It takes Daniel a second to notice the red on Armand's face. Tears. His reddened eyes aren't just from increasingly erratic moments of stress; the vampire has been earnestly crying. Dread and adrenaline slice through him, realizing, and Armand watches him realize, and reaches to hold his face in his hands.
"Wait," Daniel says, but Armand doesn't.
He doesn't know how to scramble for Louis. His pulse kicks up, a surge of panic, Armand looming close, so close, and then—
Nothing, because Armand kicks Louis out.
It doesn't take long. Daniel's surprised. Doesn't know why. With the right injury, an adult human can bleed to death in a matter of minutes. This isn't getting stuck in the thigh and left to bleed out, though, and so minute becomes hours, for the whole ordeal. Which is still too short a span of time for Louis to search all of Venice and find him. But what would he do? Interrupt? Does it even work when it's half and half, the whole way? Or would Daniel just not take? He thinks about it, staring at a baroque ceiling in need of restoration; he thinks of not taking. But there's nothing for it. Armand is too old, too powerful. It takes like a sharp knife sinking in through the softest flesh, inescapable, smooth, fatal.
In the end, Armand just turns his phone on and texts Louis an address.
He leaves Daniel alone, barricaded in a bedroom, with several mortals waiting in the lounge area. Docile and glassy, they sit obediently where they've been told, no thoughts in their heads. Sacrifices as his last goodbye to a fledgling he hadn't even been able to look in the eye after.
As if they are all three of them back in that apartment. As if Louis hadn't thrown Armand through the wall. They are all three locked together again, and Louis can feel Daniel's fear, Daniel's panic, before Armand simply expels him. Doesn't matter how tightly Louis dug in to Daniel's mind. Armand wills it, and Louis is simply gone.
Left alone with his panic, his terror. The understanding of what Armand means to do and his own inability to stop it.
Armand's mind is closed to him. Daniel is an absence.
The address is a knife twist. Louis had been close.
The scent of him is still lingering in the room when Louis opens the door. Moving too fast, made single-minded by his panic.
"Daniel," like a plea.
Not a single mortal reacts. But they are not the only occupants of this place.
He sees different. Hears different. Disoriented and starving and in— pain? Not quite. He was. Daniel's head swims and he tries to right himself, looking for something still in a stormy sea. Intellectually, he understands what's happening, but actually feeling it is worlds different than hearing it described.
He hears his name, and recognizes—
"Louis?"
Fuck. He's glad he's already puked up blood all over himself.
Daniel is still in this back bedroom, collapsed between the bad and the far wall, but he makes himself get up. Woozy, everything spins. Processing everything so much faster than his brain is used to.
The door shudders open, yanked too hard. Louis moving too fast. Mortals abandoned in the front room, insensate and doomed, as Louis blurs towards Daniel's voice.
The scent of blood is so heavy in this room. Overwhelming, the mingling of Daniel's and Armand's. A fundamental shift in Daniel's scent, only one marker of what had been made clear to Louis the minute he'd opened the door.
"Daniel," sounds like a sob. Relief. Agony.
Louis tries almost instantly to reel that overwhelming flow of emotion back. Control himself.
"Daniel," again, hands catching and releasing and catching again, fretful points of contact as Louis tries to reassure himself, tries to avoid overwhelming Daniel. "Go slow. It's alright."
Louis moves so fast, but Daniel can see it. Not like when he would dart around, appearing in one place then the next like magic. His voice is richer, a different kind of reverberation finding Daniel's ears, almost painful. He is a thousand times more beautiful for the detail that Daniel can now see. He can smell him, a not-alive-not-dead thing, he can almost hear his heart.
"I'm sorry."
