Speed-running getting sick of him? If so, Daniel might as well enjoy it while it lasts. He presses a kiss to Louis' mouth. The weight of him pressed down on him feels as good as everything else. He should really be spent, and maybe he is, but over-stimulation to the point of pain was something he was into even before. Not the type to roll away and call anything a night.
"Until you kick me out."
Yes. More than yes.
But even if he's not the type to pull the plug on this— he should probably not annoy the shit out of Louis with it? Right? Right. So.
"What's the game plan?" A light pinch to his side, teasing.
(Trying to parse out the answer is like ripping open a barely-scabbed wound. Remembering. Recalling what was once good, what remained good, what was eaten up by misery.)
Daniel pinches him and Louis bites him, a scrape of teeth along the jaw.
"I'm going to make you come until you can't," is decisive, indulgent. Attuned, maybe, to the silent flicker of thought in Daniel's head that wants more, and more, and more. A thought that Louis leans into, lets himself sink into it as he gives Daniel his thigh to rock against while they kiss. Murmurs, "And then wash you clean," into Daniel's mouth. "And see you sated, before I take you with me to coffin."
That declaration curls around something deep and just a little fucked up in Daniel, and Louis can no doubt sense his interest— and on the heels of that, the sheepish thought that he doesn't actually know what his limit is. The sexual partners he's had since transformation have all been mortals, before this encounter right here right now, and he's always stopped just a little beyond what should be normal for a human man (granted, one younger than him), and nothing past it.
Another half hour? ... A week??? Mysteries of the universe. Does Louis know? How much exhaustion kink does he get up to? Inquiring mind. Singular. This specific, inquiring mind.
"Sounds pretty cool."
Saying dopey shit on purpose, just to see if Louis will laugh.
And Louis does. Nothing to do with what he feels in Daniel's head, everything to do with how he sounds saying this, the curiosity that is so intrinsic to who Daniel is and always has been. Louis laughs, low and fond, presses his smile in against Daniel's cheek. Kisses the corner of his mouth.
"Pretty cool," Louis echoes, just to roll the words off his tongue. Tasting them, experiment with how Daniel's vernacular feels in his mouth.
Reaches down to take him in hand again, a loose curl of fingers. Touching just to touch, intent not quite materializing as Louis thumbs over the head of his cock.
"We'll find it together," Louis tells him, answering at least one unspoken question. Maybe he'll answer the others. Maybe Daniel will have to ask, pin him, corner him into an answer. The mingled experience between Lestat and Armand, so much ground covered in a century's worth of time, not all of it easy to recall. "What it is now, what it will be someday."
No desire to dig up bittersweet (or worse) memories and chill the mood; Daniel just can't help being ravenously curious about everything. He laughs into a nuzzle, shivers a bit at the way Louis touches him.
"Making plans," he observes. Louis likes plans. Daniel imagines him with a very detailed, very orderly bullet journal, one clean and organized without any washi tape or cute stickers, in his old lady cursive handwriting. He lets Louis see this fond thought as he sits up, shuffling them to be face to face, and Louis can sit beside him or with legs splayed over him to be half in his lap, whatever he feels like.
Because this goes both ways. Daniel's not just going to lay back and count nuts. He wants to see Louis reach his peak again, hear the way his breath changes, watch his face contort in pleasure. As many times as they each can. Louis had been torn on what position, wanting too many things at once, now he gets it if he wants it now. Daniel kisses him, touches him, loses count. Loses track.
Eventually his phone will ping. He's got a funny (and very loud) alarm an hour or so before sunrise. It's just that he usually loses track of time because he's working, not because he's fooling around.
The alarm makes Louis laugh breathlessly, fingers curling at the nape of Daniel's neck. Present, focused wholly on what he's been drawing out of Daniel, what Daniel has been drawing out of him. Counting in an idle way, interested in the number as a marker, something he might someday push Daniel past.
Here, now, the phone chimes and Louis laughs. Has migrated fully into Daniel's lap from their starting point, crowding him into the headboard. Skin gleaming with sweat, mouth bruised, hips rolling down in an easy sinuous movement, unbroken by the sound of the alarm.
