Raglan is out the back door and in a car to the next scam by the time they let Louis in.
Daniel should be, too. He tells him as much. He's always told him that, about Louis. The actually dangerous one, which he still believes, even after all that's happened. You can trust an ancient to be committed to ancient stuff. Louis' too young. Too unpredictable. Daniel remembers now, right?
Whatever.
Bailing, even after such dedicated ignoring (well, it was dedicated at first, after that he just got preoccupied), seems like too much. He still cares about him. It was still him, telling him to live. He's still who Daniel decided to die over when he pulled the pin on the grenade. Did die over, ultimately. It's just—
It's just he kinda doesn't want to talk to him about it. About any of it. Frustrating. But he stays. Opens a window (legal in the UK? was the building never updated?), burns a cigarette, puts Raglan's half-eaten dinner in the microwave. Stupid. Louis will be able to tell.
(Talamasca agents hedging their bets. Maybe a good idea not to be so near to Louis, when he receives this news. Consider, all that's been said about Louis' temper. Young vampires, erratic in their hurts and their angers, better observed from a distance.)
Almost as Daniel left him. Here is Louis with soft curls, eyes masked by dark mirrored glasses he is already removing, turning in his hands in a little tick of anxious movement. Now stowing them in a pocket of the oversized bomber jacket, cut from shining dark material. Rich, dark emerald green polo beneath it, textured knit evoking living things, greenery and life. Trousers belted at the waist. Polished leather loafers. An evolving wardrobe, expanding, experimenting.
A sign of the times.
Daniel's right. Louis knows, instantly. Maybe had already known before the door opened, catching Daniel's scent and finding it changed. Confirmation now, looking at him. At his eyes.
The vampire Daniel Molloy.
"Daniel," Louis says, split open under the blow of this revelation.
Finds his way to, "You haven't been answering my calls," as a statement of fact stripped of all attached emotion. Daniel is a vampire. Daniel is alive, not lying in a hospital (but maybe having chosen to cut ties with Louis anyway) or overwhelmed by his illness.
It doesn't matter what Louis feels in the moment. Here is Daniel, alive. Louis can take some relief in it even as his mind churns, surges ahead, circles the horrible inevitability of Who?
Hurts a little, to see him. It's real, now. Louis is the architect of all of this, he picked him up in that bar, he invited him to his home, he left with with Armand. Daniel doesn't blame him, it's nothing like that, it's just—
Louis is the vampire who's been in all of his dreams since he was a too-young addict hustling drugs for blowjobs. A safe person to fantasize about, who was both terrifying and alluring. He'd nearly killed him, he might not be real, and their dynamic during the interview had been just as much of a rollercoaster. And now, Louis gets to see what's become of him, and Daniel...
Might be a shitty vampire? Shouldn't be one at all? Will Louis be disappointed he didn't just walk into the sun, will he resent him over who's done it to him?
"Hey."
Great opener. He looks at Louis for another moment, finds an ache in his chest blooming to see him so much like his own person, and then turns away. He moves back into the suite, shrug passing as an invitation inside.
Something like an invitation. Daniel would tell him to leave if he didn't want Louis here, wouldn't he?
Was that what those weeks of silence, absence of response, was that Daniel telling him to fuck off?
Louis closes the door quietly behind him. Follows because he is helpless to do anything else, kited along by Daniel with new eyes, sharper nails, scent altered.
Stands in the quiet, looking around the room. Daniel has been here? Long enough that his scent is comfortably suffused within the space. He has been well fed.
He has been a vampire for—
"I didn't know."
Isn't an excuse.
Isn't even followed with the things Louis had thought, his panicky worries, all fears between Daniel's declining health and the possibility of having been cut off forever. Not for Daniel to carry, the things Louis had been turning over in his head.
"Daniel," repeated, softer. An appeal. Look at him. Don't brush this off.
