followups | so, when you come back

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.

This structure is smaller than the Dubai penthouse. Quieter, lacking the mournful groan that had become so much a part of Louis' nights that he'd ceased to notice it.

Of course, until Daniel had arrived. And then he had noticed Daniel's noticing, and the sound had been made new to him again.

Here, Louis leads Daniel by the link of their fingers from the main room with its lovely windows and tastefully worn furniture. More color in this place than Dubai as well, though the beginnings of its absence can be seen. Walls washed clean, stripped of natural woods, a blank canvas upon which paintings must once have been displayed.

They leave Louis' paperwork, financial touchstones from decades ago, in Daniel's assortment on the table. Louis pushes open the door to the guest bedroom. Brings Daniel along with him to the sprawl of bed.

"I can have a coffin brought for you, while you stay, if you didn't bring your own." Louis murmurs, loosening his grasp only so he might recline, settle himself onto pillows against the headboard. This too, not so far removed from the understated luxury of Dubai. The markings of a shift in shared design sensibilities. He reaches a hand back out to Daniel, inviting.

Asks, "Will you tell me about your dream?"

A little like asking to see a puzzle piece. A little like asking for permission to test its fit.

"I bought one online ahead of time and had it delivered to my hotel," Daniel says, about coffins. He'd dragged one around a bit for the book tour until he realized he was being a fucking idiot. He's rich now, he can have five hundred coffins wherever he goes and he can have custom enclosures built at home. Working smarter.

Trying not to appear so cautious as to be offputting, Daniel is peeling off his jacket - suboptimal for whatever's going on here - when Louis questions him.

"More about my dreams of San Fransisco?"

He hasn't mentioned any others. A thread of nervousness. Has Louis been...

"I know you don't have a TV in here to throw a movie on, but that's kind of a bleak alternative."

"We'll have it brought here," delivered in a kind of easy dismissal of Daniel staying in a hotel. Yes, yes, he's very rich, but he's here because of Louis. Louis can offer him the guest room.

The unspoken query: why be apart at all?

Because Daniel will go back to Lestat and the tour and the interview and Louis will go back to his search, to the war he's started. They have two weeks.

Louis hitches an ankle up. Watches Daniel, intent.

"I know," doesn't contradict. It is hardly light conversation. "But I want to hear what you dreamed. I want to see if we can remember it together. You only told me part of it, earlier."

Something occurs to him. He's glad he came out here, and now. Louis' readiness for his privacy to be invaded suggests he could really use the company, and it calms something in Daniel. Washing away some of the insecurity. He's still uncertain about what's going on, here, but willing to forge ahead.

He wants—

Is he allowed? Is it a good idea?

Daniel sits on the edge of the bed. Louis watches him, and Daniel watches him back.

"Some of it... you wouldn't have seen. Maybe heard a little."

This will be a pattern: Armand, that person-shaped wound they share, which is far worse for Louis when it's agitated. He listened to the tapes again and again. He eventually remembered Daniel would need food and water. He waited until his body had made enough new blood cells before he attempted to drain him.

Louis is still, listening. Watching.

Remembering.

A moment where a memory of a dream of Lestat comes to his mind, the sweet encouragement of Tell me, mon cher. Tender in a way Louis feels now, as Daniel looks at him, begins this recitation.

"I wasn't all there sometimes. It was harder during the day."

To be lucid. To stay in his body when he was burning and burning and burning, agony exacerbated by laying beneath windows papered in nothing but newspaper to block the sun.

"Sometimes I heard you."

Because Daniel would be screaming, agony loud enough to carry through the door that was sometimes open, often closed. Armand had stopped screaming, by then.

Louis' hand stretches along the coverlet, maintaining the invitation. A silent Come here open, for Daniel to bend towards to whatever extent he feels inclined to indulge.

"I know."

About daytime. Daniel remembers - has been remembering, over the time they've been apart - the feeling of dawn, how it turned from Will it be over now? to I'm alone with him now, aware that it meant Louis would fall silent. Just him and the boyfriend and his horrible eyes.

Daniel has the same eyes, now.

He toes his shoes off, and moves up onto the bed properly. Accepting the invitation and sitting close to Louis, hand going to his.

"I felt like it was my fault. I think I apologized to you."

"You were very young."

Words almost to himself, even as Louis feels some specific attachment to the thing Daniel is putting voice to. How an argument within a marriage could feel like it was his fault, his responsibility to fix.

Of course, this is very different from the du Lac household. This was not Daniel's fault. It has been Louis'.

His eyes open. Louis had closed them as Daniel turned attention to his shoes, as he levered up into the bed. Let himself feel it. See what the sensation shook loose.