"Once more," Louis coaxes. "Once more, right now, before we stop for the night."
Thumbs stroking the delicate skin behind Daniel's ears, fingers nudging at his hairline. Louis brushes his lips across Daniel's, their breath mingling.
The alarm is crazy, Daniel thinks. Has so much time passed? Has so little time passed? He grins and bumps his nose against Louis', feeling loopy and happy for it. He tastes Louis still, in the back of his teeth, has told him he could probably suck his cock for an entire night (or more), has found bruises that vanish, has been impressed by the pinkish sheen of sweat that comes off them both.
"Can you?"
Daniel shifts up, pressing his cock deeper into him, finding it effortless still despite the exertion and the impending call of the sun, soaking in the endless easy delight of no longer being human. It's possible he'll never take this for granted— being able to move just as he wants to, no pain, no struggle. Everything in service of making them both feel good, claw and tumble to the next height.
Another kiss, because he can't get enough, and he circles a hand between them to stroke Louis. Can't get enough of this, either.
An absurd thing to be thinking now, as Daniel fucks up into him and drives the breath out of Louis' lungs, but he can feel all these things in Daniel's head. The pleasure of what his transformation has given him. The gratitude. (Some part of Louis, jealous and hurt, flicks open an eye to remember that Louis had wanted to give his to him, Louis could have—) Daniel is so pleased and Louis feels it, lets himself mirror that joy.
Daniel, alive always. Healthy always. And they can have each other this way, whenever they want.
Daniel kisses him and Louis licks into his mouth. Possessive, pleased, tasting himself there. A humming whisper of thought: For you, anything. And Tell me you want me again.
As if it's not a foregone conclusion, once Daniel starts touching him with such clear intention as Louis meets the upward thrust of his hips. Daniel's pleasure is an electric thing, sparking bright like a livewire strung between their heads.
No regrets at all that it was Armand. Sure there was horror, but it's horror that won him something: the same line that connects him to his maker separates them. And there gets to be nothing that separates him from Louis. They can laugh in each other's heads, chat at all hours anywhere in the world, no phones needed. They can feel like this, pinwheels of emotion and sensation and happy reflections.
'I want you,' he tells him, lets him feel how much. How much, despite how many times already. Edges are starting to fray, concentration is starting to go glassy, but Louis said until you can't. Sunlight or unconsciousness. Daniel will indulge until he overdoses.
Out loud this time: "Watching you, feeling you come like this, is so good. I thought I'd never see you that unwound. I'll never get sick of it. I'll never get sick of being the one to do it. Come on, one more time. Just like this."
All this wanting, all this desire, Louis lets it reflect back. They have been fucking for an eternity, and it is not enough.
Maybe fifty years would come within shouting distance of enough. Louis doesn't know. Daniel says these things to him and Louis shudders down into the cradle of his hips, hands tightening around the sides of Daniel's face.
"Just like this," Louis echoes. Repeats again, "Anything for you."
Drawn in where Daniel's consciousness is blurring, savoring the quality of it. Fingers slipping, grazing over scar tissue, over new-made bite marks already healing into nothingness. (Grateful, unforgivably, that Louis left a mark on him. Bit it into him, a claim that endured even through Daniel's death and rebirth.)
Murmurs, "Come with me," even as he lets himself come all apart, panting against Daniel's mouth, spilling over under the pull of Daniel's fingers.
Verging on that place where everything is a little too rubbed raw and sore, but it doesn't quite tip over into it like it would for a mortal— Daniel can feel it, but it's not reaching him, and it just ends up heightening the experience. He'd go all the way to real pain if they had time and if Louis let him. And even then it wouldn't really be pain, because there are wires in Daniel that were installed incorrectly at birth.
But Louis wants one more time, and right now, and just like this, and anything, and he's there and Daniel feels his body clench around him, just as good maybe better than that his mind shimmer with it at the same time. One can really believe the whole 'little death' translation joke from this perspective; following dead blood into the darkness, following a partner's orgasm over a ledge into your own.
Too morbid? Too morbid.