Sorrow. Shame. He didn't wait long enough, he couldn't find a way to talk Armand out of it. He'd asked for it at twenty, and he dismissed the mocking suggestion of it at seventy, but here he is. He should have just offed himself in a bathroom, or something. The worst of the transformation is over, but he feels on edge still, fucking crazy, a failure. He was already dying, already making end-of-life care plans, but a thousand little things suddenly overwhelm his head on the heels of the interview. Stupid. What does chewing gum taste like now? Did he look long enough at Venice in daylight?
It feels like a loss even though he was going to die anyway. Maybe it's just that Louis looks so fucking disappointed, and shattered. Daniel tries to steady him, but he's too unsteady, himself.
"No," Louis tells him, instant. Miserable. "No, Daniel."
Shattering too, hearing Daniel apologize. Apologize for being taken, dragged across the globe. Changed.
Between them, it's Louis who should be sorry. But what use is an apology? This can't be undone. Can't be rectified. Louis couldn't save him. He can take Daniel from this room, but it erases nothing.
And Daniel is covered in blood. Smells different. Eyes changed. Louis' hand lifts, a fretful slip of fingers across Daniel's neck. Seeking the scarring Louis left there, decades ago.
After a few failed attempts - nervous, everything is too different, even something as simple as moving his hands - Daniel manages to hold Louis a little, hands at his sides, like he's testing to see if he's actually here with him. He really hadn't expected anyone to come. Louis was the only potential, and he did come. He really did.
"I..."
How to even describe it. Daniel keeps blinking too fast, still adjusting. Pale blue-green eyes are darker now, denser, uncanny. Similar to Louis', but as he stands there they start to refract and turn amber. Reminiscent of the person who gave him the bite that's not visible on his neck. Armand had gone at the other side, as though the scar Louis left on him was too much of a condemnation to face. Still there, textured under Louis' fingers.
"Yes," is a whisper, unconscious agreement. Remembering.
But Louis had felt such joy. He remembers that. Lestat and him, laughing together. The moonlight catching in Lestat's hair, the blue of his eyes electric whenever their eyes met. They'd gone tearing through the night together. It had been all adrenaline and exultation and Louis' first staggering steps had been haphazardly shepherded along.
This is not anything like it.
An apology, choking Louis. Wanting to say over and over, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
"Sit," Louis coaxes instead. "You're half-finished."
Not quite true. The thing is done. Daniel is only acclimating to it. His body is only catching up. Daniel's eyes shifting and Louis' hands coming up to cup his face, watch the sharp flint-blue of them be swallowed by jeweled amber instead. Feels it like a loss.
"I think I already puked up half a spleen, is there more?"
As if the gothic romance vibes weren't already a lost cause. Too fast, all of it. Armand had only known what he was doing through textbook knowledge; Daniel saw, in the transfer of blood, that the too-old monster has no real memory of his own transformation besides pain. The last thing he'd said to Daniel, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head hung over, was You'll feel better now.
Fucking asshole.
Daniel doesn't know what his eyes are doing, can't see himself, obviously. Mood-ring bullshit, green-orange-yellow, shifting between a reflection of his own genetics and something borrowed.
But maybe there is nothing more. Maybe the strain of Armand hauling Daniel around the globe, whatever had passed between them in those long stretches where Louis could not hook into contact with them, couldn't get eyes on them, maybe that was enough to ease the transition. Louis had been young, healthy. There had been so much life to wring from his body.
But Daniel—
Maybe this is the only blessing. The only easy part of this.
Louis is already nudging him back towards the edge of the bed. Not letting go, only easing back.
"It's been..."
Too long. Too much time.
"Months," Louis answers. "I'm sorry," breaks loose at last, his chest cracking apart as he watches Daniel's eyes.
"My body has been dying," he says, sharp and brittle in response to the sledgehammer reminder that now he's cursed like this, some fucking old man, being tended to by an impossibly handsome 200 year old who could have been a supermodel if he were a youthful millennial. What a fucking joke, being seventy and suddenly becoming frozen in time.
Maybe more complaining would come, layers on layers of reality sinking in, but as he sits down he hears Months and it shocks him.
