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.
And Louis watches him go, anxiety plain in his face now that Daniel's attention elsewhere. The churn of emotion doesn't ebb. Grief and guilt and anger and fear, washing together in his body. He left Daniel unprotected. It doesn't matter that he'd never have guessed that Armand would make a fledgling. Armand surprised him.
Louis hadn't been able to stop him.
But Daniel goes, and Louis straightens. Maybe has some similar animal instincts that balk at encroaching on what Armand has left for Daniel, hesitate over how many how much.
Remembers how much he had wanted, how the thirst had felt bottomless. Like it would swallow him. Like it would tear him apart if he didn't sate it. (Louis' gift, this prodigious hunger, this love of his prey.)
Stood there among blank-eyed humans, skimming their minds and finding nothing at all, Louis has the urge to press farther. Find Armand. Scream into his head.
He sinks his fangs into the throat of the nearest unresisting mortal instead. The man's life flows into Louise' mouth as he hangs limply from Louis' arms. (Shades of the tenor from so many years ago: a sweet life, a little sailboat, a father swinging him up into his arms.) Louis drains him down to nothing and lays him down. Feels the blood in his body. Listens to Daniel, still alive. Still here.
Drains a second mortal, the sweet-faced woman sat on the settee. (A little dog, a half-completed canvas on an easel, a woman turning in her arms beneath a white sheet.) Feels sick. Feels anger.
Louis leaves the rest. Practical, isn't it? Having prey that will make it easy for Daniel to learn. Crosses back into that blood-splattered bedroom, mouth painted red.
Daniel is horrified of his own reflection. Eyes he doesn't recognize, gore-covered. He does wash his face, and he stares too long at the blood that drains down the sink, leaving it stained faintly. He feels nauseous, but only for a second, and the hunger kicks in. A part of him he's unfamiliar with is aware of Louis and whoever else is out there — what Armand left — and it claws at his insides like a frantic wild animal.
Control slips away like blood into the drain. He holds a towel (patterned, delicately embroidered on the end), stands in the doorway back into the bedroom, and the world does something strange. It feels... euphoric, and terrible.
"I can feel myself losing it," he advises. To his own ears, he sounds far away. "Lost it already, I think. If I. Louis, if."
He can smell the blood. Taste it in the air. His eyes change again, green vanishing into yellow. Staring at himself from some spot high up, observing the interaction. Ears ringing.
A promise given softly, sincerely. Daniel has heard all of Louis' turning, listened to Louis describe that first kill.
Louis can spare him that, at least. Spare Daniel a clumsy, frenzied attempt at drinking down a human while out of his mind. What comes later, they can manage it together. What Daniel wishes to attempt. What sort of vampire he decides to be.
Louis takes the towel carefully from his hands.
"You won't hurt me," Louis promises, laying the towel aside. Reaches up to take Daniel's face into his hands. "Look at me. Can you hear my pulse?"
Too quick of an answer. Daniel is blinking too rapidly, pupils quickly dilating, fangs appearing in his mouth. He touches Louis, startles at the difference, having only become properly aware of the way his nails have changed while washing his face.
Yes turns out all he's capable of communicating. Stuck after that, knowing better than to try and struggle against Louis on a lizard-brain (monster-brain) level, but unable to formulate anything else. He's so fucking hungry. Everything in him is dead, made up of crumbled, burned paper, and if he doesn't get blood, he's going to turn to nothing but ash, even just standing here in the middle of the night.
Wrenching, to watch Daniel struggle. Louis had wanted to give this to him, to have made it easy. Something Daniel chose.
He can only make this easy. This, the sating of his hunger. Filter the blood through Louis, let Daniel have as much as he needs without leaving a corpse behind.
Fangs gleam in Daniel's mouth. Louis' heart aches. Says anyway, "Keep listening to it."
The sound of blood moving through his veins. His heart, steady, even as Louis uses a nail to slice open his wrist.
The sight of Louis maiming himself that way makes Daniel flinch — he's talked so much of all the times he's wanted to kill himself, the imagery is profound — and at the same time, it inspires hunger to reach up and choke him. Like yanking the steering wheel out of his own hands and putting it firmly into an instinct he's never known before.
Holding Louis' wrist in his hands, simultaneously cradling him carefully and clutching with ravenous desire. Reality moves too fast for Daniel to think about. Consciousness is buried away somewhere behind a brand new monster's wild desperation. Blood, in his mouth, around fangs he doesn't know how to use. It's like light painting his insides. He doesn't have the presence of mind to compare it to Armand's (different, insane, an incident he will spend years unpacking), too wrapped up in it.