He figured that was the case. Thought it had to have been, expected it, and yet still, somehow—
A rough exhale, like a laugh, and Daniel scrubs his hands over his face as he turns back around. Restless. He crosses his arms for something to do with his hands, and shrugs, though it's clearly an anxious gesture and not a dismissive one.
"I get it, because you were freaking out. You had to bail. I just— it's still a crazy thing to hear. Cognitive dissonance between completely understanding why you left the way you did, why you wouldn't have thought past the moment, needing to leave, and... what was going to go on when the door closed behind you. Because there was never a world where it was nothing."
So it's! Just! Crazy!
Daniel could laugh more. He could cross the room and hug Louis. Contradictions within him.
The memory in question is so, so sharp. How angry he had been. How deep the betrayal cut. The full knowledge of the lie, of what Armand had took, what Louis had permitted to happen.
And still, he'd had that sliver of trust.
"He'd never," Louis begins, and stops.
A foregone conclusion. Armand did this. Does Daniel need to say it?
Almost eighty years, and maybe Louis didn't know everything but he had know this: Armand had never made another vampire. He had been repulsed by it. He had never chosen it.
And behind that, the awareness of what Armand knew. Of what Louis had wanted, intended.
"I'm sorry," is what Louis settles on.
Louis' fault. Louis had brought all of this to pass. Put Daniel in this position. And now they are here, and Louis cannot undo any of it.
"Well," and Daniel is laughing again, incredulous and something like relief, "I'm pretty sure that's what he thought, too. But I guess some loudmouth old human who he should have killed fifty years ago hasn't ruined his life before."
A collection of pronouns instead of a name. Armand would find that funny, he thinks. Haunting them so clearly.
"Me too, really. I was very confident he was just regular killing me. So you can imagine how weird waking up was. But fortunately I had these fucking nerds around and I got a safe ride out of town without torching myself by accident. Ready for all my opinions about how over-dramatic you've made certain aspects seem?"
Hey, look, he's got insensitive jokes still. Just going to steamroll right past all the potential trauma, yep.
Lestat had been something like gentle with Louis. Lestat had given him a choice. But Lestat had not been Claudia. How could he have been? Maybe there was no other vampire who could ever have given the Gift the way Claudia had.
Louis had wanted to try. For Daniel.
It doesn't matter now.
"You can tell me," Louis invites, treading closer, further into the room. "Whatever parts of it you want to, or can."
What Armand had done.
How many ways Louis will have to make him suffer before he makes good on what he'd promised Armand before be left.
Doesn't say again I'm sorry, but it lives in his face still.
A pause, in which Daniel looks slightly anxious, like a cat being pet the wrong way. Fur inward.
"Gonna stay my business."
Whatever went on between he and Armand is forever behind the door Louis walked out of, as far as Daniel's concerned. Louis let it shut behind him, and went to New Orleans (so the nerds have said, maybe they're wrong), and it didn't occur to him that Armand had no reason in the world to obey, that Armand might be motivated to exact revenge on the person who'd set the bomb off, that Armand had spent two weeks with a psychic power drill held up to Daniels' temple right in front of him. And so that's where it's going to stay: behind the door, past which only Daniel and (unfortunately) Armand are privy to.
He exhales and internally shakes off the ill feeling. The idea of sharing anything about it, even with Louis, is just... strange. Daniel looks at him, small frown knit between his brows.
A thing that will calcify, cement the sense of blame to underwrite the responsibility Louis had already assigned himself.
Whatever he might have said, whether or not Louis would have asked something more direct, swept aside by the question Daniel puts to him. Louis looks taken aback. Somehow, the last thing he'd expected.
"You're asking about me?"
Confused.
"I should be asked about you."
And he will. If they aren't going to talk about the act, they can hash out the aftermath.
"Me," an incredulous tone. Daniel holds up one hand, palm flat. Perfectly still. "I'm great. Better than great. Either I've never actually felt this good, not even in my twenties, or I've been in so much pain for so long that prior stability seems fake."