In any event, Daniel fucks up into him and stills as he comes, holding Louis close and gasping against him, open mouth against him, too messy to be a kiss, just wanting to be near him and a part of him. Fractal fireworks, ecstasy, a hysterical peak of his heartbeat and the joy of it slowing like falling, like flying.
And even now, feeling Daniel tip and fracture and fall, Louis thinks, Again.
But no. The sun is coming up. Daniel is young. He needs to sleep.
Louis kisses his slack mouth. Scrapes nails up and down his scalp. Murmurs Daniel's name, low and intimate and so, so affectionate. Letting him find his way back to composure while Louis stays close, wound close still. Skin to skin, mind to mind.
I like you this way, Louis tells him. Smiles, admits, I like you every way I can have you.
Frustrating and irreverent and kind and now this, how Louis has him now.
"We'll need a whole day," Louis supposes, thoughtful. "A whole day to do something like this."
Having caught some stray edge of Daniel's thoughts, the thing he didn't quite ask for that Louis wants to give him anyway.
Daniel laughs softly, bumps forehead to forehead before he presses a blurry kiss to Louis' cheekbone. All a mess, reconciling with okay, that was the last one, enjoying it, because there is incredible sweetness to wrapping it up and moving to the next stage of intimacy, too. He hasn't showered with someone in decades, and sleeping in bed with someone else is a rare luxury, to say nothing of the as-yet-un-experienced coffin.
"Anything means anything," he says.
A whole day, or not, Louis doesn't have to steamroll himself for Daniel's sake. Though he'd absolutely go in for it.
More soft kisses, and touches that don't want to let go. Daniel finds the prospect of parting to be particularly brutal, but consoles himself with the fact that Louis is not yet tired of him. Spell not yet broken.
Physical detangling is a slow process. Louis, reluctant, taking long minutes to work up to leaving the bed. A long, indulgent exchange of kisses, Louis' hands sweeping across skin before coming to brace on Daniel's chest and lever himself up.
A tug between their heads as Louis reaches a hand back. Aware of the mess they've made of each other. His own skin damp with sweat, thighs slick, a pleasant ache smoldering in his body.
"Come on."
Beckoning Daniel to him, wanting already to be touching him again.
A shock to the system, getting up and remembering himself again, needles of insecurity and embarrassment at what he looks like. (Surely this cannot be a handicap forever, but he had a lot of time for these self-image issues to settle in, alright.) Bullied into submission by the past hours, the still-stick evidence of it, by Louis reaching out to bring him along for more contact, more closeness.
Alright, alright.
He follows him, presumably to the bathroom, where he clings to the notion of this being fine and does not look at himself in the mirror. The absurdity of being shy despite all they've done.
Daniel wants to touch him, feel him under warm water, help him get clean. Carefully wash away the mess they've made, but not forget it.
The lights stay low. Louis flicks a few switches, leaves the main room dim, the shower itself bathed in warm tones.
It's a different kind of opulent in this room. More earthy grotto than sleek minimalism. The shower itself is set into the wall, invokes the sense of a cave, low seats of cut stone behind the glass doors. Signs of Louis' occupancy in the products laid out on the counter, the silk robe, a towel hanging off a hook.
Louis pauses as the door closes behind them.
"Hey."
Louis knows he has to withdraw out of Daniel's head. He has begun the process, unwinding slowly. Perhaps catches the tailend of one thought or the other, or maybe just needs something to ease the ways in which they're separating. Indulges himself, reels Daniel in by their linked hands so he might lean up and kiss him again.
Daniel likes this better than Dubai's harshness, and he's glad for no blinding while to illuminate things he's still shallowly struggling with. It's warm, in a way, and he thinks that suits Louis much better than brutalist design. (What might he look like in modern takes on art deco? Too painful, or?)
"Hey yourself."
He allows himself to be reeled in, and he follows Louis, presses into that kiss, touches his hip with his other hand.
"Weird how cold it is, disengaging," he says, and thinks Louis will know he means about the telepathic closeness. "Thank you, for sharing that with me."
