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.
Daniel goes where Louis leads him, barely aware of it. Everything is too fucking loud. Funny that it's this tripping him up so badly. Dying was a whatever, but then, Daniel had been making plans to die for months already. Psychologically braced. Thoughts roll around in him, and as Louis connects their minds to protect him, the other vampire might see Daniel thinking about his own relationship with death as he tries to sort it out— a wry memory, sitting in a restaurant in Dubai, relating his desire to get out of the city alive to a grey-haired man. Fucking moron. Daniel was already functionally dead, but saying so had gotten him more interesting information out of the agent.
Who cares about dying. Wasn't scared of Armand threatening him. What are you going to do, kill me, but that would have been easier than Armand's psychic tentacles in his head.
These thoughts bump into others, spinning around and outward, hearing, feeling, observing. It takes a second for him to find balance, using Louis as a fixed point, but he gets there.
Stay here, Louis says, and Daniel finally manages to get a decent grip on him.
'Think I'm gonna puke,' he warns Louis, though this is not the case. He might pass out, though.
Louis' heart aches for it, for this resignation. For Daniel thinking he is going to die and accepting it, dispassionate. Still unable to consider a world without Daniel in it, even now that Louis is assured it will never come to pass. (Is this Armand's idea of a gift?) His fingers bracket Daniel's face, stood so close their breath mingles, noses brush, Louis disregarding personal space on the far side of the fountain.
Breathe, Louis instructs. They are no longer in a blood-soaked hotel room. The air is clean, the fountain behind them a waterfall of sound. Louis' mind opening up, steady. Familiar terrain, perhaps. There are only two others who might claim to know Louis as well or better than Daniel does.
Called it peeling back, when I first started out hearing them all around me, comes this murmur. I didn't think it'd come to you so fast. Peel back on me. I'll keep it quiet.
Louis, who wished for death so differently than Daniel did. Who turns the face of a gray-haired man in Daniel's mind back and forth, lets it drift beneath the surface of his thoughts.
Says aloud, "Use me to orient yourself, while you get your bearings."
While Louis tries to pluck up some relevant memory, something like instruction. Here is Lestat, pivoting round on a lamp-lit New Orleans street. Here is Armand, lounging in bed, eyes alert. Lessons overlapping, linked in Louis' mind.
Nothing else has come so fast, so chaotic. Dying already, when Armand turned him; maybe it was the disease, maybe it was Armand feeding him his blood for weeks. (Months, Louis said. Fucking months.) But Daniel's entire being has always been centered in his mind. Sharp and unyielding, resilient in the face of all the shit he put himself through. Of course it's an element of his mind that wants to go wild at the first inkling of unchecked power and newness.
Thoughts of death and negotiation around it filter away. He stays with Louis, thinks of peeling — doesn't really work, someone nearby is thinking about potatoes and preparing them — tries something else. Then something else, then something else, and he sees Lestat, like he's there walking alongside them, disoriented and out of place, and he sees Armand—
Sitting with him in Dubai, aware Louis is asleep in the next room, talking to Daniel about solar power. It's a completely normal conversation, except for the way Armand is looking at him.
Gone, and it's just Louis and Daniel, in Venice, by a fountain. Daniel manages to close the fucking box around himself, and he takes a shuddering breath. Realizes he's holding on to Louis' sides again, probably clinging a little too intensely, but he can't make himself let go. He feels like he'll sink into the fucking abyss if he does.
A glimpse, displaced memory. Not his, Daniel's, slipping past. Louis lets it go. Daniel is vulnerable enough as it is without Louis prying after any given fragment of thought that catches his interest.
But he is aware of the process. How Daniel tries, tries again, troubleshooting. Something innate, skill Daniel has already in his possession, that severs himself from the drowning flood of mortal thought.
Louis' hands have shifted into his hair. Set their foreheads together. Daniel's hands are gripping tight at his waist, and Louis has not dislodged him. Senses Daniel to be steadier but not steady, and so remains. Their noses brush. Their breath rises and falls in time. A passing awareness of too close, set to the side.
"I got you," comes soft, reassuring. "And you got hold of it. You're still here."
Still here. Alive-but-not. Daniel finally, properly, understands what's happening, and manages to get a grasp on it. Wrangle it down. He's so used to paying attention to everything and everyone around him, picking up on details and patterns and tells. He will have to do all of that differently, learn to calibrate his passive observation so that it isn't this.