Not just food. Life, pleasure, connection. Does he feel Louis? Too much, for right now. He drinks, and loses himself.
He saw it, the moment Daniel teetered past conscious choice. His fangs sink into Louis' wrist, fingers gripping Louis' bare forearm for purchase, and Louis can turn his hand only so much, just enough to touch the side of Daniel's face. Encouraging.
Louis feels Daniel. (Had Lestat felt Louis like this?) Louis is not Daniel's maker. The Gift has been given, and Louis is granting him nothing but nourishment after the fact. It's painful. But Daniel is drinking, is taking what he needs, and Louis will survive it. That is more important than anything else in this moment.
The connection it forges between them—
Louis' eyes are wet again. His freed hand hooks into the blood-sodden front of Daniel's shirt, reeling him closer so Louis might hold onto him. Murmur encouragement. Lays his hand at Daniel's nape, give over to the depth of connection between them.
There is the instinct to give everything, and then some. Let Daniel drain him to dregs and filter the remainder of Armand's offerings through his body once more. Take it all. Anything. Everything. It's what Louis owes him, wants still to give him.
Louis is not his maker. Should he have been? Daniel can see so much into him, and it washes over and through him right now, not coherent enough to sift through and read or make notes. It will come to shore later, his analytical mind will want to pin every little thing, but right now he's in a raging flood. He needs this or he'll die, an instinct tells him, and so he indulges, and takes more, and the ravenous maw with thousands of jagged teeth and a seductive whisper tells him to keep going.
In fiction, vampires are bats, and spirits, and wolves. This is something else, some other order of thing, demonic and angelic at once. Unearthly. Here-but-not.
And Louis—
The flinch at seeing him open his wrist comes back. It hits him, in the wave of feeling. Daniel won't drain him, he won't do this even if Louis is caught in a trap of despair. He recognizes that Louis is clinging onto him and has tears on his face, and he shifts, pulling his mouth away from his friend's wrist and grabbing at his side, then more, scrambling at him until he can hold him. Fierce and sorrowful but thankful.
Stay with me, he thinks, and he means here in this world on this plane of existence. Don't go. The thought echoes, out of his control, away from him and into Louis.
The sudden shock of detachment is jarring, jolts Louis in a full body shiver as if doused in ice water.
What had flowed between them? So many things. Assortments of memory, of deep affection, deep regret. All of it accessible to Daniel, beyond even the boundaries of what Daniel had wrung free of Louis in Dubai. All the rest, all that Louis did not speak of, it flows into Daniel's jaws.
And then stops. They stop.
Daniel holds him so tightly that Louis can do nothing but wrap arms around him in return. The wound is still bloody, a ring of teeth marks sunk in to the flesh of his wrist. It doesn't matter.
"I'm here," Louis promises, voice gone thick. "I won't leave you."
Doesn't occur that Daniel is seeking a promise beyond their immediate circumstances.
"The world is better for you being in it," Daniel tells him, clutching him close. "You don't have to give anything up. Just be here."
Maybe they're both shitty people when you get right down to it. Daniel who ruins marriages and children, who picks apart peoples lives; Louis exploited women, digs deep into capitalism, and now Daniel has joined him in being a blood-draining monster. But Daniel's world is better for Louis being here. He is a light, and for every harsh word and cruel trick they played on the other during the interview, for all the horror they survived one week in the past, Daniel might just fucking love him.
"I'll be okay. We'll be okay."
How, he's not sure yet. But Louis made it, and that gives Daniel hope.
Yes, Daniel will be okay. Louis knows this. There is steel in him, strength enough to survive the transformation. To weather the demands of vampiric life beyond this room, the mortals waiting insensate beyond the bedroom.
"I'm here," Louis promises, a soft repetition. "I ain't leaving you."
A promise skewing near to what he had once offered Claudia: As long as you walk the Earth, I'll never taste the fire, you understand me? Similar, but not the same. He and Daniel have suffered together, survived together. They are linked. They walk into rooms and emerge side by side. Daniel is alive. They will survive this too.
Louis is holding Daniel so tightly. His wound is healing, but not quickly enough to avoid trickles of blood soaking into the back of Daniel's shirt. Cradles Daniel's head, allows himself to shudder through the rush of relief, held in check while so much else demanded Louis' attention.
Daniel doesn't need a promise of togetherness, it's not really about him. He'll figure it out. He survived this long, drug addiction and his life being upended in divorce, kids when he didn't really want any, being fired over and fire. Being tortured for a fucking week. Armand. Louis, though, he worries about. Worries about feeling him, seeing his wrist like that. It shocks too close for him in this new and uneasy state, he feels too intensely.
