followups | so, when you come back

"You don't need to be worrying about me."

No one has even taken a run at him this week.

Of course, no word on what kind of worry should be directed at Armand. There is a ragged tear in Louis where Armand came away from him, a wound that inspired pain and anger and regret by turns, but never quiets.

Daniel doesn't need to hear about that though.

Louis moves on, suggesting, "I don't know. Lestat might. I'm limited in my understanding of the mind gift."

Of how its workings may deteriorate over time. Whether Daniel's curiosity alone is enough to wear at the edges until he can gather glimpses of what was obscured or altered.

"Does it feel real, what you've been dreaming?"

"Well, I care about you, and my other methods of caring about people are leaving them alone for their own good, or bribery."

So, worry it is. Mirrors in their own ways. Louis' wounds from Armand are significantly worse than Daniel's, so much that Daniel can't conceptualize them, not really, not the depth. And yet he's still got these fucked up entry wounds in his soul from the guy, so here he is, circling the drain infinitely about what the fuck do I do about it.

Then he pulls a face, about the idea of telling Lestat. Absolutely not, apparently.

"Sometimes." He knows that word isn't helpful, but it's all he's got. "As much as dreams can, where it just could be, and other times I forget it's a dream at all, until I wake up. I mostly see you. We're both fucked up and I'm trying to make you laugh. I think I'm going to die, I think you're probably going to die. You've told me to hang on but there are moments when I'm not being actively hypnotized and it's, you know."

He's in a shitty apartment with a dying monster and a very alive one who wants to kill him.

"I think Armand left to get me a sandwich, at one point. I was probably going to die from lack of nutrients after the blood loss after a few days. So I was locked in the room with you. Does that sound real?"

Does that sound real?

Louis' expression has lost all of the easy warmth with which they began this conversation. The look he wears now must be familiar; it is the same expression he wore in Dubai, across the table, listening as Daniel methodically laid out which pieces he had, what he had made of them, looked to Louis to fill in the rest. Tension and focus and a flex of worry. Not for himself.

Daniel is still so young. Young for a vampire. Young even in comparison to Louis, who had lived out lifetimes before Daniel had ever grown old.

But they are not in that room. There is no one who will stop them piecing through what's been lost but them.

Louis draws a breath. A little restless tic of movement works through his body. Readjusting the cross of his legs, his perch on the edge of the cushion, drawn unconsciously closer as Daniel speaks.

"I haven't dreamt that."

Only enough to know his fears of missing pieces are real. To know that things have been lost, or taken from him, and that Daniel and his tapes won't recover them.

Daniel is asking him about that room. Louis closes his eyes.

"But it sounds real," comes softly, slowly. "I remember..."

A door closing. A hand rattling at the lock. Sunlight filtering through newspaper. An agonized groan that could have been him, might have been Daniel.

"I remember your voice," Louis admits. "Closer than I thought you should be."

Acclimated to Daniel in the main room, his screams and moans of pain carrying through the sometimes locked, sometimes open door. But the discrepancy Louis worries at now, like plucking at a loosened thread, rolling it between fingers.

"I dreamed you were blocking the sun."

After a minute of watching Louis' drawn face, and suddenly feeling quite bad for barging in here and dumping this on him (Daniel has been more wound up about it than he realizes, unable to slow his roll with verbal puke about it), he reaches out. A warning touch first, a brush of fingers against Louis', before he squeezes his hand.

Comfort, apology.

"So have I just implanted a false memory in you?"

The trouble with this kind of shit, is that there is so much trouble with this kind of shit.

"I don't know if I'd have known to do that. I'd like to think so, though. I'd do it now."

"I don't think you meant to do it," Louis says slowly, lacing their fingers together. Taking that small touch and turning it into a link, holding on as he explains, "Or that I was able to think to ask you. You were standing beside the bed, and you cast a shadow across me."

Is it all a dream? A story they're telling themselves?

It feels real. The shape of a thing that fits into the pain-blurred voids they hadn't managed to parse out in the span of a single lunch break.

Louis turns Daniel's fingers in his own, thumb moving across his knuckles, grip tightening and loosening by turns. Familiar. Tethering, while Louis' thoughts turn inwards by degrees.

"I don't know if it's false. It feels real."

And then:

"You're the only other person in the world who would know. And you're better at this. Putting together what we lost."

"Yeah. He probably just told me to go in there and stay."

No conscious positioning, everything incidental, until Daniel laid down because the Lovecraft monster was no longer controlling his body, but he was too exhausted and in pain to do anything else. Desperately in need of actual rest, and not the kind that came from invisible tentacles in his fucking brain.

Daniel's hand feels inelegant, next to Louis'. Thick fingers warped with age, nimble again now but no more attractive for it; nails a little longer than he'd like, but he supposes they echo his fangs. Strange, all of it. Not unwelcome. Nothing's perfect, especially not death, but it beats the way life was.