"It wasn't your fault," Louis tells him now. "Did I tell you that?"

How could Daniel even have known that Louis ran into the sun? He'd been bleeding out. A gap of time that existed only on the tapes: Daniel, unconscious and bleeding on the floor. Daniel, hauled upright while Louis screamed from the next room.

Things got heated with a boy, it's morning, the tapes, wake the boy and you go, then becoming a talisman meant to preserve a companionship. Maitre, a horrible, fragile voice that made Daniel wake up from the hypnosis Armand had finally managed to lure him down into (he was so fucking tired, he didn't want to agree, but it had been days by then, he was so tired). Louis, sitting there instead, and he was burned and he was the one who'd ripped his throat out but Daniel was so, so relieved to see him.

"I don't remember what you told me."

Not an admission he's happy to make, but—

"It was later. I remember.. pieces of us walking. I don't remember what I was thinking. Probably nothing. You were on one side of me, and I felt like shit, and I knew you felt like shit."

Armand was carrying most of their combined weight, no matter that Louis was on Daniel's other side. They were both shattered, still, and the sense-memory of it is that they were clinging to each other to a degree that was mismatched for the situation. Daniel was out of his mind, but he still... He thinks he still tipped his head down against Louis', whispered, Hey, I'm sorry.

And Louis...?

He doesn't know. He was so far under, then, about to be deposited in the crack house, with the rest of the trash.

Maybe Louis hadn't said anything. Couldn't say anything. He'd played all the cards he'd had to play, turning Armand from Daniel's throat and the promise of an easy death. Maybe Daniel had said this thing and Louis had said nothing back.

He'd like to think he'd murmured something. But he just doesn't know.

A slight shift, setting hip to hip without disturbing the relaxed sprawl of his limbs across the bedding. The dig of heel against the coverlet. His thumb strokes over and over Daniel's knuckles, listening. Thinking.

"It hurt to carry you."

Clarity. Memory, not conjecture. Louis barely healed, still a horrendous sight beneath the hooded sweatshirt he'd tugged up over his healing face. Every step had jostled Daniel between them. All Louis' breaths had been sharp hisses of pain, but he'd clung tighter as they'd walked.

"Hurt more when I let you go."

Harder to tell if this is a memory or only what Louis knows to be true of himself, reasoned through with what he has of that night and knowing it to be a likely outcome.

"Tell me about when he left. What you dreamed of us in a room."

What was it like? Daniel doesn't remember. He sees only snippets of the last of it— the haze of Armand's hypnosis is too powerful, his exhaustion was too overwhelming, and the reality of the flophouse asserts itself. He doesn't know if he was a zombie, left in there, if they dumped him onto a soiled mattress and left him there, limp and barely breathing, or if he stared up at Louis with half-fogged eyes and their hands were connected until the last moment.

Little things, lost. But he held onto Louis.

"In the room..."

which he pronounces like a fucking fraud that's not how californians says room, eric

They weren't sat like this. They were laying down, side by side, and then at some point they'd each turned to look at the other. Daniel... had he reached out? Touched a little patch of skin that didn't look too burned, trying to conceptualize what had happened to him?

"I said 'I don't think your boyfriend was cool with it after all', and you made a noise, like. I don't know. Maybe I imagined it, since I was trying to lighten shit up. I don't know why. Maybe you did laugh, or maybe you were trying to tell me to put a sock in it. I told you I didn't have enough strength to get away. That was probably true, I was exhausted, but looking back on it I know it was because Armand told me not to get up."

Louis had been so badly burned. Exquisite, Armand had correctly described the pain. But Daniel says this and shakes loose a little sense memory: cool fingers, hesitantly set to his face.

"I'm not sure I realized you were really there at first."

The combination of the daytime, the newspaper-filtered light exacerbating his pain, lending a layer of unreality to the sense of Daniel on the bed beside him. It had taken everything in him to turn on the mattress towards him.

"I wanted you to run," slowly, feeling out the words. Truth. "I remember your blood, and how hurt you felt."

The scent of him had lingered, even when Daniel had been extricated from the bed and bidden to eat, drink. To live, so Armand could continue on with their sentence.

"I think I told you to try to sleep."

And maybe it would have felt like a joke too, offering Daniel actual sleep instead of what Armand had been pushing onto him. Rest like a sledgehammer, like a hand forcing Daniel's head down beneath the sea of his own exhaustion. Louis had been in too much pain to sleep, had been too overcome with the selfish comfort of Daniel laid alongside him in the ash-flecked sheets, but Daniel could have slept. Might have. Louis has trouble recalling what came next.

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