followups | so, when you come back

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.

"You've got more."

All the centuries Louis wants, to do anything. Everything. Live until he can touch the sun again, live until he can want to see another sunrise. Live until he doesn't sound so dismissive of himself, A rougher thing.

And then a huff of a laugh, and he jostles there hands again, teasing.

"Come on, you've have been sick of me so fast."

Daniel would have made a much better looking vampire in decades gone by, but he'd have been a much more insufferable one. There are reasons he's twice divorced (and none of them are waiting in the swamp for him, no one is holding trials, no one's keeping him locked up in a cage), why he has no friends, why his kids hate him.

"What happened wasn't better," he says. "But now has its own merits."

Silver linings, like skipping Daniel in the early 90s.

Even for a vampire, it is a formidable amount of wasted time. More than half his life, more than half of what he's lived thus far.

He does not say this to Daniel, offering reassurance and optimism. Yes, Louis has more. He will have more years and Daniel will have more years, and perhaps Daniel will permit Louis to lay claim to a handful of them even though his story is told and what's missing may well be less compelling than what's already been put to page.

Daniel will be fascinating still. Louis has no doubts.

He lets a smile slant between them, warming to Daniel's teasing. Doesn't matter if he holds fast to these doubts and regrets; it matters that he warms to Daniel, easier than he might have if they dipped too far towards what happened.

"I'd have had a good time arguing with you then."

And Daniel would have gotten better at it. Louis observed his progress in glimpses of late night appearances, print interviews scoured to find familiar voice in each line.

"But I'll give you this one. Now's got some merit."

Daniel, in his home, no longer shaking or in pain.

Daniel understands the agony of wasted time. A year ago he was making plans to be cremated. Books he was never going to finish, relationships he'd never repaired, opportunities passed on, chances never taken. He looked back on his life and all of it, every moment, felt pointless and shallow and unfinished. It's all still pointless and shallow, but maybe he can finish a little. And maybe he can have fun being just as pointless and shallow for another few lifetimes. Fun, spite, hedonism, defiance. Whatever.

Different for Louis. But in the same pool. Daniel doesn't want pull another Cheer up buddy, but he does want him to stay buoyant. The only thing with a set time is the past, he doesn't have to go into the sun or... fucking bury himself, or whatever.

"I like now. I like you, here."

Teetering on profoundly sappy, the both of them.

"And I like that my cosmic timing involves showing up when you could use an investigator."

"You know I wanna see you even if I ain't investigating anything?"

Pushing the point.

Louis can't say the important things. Can't say what matters, no mater how deeply he feels it. And Daniel must know this, or at last, have the shape of Louis' failings when it comes to those he cares for the most.

But he can say this. He always wants to see Daniel. His door will always be open for Daniel. And for now, that can be enough.

Pause.

Not that he's surprised— well, maybe he is. That Louis would address it out loud, and furthermore, that Daniel actually has to think about it. Kneejerk is Of course I know that, but does he?

For a moment he just looks at Louis, and considers the merits (hah) of the of course answer.

"I guess I don't know that," is what he ends up saying, because it's the truth, even if it sounds pretty fucking bleak. "Not because of any failing on your part. I can't remember the last time I spent any time with someone and it wasn't about work, or a doctor's appointment. Maybe I don't know how to do anything else."

I think it was the Yeah that pissed her off the most, yeah?

No off button—

But it's not just that. Daniel doesn't think he's got much (or anything) else to offer. What does he have? Is he a good friend? No. Is he good company? Not really. Louis is charming and engaging and Daniel is the first vampire to ever have The Annoying Gift.

"You'll remember."

Though Daniel can be forgiven, can't he, for assuming otherwise?

Fifty years of absence after a week of torture. Leaving him behind in the penthouse. And now Louis' distance, while he skirted around vampires seeking to kill him and the pressure of mortal attention. He has not done much to counterbalance the perception that his investment in Daniel centers in their shared work.

Trust, Louis has considered his failings, whatever Daniel has to say otherwise.

"I don't know that I can compete with Lestat," is a minor needling. Yes, Louis reads the news. "But I think we could have a good time together outside of these."

Reaching a free hand to flick the edge of the sack of papers, dismissive. As if it is a small thing, finding which pieces are unaccounted for over the course of eighty years of life.

"Mmm."

A bit of an ah, there it is.

Daniel misses Louis, Louis misses Daniel? Louis had spent all of San Fransisco and all of Dubai speaking of Lestat. Louis misses Lestat. Is Daniel envious? ... Yeah, a little. But he puts it away. What an embarrassing thing to expose.

"Well, kiddo," we have fun here, cajoling dad voice, "it's not a competition." Daniel nudges the papers back into a neat alignment. He sighs, and more seriously: "That's work, too. And that's shit I have to be on guard during in a very real way. We can talk about it, if you want."

"Kiddo," Louis scoffs. "I'm twice your age."

When else will he get to say this? A joke, creating some space in which Louis can consider the offer that followed after.

"I want to know how you are. How it's been."

Not details as it relates to what Lestat is saying. Louis might have let the entire subject drop if it hadn't been for the implication of guardedness, of needing to be alert. Daniel is sturdier now than he had ever been, but Louis worries for him still. Even now.