The prospect is as daunting as it is interesting.
Puking up his liver (or whatever) was much easier.
A shaky breath, then another, steadier one. So close to Louis, closer than he's been to anyone in... years, definitely. That thought is there, in the shelter of Louis' mind, and it's somewhat of a marvel until Daniel realizes what they must look like, Louis cradling some decrepit old man out in public in a fucking tourist hot spot, and he winces. Embarrassment colors his relief, and Daniel withdraws with a wry feeling of apology.
"I'm okay," he says, straightening up. Convincing himself that it's the truth, that he's okay. Repeats it. "I'm okay."
Maybe. Crosses his arms, self-soothing.
"If we could just. I dunno, get the fuck outta here, I guess."
Louis must contend with the instinct he has now, which is to hold fast. To fold Daniel in against himself, clinging and close like that can dispel all the unsteadiness of transformation. Of walking into the world as something new.
Of how Daniel was vulnerable for so long, hurting for so long, alone with Armand.
Armand, who is now silent.
Louis lets go. (Recognizes, in some way, the thing that had lived in Daniel's face when Louis had made an offer to him months back, mid-interview.) Touches Daniel's cheek briefly, fingers light at his cheek before Louis too straightens. Finds some composure, so he might look less split open by their present circumstances.
"We can go."
Softly.
You don't have to be okay, as a whisper in the back of Daniel's mind. Louis' voice, private, just for Daniel, as they begin to walk once more. You don't have to be okay with me.
New Rashid is already collecting what little luggage Daniel has. Louis' hotel is not a far walk. (Lavish, old building, beautiful artwork upon the walls, a breath-taking view from the window.) They'll need only spend a few hours, long enough for a flight to New York to be arranged. They can simply go. Louis has so much money. It makes all things possible.
To that whisper. No way for him to know how to only send it in his mind, and so he says it out loud, despite hearing Louis internally.
"I just need to be okay."
For as much as he can, he trusts Louis. And he's grateful beyond expression for this rescue— because that's what it is. He's not sure that Armand would have ever let him go if they hadn't been followed. If there was no pressure, he expects he'd have just died of his illness, probably had a stroke from anxiety, or Armand would have lost his temper. The end.
Different end, now.
Louis is a safe haven. Daniel wants to cling to him, too. Doesn't know how. So: the hotel, and he thinks of getting on a flight, but realizes he ... can't. Not for logistical reasons. For other reasons, one that don't fit together right in his head. Flight, drive, escape, hotel, fleeing, arguing, flight, hotel. Does he have anything to go back to? Is there a point to New York?
"I think I'm having a panic attack," Daniel observes, tone mild.
A twinned flutter of alarm and concern in Louis' mind, on his face, as he turns towards Daniel. The tablet in Louis' hand is set aside, a light clack of contact as Louis discards it on the glass tabletop. New Rashid seamlessly gathers it, taking up whatever Louis had left off. (Money, moving from place to place, easing the way.) Footsteps, as Rashid heeds some unspoken directive and exits into a side room of the suite.
Privacy, for the moment.
"That's normal."
Maybe. The concept of a panic attack is relatively new. Louis had been turned under vastly different circumstance.
He snares Daniel's hand in his own, draws him down to sit. No stones here beneath their feet, nothing but solid wood floors and Louis himself, playing tether.
"Talk to me. I'm here."
Shorthand for You're safe.
Or maybe, Everyone around us is safe from you.
Dual worries, things Louis would guess at but can't be certain are at the forefront of Daniel's mind without touching his thoughts. Is reluctant to do so without invitation or dire necessity, after Daniel has likely gone so long living with casual intrusion into his head at Armand's whims.
Daniel doesn't panic often. Not in his nature. Doesn't scare easy, responds well to stress. But his pulse has been slowly but steadily ticking up ever since leaving the place where Armand killed him, and now, trying to conceptualize returning to Brooklyn, it's a frantic beat like a thrashing bird's wings, and he's breathing too deep without exhaling for long enough, and his vision is starting to tunnel.
Classic signs. He attempts to identify the source so he can confront it. But, well.
The source seems to be everything.
"Maybe," he sounds unsteady, uncertain, "we could wait a day or two before leaving."
"Hey," soft, using a hand to reel Daniel in closer. Physical boundaries mutable in this moment, ever-evolving as they weather the toll this change is taking on Daniel. "We can stay."