Months? He thought weeks. Nobody caught him in customs on any of these airports, nobody noticed he was gone, huh. Well that's. Kind of fucked, but not surprising. Louis only noticed because he called him.
Louis. Daniel looks at him, and his own face falls, seeing how sad the other man looks. He gets a hold of him again.
"Don't do that. Just don't. I shouldn't have called, I should have just let you move on. It's okay, alright? I'm okay."
A sharp shake of his head, dismissive. Louis won't hear this.
"You were right to call."
As Louis lowers himself too, until he is looking up into Daniel's face. He can't stomach the idea of it, of never knowing.
"I thought," goes nowhere, stops abruptly. Things Louis doesn't need to say because they only excuse him, won't be a comfort to Daniel. "I called," he says instead. "I missed you."
Did Daniel think he was so easily forgotten?
Louis pushes past the uncertainty of it, asking, "How do you feel?"
Hedging around the necessity of hunger. Of pain. Trying to gauge well-being when Louis has so little understanding of how Armand had done about this. Louis had wanted to make it near-painless. He had learned from Claudia, what it could be. He wanted that for Daniel, suspects it is no what came to pass.
That shocks him, too, and it shows on his face. Daniel really didn't expect to be missed. He understands why Louis left with such immediacy and never looked back, and doesn't hold it against him: Daniel blew his life up. It was the truth, it freed him, but it was still destructive. The kind of thing therapists would probably urge a slow introduction to. Instead, Daniel set an unpinned grenade on the table in front of him.
So it makes sense for Louis to have bailed, and it would have made sense to not care at all about Daniel after. He said his goodbyes, he lit his fucking laptop on fire (the guy who doesn't have a TV doesn't know about cloud storage), he maybe wired him some money. The end. Hearing him say he called, he missed him, makes red swim in Daniel's vision.
Red?
Christ.
"Disoriented. I don't know."
It's a lot. Daniel squeezes Louis' forearm where he's holding onto him, like a lifeline.
"Is this." Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. His voice cracks with emotion. "Is this really happening."
Daniel is bloody and disgusting and possibly minutes away from a fullblown starving newborn nightmare predator meltdown, but he cares more about Louis in this moment. He feels horrible for him, seeing that look on his face, knowing he feels responsible, knowing that Armand did this just to fuck with him.
A clumsy surge forward, arms around his shoulders. A messy hug, making Louis a mess too, but he doesn't know what else to do. For a minute he has nothing more than the ability to cling to him and try to take in a breath, finding himself not-quite-gasping. Strangled by emotion. Choked by it. Red over his own face, bloody tears, and he can feel and smell and taste the difference; everything is different, the way air feels in his throat, the pressure in his sinuses, the texture of fabric under his hands.
"I didn't think anyone would notice. Or show up." Finally, eking this out. Louis doesn't have to apologize. He came. He tried. "You kept me from losing it."
It's not enough. None of this is enough, because it still ended this way. Daniel, alone in a room covered in blood, changed.
Had Armand asked? Louis had wanted that for Daniel, a choice.
Daniel smells of so much blood. His own, Armand's. Louis holds him so tightly, a hand at the nape of his neck. Crying silently, hating himself for that too, because how dare any part of this be about Louis' regrets, his grief, his relief that Daniel is still breathing?
"I noticed," again, admission stripped of the self-pitying bullshit. Thinking Daniel was sick of vampires. Thinking Daniel was ignoring his calls. Foolish. Maybe if he'd been more suspicious sooner—
"I'm gonna stay," offered up to Daniel, thick-voiced. "We'll figure it out together, alright?"
Daniel holds him, trying to offer comfort as much as he's getting it back. A tremor shudders through him that feels different than the one he's been held captive by for years, and he thinks maybe he's going into shock. Stupid. Everything is spinning, but Louis is a still point to focus on.