"You ask after me. I want to do the same for you."

"And you've been youthful and spry the whole time. Doesn't count."

Louis has yet to see Daniel pull a 'just a confused old man having an episode in public' routine to get away with being somewhere he shouldn't, or lure in a victim. Maybe he'll have an opportunity to do it sometime out here, a lost elderly tourist on private property, and they'll see who loses it and laughs first.

He doesn't want Louis to worry, or fixate on Lestat more than he already seems to. (Can he be blamed for this belief? Both interviews, the entire time, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat. Now, needling him just a bit about it.)

"It's been interesting. I haven't spent much time with another vampire, and now all that, and there's other people around, and shit's crazy all night every night. I'm learning a lot, both about how to deal with this existence, and how to shoot a fucking documentary. Elements of feeling like an idiot kid again fumbling with learning how to drive, and being geriatric baffled at smartphones. Except some of it's camera batteries and some of it's, you know. Hey quit reading my fucking mind."

A brief pause, digesting all of this. Louis watches Daniel's face, and thinks about the ways they touch each other now. Tentative expressions of comfort, of intimacy, things that feel right in the moment but that they don't speak about after.

"Are you happy?"

A heavy word. Can Daniel be happy as a vampire?

Louis wants him to be. Wishes he could be. He'd wanted to ask and for Daniel to say yes.

That isn't how it happened. And now they are mostly apart and Louis has to be envious of Lestat and Daniel by turns, wishing to join them, knowing all the reasons why he shouldn't. Why it is better to be alone, doing what sometimes feels like healing and growing and sometimes feels nearer to destruction. Regardless, Louis knows all the reasons he should be doing that on his own. All the reasons he shouldn't take two weeks of Daniel's time even, why it's selfish and why he hasn't stopped himself.

Daniel looks baffled.

"I have millions of dollars, I'm not in pain, I get to 'leave' my kids money, and I can have sex and do drugs again. I have fucking superpowers. I'm happy."

That boy who fumbled over his tape recording device (shut the fuck up, Armand!!) has always been in here, yes. Daniel is still who he's always been, if sharper, meaner, older, more vindictive. More insightful, too. World weary in a way that will (hopefully) let him mitigate his worse instincts, especially as time goes on.

But for better or for worse, he is who he is.

So.

"Does it disappoint you, that I'm not taking it more seriously? It's not a joke. I know that. But I'd been dying already, Louis. It's hard to not feel better."

Quiet, as Louis' eyes rove over Daniel's face. Lifts his free hand to set light fingers o his cheek.

Is it enough? Louis can only take Daniel's word. Remind himself of all the ways they are different, and let that ease Louis' fears for him. Push aside the question: will all of that be enough in ten years? Twenty? Ninety?

"You could never disappoint me."

Says Louis, who is not on TikTok. Who has only the barest understanding of what Daniel and Lestat are doing together between stops on the tour.

"I only want you to be fulfilled by this. I already know you're able to make something of the Gift," and then, softer, "I want you to live."

To live better than Louis had, though the bar for that is admittedly low.

An internal flinch of shame (does Louis feel it? he hopes not) about that touch. He knows what he looks like. That's the trade off, he supposes. Daniel has no angst about his mortal life being stolen from him, because he's already lived a mortal life. But he gets to be undesirable by anyone but weird fetish chasers forever.

More than fair. He'd sworn off longterm companionship before he ever knew the c-word had special vampiric connotations. Weirdos are fine, and Daniel doesn't need another divorce. But it must be particularly strange for someone eternally young and beautiful to look at and think about.

"You say that," is wry, with a touch of humor. About disappointment. Maybe they shouldn't spend more than a week at a time together. Minimize the risk of Louis realizing what a catastrophe Daniel is capable of being.

"You don't have to worry about that. Not with me."

Not even Armand could talk him into wanting the end, all his hypnotic powers pressed pedal to the metal, when Daniel was twenty years old and psychologically terrorized and on death's door from exhaustion. I like my life. I have a thing in the city. He didn't ask for the Gift because he wanted to die. He wanted to feel better.

"All the same," Louis murmurs.

The world has so many dangers even aside from the vampires who are bent on killing Louis, who thrash mutinously about Lestat's tour. Who can say whether Daniel is spared their ire for being only the medium through which their stories are relayed to humanity, not once but twice?

Daniel's skin is warm beneath even this light touch of fingers. Louis has been careful to stay out of his mind, but even surface-level awareness telegraphs a thing Louis mistakes as discomfort. Weighs against the linked fingers, his touch to Daniel's face. Too much? Too intimate? His fingers skim along his cheek, his jaw, lingering even as Louis angles towards disengaging.

"I'm glad you're here," is a layered thing. Glad Daniel came. Glad he lives still. Glad he will live long centuries. Glad for the privilege of knowing him, whatever shape that knowing takes in the coming years.

A pause.

"Hey, do you."

Another pause. Daniel looks at Louis, and it's a slightly weird calculating look, like Daniel is considering rolling the dice. That's what he's doing, for the record. Sometimes he's easy to read.