Louis' hand finding the center of Daniel's back, smoothing slow circles there.
"I got a place," implies more comfort, more privacy, maybe better equipped for care and feeding of vampires than a lavish hotel. "Could post up there, send someone on ahead."
Though Louis isn't entirely sure it's the not knowing. But offers this, sweeping contact across Daniel's back, a murmur in his mind: Breathe. I got you.
Does he want a hug? Does he want to burst into tears? Does he want to leap out a window and eat a half dozen people and laugh about it, scream at the moon, rip someone's head off? Does he want to find out what his body does now, or call his eldest daughter and cry I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
He was prepared to die. He didn't want to die, but he'd done the trench work to get ready, since no one else was going to. He's interviewed enough people with suicidal desires to know that envisioning reactions and the state of the world after is a big part of the fantasy. (Louis, even, thinking about his cane and his pile of ash.) But that's never been Daniel. Someone would clear out his apartment and that would be that. He didn't even want to be buried. Cremated. Dumped in the ocean somewhere, just so no one would have to accidentally on purpose lose an urn. And then, nothing, because he's been so absent from anything of consequence anyway.
Here he is, in that fucking fantasy zone, except the fantasy's never been his.
"Will you tell me," he says, staring at his feet, thinking about taking solace in that touch to his back but not entirely sure how to go about it, "about what you were doing before? I interrupted you. About Lestat. Are you okay?"
The buzz of Daniel's thoughts is a palpable thing. Stronger for proximity, maybe, or because Louis is so attuned to Daniel in this moment. (Every moment, every moment in which they inhabit the same space, since the interview.) Louis keeps the detail and shape of those thoughts carefully out of focus, the slow sweep of his palm a firm pressure circling from the nape of Daniel's neck and down to the small of his back, over and over. Maintaining steadily; Daniel hasn't pulled away, hasn't stabilized either, and so Louis continues.
A moment of quiet in the wake of the question. Not withholding, not really, only parsing out his answer. Trying to pin down a thing he's scarcely given thought to himself.
"I'll tell you," he acquiesces, between he sweeps of his hand, observing Daniel's face in profile. "After I remind you that you haven't interrupted anything."
Insistent on this point, unwilling to let even this glancing comment stand. Continuing on, without leaving Daniel the space for an objection.
"I went to New Orleans," softly, a murmur into the space between them. "I wanted to go home."
Home. Louis' voice softening further over this word. New Orleans. Lestat. The two mingle, intertwine.
Maybe his instinct to push outward, away from himself, ask questions is a bad one. But Louis wants Daniel to use him as an anchor, and so, that's what he's doing. Trying to listen, trying to make his pulse calm down.
He thinks—
Of how fucking happy he is, genuinely. It floods him like the release of a painfully held breath. Louis got out of Dubai and found Lestat, for better or worse. Daniel didn't pull pack the curtain on something that couldn't be given closure. He doesn't pretend to know what that feels like - his relationships have deteriorated for far more mundane reasons. No pining involved. (Alice, a little. But does he miss her, or his fucking youth?)
A little miserable flex of a smile, acknowledging the inherent complexity of the question. In this moment? Louis is being eaten alive by his regrets and misery. But Daniel is asking about more than the immediate moment.
His fingers scrape lightly at the nape of Daniel's neck. Palm sweeps back down his back once more. Back up again. Steady, continuous contact.
"We forgave each other," Louis says slowly, feeling his way through the answer. "I'm glad for it."
Fumbling towards an answer to the actual question.
"I feel lighter," makes him feel guilty too. "It was good to see him."
After so many years. After so much misunderstanding, so many lies.
Daniel squeezes his hand. Hopes Louis can feel how pleased he is about it, even if it's bittersweet.
"I'm glad about it, too. I am, Louis. You deserve to feel lighter about fucking something."
A dry laugh—
"Armand made it clear I ruined his fucking life."
It wasn't a major, active worry, that he had also ruined Louis' - somewhat preoccupied at the time, given the abduction - but it was there. He feels the resurgence of that worry now, and can let it go. Feels fucking great, actually, to be able to let something go, in this mood. He doesn't ask more, doesn't want to pry into things now when he's already driven a bulldozer through so much of Louis' privacy (invited, but still).
"I can tell he's still in Venice, by the way. Is that weird?"