"I couldn't have called any sooner anyway," he says with a huff of wry laughter. He'd tried to get away, but it was hopeless. Armand was a black hole. (Callback. It's brutal, to know everything Armand accused Daniel of in San Fransisco was projection. He can taste the ancient vampire's self-loathing, now.)
Hardly Daniel's fault. It was Louis. Louis' misjudgement. Louis' recklessness. Louis' misunderstanding.
Trusting Armand's revulsion so thoroughly that he had never even considered that Armand might do this. Might force the Gift on Daniel. The kidnapping, yes, but the rest—
"Don't be sorry," Louis repeats, fingers scraping slow through Daniel's curls. Breathes him in, blood and sweat, scent washed clean of the remnants of medication and illness. "This wasn't your fault."
Practicality has Louis measuring the necessity of the mortals waiting in the next room. Whether Daniel would feel better washed clean of blood first or if it wouldn't matter, given the inevitability of navigating that first meal.
Daniel weighs the shame-based instinct of wanting to be alone for humiliating circumstances, thinking of how screwed up he is, against the comfort of Louis being here and holding him. He should insist that he leave, but he can't make himself, even though he suspects he'll regret the lack of privacy later. There's no romance or familial yearning about this, just punishment.
But even as he thinks this, starts to become aware of the way wanting to withdraw is just a way to try and hide from the reality of what's happening, it starts to feel farther and farther away. A different feeling sweeps over him, an empty pit in his stomach that grows and starts making him feel weak.
Dying, after all? Is it rejecting him?
Daniel tries to ask Louis something and just makes a strange sound, disoriented. A sharp pain, gnawing on his insides. It's so different from how he recognizes hunger that it takes him a minute to realize that's what it is.
Daniel shudders back just enough to wrap his arms around himself, letting Louis go. Suddenly feeling like he might crawl out of his own skin, or do something out of his own control. His eyes are green again, but inhuman— shifting still, the color change more apparent on him than Armand, whose slides into yellow and red were less jarring, staring from amber.
"What?"
What. He can't. He can't. (Even though he might have fucking tried blood, when offered, but there was no way he was going to play into their weird game.)
Louis offers himself, and something in Daniel surges up to demand he say yes, demand he lunge forward. He can feel himself tremble. Do you want— too much of a question for him, for a mind that's starting to truly freak the fuck out.
Would Armand have touched Daniel's mind and lifted away the panic Louis can easily feel?
Maybe.
But Louis doesn't want to be Armand.
"You won't," Louis tells him, promises him. Easier to drink from Louis than to kill, because it would kill any of the mortals patiently waiting for their death in the next room. Louis would survive.
And whatever vampire Daniel intended to be, he could become it with a clearer mind.
It is weird to be able to feel everything again so vividly, when Armand had so often pacified him to get him to cooperate. (You'd hurt yourself if you fought, the ancient vampire had hissed at him on one flight, sitting so close to him, like he was fucking worried.) He's glad he can feel it all, though, even if it's fucking him up. He'd rather just know.
The monster that lives inside of him now — that is him now — is starting to scream, ears ringing, near panic at the idea that blood is being offered and he's not taking it. Daniel's considerable experience with managing cravings and fits is the only thing keeping him lucid. The part of his brain that could say I know you want more heroin today but we're going to have to go to work and make himself cooperate has survived transformation.
But even that's hanging on by a bare fucking thread.
"Alright." Alright. God help him. "How the fuck do I .. fucking do this."
A terrible moment to think of Claudia. To wish he had asked her, had time enough to ask her, how she had taught Madeleine.
Louis puts it aside.
They are here, in this room. Together. Daniel is hungry and he is afraid.
Louis wants this to be easy for him. His fingers are gentle at Daniel's cheek, watching the shift of color in Daniel's eyes.
"I'm going to go in the next room and drink what Armand has left for you."
Whether or not Daniel knows that Armand had, in his own way, tried to provide for him, Louis isn't inclined to lie.
