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."
Louis, oblivious, reaching for another bottle of something glossy, herbal-scented, to begin working into his hair as Daniel speaks. Watching him from beneath the steam and mist, amusement on his face listening to this predicament.
Reaches to catch Daniel's hand. Lifts it, thumb running across his palm, to study first his hand, and then Daniel's face between his splayed fingers.
"I played it a few times back when," Louis admits. Back when harkening back to forgotten humanity. Side-steps it when he asks, "Do you think you'd do better as a vampire?"
An addition to Daniel's many talents, maybe.
Louis would play reckless games with him. Lick blood off his fingers after. Louis wants to hear all his stories, every piece that made up the long years they lived apart. He wants all the stories that are yet to come, all the stories they could make together. His thumb runs along the deep grooves of Daniel's palm, quietly possessive, as Louis smiles at him behind their hands.
"We could play over breakfast."
As if Louis wasn't searching for lost pieces of himself. As if Daniel didn't have another interview to return to.
Daniel is much less porn-adjacent, barring the weird side of porn. A melty wet rat, seeming slightly transparent when saturated, though at least his animated flair gives him some life. Louis takes his hand and it makes him smile, everything scrunched up pleasantly.
"What makes you think I didn't end up doing it in Russia?"
Teasing. Maybe he did. Maybe he just downed another cupful of shitty post-communist vodka and did a round, then screamed, then made friends for life, until most of those guys ended up executed for stealing bread or importing blue jeans, while Daniel went off to do the real interview.
Or he didn't. Or he panicked and definitely didn't.
A grin through Daniel's fingers, Louis' smile widening just a fraction.
"Could get one," Louis offers.
There is cereal in a cupboard in Dubai. Morocco is spared the expense of a well-stocked kitchen, of the punishing ritual Louis used for so long to feed himself.
But a switchblade, Morocco can yield up a switchblade.
Louis wants to do everything with Daniel. To be as reckless as they were in San Francisco, indestructible in it now. Louis wants to know every part of Daniel, wants to see him flex his new abilities over and over again.
"We could do everything you passed on."
A casual offering, easy as a shrug, as a drawn breath. They can do anything. Everything. Why shouldn't they?
(In the main room, stacks of papers languish. Monetarily ignored, never forgotten.)
"If you want to see me penetrated that bad, you could ask."
He touches the tip of Louis' nose with an index finger, playful. Daniel is scrubbed clean with washed hair by now, perfunctory about it, clearly having never touched a luxury grooming product in his life. Having only ever been in a spa to clandestinely fuck other men, eschewing all specialty grooming, it's almost like he could actually be straight.
Wait what—
"I came out here to bother you, Louis. I want to do whatever you want to do. We can pick something in the morning. Evening." He huffs a laugh. "You know what I mean."
Lately, he has been picking fights. Seeking out old memories and ghosts. Texting Lestat.
And now here is Daniel, smiling at him, touching him, making promises about time.
Louis yields back his hand, smiles a little back.
"I'll think on it," Louis agrees, minor acquiescence. Daniel, trapping him into choices. Annoying. (Fond.) He tips his face up into the spray, rinse product from his hair before reaching for another bottle. Conditioner, this time. It's a leisurely process, all of this. Louis is a relatively young vampire, but there are small ways in which he has slowed down, learned to take his time because there is no hurry, no looming end point to life.
"We don't have to stay in Morocco," Louis reminds, eyes opening to look at Daniel as he works palmfuls of conditioner into his hair. "Could go somewhere else. Sight-see."
Somewhere Daniel doesn't have any kill orders or whatever taken out on him. A jailbreak might be fun, but not until less of the vampire world wants Louis dead, and maybe Daniel is less likely to make headlines in the wake of whatever dashing escape they concoct.
Daniel doesn't want to make choices for Louis, and he doesn't want to be his guest. Daniel can entertain himself, he can be a solo traveler everywhere he goes in life. Louis, on the other hand, has had so much muffled. Nearly a century stolen. Daniel is conscious of that, and wants to find the right balance to strike between handling it appropriately and not treating Louis like a baby.
He's probably put conditioner in. It just took him thirty seconds, because he doesn't care too much. And now, his hair's frozen in place, so it doesn't matter. He can spend even less time on messing with it.
Leaves him time to admire the view, too.
"I know."
Gentle, fond. There really is no rush. As long as they're hanging out for a while, Daniel will be happy.
"You know," Louis repeats back, syllables further softened by the reemergence of his accent. Affectionate.
Daniel knows so much. Sees so much. A gift that will only sharpen as time goes on, Louis presumes, become something more impressive than it has been. Louis' fingers pull slowly through his hair, working expensive product through to the very ends, before reaching out to draw Daniel in to him.
"Give me a hand," he coaxes, which is just an invitation for Daniel's hands on his skin, to be touched, with the soaps and soft clothes and rush of warm water an excuse for it. "We gonna have to get you something when we're finished here."
Blood. Louis can offer his usual fare, blood in thick mugs, in elegant glassware. But it's too late for a hunt. Louis wants to give Daniel that too, but tomorrow. It will wait until tomorrow.