"I just have perspective. You didn't know there was any other way to look at it."

Inhale, exhale.

"If you don't want to be bogged down by all this..."

A tightening of Louis' fingers around Daniels. Uses their fingers as a link, levering himself closer, head shaking.

"You aren't bogging me down."

No hesitation. Firm over the words, intending to dispel any instinct Daniel might have to withhold.

"I want to be here with you."

Even when here required them to be there. Who else had this perspective? Who else could understand even a fraction of what Louis is struggling with? Pieces of him, missing. Pieces of him simply gone, excised over decades. He'd never known. He wants to know now.

"It's good to be here. With you. To see you here."

And not just in that apartment, in that room, in his dreams and invasive flashes now and again as he tries to go about his nightly life. Louis is real, he's alright, he's not a charred corpse, he's not back under Armand's thumb, he doesn't have to hear him scream and beg from the other side of a closed door.

Whatever happened, more or less or whatever they remember or don't, it's behind them, and they're here. Daniel squeezes his hand. His lifeline, since then.

"I promise I'll eventually get over needing to check in with you in person. No ETA on when, though."

Maybe it'll take a hundred years. Louis' stuck with him.

"I'm not complaining," Louis promises. "I like to see you."

Missed you, Daniel had said. Louis hadn't said it back. He should. Daniel is intuitive, but Louis has learned not to leave some sentiments to the intuition of others.

And now he has this memory, coming into clearer focus. Daniel, on the bed beside him. Agony and comfort mingling together at his closeness, the nearness of his body jostling Louis' charred limbs but too much of a comfort to forgo. Real. It's real. Louis knows it in his body, truth like it had been truth in Dubai when Daniel dragged the reality of that week out of the dark.

"How long can you stay before the tour beckons you back?" Louis asks. "Long enough to sort through a few more dreams with me?"

He doesn't know why he needs to know about those liminal spaces in his memory concerning that week. He should probably want to forget the awful details, at least, and leave himself armed with just the awareness. But he can't stop digging. Even when it turns into harm, he just can't fucking let things go.

Trying to, for the moment. This surprise attack on Louis' peace is enough, and Daniel feels like some strange pressure has been bled out of him for it. He's left feeling grateful, but definitely sheepish.

"A few weeks." Maybe more. Maybe less, if he gets a hysterical phone call, but that'll only happen if Lestat figures out who he's with. "What are you doing here, anyway? — Should have been what I led with, probably."

"I wondered if you already knew."

It wouldn't have surprised Louis if Daniel had guessed at what he had been working on.

His thumb runs along Daniel's knuckles, fidgets lightly with the hand caught in his grasp. Should let go. Holds on anyway.

"I've been looking for the pieces I'm missing," Louis admits. "In my mind, there's..."

A trailing shrug of an implication. Maybe Daniel knows. Maybe it's the same for Louis as it is for Daniel, thinking of that room in San Francisco and feeling places where the story lapses. Where they cobbled together enough, but not everything.

"I think there's memories that are gone. I've been trying to recover them."

And then, a smile, head tipping slightly as Louis adds, "Lestat thinks it's a kind of vacation. I haven't corrected him."

Doesn't want to worry him, distract from the interview, the tour. It's Louis' problem to fix. Lestat has his own to occupy him.

"Oh."

Real surprise. Daniel wonders at it. Coincidence alone, or was there some subconscious call between them, drawn to the same missing pieces? Well. It's not like there will be memories of Daniel anywhere besides San Fransisco, so probably coincidence. He doesn't have anyone else to go to about it (except Armand, but he's out of the question).

Louis might, he realizes. He could uncover any number of people. A slightly sick thought, and probably nothing compared to how Louis feels about it.

"He misses you. He'll live, though."

Sentimentality and assurance offered at once. Daniel does not mention that Lestat loathes his association with Louis and passionately hates that they have a past connection, because there's no point. He gets it, anyway. And as dangerous as Lestat is, as fucked up as his relationship with Louis was (is), there's a part of him that wonders if either of his marriages would have lasted longer if one of them went really, really crazy over it. If it wouldn't have been romantic.

"What brought you here specifically?"

"I miss him."

What does it cost him to say this to Daniel? Daniel, who cut through all the stories Louis told himself for almost eighty years to find this truth.

A little smile, head tipping as he contemplates Daniel. Daniel who Louis doesn't need to miss, because he is here. Who Louis will miss when he goes, because he doesn't expect Daniel to stay when he is a newly made vampire and the entire world is laid open at his feet.

Contemplations Louis moves past to devote himself to Daniel's question.

"We lived here, for a time," Louis tells him. Something he guesses Daniel knows, because he found his way here. "I thought I would find something left behind."