"You're going to go wash the blood off your face," Louis tells him. As if that will make him feel better about what's to come. "And when you're done, I'll open a vein for you."
The rest will come. Louis is somewhere between impressed and worried that it hasn't already.
All of his precision is gone, in this state. Just huh, instead of being able to ask what the fuck Armand left for him, his mind racing faster than ever before yet going in circles, struggling to hold onto anything but hunger. Some horrible animal thing attempts anger, that Louis is going to go have something meant for him, like a predatory creature growling over a slain deer, and Daniel revolts against the feeling.
"Sure. Okay."
Wash his face. He must look like—
Jesus, who cares.
Daniel makes himself get up, unsteady in a way he's never been unsteady before, because everything about him is lighter, and there's no tremor making it difficult to find his center of gravity, and the pull of the earth seems to be less concerned with him. Eventually he'll realize this is because he's stronger, but right now, he just feels like he isn't real. Not nailed down correctly in reality.
A pause, distracted by the view out the window. Too dark to see anything out of, just a few hours ago. The water is a dozen deep jewel tones now. Eventually he starts moving again, one hand out in front of him like he might need to catch himself, not trusting his vision and the way it swims so vividly.
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"Wait," Daniel says, but Armand doesn't.
He doesn't know how to scramble for Louis. His pulse kicks up, a surge of panic, Armand looming close, so close, and then—
Nothing, because Armand kicks Louis out.
It doesn't take long. Daniel's surprised. Doesn't know why. With the right injury, an adult human can bleed to death in a matter of minutes. This isn't getting stuck in the thigh and left to bleed out, though, and so minute becomes hours, for the whole ordeal. Which is still too short a span of time for Louis to search all of Venice and find him. But what would he do? Interrupt? Does it even work when it's half and half, the whole way? Or would Daniel just not take? He thinks about it, staring at a baroque ceiling in need of restoration; he thinks of not taking. But there's nothing for it. Armand is too old, too powerful. It takes like a sharp knife sinking in through the softest flesh, inescapable, smooth, fatal.
In the end, Armand just turns his phone on and texts Louis an address.
He leaves Daniel alone, barricaded in a bedroom, with several mortals waiting in the lounge area. Docile and glassy, they sit obediently where they've been told, no thoughts in their heads. Sacrifices as his last goodbye to a fledgling he hadn't even been able to look in the eye after.
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As if they are all three of them back in that apartment. As if Louis hadn't thrown Armand through the wall. They are all three locked together again, and Louis can feel Daniel's fear, Daniel's panic, before Armand simply expels him. Doesn't matter how tightly Louis dug in to Daniel's mind. Armand wills it, and Louis is simply gone.
Left alone with his panic, his terror. The understanding of what Armand means to do and his own inability to stop it.
Armand's mind is closed to him. Daniel is an absence.
The address is a knife twist. Louis had been close.
The scent of him is still lingering in the room when Louis opens the door. Moving too fast, made single-minded by his panic.
"Daniel," like a plea.
Not a single mortal reacts. But they are not the only occupants of this place.
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He sees different. Hears different. Disoriented and starving and in— pain? Not quite. He was. Daniel's head swims and he tries to right himself, looking for something still in a stormy sea. Intellectually, he understands what's happening, but actually feeling it is worlds different than hearing it described.
He hears his name, and recognizes—
"Louis?"
Fuck. He's glad he's already puked up blood all over himself.
Daniel is still in this back bedroom, collapsed between the bad and the far wall, but he makes himself get up. Woozy, everything spins. Processing everything so much faster than his brain is used to.
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The scent of blood is so heavy in this room. Overwhelming, the mingling of Daniel's and Armand's. A fundamental shift in Daniel's scent, only one marker of what had been made clear to Louis the minute he'd opened the door.
"Daniel," sounds like a sob. Relief. Agony.