Louis can feel it. Feels Daniel's relief, tinged with the overwhelming reality of what Daniel paid to see it done.
Says nothing, for a moment. Just touches him, because Daniel is permitting it, and because for the moment it seems to be helping. Squeezes his hand back. Waits out the tremor in his chest that is all guilt and sorrow, because Daniel has enough to weather without Louis' internal conflict. He keeps it tucked away, walled carefully off, separate as his own mind touches Daniel's, something akin to a light lean, shoulder to shoulder.
"What happened was of Armand's own making," at last, simple dismissal of a thing Louis knows to be more complex than he's acknowledging. Moves onwards to admit, "It's not unusual, feeling your maker."
Louis feels Lestat even now, the threads between them all the more solid for the relief of their reunion, the time spent together. Long parting ended, and now some rebirth, renewal, whatever they make of it.
What will he do?
"I'll go where you go," Louis reminds Daniel quietly. "Brooklyn, and then wherever you like."
Louis is okay, Louis feels terrible over what's happened to Daniel, but he found Lestat again. He's out from Armand's control. Daniel is— coping, bit by bit. (Bite by bite??? We have fun)
The prospect of sleeping during the day feels daunting, for some reason, though he manages it; the next night, still jittery in stops and starts, but feeling more capable of thinking things through without forcing himself to. A breather, even if they're still here, in just one more place he was abducted to. Enough time to see something interesting, listen to Louis' opinion about it, associate the place with more than just Armand. Though Armand feels carved out somewhere inside of him now, permanent.
He has a long time to think about that. No rush to do it now.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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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Who cares about dying. Wasn't scared of Armand threatening him. What are you going to do, kill me, but that would have been easier than Armand's psychic tentacles in his head.
These thoughts bump into others, spinning around and outward, hearing, feeling, observing. It takes a second for him to find balance, using Louis as a fixed point, but he gets there.
Stay here, Louis says, and Daniel finally manages to get a decent grip on him.
'Think I'm gonna puke,' he warns Louis, though this is not the case. He might pass out, though.
no subject
Louis' heart aches for it, for this resignation. For Daniel thinking he is going to die and accepting it, dispassionate. Still unable to consider a world without Daniel in it, even now that Louis is assured it will never come to pass. (Is this Armand's idea of a gift?) His fingers bracket Daniel's face, stood so close their breath mingles, noses brush, Louis disregarding personal space on the far side of the fountain.
Breathe, Louis instructs. They are no longer in a blood-soaked hotel room. The air is clean, the fountain behind them a waterfall of sound. Louis' mind opening up, steady. Familiar terrain, perhaps. There are only two others who might claim to know Louis as well or better than Daniel does.
Called it peeling back, when I first started out hearing them all around me, comes this murmur. I didn't think it'd come to you so fast. Peel back on me. I'll keep it quiet.
Louis, who wished for death so differently than Daniel did. Who turns the face of a gray-haired man in Daniel's mind back and forth, lets it drift beneath the surface of his thoughts.
Says aloud, "Use me to orient yourself, while you get your bearings."
While Louis tries to pluck up some relevant memory, something like instruction. Here is Lestat, pivoting round on a lamp-lit New Orleans street. Here is Armand, lounging in bed, eyes alert. Lessons overlapping, linked in Louis' mind.
no subject
Thoughts of death and negotiation around it filter away. He stays with Louis, thinks of peeling — doesn't really work, someone nearby is thinking about potatoes and preparing them — tries something else. Then something else, then something else, and he sees Lestat, like he's there walking alongside them, disoriented and out of place, and he sees Armand—
Sitting with him in Dubai, aware Louis is asleep in the next room, talking to Daniel about solar power. It's a completely normal conversation, except for the way Armand is looking at him.
Gone, and it's just Louis and Daniel, in Venice, by a fountain. Daniel manages to close the fucking box around himself, and he takes a shuddering breath. Realizes he's holding on to Louis' sides again, probably clinging a little too intensely, but he can't make himself let go. He feels like he'll sink into the fucking abyss if he does.
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But he is aware of the process. How Daniel tries, tries again, troubleshooting. Something innate, skill Daniel has already in his possession, that severs himself from the drowning flood of mortal thought.
Louis' hands have shifted into his hair. Set their foreheads together. Daniel's hands are gripping tight at his waist, and Louis has not dislodged him. Senses Daniel to be steadier but not steady, and so remains. Their noses brush. Their breath rises and falls in time. A passing awareness of too close, set to the side.