Louis doesn't know what it was like to be sick.
(Armand does.)
"I sent each of my kids a couple million, and I got to talk about censorship and extremism with Samuel Beckett via shoddy Zoom call. You had your whole life blown up, and you ran out before I could even ask if you were going to be okay."
Hand in hand. Daniel is as aged as ever, but the quality to him is different; less fragile, less changeable, steady, and of course, colder. The diamond-hard claws that tip each finger are just too long to be appropriately subtle. He'll have to have excuses that go beyond lackluster maintenance. Maybe he can paint them black.
He looks at Louis.
What's easy? What does that mean? Growing up with immigrant parents terrified of genocide, being a hustler, being a drug addict, being the worst parent, being terminally ill, being tortured for weeks at a time? What's easy ever gotten him? But he thing is, he can say anything. He just isn't going to.
Behind tinted glasses, orange glints. Eerie.
"I'm fine, Louis. Don't rush me into hating it, okay? I've got a while, with any luck. Plenty of time to get miserable eventually."
Gently, but firmly, Daniel withdraws his hand and reasserts his personal space. Hurts a little, for a lot of reasons. In a way he feels too young— easily bruised, the delirious high of a renewed existence sending him stumbling around like a kid again. But in this, he's very much leaning on old man instincts. He's very aware of what it feels like to not be a priority, and as much as he cares for Louis (wouldn't have done what he did if not), he just doesn't want to fall down a fucking hole.
"Don't do that," he says, sounding tired. Not unkind, but still. Gentle but firm to match the retrieval of his hand. "I don't blame you, it's not like that. But you did leave me with him. Those two things co-exist. So I can't— just, none of that. The what you wanted stuff."
It isn't true, and if it is, Daniel would almost find it worse. Louis what, wanted to make him a wrinkly old man vampire? How fucking ridiculous. Daniel is happier like this already, but it's definitely not ideal. The alternatives are all just even less ideal. At least in this reality, he gets superpowers and he doesn't hurt anymore.
"Besides, you might decide you're angry with me, when I tell you why I'm still London."
Daniel says, Don't do that, and Louis relinquishes his grip, looks steadily back into Daniel's face and bites down on a true thing he might have said otherwise.
Daniel doesn't want it, and so Louis puts it away. What use is it, what Louis would have offered? What he had wanted? Daniel doesn't want to hear him say it, and so Louis doesn't.
Daniel says, I don't blame you.
And Louis does not believe him.
This too, Louis holds in his chest. Lets the quiet settle before gamely asking, "Why are you still in London, Daniel?"
This could have been a phone call, he thinks. It's an unkind thought, but he just feels vulnerable. He's had to figure out most of this alone, working with his 'education' from the interview and navigating the not-always-helpful help from the Talamasca, whose priority is transparently trying to lock him in as an asset over anything else. It's fine, because he's been fine, he's already gone through the adjustment of being alone in life.
Reckoning with Louis, wondering about how to manage his reactions and his feelings about it, is alien. This has nothing to do with you, he could say. Considers saying. Because while Armand might have had motivations surrounding Louis, Daniel's existence is his own.
It's just—
He doesn't want to be an asshole. Happens pretty often, though. Ask his exes. Ask his kids.
"They're helping me publish the book." He spreads his hands, shrugs. "Ten million and lighting my laptop on fire might have been okay if I was going to die in a few years, but I can't let it go, now."
Daniel can't let it go. He is taking Louis' life and publishing it.
Louis is quiet, eyes moving over Daniel's face. Taking in his eyes, the absence of familiar blue. Thinking of messages flung into a void, unanswered. Daniel's hand in his, in those last moments.
A shuttering in Louis' face, controlling the initial rush of emotion. He feels distance, and withholds in turn. Uncertain of them, of what connection has survived. Louis had left and had trusted Armand, and now this. Now they are here, and Daniel is telling him this without apology, without any give to the words.