Opening his mind, accepting Daniel's openness in return. Tangling with him in their heads and feeling so much, knowing he was safe during the whole thing. It's been unlike anything else he's ever experienced.
Cold is the right word. The chill of separation is inescapable.
They can't live in each others' heads. Just like they can't stay a night and a day and a night in bed, despite what a good idea it feels like in the moment.
Daniel says this, offers this sweet expression of gratitude. Louis smiles, fingers grazing Daniel's jaw. A stray slip of thought, a lingering impression: I want to share everything with you.
Aloud, Louis tells him, "You let me in. Thanks."
Let him in. Let him stay.
Louis' fingers tighten around the link of their fingers, looking into Daniel's face. Missing him, absurdly. Missing him even though they're stood so close.
He lets go. The glass door slides open silently, and Louis twists the taps. Promises over his shoulder, "I'll run it hot."
"You're the only person I'd even think of trusting like that."
The sentiment echoes through feeling: the only person he might believe wants to share everything with him, the only person he'd let into his head that way. No one else is even a maybe. It's just Louis. Louis, who nearly killed him, who maybe should have, who went through hell with him, who remembered with him.
Not his maker. Better for it.
He slides a touch over the other man's shoulders, feeling a little reluctant to stay totally apart. Which is absurd, they're in a goddamn shower together, it's pretty fucking close.
"Do vampires like saunas? I guess we wouldn't have to worry about passing out. I used to do that when I was really broke. Chug cheap bottles of wine in the shower. Because I was too classy for huffing glue, you know."
A gift, this admission Daniel offers up to him. Louis, the only person Daniel would let into his mind that way. Louis feels the way that truth hooks behind his ribcage. Flutters next to his heart.
Who else would Louis let in? Lestat, only Lestat, and that's not possible. It will only ever be Daniel in his head. (How deep was Armand in Louis's mind? If Daniel delves deep enough, would he find traces? Familiar fingerprints set deep into the soft clay of Louis' head?)
The water runs hot as promised, a misty rainfall from two shower heads that envelope them both and Louis turns back around under the spray to Daniel. Smiles at him.
This is the most he's smiled in a long while, Louis knows. It comes easy, with Daniel.
"I like saunas."
A statement deliberately stripped of the we that could have, would have colored the answer in Dubai.
His palms flatten across Daniel's chest. Feel his heart, secure and steady. Cherishes this small fact, pieces of Daniel outside Louis' experience, outside the scope of books and interviews.
"Never chugged cheap wine though."
Louis de Pointe du Lac seeking only the finest vintages for his worst moments.
Maybe someday, when Daniel has the experience and the finesse, when he is familiar enough with Louis and familiar enough with the particular shadow-shapes the creature that made him leaves, he can take a look. Sift through and find anything that needs overturned, or mended. Help him in more ways than just sitting and talking.
A future consideration. Too soon, for an old man who is a young vampire.
He rolls his eyes fondly about cheap wine. Of course. Louis, who is even more beautiful when he smiles, would never stoop to cheap wine. Even the drugs he lured Daniel in with were high quality. He can't help but reach up and touch the corner of one of that smile, and marvel at it.
"'Then', like at the weird lowest points, or 'then', just being mortal? Something funny, something weird?"
Stipulates, "Nothing I already read in your books."
The parts of Daniel's life that Louis missed. The long absence where Louis only touched Daniel's life from a great distance. Collected what was curated. Daniel was a shockingly candid writer, but not every part of his life is in what had already been put into the world.
Louis catches his hand, the fingers at his mouth, and kisses Daniel's palm. Disengages to collect soaps and shampoos from one rough hewn shelf, an abundance of options to offer up for Daniel's inspection.
Time for soap, maybe time to get just a little handsy; sometimes a guy just needs to wash his own asshole, when it comes to post-coital showering. Practical thoughts from Daniel Molloy. But he will give Louis hell for the absurdly high-end items even in the shower. Does it actually make a difference, using this instead of grocery store 2-in-1? Pfft.
"Beth McLean once sent me an email with actual slurs in it," he says. "She was furious about how I talked about all the accounting in the Enron book, she thought I was making a joke about her own Enron book. Which did better than mine anyway. I never showed anybody, I just thought it was funny."