Louis tries almost instantly to reel that overwhelming flow of emotion back. Control himself.
"Daniel," again, hands catching and releasing and catching again, fretful points of contact as Louis tries to reassure himself, tries to avoid overwhelming Daniel. "Go slow. It's alright."
It isn't. Louis knows that it isn't.
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"I'm sorry."
Sorrow. Shame. He didn't wait long enough, he couldn't find a way to talk Armand out of it. He'd asked for it at twenty, and he dismissed the mocking suggestion of it at seventy, but here he is. He should have just offed himself in a bathroom, or something. The worst of the transformation is over, but he feels on edge still, fucking crazy, a failure. He was already dying, already making end-of-life care plans, but a thousand little things suddenly overwhelm his head on the heels of the interview. Stupid. What does chewing gum taste like now? Did he look long enough at Venice in daylight?
It feels like a loss even though he was going to die anyway. Maybe it's just that Louis looks so fucking disappointed, and shattered. Daniel tries to steady him, but he's too unsteady, himself.
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Shattering too, hearing Daniel apologize. Apologize for being taken, dragged across the globe. Changed.
Between them, it's Louis who should be sorry. But what use is an apology? This can't be undone. Can't be rectified. Louis couldn't save him. He can take Daniel from this room, but it erases nothing.
And Daniel is covered in blood. Smells different. Eyes changed. Louis' hand lifts, a fretful slip of fingers across Daniel's neck. Seeking the scarring Louis left there, decades ago.
"What do you feel?"
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"I..."
How to even describe it. Daniel keeps blinking too fast, still adjusting. Pale blue-green eyes are darker now, denser, uncanny. Similar to Louis', but as he stands there they start to refract and turn amber. Reminiscent of the person who gave him the bite that's not visible on his neck. Armand had gone at the other side, as though the scar Louis left on him was too much of a condemnation to face. Still there, textured under Louis' fingers.
"Everything."
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But Louis had felt such joy. He remembers that. Lestat and him, laughing together. The moonlight catching in Lestat's hair, the blue of his eyes electric whenever their eyes met. They'd gone tearing through the night together. It had been all adrenaline and exultation and Louis' first staggering steps had been haphazardly shepherded along.
This is not anything like it.
An apology, choking Louis. Wanting to say over and over, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
"Sit," Louis coaxes instead. "You're half-finished."
Not quite true. The thing is done. Daniel is only acclimating to it. His body is only catching up. Daniel's eyes shifting and Louis' hands coming up to cup his face, watch the sharp flint-blue of them be swallowed by jeweled amber instead. Feels it like a loss.
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As if the gothic romance vibes weren't already a lost cause. Too fast, all of it. Armand had only known what he was doing through textbook knowledge; Daniel saw, in the transfer of blood, that the too-old monster has no real memory of his own transformation besides pain. The last thing he'd said to Daniel, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head hung over, was You'll feel better now.
Fucking asshole.
Daniel doesn't know what his eyes are doing, can't see himself, obviously. Mood-ring bullshit, green-orange-yellow, shifting between a reflection of his own genetics and something borrowed.
"Are you okay? How long has it been?"
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But maybe there is nothing more. Maybe the strain of Armand hauling Daniel around the globe, whatever had passed between them in those long stretches where Louis could not hook into contact with them, couldn't get eyes on them, maybe that was enough to ease the transition. Louis had been young, healthy. There had been so much life to wring from his body.
But Daniel—
Maybe this is the only blessing. The only easy part of this.
Louis is already nudging him back towards the edge of the bed. Not letting go, only easing back.
"It's been..."
Too long. Too much time.
"Months," Louis answers. "I'm sorry," breaks loose at last, his chest cracking apart as he watches Daniel's eyes.
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Maybe more complaining would come, layers on layers of reality sinking in, but as he sits down he hears Months and it shocks him.