Breaks the winding tension by stepping back, away. Circling a few paces from Daniel, gaze moving from him to the room.
Louis is still looking away from him as he asks, "Were you going to tell me?"
Or would it have simply been the book, released into the world?
Flippant. Louis had signed over the rights already before Daniel even got to the penthouse. What was that going to look like, if he hadn't blown everything up? Was Armand only pretending to let it happen, waiting for Louis to look away before he killed the journalist then shrugged about the book never happening? Or was Louis going to do it himself, one last step to closure? He'd certainly been willing to hurt Daniel over the course of it.
He doesn't really think so. But it's a plot hole, to so speak, and with his maker AWOL, he can't ask the person who probably has the actual answer.
But—
"Of course I was going to tell you. That's probably why Traitor Agent Rashid ratted me out. The nerds didn't want me to."
Talamasca muddles the picture. A whole other party, their own objectives. They didn't come to collect Daniel out of the goodness of their heart. They are not supporting the publishing of Louis' interview out of the goodness of their heart.
Something for later. This is about them, not the Talamasca. Not yet.
"I was never going to kill you," Louis answers. Easy honesty. Daniel has barred him from saying the rest, explaining the rest, so Louis leaves it there. Louis had always wanted Daniel to live, even when he didn't fully understand the whole of why.
How much to say to the rest? What he had wanted then, how much it had changed when Daniel had started digging? How much does it matter given what's been done now?
A breath, before asking, "Does it matter that I don't want you to publish it?"
Maybe that's what Louis really believes. Daniel's expression betrays his skepticism, though. Was Louis really going to let him walk out of there, perfectly (imperfectly, miserable, dying) alive, to go and publish their book, before he knew about Armand? ... No, he thinks. Even if Louis made himself believe that. No way. There was a plan he wasn't privy to. Daniel is certain.
A beat, then—
"Sort of." What an awful answer. Daniel is aware, but his awareness doesn't help much. "Not enough to throw it out. Look, man, I only have so much time left to do this as Daniel Molloy. And this is going to change the world, the world that I'm now a part of on both sides. I can't just not go out there with the truth of it, not after all that. And that's what you wanted, too. This half-life under a rock thing fucking sucks. You wanted to throw the grenade into the shadows."
Skepticism. Familiar on Daniel's face, not unexpected, but what does Louis do about it?
It becomes something to weigh in a hand as he looks at Daniel and listens to this answer. The appeal behind it.
"It was different then."
Daniel should know. Daniel had pulled down the foundation upon which Louis had been standing on. Uncovered truth.
He hadn't known about Lestat. Hadn't known where the blame truly laid for Claudia's death. Whatever Louis had thought the story would shake free, it hadn't been that particular revelation.
An observation after, "But now things have changed for you."
That Daniel won't be swayed. He wants this book. He wants to take Louis's story and shake the world with it. What can Louis truly do to dissuade him, if his own preference for the story isn't enough?
Very aware of that fact. He was there, after all. He saw it before Louis did, days before, maybe weeks before as soon as he got there, something rotten and fucked up and fake. If Daniel had been sicker, if he couldn't have come, Louis would still be stuck in a tower with Armand, playing house, having no opinions of his own, slowly wasting away.
Daniel doesn't want to say that. Doesn't want to say You owe me, because he hates that kind of shit, but it might be useful. Like he said, he does care— it's a personal kind of caring, because it's Louis.
But the story. He can't let go.
"Literal darkness is fine, for me. But figurative darkness isn't going to work."
It is only a little like being cornered, backed in and caught. Things have changed. Louis hadn't expected the end of his own story to become a reveal, to exonerate Lestat, to break him from Armand. There had been something misaligned. Louis had known that. He'd known Daniel would find it.
He had thought it was a fracture, something that would realign. The scope of it—
No.
Louis puts contemplation of it away.
