sneeze at.
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(That'll be the thing, probably. Hunger he can cope with, to a degree, with his experience in the trenches of addiction. But the cascade of variables - power plus a potentially inherited knack plus curiosity plus his inherent journalistic aggression - will equal a harder impulse to control.)
If he gets an impression of Lestat as he looks back over at Louis, he doesn't realize what it is; doesn't even realize what he's doing. There are other people out at night, wandering in the late hours and scoping out scenery or heading towards early shifts at bakeries and so on— one of them is thinking loudly about a fight with her husband that turned violent, and Daniel flinches and looks over his shoulder, trying to sort out what jumped into his head.
"I, uh."
Christ. What the fuck. (Tired of thinking What the fuck.)
"You didn't keep that shitty apartment, did you?"
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But there is a moment where Louis finds himself uncertain. Tests the porous edges of that memory, all that had come before or after now suspect.
"Yes," Louis says at last. Testing the answer, knowing it to be true. "The building's been renovated."
Modernized. Is now handled by a property manager.
The floor still slants to the north. Louis knows this without any reason to still have possession of that fact. He hasn't set foot there in years.
"I can have a direct flight for us to New York," hooked onto the tailed end of this. "We can make arrangements for things you'll need when we get there."
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So
having a normal time, tonight.
"That's funny."
He still has it. Daniel can go see it. Check if it's haunted or not. (With what? The ghost of things he can't remember? A poltergeist made of the junkie who should have died in the 70s?)
"What were you doing before this?"
New Orleans, something about New Orleans. Something about having to get home before the baby wakes up, but something something, he doesn't speak Italian. What? Daniel rubs the bridge of his nose.
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Is Louis being exasperating? Not at this exact moment. But the rest —
"I was in New Orleans," Louis answers, truthful because what reason does he have to obscure this? "I wanted to go home."
To open the car window, to turn his face out into the night and feel all things familiar carried to him on the air.
"I wanted to find Lestat," is true too. "And I did."
And now he is here. His fingers soft in the bend of Daniel's elbow, keeping him near as they navigate the ebb and flow of mortal foot traffic. As Louis draws him off to a small fountain, a place to sit. Watches Daniel's face, assessing. Worrying.
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Is it surprising? A little, despite the fact that Armand had made it clear that's where Louis was, had berated Daniel for sending Louis back to someone who will eventually beat Louis half-dead again. Despite that, it's almost uplifting. Louis got to put some things together, get a resolution, for good or ill.
"Is he okay?"
This question comes out slower than is normal, for Daniel. He feels like he's speaking underwater, suddenly, trying to be heard over a crowd. Voices, thoughts, impressions trickle in, then flood, then stop, then surge up again like a wave, and the water is too loud, and a woman walking by is thinking in Spanish which means he actually understands her, and Louis is worried about being exasperating but Daniel doesn't know why he'd say that, and, and, and,
his hand over his forehead, now. He wants to know about Lestat, but also:
"How do I turn my head off?"
A weak question. Lost, exhausted, disoriented.
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It had been days for him, for this skill to manifest. Longer for it to become something that needed to be managed, curbed. (And then something that made feeding intolerable, much to Lestat's chagrin.) It has been hours, for Daniel.
The earlier question discarded for the moment. They can talk later about New Orleans, Lestat, anything Daniel likes.
Here, now, Louis takes Daniel's face in his heads.
"You can hear them?" Louis questions, worry creasing across his face as he draws them these last few steps. The fountain perhaps a mistake. There are others milling about here, humans enjoying the scenery, children playing, lovers chattering, an elderly couple with their little dog. Not ideal, but they are here.
Focus on me like a little tug at corner of Daniel's mind as Louis opens his own head to him. Makes himself an eclipse, all-encompassing, a shelter in which only there is only the quiet patter of his own thoughts, the subdued flow of emotion, running alongside Daniel's presence. Stay here.
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🎀 territory?? unless you had further desires