What should he say. 'You seem off', 'You still seem lonely,' 'Are you sure you're okay,' all things that seem like an Interview Question when Daniel has been told very recently that Louis likes to see him just to see him. He returns to a previous instinct.

"Do you want a hug?"

How does friendship.

How does friendship.

Is this friendship? Are they friends? Is that what it is now, when it was always more complex than that?

Maybe there is nothing else to be but complex, given how they stared. Given the sudden urge in Louis to slide his fingers down beneath Daniel's jaw and reassure himself that the marks his teeth left on Daniel's throat are still just as he recalls.

And Daniel is still waiting for an answer while Louis thinks this, looking into his eyes that are no longer blue but still familiar.

"Do I seem like I need one?"

Needing and wanting are different things, Louis knows. It is difficult for him to consider the latter. Of wanting, and indulging that want.

Something else, different than friendship. Daniel hasn't realized yet. But is there a word for it, if he does?

"I don't know what you need. I don't know if I'd be able to give it to you, if I did."

As touched on earlier, he has limited applications. An aggressive investigator, a sharp-edged conversationalist, an elusive off button. He did puzzles when he was sick, to try and make his hands work. Before that he mostly did drugs and went to bars. What hobbies. What social life.

But there is still that instinct. Pulling Alice against him, annoying the shit out of her until she laughed. (Out of everyone, he loved her best, and losing her hurt the worst; she is remarried now, and Louis does not need to see if she thinks of him, because Daniel knows she doesn't, she is remarried and she does not see any dream versions of him, just frowns when their daughter says something mean in a particular way she knows to be inherited, and tries not to regret her choices.)

Unfair to expect Daniel to know what it is Louis needs in the wake of shattering apart his life. Louis needs to know it. Needs to stand on his own and find that thing, build upon it.

Still, a measuring look, a memory of Daniel across from him at a small table with a clunky tape recorder. Revelation.

"You could."

Decisive.

More complicated than this answer acknowledges. Hardly defines what it is Louis alluding to. This thing they are to each other. How he breathed easier when Daniel appeared in this building. How he misses him as he misses Lestat, a similar depth and longing and jealousy. Daniel is not Lestat, he is something else and Louis doesn't have a word for it either, but he has this certainty.

Yes, Daniel could. Daniel already has. Maybe it is a gift only for Louis, maybe it's been true since Louis gravitated into his space at that bar all those decades ago. True now, with the two of them so changed by the course of their lives, all the missing pieces between them specifically.

It may be unfair, too, for Daniel to have demolished Louis' life. He never asked him if he wanted out, if he wanted the truth. It's only Daniel who thinks the truth is paramount even when it's made of nothing but pain and suffering. Maybe that's the love of his live. Truth, all the horrible parts of it.

So this is where he says, I also had this other dream, right, because truth.

Of course not, that would be weird.

"What do you want to do, for right now?"

A smile bending into Louis' expression. Some private amusement. What does he want to do? Many things that are perhaps a poor idea, impulsive and reckless in ways Louis hasn't been in years. Had sheared away over time and is surprised to find the roots have survived deep in his body.

"Come lay down with me," is not exactly a clear answer as to what Louis wants or wishes to do. His palm lays softly, briefly, across Daniel's cheek, before his hand drops and Louis uses the tether of their fingers to draw Daniel to his feet as he rises.

The request is so unexpected that it manages to short-circuit Daniel long enough that he stands without resistance. Staring at Louis in a way that makes it clear he's trying to process whether or not he actually heard what he thinks he heard. Replaying it in his head, he realizes: yes, Louis did say that.

Hey what!

What!!

The expression on his face is comically youthful, eyes wide and scandalized. 'Kiddo' jokes not clearing after all.

"Are you tired?"

The dumbest question in the world.

Rare to ever truly stun Daniel. Daniel who had been talking and talking through the first reveal of Louis' fangs. Who had received the entirety of Louis' story nearly in stride.

"No," is mostly true. Louis is tired, but not the kind of tired that requires a nap. He is tired of the business of piecing together his own mind, his own history.

But that's nothing to do with his request, not really.

"I want to lay down with you."

Half an intention. Maybe it goes no farther than the two of them in the lavishly appointed guest bedroom, because Louis closed the door to the one he'd shared with Armand when he'd emerged at dusk, and has no desire to lead Daniel over the threshold now.

"Is that alright?"

Daniel has a say in this, of course.

He thinks, well, he had offered a hug, meant obviously as comfort for the bad weather in Louis' head. Despite that, it does feel like mixed messages— cold dismissal in San Fransisco, a mocking offer in Dubai. But this doesn't have to be anything more than a hug, somewhere else. Even if it's strange. Daniel supposes there's going to be quite a lot of strange things between them, undefined as they are. Louis hasn't been human in a century, Louis has been living in a psychic dollhouse for nearly as long.

There aren't established boundaries for connections like this. No playbook. Maybe not even between vampires. How often does this happen?

"Yeah, it's alright."

Daniel silently vows to try not to embarrass himself. Confidence in avoiding it entirely is low, but might as well give it a shot.

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