Swerves anyway, direct, asks, "Why didn't you call me, not them?"
Did Daniel think he wouldn't have come? That Louis wouldn't have helped him?
Daniel tries not to look at him like he's grown a second head. Is maybe medium successful.
A pause that goes on long enough to touch the edges of awkward, as he regards Louis, before he finally musters up:
"I wanted to deal with it and move on."
No, he does not think Louis would have come, while he was in the midst of a total nervous breakdown and fleeing back to Louisiana. He does not think Louis would have helped him, at least not right away, and certainly not in a style that Daniel could have tolerated at the time. Might still not be able to tolerate now. He understands that Louis's lack of attention is not because he doesn't care (probably), but that doesn't erase the fact that he simply wasn't there. That he let the door shut behind him and kept walking even as Armand drained all the blood out of Daniel's body.
He doesn't remember if he called out. But it doesn't matter. Louis either didn't hear, or wouldn't have anyway, no matter how close he was.
"You still haven't told me how you are. Though I should have pressed for an answer there before handing you another bomb, huh."
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Daniel should be, too. He tells him as much. He's always told him that, about Louis. The actually dangerous one, which he still believes, even after all that's happened. You can trust an ancient to be committed to ancient stuff. Louis' too young. Too unpredictable. Daniel remembers now, right?
Whatever.
Bailing, even after such dedicated ignoring (well, it was dedicated at first, after that he just got preoccupied), seems like too much. He still cares about him. It was still him, telling him to live. He's still who Daniel decided to die over when he pulled the pin on the grenade. Did die over, ultimately. It's just—
It's just he kinda doesn't want to talk to him about it. About any of it. Frustrating. But he stays. Opens a window (legal in the UK? was the building never updated?), burns a cigarette, puts Raglan's half-eaten dinner in the microwave. Stupid. Louis will be able to tell.
Whatever, again.
Daniel opens the door.
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Alone.
(Talamasca agents hedging their bets. Maybe a good idea not to be so near to Louis, when he receives this news. Consider, all that's been said about Louis' temper. Young vampires, erratic in their hurts and their angers, better observed from a distance.)
Almost as Daniel left him. Here is Louis with soft curls, eyes masked by dark mirrored glasses he is already removing, turning in his hands in a little tick of anxious movement. Now stowing them in a pocket of the oversized bomber jacket, cut from shining dark material. Rich, dark emerald green polo beneath it, textured knit evoking living things, greenery and life. Trousers belted at the waist. Polished leather loafers. An evolving wardrobe, expanding, experimenting.
A sign of the times.
Daniel's right. Louis knows, instantly. Maybe had already known before the door opened, catching Daniel's scent and finding it changed. Confirmation now, looking at him. At his eyes.
The vampire Daniel Molloy.
"Daniel," Louis says, split open under the blow of this revelation.
Finds his way to, "You haven't been answering my calls," as a statement of fact stripped of all attached emotion. Daniel is a vampire. Daniel is alive, not lying in a hospital (but maybe having chosen to cut ties with Louis anyway) or overwhelmed by his illness.
It doesn't matter what Louis feels in the moment. Here is Daniel, alive. Louis can take some relief in it even as his mind churns, surges ahead, circles the horrible inevitability of Who?
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Louis is the vampire who's been in all of his dreams since he was a too-young addict hustling drugs for blowjobs. A safe person to fantasize about, who was both terrifying and alluring. He'd nearly killed him, he might not be real, and their dynamic during the interview had been just as much of a rollercoaster. And now, Louis gets to see what's become of him, and Daniel...
Might be a shitty vampire? Shouldn't be one at all? Will Louis be disappointed he didn't just walk into the sun, will he resent him over who's done it to him?
"Hey."
Great opener. He looks at Louis for another moment, finds an ache in his chest blooming to see him so much like his own person, and then turns away. He moves back into the suite, shrug passing as an invitation inside.
"I've had a weird few weeks."