A shy smile as Louis pulls him close. (Shy, after all that, while being naked in here with him, whatever.) But he does touch him, takes a cloth, slides it over Louis' skin. Everything smells nice. Not as nice as the hints of blood Daniel got from him, but this feels... grounding. It's not the otherworldly ecstasy of vampires fucking around. A normal kind of intimacy that Daniel has lacked as thoroughly as everything else.
"Whatever you've got on hand. No cereal."
Blood in mugs and little dishes is fine. He'll cope. And he'll decide, tomorrow, if he thinks Louis seems like he'll actually be comfortable hunting or not. Daniel is adept at handling it by himself, so there's no pressure, no need of an escort.
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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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Reaches to catch Daniel's hand. Lifts it, thumb running across his palm, to study first his hand, and then Daniel's face between his splayed fingers.
"I played it a few times back when," Louis admits. Back when harkening back to forgotten humanity. Side-steps it when he asks, "Do you think you'd do better as a vampire?"
An addition to Daniel's many talents, maybe.
Louis would play reckless games with him. Lick blood off his fingers after. Louis wants to hear all his stories, every piece that made up the long years they lived apart. He wants all the stories that are yet to come, all the stories they could make together. His thumb runs along the deep grooves of Daniel's palm, quietly possessive, as Louis smiles at him behind their hands.
"We could play over breakfast."
As if Louis wasn't searching for lost pieces of himself. As if Daniel didn't have another interview to return to.
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"What makes you think I didn't end up doing it in Russia?"
Teasing. Maybe he did. Maybe he just downed another cupful of shitty post-communist vodka and did a round, then screamed, then made friends for life, until most of those guys ended up executed for stealing bread or importing blue jeans, while Daniel went off to do the real interview.
Or he didn't. Or he panicked and definitely didn't.
A mystery.
Daniel looks at him and flexes his fingers.
"What, you got cereal and switchblades?"
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"Could get one," Louis offers.
There is cereal in a cupboard in Dubai. Morocco is spared the expense of a well-stocked kitchen, of the punishing ritual Louis used for so long to feed himself.
But a switchblade, Morocco can yield up a switchblade.
Louis wants to do everything with Daniel. To be as reckless as they were in San Francisco, indestructible in it now. Louis wants to know every part of Daniel, wants to see him flex his new abilities over and over again.
"We could do everything you passed on."
A casual offering, easy as a shrug, as a drawn breath. They can do anything. Everything. Why shouldn't they?
(In the main room, stacks of papers languish. Monetarily ignored, never forgotten.)
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He touches the tip of Louis' nose with an index finger, playful. Daniel is scrubbed clean with washed hair by now, perfunctory about it, clearly having never touched a luxury grooming product in his life. Having only ever been in a spa to clandestinely fuck other men, eschewing all specialty grooming, it's almost like he could actually be straight.
Wait what—
"I came out here to bother you, Louis. I want to do whatever you want to do. We can pick something in the morning. Evening." He huffs a laugh. "You know what I mean."
They can do some work, they can play hooky.
They've got time.
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Lately, he has been picking fights. Seeking out old memories and ghosts. Texting Lestat.
And now here is Daniel, smiling at him, touching him, making promises about time.
Louis yields back his hand, smiles a little back.
"I'll think on it," Louis agrees, minor acquiescence. Daniel, trapping him into choices. Annoying. (Fond.) He tips his face up into the spray, rinse product from his hair before reaching for another bottle. Conditioner, this time. It's a leisurely process, all of this. Louis is a relatively young vampire, but there are small ways in which he has slowed down, learned to take his time because there is no hurry, no looming end point to life.
"We don't have to stay in Morocco," Louis reminds, eyes opening to look at Daniel as he works palmfuls of conditioner into his hair. "Could go somewhere else. Sight-see."
Somewhere Daniel doesn't have any kill orders or whatever taken out on him. A jailbreak might be fun, but not until less of the vampire world wants Louis dead, and maybe Daniel is less likely to make headlines in the wake of whatever dashing escape they concoct.
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He's probably put conditioner in. It just took him thirty seconds, because he doesn't care too much. And now, his hair's frozen in place, so it doesn't matter. He can spend even less time on messing with it.
Leaves him time to admire the view, too.
"I know."
Gentle, fond. There really is no rush. As long as they're hanging out for a while, Daniel will be happy.
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Daniel knows so much. Sees so much. A gift that will only sharpen as time goes on, Louis presumes, become something more impressive than it has been. Louis' fingers pull slowly through his hair, working expensive product through to the very ends, before reaching out to draw Daniel in to him.
"Give me a hand," he coaxes, which is just an invitation for Daniel's hands on his skin, to be touched, with the soaps and soft clothes and rush of warm water an excuse for it. "We gonna have to get you something when we're finished here."
Blood. Louis can offer his usual fare, blood in thick mugs, in elegant glassware. But it's too late for a hunt. Louis wants to give Daniel that too, but tomorrow. It will wait until tomorrow.
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"Whatever you've got on hand. No cereal."
Blood in mugs and little dishes is fine. He'll cope. And he'll decide, tomorrow, if he thinks Louis seems like he'll actually be comfortable hunting or not. Daniel is adept at handling it by himself, so there's no pressure, no need of an escort.
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