Something. Someone. Louis keeps the feeling to himself, the terrible, aching swoop as he contemplates what's been taken from him. How he was kept, things excised from him over the passing years.

"I've been looking at documents. It hasn't been very enlightening," he admits. "So you're a welcome interruption."

Yeah no shit

would not be a nice thing to say, even with a fond smile, and so he doesn't. Significant to hear Louis admit it out loud. He spent the entirety of two interviews talking about Lestat, for good or ill. A mutual obsession. Daniel wants Louis to be happy and safe. He wonders if those are mutually exclusive things, but he hopes not.

"Do you have day to day, or night to night would be a better way to put it, recollection of things tied to the papers you're going through?"

He leans in to see what Louis is looking at. Sorting out gothic romances is beyond him. But this. Getting the story straight is something he can help with.

Yielding his grasp on Daniel's hand, the contact lingering before Louis accepts that they are breaking fully from each other. Contenting himself to the way Daniel leans closer, interested in something Louis is certain is of limited interest.

"No," he admits. "I have...pieces. And these are financials, not diaries."

A boon, maybe. Armand might have doctored a diary, but the record of where Louis' money had been going seems more or less untouched.

"I thought I'd look through local archives. Hope for something to jog my memory."

Body counts. Extravagance. The kind of tragedies tailored to cover up a vampire who had lost control.

"Or for your friends to make an appearance."

A sly, needling look. Invoking the Talamasca.

"Unobjective paper trails are better."

No wishy washy nonsense like does this feel real. Does Louis remember buying this thing, on that day? Can he remember the circumstances? Who worked for him at the time, how long were they on payroll, at what point did staff change, were they discharged and mindwiped, forced into NDAs, killed? Did they pay taxes?

A wealth of information and potential reminders. Good call, Louis. Daniel is busy looking at his financials when he realizes he's being looked at, glances up, laughs a little.

"Hey, you had the chief butler as a spy long before they tried to rope in my inept ass. I was so bad at it that Armand noticed me, thought I had maybe been contacted by them, but then after he looked into it, decided I was just fumbling like a moron and he was imagining things."

Fun.

"But, I do have a bunch of their shit, still, if you want me to look up any dates in particular."

Difficult, hearing Armand invoked. Pressure upon bruising, pain that comes from within the body.

Louis is here partly because of Armand. What Armand neatly snipped out of his mind. (What Louis willingly discarded, perhaps.) They shared a life for seventy-seven years. Louis chose him. Louis had believed him, when he had said Yes in answer to that fateful question.

Daniel is smiling. Daniel laughed, and Louis likes hearing him laugh very much. He lets these things offset the spiraling cascade of thoughts in his head, circuitous and guilt-drenched and angry, and draw him back.

"I could make a list," is only a stop on the way to: "Are they still hoping to rope you in?"

Or is it disqualifying, the vampirism?

Armand is a sore spot for Daniel, too, differently. Little needles of it, like one of those inner ear headaches, adn sometimes literal nightmares. He has a re-occurring one of Armand in his wine-colored shirt in the 'reading room' of the Dubai penthouse, sitting calmly across from Daniel, not letting him turn his head to the sight of his youngest daughter being immolated; all he can do, in the dream, is see the flames in peripheral, and hear her scream.

But he pokes at it anyway. A constant source of low-level stress. A permanent tether.

"A list would be a great start." Because he actually will look it up for Louis. Then, hm. He shrugs. "Sometimes. They've made pitches."

Attempts at begging, attempts at intimidation. But Daniel was almost impossible to wrangle into cooperation as a mortal, and now, it's basically impossible. He will do whatever he wants to do.

"It's interesting to me, their whole gig. I just hate the secrecy and I hate the drama."

"The drama," Louis echoes. Amused. Fond.

Watches Daniel's fingers on documents containing years of Louis' money, moving in and out of accounts. Assets multiplying. The accounts of this household, the accounts of what it cost when Louis and Armand lived here and hunted here and careened wildly through the streets.

"What will you do instead?"

Louis won't hold his attention forever. Even this, the piecing together Louis is attempting, is limited in scope for a man who can do as he wishes, seek answers more incisively than he had ever done as a mortal. The quiet pleasure at his company is limited, Louis reminds himself. Daniel will return, first to Lestat's tour, and then to whatever work draws his attention.

Louis will be pleased to read it all, as he has for long years.

"Yeah, the spy drama." Sifting papers. Already putting them in a different order. "Spies are only good to talk to after they've retired. The active ones all suck. The one they sent to finesse me in Dubai is still sending me sad 'hey baby' messages like I'm an idiot."

Like Daniel did not spend a year literally embedded with 'ex' KGB. Please, Raglan.

"Finish projects I'd stopped working on because I got sick. Still got a limited window."