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Was that what those weeks of silence, absence of response, was that Daniel telling him to fuck off?
Louis closes the door quietly behind him. Follows because he is helpless to do anything else, kited along by Daniel with new eyes, sharper nails, scent altered.
Stands in the quiet, looking around the room. Daniel has been here? Long enough that his scent is comfortably suffused within the space. He has been well fed.
He has been a vampire for—
"I didn't know."
Isn't an excuse.
Isn't even followed with the things Louis had thought, his panicky worries, all fears between Daniel's declining health and the possibility of having been cut off forever. Not for Daniel to carry, the things Louis had been turning over in his head.
"Daniel," repeated, softer. An appeal. Look at him. Don't brush this off.
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He figured that was the case. Thought it had to have been, expected it, and yet still, somehow—
A rough exhale, like a laugh, and Daniel scrubs his hands over his face as he turns back around. Restless. He crosses his arms for something to do with his hands, and shrugs, though it's clearly an anxious gesture and not a dismissive one.
"I get it, because you were freaking out. You had to bail. I just— it's still a crazy thing to hear. Cognitive dissonance between completely understanding why you left the way you did, why you wouldn't have thought past the moment, needing to leave, and... what was going to go on when the door closed behind you. Because there was never a world where it was nothing."
So it's! Just! Crazy!
Daniel could laugh more. He could cross the room and hug Louis. Contradictions within him.
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The memory in question is so, so sharp. How angry he had been. How deep the betrayal cut. The full knowledge of the lie, of what Armand had took, what Louis had permitted to happen.
And still, he'd had that sliver of trust.
"He'd never," Louis begins, and stops.
A foregone conclusion. Armand did this. Does Daniel need to say it?
Almost eighty years, and maybe Louis didn't know everything but he had know this: Armand had never made another vampire. He had been repulsed by it. He had never chosen it.
And behind that, the awareness of what Armand knew. Of what Louis had wanted, intended.
"I'm sorry," is what Louis settles on.
Louis' fault. Louis had brought all of this to pass. Put Daniel in this position. And now they are here, and Louis cannot undo any of it.
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A collection of pronouns instead of a name. Armand would find that funny, he thinks. Haunting them so clearly.
"Me too, really. I was very confident he was just regular killing me. So you can imagine how weird waking up was. But fortunately I had these fucking nerds around and I got a safe ride out of town without torching myself by accident. Ready for all my opinions about how over-dramatic you've made certain aspects seem?"
Hey, look, he's got insensitive jokes still. Just going to steamroll right past all the potential trauma, yep.
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Lestat had been something like gentle with Louis. Lestat had given him a choice. But Lestat had not been Claudia. How could he have been? Maybe there was no other vampire who could ever have given the Gift the way Claudia had.
Louis had wanted to try. For Daniel.
It doesn't matter now.
"You can tell me," Louis invites, treading closer, further into the room. "Whatever parts of it you want to, or can."
What Armand had done.
How many ways Louis will have to make him suffer before he makes good on what he'd promised Armand before be left.
Doesn't say again I'm sorry, but it lives in his face still.
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"Gonna stay my business."
Whatever went on between he and Armand is forever behind the door Louis walked out of, as far as Daniel's concerned. Louis let it shut behind him, and went to New Orleans (so the nerds have said, maybe they're wrong), and it didn't occur to him that Armand had no reason in the world to obey, that Armand might be motivated to exact revenge on the person who'd set the bomb off, that Armand had spent two weeks with a psychic power drill held up to Daniels' temple right in front of him. And so that's where it's going to stay: behind the door, past which only Daniel and (unfortunately) Armand are privy to.
He exhales and internally shakes off the ill feeling. The idea of sharing anything about it, even with Louis, is just... strange. Daniel looks at him, small frown knit between his brows.
"How are you? Are you okay, with everything now?"
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A thing that will calcify, cement the sense of blame to underwrite the responsibility Louis had already assigned himself.