Twenty years ago, he could have ruined her career, but today he'd probably just improve her reputation among the freaks taking over the US. Oh, how times change.
"The first time I went to Russia, everybody kept making me drink. Like a trust thing. If I let myself get drunk around them, if I let them fuck with me, yadda yadda. But I just wasn't getting drunk fast enough and I kept pissing them off. So I tried to start acting drunk."
A grocery store 2-in-1 has never touched Louis' skin.
There is some practical distance. Louis beginning the routine of washing his hair, working product into a lather as Daniel speaks and letting the suds run down his neck and shoulders.
"Were they convinced?" Louis asks, diverting to the Russians rather than dwell on Beth McLean, whose finances Louis might ruin as petty little payback. "I remember your tolerance. They would have had to make a real investment in that goal."
Remembering San Francisco. Daniel, young and human and jubilant, downing anything put in front of him. He'd held it all so well that Louis had lost track as the night dragged on, kept sliding another and another and another into Daniel's hands. Endless. It had felt like the night would never end. That they could stay there together forever, floating in the close jubilation of confession, of Louis sharing the worst things and Daniel eager to hear more and more and more.
Louis shakes his head. Sprays suds and water everywhere, before he tips his head back into the spray, lets the water patter down over his face as he rinses away the shampoo.
Washing while talking. He likes being able to speak at a normal volume, isolate the sound of conversation away from the sound of the water; little things, interesting things, making this new life better than the old one. (You don't know what mortal life is like, man. You've forgotten.)
"I think so, it's always hard to gauge with cultural and language barriers, but I have some experience about what alcohol-impaired people act like."
One of his many extremely impressive skills.
"But they—"
Briefly dazzle-distracted by Louis rinsing water off of him like a woman in a soft-core erotic thriller from the 70s.
Anyway.
"So, they wanted to play the 'knife game', which doesn't have a name, you know the," here he gestures, one hand splayed out flat, the other gesturing over it, to mime taking a knife and stabbing between each fingers. "That thing. And I started to freak out because I wasn't going to be able to do that even sober, and I thought they were pressuring me to torture me, because they're deranged Russians. It turned out they thought I could probably just do it because they've only ever seen it in American movies, and would never have suggested it if they weren't hammered."
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"Until you kick me out."
Yes. More than yes.
But even if he's not the type to pull the plug on this— he should probably not annoy the shit out of Louis with it? Right? Right. So.
"What's the game plan?" A light pinch to his side, teasing.
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How long since there was teasing, in Louis' bed?
(Trying to parse out the answer is like ripping open a barely-scabbed wound. Remembering. Recalling what was once good, what remained good, what was eaten up by misery.)
Daniel pinches him and Louis bites him, a scrape of teeth along the jaw.
"I'm going to make you come until you can't," is decisive, indulgent. Attuned, maybe, to the silent flicker of thought in Daniel's head that wants more, and more, and more. A thought that Louis leans into, lets himself sink into it as he gives Daniel his thigh to rock against while they kiss. Murmurs, "And then wash you clean," into Daniel's mouth. "And see you sated, before I take you with me to coffin."
Kick him out. Unlikely. Impossible.
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Another half hour? ... A week??? Mysteries of the universe. Does Louis know? How much exhaustion kink does he get up to? Inquiring mind. Singular. This specific, inquiring mind.
"Sounds pretty cool."
Saying dopey shit on purpose, just to see if Louis will laugh.
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"Pretty cool," Louis echoes, just to roll the words off his tongue. Tasting them, experiment with how Daniel's vernacular feels in his mouth.
Reaches down to take him in hand again, a loose curl of fingers. Touching just to touch, intent not quite materializing as Louis thumbs over the head of his cock.
"We'll find it together," Louis tells him, answering at least one unspoken question. Maybe he'll answer the others. Maybe Daniel will have to ask, pin him, corner him into an answer. The mingled experience between Lestat and Armand, so much ground covered in a century's worth of time, not all of it easy to recall. "What it is now, what it will be someday."