"I got you," comes soft, reassuring. "And you got hold of it. You're still here."
no subject
The prospect is as daunting as it is interesting.
Puking up his liver (or whatever) was much easier.
A shaky breath, then another, steadier one. So close to Louis, closer than he's been to anyone in... years, definitely. That thought is there, in the shelter of Louis' mind, and it's somewhat of a marvel until Daniel realizes what they must look like, Louis cradling some decrepit old man out in public in a fucking tourist hot spot, and he winces. Embarrassment colors his relief, and Daniel withdraws with a wry feeling of apology.
"I'm okay," he says, straightening up. Convincing himself that it's the truth, that he's okay. Repeats it. "I'm okay."
Maybe. Crosses his arms, self-soothing.
"If we could just. I dunno, get the fuck outta here, I guess."
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Louis must contend with the instinct he has now, which is to hold fast. To fold Daniel in against himself, clinging and close like that can dispel all the unsteadiness of transformation. Of walking into the world as something new.
Of how Daniel was vulnerable for so long, hurting for so long, alone with Armand.
Armand, who is now silent.
Louis lets go. (Recognizes, in some way, the thing that had lived in Daniel's face when Louis had made an offer to him months back, mid-interview.) Touches Daniel's cheek briefly, fingers light at his cheek before Louis too straightens. Finds some composure, so he might look less split open by their present circumstances.
"We can go."
Softly.
You don't have to be okay, as a whisper in the back of Daniel's mind. Louis' voice, private, just for Daniel, as they begin to walk once more. You don't have to be okay with me.
New Rashid is already collecting what little luggage Daniel has. Louis' hotel is not a far walk. (Lavish, old building, beautiful artwork upon the walls, a breath-taking view from the window.) They'll need only spend a few hours, long enough for a flight to New York to be arranged. They can simply go. Louis has so much money. It makes all things possible.
Almost.
no subject
To that whisper. No way for him to know how to only send it in his mind, and so he says it out loud, despite hearing Louis internally.
"I just need to be okay."
For as much as he can, he trusts Louis. And he's grateful beyond expression for this rescue— because that's what it is. He's not sure that Armand would have ever let him go if they hadn't been followed. If there was no pressure, he expects he'd have just died of his illness, probably had a stroke from anxiety, or Armand would have lost his temper. The end.
Different end, now.
Louis is a safe haven. Daniel wants to cling to him, too. Doesn't know how. So: the hotel, and he thinks of getting on a flight, but realizes he ... can't. Not for logistical reasons. For other reasons, one that don't fit together right in his head. Flight, drive, escape, hotel, fleeing, arguing, flight, hotel. Does he have anything to go back to? Is there a point to New York?
"I think I'm having a panic attack," Daniel observes, tone mild.
no subject
Privacy, for the moment.
"That's normal."
Maybe. The concept of a panic attack is relatively new. Louis had been turned under vastly different circumstance.
He snares Daniel's hand in his own, draws him down to sit. No stones here beneath their feet, nothing but solid wood floors and Louis himself, playing tether.
"Talk to me. I'm here."
Shorthand for You're safe.
Or maybe, Everyone around us is safe from you.
Dual worries, things Louis would guess at but can't be certain are at the forefront of Daniel's mind without touching his thoughts. Is reluctant to do so without invitation or dire necessity, after Daniel has likely gone so long living with casual intrusion into his head at Armand's whims.
no subject
Classic signs. He attempts to identify the source so he can confront it. But, well.
The source seems to be everything.
"Maybe," he sounds unsteady, uncertain, "we could wait a day or two before leaving."
To think. To not think. He grips Louis' hand.
"I don't know what I'm going back to."
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Louis' hand finding the center of Daniel's back, smoothing slow circles there.
"I got a place," implies more comfort, more privacy, maybe better equipped for care and feeding of vampires than a lavish hotel. "Could post up there, send someone on ahead."
Though Louis isn't entirely sure it's the not knowing. But offers this, sweeping contact across Daniel's back, a murmur in his mind: Breathe. I got you.
no subject
He was prepared to die. He didn't want to die, but he'd done the trench work to get ready, since no one else was going to. He's interviewed enough people with suicidal desires to know that envisioning reactions and the state of the world after is a big part of the fantasy. (Louis, even, thinking about his cane and his pile of ash.) But that's never been Daniel. Someone would clear out his apartment and that would be that. He didn't even want to be buried. Cremated. Dumped in the ocean somewhere, just so no one would have to accidentally on purpose lose an urn. And then, nothing, because he's been so absent from anything of consequence anyway.