Maybe he should fuck Raglan. A guy might shake things up, particularly given Daniel is still adamantly heterosexual. Being able to have sex again has been great, even though fucking humans while inhuman is a sometimes-dicey situation, already tipping towards a pattern he recognizes. Less and less fulfilling each time, like every hit of something really bad is less and less good with each high. Be with your own kind, some nagging animal instinct calls, and to that he says Fuck off. Because: no. He's not doing the companion thing, and he's not seeking out anyone who might want to take his head off for publishing the book.

If he thinks about things sometimes—

Daniel misses Louis, Louis misses Lestat.

It's not that Louis wouldn't be worth the attempt. But Daniel would lose, and badly, and he knows that. Sometimes dreams aren't memories, they're just dreams. Armand in the reading room, looking at him. Armand in the reading room, a touch sliding over his shoulder that's sensual for a moment before it turns. His daughter burning, and Louis, reaching for him.

Just dreams.

A smile for the thought of this nameless, faceless spy courting Daniel. A flicker of jealousy that Louis knows he is not entitled to but feels anyway, deep in his body, hooking into the mournful wound there. Still raw, the circumstances of Daniel's turning. They don't speak of it, but that doesn't mean Louis doesn't feel it.

"You should," is quiet encouragement, Louis watching the reordering of documents. "I'd been interested in your upcoming projects."

Of course Louis was aware. He'd observed the press releases, the curated website. Everything is different now, but his enthusiasm remains.

"How long can you stay now?" is followed a little hastily by: "I don't expect you to put aside your work for my soul searching."

Which is a fucked descriptor, something Louis only catches after the fact but can't retract.

He wants Daniel to stay. He doesn't want to infringe on Daniel's pursuits. It's difficult to balance.

"You don't know the half of the dumb shit I was looking into."

Collections to be compiled, sure. Interviews with North Korean escapees, published here and there throughout his career, being turned into a book. His (former) publisher announced intent to formally put out unedited interviews with all the rock stars he's ever known. Daniel has half of the connective tissue of it written. But there's more— stories he got halfway through, research done to the near-pinnacle but never completed. He got sick. He burned bridges.

Now, though.

"Two weeks, at least." Louis' sudden minimizing catches his attention, and Daniel leans in, giving their hands a little jostle. "Hey. Parts of our souls are overlapping now, I think. Just some tiny fucked up corner."

Shaped like an apartment in San Fransisco. Shaped like an angel.

"If you need me for longer than that, then I'll stay longer. I'm a sad old seventy year old man, I get too sick to fly all the time."

Stay, though even the thought itself stops short of what Louis feels in his body. It blooms between them, obvious and clear in his mind, but the rest comes only as formless impression. Stay in a way that offers weeks months years of time. Work here on the books and the articles, travel where he pleases.

Louis missed him. Misses him. Hand opening into the little knock of knuckles and wrist, the suggestion of interlocking fingers without indulging himself. Laughs, quiet but clear, for the excuses as to the rigors of traveling.

"I'll take two weeks, to start," he says, knowing this already as indulgent. "I know you have work waiting for you."

Daniel and Lestat should complete their work together.

"And I'll do a better job of staying in contact with you both."

Find the balance between too much presence in their periphery and too little. Louis has stepped back out of politeness, but—

"I have missed you," he reminds Daniel. "A whole hell of a lot."

For a heartbeat—

It seems like there's nothing else Daniel could do, besides pull Louis in against his side and hold him. Soothe that ache of loneliness, comfort him, hug him like he might one of his girls if they didn't all hate each other, or like a friend if he ever had any he became close to. Or even like Alice, who he used to jog up beside and sling an arm around so he could become an annoying dead weight against her while she gave up and laughed her bad mood away.

Of course he doesn't do any of that. But like the obviousness of Louis' urge of Stay, his instinct is a tangible thing, hidden parts all made detectable by supernatural powers. Hands near each other, touching now and again. He doesn't know what to make of their friendship.

Louis misses him, Daniel is reminded. And he does believe him.

"We've got time," he says, a bit muted. Careful with the moment. "Centuries of it."

He can work anywhere.

Centuries of time. Louis knows. He is aware of the specifics of the gift he'd very much wanted to give Daniel. Their fingers tangle, a loose hold, as Louis contemplates this.

Centuries of time now. Nights ahead of Louis where he is himself, mistakes and sins and flaws and all, and able to move through the dark with them as they are. No one to tease them into less offensive shape.

A terrible thing, to know all of what had been done to him and still find himself missing pieces of the well-manicured life he'd kept for so many years.

But out of all of the ugliness and pain: they are here.

"I wasted decades of it," Louis murmurs. Isn't talking about Armand. How had Louis been spending that time? And how long he had gone, content to live with pieces sliced out of him so neatly it left no scar.

"Wasted at least fifty I could have spent knowing you," as if that had been an option available to him. As if it would have been permitted.

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