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"Making plans," he observes. Louis likes plans. Daniel imagines him with a very detailed, very orderly bullet journal, one clean and organized without any washi tape or cute stickers, in his old lady cursive handwriting. He lets Louis see this fond thought as he sits up, shuffling them to be face to face, and Louis can sit beside him or with legs splayed over him to be half in his lap, whatever he feels like.
Because this goes both ways. Daniel's not just going to lay back and count nuts. He wants to see Louis reach his peak again, hear the way his breath changes, watch his face contort in pleasure. As many times as they each can. Louis had been torn on what position, wanting too many things at once, now he gets it if he wants it now. Daniel kisses him, touches him, loses count. Loses track.
Eventually his phone will ping. He's got a funny (and very loud) alarm an hour or so before sunrise. It's just that he usually loses track of time because he's working, not because he's fooling around.
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Here, now, the phone chimes and Louis laughs. Has migrated fully into Daniel's lap from their starting point, crowding him into the headboard. Skin gleaming with sweat, mouth bruised, hips rolling down in an easy sinuous movement, unbroken by the sound of the alarm.
"Once more," Louis coaxes. "Once more, right now, before we stop for the night."
Thumbs stroking the delicate skin behind Daniel's ears, fingers nudging at his hairline. Louis brushes his lips across Daniel's, their breath mingling.
"Can you come for me one more time?"
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"Can you?"
Daniel shifts up, pressing his cock deeper into him, finding it effortless still despite the exertion and the impending call of the sun, soaking in the endless easy delight of no longer being human. It's possible he'll never take this for granted— being able to move just as he wants to, no pain, no struggle. Everything in service of making them both feel good, claw and tumble to the next height.
Another kiss, because he can't get enough, and he circles a hand between them to stroke Louis. Can't get enough of this, either.
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An absurd thing to be thinking now, as Daniel fucks up into him and drives the breath out of Louis' lungs, but he can feel all these things in Daniel's head. The pleasure of what his transformation has given him. The gratitude. (Some part of Louis, jealous and hurt, flicks open an eye to remember that Louis had wanted to give his to him, Louis could have—) Daniel is so pleased and Louis feels it, lets himself mirror that joy.
Daniel, alive always. Healthy always. And they can have each other this way, whenever they want.
Daniel kisses him and Louis licks into his mouth. Possessive, pleased, tasting himself there. A humming whisper of thought: For you, anything. And Tell me you want me again.
As if it's not a foregone conclusion, once Daniel starts touching him with such clear intention as Louis meets the upward thrust of his hips. Daniel's pleasure is an electric thing, sparking bright like a livewire strung between their heads.
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'I want you,' he tells him, lets him feel how much. How much, despite how many times already. Edges are starting to fray, concentration is starting to go glassy, but Louis said until you can't. Sunlight or unconsciousness. Daniel will indulge until he overdoses.
Out loud this time: "Watching you, feeling you come like this, is so good. I thought I'd never see you that unwound. I'll never get sick of it. I'll never get sick of being the one to do it. Come on, one more time. Just like this."
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Maybe fifty years would come within shouting distance of enough. Louis doesn't know. Daniel says these things to him and Louis shudders down into the cradle of his hips, hands tightening around the sides of Daniel's face.
"Just like this," Louis echoes. Repeats again, "Anything for you."
Drawn in where Daniel's consciousness is blurring, savoring the quality of it. Fingers slipping, grazing over scar tissue, over new-made bite marks already healing into nothingness. (Grateful, unforgivably, that Louis left a mark on him. Bit it into him, a claim that endured even through Daniel's death and rebirth.)
Murmurs, "Come with me," even as he lets himself come all apart, panting against Daniel's mouth, spilling over under the pull of Daniel's fingers.
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But Louis wants one more time, and right now, and just like this, and anything, and he's there and Daniel feels his body clench around him, just as good maybe better than that his mind shimmer with it at the same time. One can really believe the whole 'little death' translation joke from this perspective; following dead blood into the darkness, following a partner's orgasm over a ledge into your own.
Too morbid? Too morbid.