Here he is, in that fucking fantasy zone, except the fantasy's never been his.
"Will you tell me," he says, staring at his feet, thinking about taking solace in that touch to his back but not entirely sure how to go about it, "about what you were doing before? I interrupted you. About Lestat. Are you okay?"
no subject
A moment of quiet in the wake of the question. Not withholding, not really, only parsing out his answer. Trying to pin down a thing he's scarcely given thought to himself.
"I'll tell you," he acquiesces, between he sweeps of his hand, observing Daniel's face in profile. "After I remind you that you haven't interrupted anything."
Insistent on this point, unwilling to let even this glancing comment stand. Continuing on, without leaving Daniel the space for an objection.
"I went to New Orleans," softly, a murmur into the space between them. "I wanted to go home."
Home. Louis' voice softening further over this word. New Orleans. Lestat. The two mingle, intertwine.
"I found him there."
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Maybe his instinct to push outward, away from himself, ask questions is a bad one. But Louis wants Daniel to use him as an anchor, and so, that's what he's doing. Trying to listen, trying to make his pulse calm down.
He thinks—
Of how fucking happy he is, genuinely. It floods him like the release of a painfully held breath. Louis got out of Dubai and found Lestat, for better or worse. Daniel didn't pull pack the curtain on something that couldn't be given closure. He doesn't pretend to know what that feels like - his relationships have deteriorated for far more mundane reasons. No pining involved. (Alice, a little. But does he miss her, or his fucking youth?)
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His fingers scrape lightly at the nape of Daniel's neck. Palm sweeps back down his back once more. Back up again. Steady, continuous contact.
"We forgave each other," Louis says slowly, feeling his way through the answer. "I'm glad for it."
Fumbling towards an answer to the actual question.
"I feel lighter," makes him feel guilty too. "It was good to see him."
After so many years. After so much misunderstanding, so many lies.
no subject
"I'm glad about it, too. I am, Louis. You deserve to feel lighter about fucking something."
A dry laugh—
"Armand made it clear I ruined his fucking life."
It wasn't a major, active worry, that he had also ruined Louis' - somewhat preoccupied at the time, given the abduction - but it was there. He feels the resurgence of that worry now, and can let it go. Feels fucking great, actually, to be able to let something go, in this mood. He doesn't ask more, doesn't want to pry into things now when he's already driven a bulldozer through so much of Louis' privacy (invited, but still).
"I can tell he's still in Venice, by the way. Is that weird?"
It's weird.
"Will you go back to New Orleans?"
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Says nothing, for a moment. Just touches him, because Daniel is permitting it, and because for the moment it seems to be helping. Squeezes his hand back. Waits out the tremor in his chest that is all guilt and sorrow, because Daniel has enough to weather without Louis' internal conflict. He keeps it tucked away, walled carefully off, separate as his own mind touches Daniel's, something akin to a light lean, shoulder to shoulder.
"What happened was of Armand's own making," at last, simple dismissal of a thing Louis knows to be more complex than he's acknowledging. Moves onwards to admit, "It's not unusual, feeling your maker."
Louis feels Lestat even now, the threads between them all the more solid for the relief of their reunion, the time spent together. Long parting ended, and now some rebirth, renewal, whatever they make of it.
What will he do?
"I'll go where you go," Louis reminds Daniel quietly. "Brooklyn, and then wherever you like."
🎀 territory?? unless you had further desires
Louis is okay, Louis feels terrible over what's happened to Daniel, but he found Lestat again. He's out from Armand's control. Daniel is— coping, bit by bit. (Bite by bite??? We have fun)
The prospect of sleeping during the day feels daunting, for some reason, though he manages it; the next night, still jittery in stops and starts, but feeling more capable of thinking things through without forcing himself to. A breather, even if they're still here, in just one more place he was abducted to. Enough time to see something interesting, listen to Louis' opinion about it, associate the place with more than just Armand. Though Armand feels carved out somewhere inside of him now, permanent.
He has a long time to think about that. No rush to do it now.
They'll figure it out.