Whatever he might have said, whether or not Louis would have asked something more direct, swept aside by the question Daniel puts to him. Louis looks taken aback. Somehow, the last thing he'd expected.
"You're asking about me?"
Confused.
"I should be asked about you."
And he will. If they aren't going to talk about the act, they can hash out the aftermath.
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Louis doesn't know what it was like to be sick.
(Armand does.)
"I sent each of my kids a couple million, and I got to talk about censorship and extremism with Samuel Beckett via shoddy Zoom call. You had your whole life blown up, and you ran out before I could even ask if you were going to be okay."
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"You can't tell me he made it easy for you."
Not the way Louis would have, wanted to.
Maybe Armand made it a punishment. Maybe Armand made it a nightmare. Louis doesn't know. Daniel isn't saying.
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He looks at Louis.
What's easy? What does that mean? Growing up with immigrant parents terrified of genocide, being a hustler, being a drug addict, being the worst parent, being terminally ill, being tortured for weeks at a time? What's easy ever gotten him? But he thing is, he can say anything. He just isn't going to.
Behind tinted glasses, orange glints. Eerie.
"I'm fine, Louis. Don't rush me into hating it, okay? I've got a while, with any luck. Plenty of time to get miserable eventually."
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Louis had wanted to give him that. Time. The Gift, to make of it what he would.
A thought to be boxed away. What would Daniel do with it? What does it matter?
His thumb runs across Daniel's palm.
"I'm not rushing you into anything," Lous reassures. "I'm only sorry for how it happened. It's not what I wanted for you."
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"Don't do that," he says, sounding tired. Not unkind, but still. Gentle but firm to match the retrieval of his hand. "I don't blame you, it's not like that. But you did leave me with him. Those two things co-exist. So I can't— just, none of that. The what you wanted stuff."
It isn't true, and if it is, Daniel would almost find it worse. Louis what, wanted to make him a wrinkly old man vampire? How fucking ridiculous. Daniel is happier like this already, but it's definitely not ideal. The alternatives are all just even less ideal. At least in this reality, he gets superpowers and he doesn't hurt anymore.
"Besides, you might decide you're angry with me, when I tell you why I'm still London."
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Daniel doesn't want it, and so Louis puts it away. What use is it, what Louis would have offered? What he had wanted? Daniel doesn't want to hear him say it, and so Louis doesn't.
Daniel says, I don't blame you.
And Louis does not believe him.
This too, Louis holds in his chest. Lets the quiet settle before gamely asking, "Why are you still in London, Daniel?"
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Reckoning with Louis, wondering about how to manage his reactions and his feelings about it, is alien. This has nothing to do with you, he could say. Considers saying. Because while Armand might have had motivations surrounding Louis, Daniel's existence is his own.
It's just—
He doesn't want to be an asshole. Happens pretty often, though. Ask his exes. Ask his kids.
"They're helping me publish the book." He spreads his hands, shrugs. "Ten million and lighting my laptop on fire might have been okay if I was going to die in a few years, but I can't let it go, now."
He does not say Sorry. He would not mean it.
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Daniel can't let it go. He is taking Louis' life and publishing it.
Louis is quiet, eyes moving over Daniel's face. Taking in his eyes, the absence of familiar blue. Thinking of messages flung into a void, unanswered. Daniel's hand in his, in those last moments.
A shuttering in Louis' face, controlling the initial rush of emotion. He feels distance, and withholds in turn. Uncertain of them, of what connection has survived. Louis had left and had trusted Armand, and now this. Now they are here, and Daniel is telling him this without apology, without any give to the words.
Breaks the winding tension by stepping back, away. Circling a few paces from Daniel, gaze moving from him to the room.
Louis is still looking away from him as he asks, "Were you going to tell me?"
Or would it have simply been the book, released into the world?