In any event, Daniel fucks up into him and stills as he comes, holding Louis close and gasping against him, open mouth against him, too messy to be a kiss, just wanting to be near him and a part of him. Fractal fireworks, ecstasy, a hysterical peak of his heartbeat and the joy of it slowing like falling, like flying.
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But no. The sun is coming up. Daniel is young. He needs to sleep.
Louis kisses his slack mouth. Scrapes nails up and down his scalp. Murmurs Daniel's name, low and intimate and so, so affectionate. Letting him find his way back to composure while Louis stays close, wound close still. Skin to skin, mind to mind.
I like you this way, Louis tells him. Smiles, admits, I like you every way I can have you.
Frustrating and irreverent and kind and now this, how Louis has him now.
"We'll need a whole day," Louis supposes, thoughtful. "A whole day to do something like this."
Having caught some stray edge of Daniel's thoughts, the thing he didn't quite ask for that Louis wants to give him anyway.
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"Anything means anything," he says.
A whole day, or not, Louis doesn't have to steamroll himself for Daniel's sake. Though he'd absolutely go in for it.
More soft kisses, and touches that don't want to let go. Daniel finds the prospect of parting to be particularly brutal, but consoles himself with the fact that Louis is not yet tired of him. Spell not yet broken.
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A tug between their heads as Louis reaches a hand back. Aware of the mess they've made of each other. His own skin damp with sweat, thighs slick, a pleasant ache smoldering in his body.
"Come on."
Beckoning Daniel to him, wanting already to be touching him again.
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Alright, alright.
He follows him, presumably to the bathroom, where he clings to the notion of this being fine and does not look at himself in the mirror. The absurdity of being shy despite all they've done.
Daniel wants to touch him, feel him under warm water, help him get clean. Carefully wash away the mess they've made, but not forget it.
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It's a different kind of opulent in this room. More earthy grotto than sleek minimalism. The shower itself is set into the wall, invokes the sense of a cave, low seats of cut stone behind the glass doors. Signs of Louis' occupancy in the products laid out on the counter, the silk robe, a towel hanging off a hook.
Louis pauses as the door closes behind them.
"Hey."
Louis knows he has to withdraw out of Daniel's head. He has begun the process, unwinding slowly. Perhaps catches the tailend of one thought or the other, or maybe just needs something to ease the ways in which they're separating. Indulges himself, reels Daniel in by their linked hands so he might lean up and kiss him again.
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"Hey yourself."
He allows himself to be reeled in, and he follows Louis, presses into that kiss, touches his hip with his other hand.
"Weird how cold it is, disengaging," he says, and thinks Louis will know he means about the telepathic closeness. "Thank you, for sharing that with me."
Opening his mind, accepting Daniel's openness in return. Tangling with him in their heads and feeling so much, knowing he was safe during the whole thing. It's been unlike anything else he's ever experienced.
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They can't live in each others' heads. Just like they can't stay a night and a day and a night in bed, despite what a good idea it feels like in the moment.
Daniel says this, offers this sweet expression of gratitude. Louis smiles, fingers grazing Daniel's jaw. A stray slip of thought, a lingering impression: I want to share everything with you.
Aloud, Louis tells him, "You let me in. Thanks."
Let him in. Let him stay.
Louis' fingers tighten around the link of their fingers, looking into Daniel's face. Missing him, absurdly. Missing him even though they're stood so close.
He lets go. The glass door slides open silently, and Louis twists the taps. Promises over his shoulder, "I'll run it hot."
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The sentiment echoes through feeling: the only person he might believe wants to share everything with him, the only person he'd let into his head that way. No one else is even a maybe. It's just Louis. Louis, who nearly killed him, who maybe should have, who went through hell with him, who remembered with him.
Not his maker. Better for it.
He slides a touch over the other man's shoulders, feeling a little reluctant to stay totally apart. Which is absurd, they're in a goddamn shower together, it's pretty fucking close.
"Do vampires like saunas? I guess we wouldn't have to worry about passing out. I used to do that when I was really broke. Chug cheap bottles of wine in the shower. Because I was too classy for huffing glue, you know."