Months? He thought weeks. Nobody caught him in customs on any of these airports, nobody noticed he was gone, huh. Well that's. Kind of fucked, but not surprising. Louis only noticed because he called him.
Louis. Daniel looks at him, and his own face falls, seeing how sad the other man looks. He gets a hold of him again.
"Don't do that. Just don't. I shouldn't have called, I should have just let you move on. It's okay, alright? I'm okay."
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"You were right to call."
As Louis lowers himself too, until he is looking up into Daniel's face. He can't stomach the idea of it, of never knowing.
"I thought," goes nowhere, stops abruptly. Things Louis doesn't need to say because they only excuse him, won't be a comfort to Daniel. "I called," he says instead. "I missed you."
Did Daniel think he was so easily forgotten?
Louis pushes past the uncertainty of it, asking, "How do you feel?"
Hedging around the necessity of hunger. Of pain. Trying to gauge well-being when Louis has so little understanding of how Armand had done about this. Louis had wanted to make it near-painless. He had learned from Claudia, what it could be. He wanted that for Daniel, suspects it is no what came to pass.
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So it makes sense for Louis to have bailed, and it would have made sense to not care at all about Daniel after. He said his goodbyes, he lit his fucking laptop on fire (the guy who doesn't have a TV doesn't know about cloud storage), he maybe wired him some money. The end. Hearing him say he called, he missed him, makes red swim in Daniel's vision.
Red?
Christ.
"Disoriented. I don't know."
It's a lot. Daniel squeezes Louis' forearm where he's holding onto him, like a lifeline.
"Is this." Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. His voice cracks with emotion. "Is this really happening."
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It is unfair.
It is worse, perhaps, that Louis is crying. Tears sluice down his cheeks, a miserable reflection of that crack in Daniel's voice.
"I'm sorry," again, because it is happening. Because Louis cannot make it stop.
Louis had wanted to give Daniel a choice. But they are here now, and it doesn't matter what he'd intended.
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A clumsy surge forward, arms around his shoulders. A messy hug, making Louis a mess too, but he doesn't know what else to do. For a minute he has nothing more than the ability to cling to him and try to take in a breath, finding himself not-quite-gasping. Strangled by emotion. Choked by it. Red over his own face, bloody tears, and he can feel and smell and taste the difference; everything is different, the way air feels in his throat, the pressure in his sinuses, the texture of fabric under his hands.
"I didn't think anyone would notice. Or show up." Finally, eking this out. Louis doesn't have to apologize. He came. He tried. "You kept me from losing it."
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Had Armand asked? Louis had wanted that for Daniel, a choice.
Daniel smells of so much blood. His own, Armand's. Louis holds him so tightly, a hand at the nape of his neck. Crying silently, hating himself for that too, because how dare any part of this be about Louis' regrets, his grief, his relief that Daniel is still breathing?
"I noticed," again, admission stripped of the self-pitying bullshit. Thinking Daniel was sick of vampires. Thinking Daniel was ignoring his calls. Foolish. Maybe if he'd been more suspicious sooner—
"I'm gonna stay," offered up to Daniel, thick-voiced. "We'll figure it out together, alright?"
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"I couldn't have called any sooner anyway," he says with a huff of wry laughter. He'd tried to get away, but it was hopeless. Armand was a black hole. (Callback. It's brutal, to know everything Armand accused Daniel of in San Fransisco was projection. He can taste the ancient vampire's self-loathing, now.)
"Alright."
Alright.
"I'm still sorry. Fuck, Louis."
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Hardly Daniel's fault. It was Louis. Louis' misjudgement. Louis' recklessness. Louis' misunderstanding.
Trusting Armand's revulsion so thoroughly that he had never even considered that Armand might do this. Might force the Gift on Daniel. The kidnapping, yes, but the rest—
"Don't be sorry," Louis repeats, fingers scraping slow through Daniel's curls. Breathes him in, blood and sweat, scent washed clean of the remnants of medication and illness. "This wasn't your fault."