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Flippant. Louis had signed over the rights already before Daniel even got to the penthouse. What was that going to look like, if he hadn't blown everything up? Was Armand only pretending to let it happen, waiting for Louis to look away before he killed the journalist then shrugged about the book never happening? Or was Louis going to do it himself, one last step to closure? He'd certainly been willing to hurt Daniel over the course of it.
He doesn't really think so. But it's a plot hole, to so speak, and with his maker AWOL, he can't ask the person who probably has the actual answer.
But—
"Of course I was going to tell you. That's probably why Traitor Agent Rashid ratted me out. The nerds didn't want me to."
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Something for later. This is about them, not the Talamasca. Not yet.
"I was never going to kill you," Louis answers. Easy honesty. Daniel has barred him from saying the rest, explaining the rest, so Louis leaves it there. Louis had always wanted Daniel to live, even when he didn't fully understand the whole of why.
How much to say to the rest? What he had wanted then, how much it had changed when Daniel had started digging? How much does it matter given what's been done now?
A breath, before asking, "Does it matter that I don't want you to publish it?"
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A beat, then—
"Sort of." What an awful answer. Daniel is aware, but his awareness doesn't help much. "Not enough to throw it out. Look, man, I only have so much time left to do this as Daniel Molloy. And this is going to change the world, the world that I'm now a part of on both sides. I can't just not go out there with the truth of it, not after all that. And that's what you wanted, too. This half-life under a rock thing fucking sucks. You wanted to throw the grenade into the shadows."
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It becomes something to weigh in a hand as he looks at Daniel and listens to this answer. The appeal behind it.
"It was different then."
Daniel should know. Daniel had pulled down the foundation upon which Louis had been standing on. Uncovered truth.
He hadn't known about Lestat. Hadn't known where the blame truly laid for Claudia's death. Whatever Louis had thought the story would shake free, it hadn't been that particular revelation.
An observation after, "But now things have changed for you."
That Daniel won't be swayed. He wants this book. He wants to take Louis's story and shake the world with it. What can Louis truly do to dissuade him, if his own preference for the story isn't enough?
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Very aware of that fact. He was there, after all. He saw it before Louis did, days before, maybe weeks before as soon as he got there, something rotten and fucked up and fake. If Daniel had been sicker, if he couldn't have come, Louis would still be stuck in a tower with Armand, playing house, having no opinions of his own, slowly wasting away.
Daniel doesn't want to say that. Doesn't want to say You owe me, because he hates that kind of shit, but it might be useful. Like he said, he does care— it's a personal kind of caring, because it's Louis.
But the story. He can't let go.
"Literal darkness is fine, for me. But figurative darkness isn't going to work."
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It is only a little like being cornered, backed in and caught. Things have changed. Louis hadn't expected the end of his own story to become a reveal, to exonerate Lestat, to break him from Armand. There had been something misaligned. Louis had known that. He'd known Daniel would find it.
He had thought it was a fracture, something that would realign. The scope of it—
No.
Louis puts contemplation of it away.
Swerves anyway, direct, asks, "Why didn't you call me, not them?"
Did Daniel think he wouldn't have come? That Louis wouldn't have helped him?
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A pause that goes on long enough to touch the edges of awkward, as he regards Louis, before he finally musters up:
"I wanted to deal with it and move on."
No, he does not think Louis would have come, while he was in the midst of a total nervous breakdown and fleeing back to Louisiana. He does not think Louis would have helped him, at least not right away, and certainly not in a style that Daniel could have tolerated at the time. Might still not be able to tolerate now. He understands that Louis's lack of attention is not because he doesn't care (probably), but that doesn't erase the fact that he simply wasn't there. That he let the door shut behind him and kept walking even as Armand drained all the blood out of Daniel's body.
He doesn't remember if he called out. But it doesn't matter. Louis either didn't hear, or wouldn't have anyway, no matter how close he was.
"You still haven't told me how you are. Though I should have pressed for an answer there before handing you another bomb, huh."
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