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Who else would Louis let in? Lestat, only Lestat, and that's not possible. It will only ever be Daniel in his head. (How deep was Armand in Louis's mind? If Daniel delves deep enough, would he find traces? Familiar fingerprints set deep into the soft clay of Louis' head?)
The water runs hot as promised, a misty rainfall from two shower heads that envelope them both and Louis turns back around under the spray to Daniel. Smiles at him.
This is the most he's smiled in a long while, Louis knows. It comes easy, with Daniel.
"I like saunas."
A statement deliberately stripped of the we that could have, would have colored the answer in Dubai.
His palms flatten across Daniel's chest. Feel his heart, secure and steady. Cherishes this small fact, pieces of Daniel outside Louis' experience, outside the scope of books and interviews.
"Never chugged cheap wine though."
Louis de Pointe du Lac seeking only the finest vintages for his worst moments.
"Tell me something else. From then."
Pieces of Daniel's human life.
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A future consideration. Too soon, for an old man who is a young vampire.
He rolls his eyes fondly about cheap wine. Of course. Louis, who is even more beautiful when he smiles, would never stoop to cheap wine. Even the drugs he lured Daniel in with were high quality. He can't help but reach up and touch the corner of one of that smile, and marvel at it.
"'Then', like at the weird lowest points, or 'then', just being mortal? Something funny, something weird?"
He's done a lot. Sometimes by accident.
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All of it.
Stipulates, "Nothing I already read in your books."
The parts of Daniel's life that Louis missed. The long absence where Louis only touched Daniel's life from a great distance. Collected what was curated. Daniel was a shockingly candid writer, but not every part of his life is in what had already been put into the world.
Louis catches his hand, the fingers at his mouth, and kisses Daniel's palm. Disengages to collect soaps and shampoos from one rough hewn shelf, an abundance of options to offer up for Daniel's inspection.
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"Beth McLean once sent me an email with actual slurs in it," he says. "She was furious about how I talked about all the accounting in the Enron book, she thought I was making a joke about her own Enron book. Which did better than mine anyway. I never showed anybody, I just thought it was funny."
Twenty years ago, he could have ruined her career, but today he'd probably just improve her reputation among the freaks taking over the US. Oh, how times change.
"The first time I went to Russia, everybody kept making me drink. Like a trust thing. If I let myself get drunk around them, if I let them fuck with me, yadda yadda. But I just wasn't getting drunk fast enough and I kept pissing them off. So I tried to start acting drunk."
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There is some practical distance. Louis beginning the routine of washing his hair, working product into a lather as Daniel speaks and letting the suds run down his neck and shoulders.
"Were they convinced?" Louis asks, diverting to the Russians rather than dwell on Beth McLean, whose finances Louis might ruin as petty little payback. "I remember your tolerance. They would have had to make a real investment in that goal."
Remembering San Francisco. Daniel, young and human and jubilant, downing anything put in front of him. He'd held it all so well that Louis had lost track as the night dragged on, kept sliding another and another and another into Daniel's hands. Endless. It had felt like the night would never end. That they could stay there together forever, floating in the close jubilation of confession, of Louis sharing the worst things and Daniel eager to hear more and more and more.
Louis shakes his head. Sprays suds and water everywhere, before he tips his head back into the spray, lets the water patter down over his face as he rinses away the shampoo.
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"I think so, it's always hard to gauge with cultural and language barriers, but I have some experience about what alcohol-impaired people act like."
One of his many extremely impressive skills.
"But they—"
Briefly dazzle-distracted by Louis rinsing water off of him like a woman in a soft-core erotic thriller from the 70s.
Anyway.
"So, they wanted to play the 'knife game', which doesn't have a name, you know the," here he gestures, one hand splayed out flat, the other gesturing over it, to mime taking a knife and stabbing between each fingers. "That thing. And I started to freak out because I wasn't going to be able to do that even sober, and I thought they were pressuring me to torture me, because they're deranged Russians. It turned out they thought I could probably just do it because they've only ever seen it in American movies, and would never have suggested it if they weren't hammered."
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