Practicality has Louis measuring the necessity of the mortals waiting in the next room. Whether Daniel would feel better washed clean of blood first or if it wouldn't matter, given the inevitability of navigating that first meal.
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But even as he thinks this, starts to become aware of the way wanting to withdraw is just a way to try and hide from the reality of what's happening, it starts to feel farther and farther away. A different feeling sweeps over him, an empty pit in his stomach that grows and starts making him feel weak.
Dying, after all? Is it rejecting him?
Daniel tries to ask Louis something and just makes a strange sound, disoriented. A sharp pain, gnawing on his insides. It's so different from how he recognizes hunger that it takes him a minute to realize that's what it is.
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No, Louis recognizes. Recognizes immediately the sound Daniel makes, what it signifies. What need it conveys.
"Look at me," as Louis draws back. Cups Daniel's face in his hands. "I know you're hungry."
Does Daniel even know that Armand left a handful of people for him? Humans made into meals?
"I can't make it easy," Louis whispers. Maybe it would be easy for Daniel someday, but the first time—
"Do you want to drink from me?"
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"What?"
What. He can't. He can't. (Even though he might have fucking tried blood, when offered, but there was no way he was going to play into their weird game.)
Louis offers himself, and something in Daniel surges up to demand he say yes, demand he lunge forward. He can feel himself tremble. Do you want— too much of a question for him, for a mind that's starting to truly freak the fuck out.
"I don't want to hurt you."
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Maybe.
But Louis doesn't want to be Armand.
"You won't," Louis tells him, promises him. Easier to drink from Louis than to kill, because it would kill any of the mortals patiently waiting for their death in the next room. Louis would survive.
And whatever vampire Daniel intended to be, he could become it with a clearer mind.
"Daniel," soft. Despairing. Worried. Entreating.
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The monster that lives inside of him now — that is him now — is starting to scream, ears ringing, near panic at the idea that blood is being offered and he's not taking it. Daniel's considerable experience with managing cravings and fits is the only thing keeping him lucid. The part of his brain that could say I know you want more heroin today but we're going to have to go to work and make himself cooperate has survived transformation.
But even that's hanging on by a bare fucking thread.
"Alright." Alright. God help him. "How the fuck do I .. fucking do this."
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Louis puts it aside.
They are here, in this room. Together. Daniel is hungry and he is afraid.
Louis wants this to be easy for him. His fingers are gentle at Daniel's cheek, watching the shift of color in Daniel's eyes.
"I'm going to go in the next room and drink what Armand has left for you."
Whether or not Daniel knows that Armand had, in his own way, tried to provide for him, Louis isn't inclined to lie.
"You're going to go wash the blood off your face," Louis tells him. As if that will make him feel better about what's to come. "And when you're done, I'll open a vein for you."
The rest will come. Louis is somewhere between impressed and worried that it hasn't already.
"Okay?"
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All of his precision is gone, in this state. Just huh, instead of being able to ask what the fuck Armand left for him, his mind racing faster than ever before yet going in circles, struggling to hold onto anything but hunger. Some horrible animal thing attempts anger, that Louis is going to go have something meant for him, like a predatory creature growling over a slain deer, and Daniel revolts against the feeling.
"Sure. Okay."
Wash his face. He must look like—
Jesus, who cares.
Daniel makes himself get up, unsteady in a way he's never been unsteady before, because everything about him is lighter, and there's no tremor making it difficult to find his center of gravity, and the pull of the earth seems to be less concerned with him. Eventually he'll realize this is because he's stronger, but right now, he just feels like he isn't real. Not nailed down correctly in reality.
A pause, distracted by the view out the window. Too dark to see anything out of, just a few hours ago. The water is a dozen deep jewel tones now. Eventually he starts moving again, one hand out in front of him like he might need to catch himself, not trusting his vision and the way it swims so vividly.
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🎀 territory?? unless you had further desires