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.
"No cereal," Louis promises. Takes advantage of their proximity to sling arms around Daniel's shoulder, cup his face. "I got enough for us."
Louis likes this too, taking care of Daniel. (Always Louis' way, these demonstrations. Actions that hold place for what's too difficult to say.) He likes Daniel smelling of him, likes the scent of his soaps and shampoos on Daniel's skin. He likes Daniel touching him, even if it's just little grazes of fingertips or the warmth of his hand through cloth.
He wants more. Everything. To talk for a week, meandering through topics. Draw opinions out of Daniel one after another. To argue. To make up after. Wants to bite Daniel everywhere, drink him down. Wants Daniel to drink from him. Wants everything, all at once, all the newness of them and all the intimacy of what they will be to each other.
Louis takes Daniel's face in both his hands, draws him down just to kiss once more.
"I'm glad you came to see me," he murmurs under the rush of water. Achingly sincere.
Daniel wouldn't call himself touch-starved. Old people don't feel that sort of thing. You get old and you give up physical intimacy, a normal part of the life cycle; even if he had gone over the hill with a committed partner, they'd be past the point of fooling around and sleeping curled up together, bodies too prone to aches and pains and discomfort. And that's without Parkinson's.
And yet he finds himself sliding his arms around Louis' middle, when he's drawn in for a kiss. Like he still can't get enough of touching him, like he can drink him in through skin to skin contact alone. Under the warm water, against each other. It chases some of the chill of psychic separation away, which is interesting in itself— now that it's been a few minutes, the contrast of being apart, that coldness, feels almost like psychic sensory play, instead of something negatively disorienting.
"I'm glad you let me find you."
Even if Louis didn't do it consciously, he wasn't closed off. Not hiding. Daniel was able to track him down, see him like a candle in the dark.
Louis had tried. He had meant to hide from him, obscure things, hold back, and Daniel had cut through it all anyway. He'd done it easy, and done it mortal. Imagine what he can do now, a vampire.
"I always want you to find me."
Soft words as Louis's hands slide across Daniel's shoulders, down his back and up again.
"Wherever I am, I want you there."
No words for it, only a foregone conclusion. If Louis is anywhere, Daniel is welcome. In his head, in his homes, in his bed. Anywhere. Everywhere. Echoes of anything in the assurance.
A flutter of emotion. There have been a whole lot, tonight. Louis will no doubt be able to feel the tender pulse in Daniel's heart, feeling the continued weight of this, how much it touches him. He's always felt safe, in a way, with Louis. Even when it wasn't. Even when he was being harmed. Safe enough to talk to him still after a reveal of fangs, to curl into him and listen when he was burned up, to stay with him in Dubai even after their sparring, and the muddied memory of his near-murder.
Not a boy anymore, but a part of him will always still be Louis'. Scars, and fingerprints on his heart.
He splays one hand over the other vampire's, to that end. His chest, his heart.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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?"
no subject
"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.)
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
Louis likes this too, taking care of Daniel. (Always Louis' way, these demonstrations. Actions that hold place for what's too difficult to say.) He likes Daniel smelling of him, likes the scent of his soaps and shampoos on Daniel's skin. He likes Daniel touching him, even if it's just little grazes of fingertips or the warmth of his hand through cloth.
He wants more. Everything. To talk for a week, meandering through topics. Draw opinions out of Daniel one after another. To argue. To make up after. Wants to bite Daniel everywhere, drink him down. Wants Daniel to drink from him. Wants everything, all at once, all the newness of them and all the intimacy of what they will be to each other.
Louis takes Daniel's face in both his hands, draws him down just to kiss once more.
"I'm glad you came to see me," he murmurs under the rush of water. Achingly sincere.
no subject
And yet he finds himself sliding his arms around Louis' middle, when he's drawn in for a kiss. Like he still can't get enough of touching him, like he can drink him in through skin to skin contact alone. Under the warm water, against each other. It chases some of the chill of psychic separation away, which is interesting in itself— now that it's been a few minutes, the contrast of being apart, that coldness, feels almost like psychic sensory play, instead of something negatively disorienting.
"I'm glad you let me find you."
Even if Louis didn't do it consciously, he wasn't closed off. Not hiding. Daniel was able to track him down, see him like a candle in the dark.
no subject
Louis had tried. He had meant to hide from him, obscure things, hold back, and Daniel had cut through it all anyway. He'd done it easy, and done it mortal. Imagine what he can do now, a vampire.
"I always want you to find me."
Soft words as Louis's hands slide across Daniel's shoulders, down his back and up again.
"Wherever I am, I want you there."
No words for it, only a foregone conclusion. If Louis is anywhere, Daniel is welcome. In his head, in his homes, in his bed. Anywhere. Everywhere. Echoes of anything in the assurance.
no subject
Not a boy anymore, but a part of him will always still be Louis'. Scars, and fingerprints on his heart.
He splays one hand over the other vampire's, to that end. His chest, his heart.
Anything, agreed.