But he can sense Louis' relief, and finds his own in how tightly they're clinging to each other. Louis doesn't feel like he's about to slip away over guilt. Fuck, this is ... a lot.
"This is—"
What is it? C'mon, Daniel, you're a writer.
"Fucking crazy," is what he ends up saying, teary laughter in his voice.
Though it doesn't quite compare. Lestat had rushed Louis, but he'd been present. He'd provided some kind of guide. He'd offered, Louis had accepted.
Daniel had none of that.
The guilt will come later. It waits, circling at the edges of Louis' mind, waylaid by all that requires his immediate attention. Holding on to Daniel, feeling his breathing, the lingering closeness that comes from Daniel's teeth in his skin.
"Do you need more?" softly, fingers playing gently with the curls at the nape of Daniel's neck. "Or do you need the blood washed away?"
No matter what happened after, Louis spoke with such reverence about his changing. He loved Lestat, he got at least the illusion of a choice. This seems fucking stupid in contrast, but Daniel's stubborn, he'll deal with it. Memories of 1973 were stranger— in a way, it's a relief to have this overwith, and stacking onto that, he's kind of annoyed that Armand didn't stick around so Daniel could yell at him.
Shit to think about later, when his head's not turning itself inside out.
"Probably both." Another weak laugh. Incredulous. "It doesn't... feel like hunger usually does."
Daniel's should have been better. Should have been a choice, should have been gentle. Should have been what Claudia had constructed once for Madeleine. Louis had been meditating on it, recalling how carefully he had caught her neck in his teeth.
Had thought of how gentle he would be with Daniel, who still wears the scars of Louis' fangs on his skin.
"It won't. We call it hunger, but it's something else," is a little lofty, even as Louis draws just slightly back. Cups Daniel's cheek with his hand. "Does it still burn you?"
Hunger so vast and overwhelming that it is like drowning. Like burning alive. Like suffocating.
His fingers hook into the front of Daniel's blood-sodden shirt. Remembers San Francisco. Daniel hooking off his own shirt, a single easy motion. Does he still move that way? Had age slowed him, and has that now been restored?
One of those jokes you see in tacky self-aware vampire fiction, about bloodlust. Oh, you're hungry? You're so hungry you have to murder people? I've wanted a sandwich before but not enough to kill somebody every night. But it doesn't feel like that at all. Louis' right, it's something else.
"It does. It is." But he doesn't feel as insane as he did before he drank from Louis. Not sure he wants to do it again, worrying too much about the despair he could feel in the other man. "I need to just— I need a minute, I think."
A glance down at his shirt, with Louis touching it. Gross. Great.
"I can change," he says. What else is there to do? "He supplemented my luggage like a considerate freak."
Unconsciously, Louis' fingers have undone one button, two, three. Nervous energy. Weeks and weeks of fear and worry, carried from country to country, and now here, where he is present but unable to do anything for Daniel. Louis can see him fed. Can be present. But he cannot take away what Daniel has lived through. Cannot make Daniel less of a vampire.
"Shower," Louis tells him softly. "Use hot water."
Daniel needs a minute. Louis understands this as, perhaps, his cue to step away.
He is finding that difficult.
"You'll feel better afterwards," is true. "You can feed again. We can decide what to do."
How much privacy had Armand given him? None, Louis would guess. So he owes Daniel this. A closed door. A few minutes.
Only it is very hard to convince the animal instinct kicking in the back of his head to let go.
Daniel doesn't need supernatural powers to see how strung out Louis is, and it's understandable. A large part of Daniel doesn't want to pull away either, even though he's still reeling from fucking everything. A week ago—
Months ago?
Doesn't matter. It's all different. He doesn't have the same priorities, he doesn't have the same life.
"Come here," he ends up saying, and pulls Louis into a hug again. A shuddered exhale, and he stays like that for a while. Longer than necessary, probably. His own nerves feel fried and tangled, and Louis' presence, despite being part of the aforementioned fucking everything, is grounding.
After a while, he brings his hands up to hold Louis' face, and looks at him. Silently checking in.
"Help me pick something out, yeah?"
A task to do besides sit and wait. Best he's got. Unless Louis wants to come scrub blood off of him, insert bleak laugh.
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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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Louis hadn't been able to stop him.
But Daniel goes, and Louis straightens. Maybe has some similar animal instincts that balk at encroaching on what Armand has left for Daniel, hesitate over how many how much.
Remembers how much he had wanted, how the thirst had felt bottomless. Like it would swallow him. Like it would tear him apart if he didn't sate it. (Louis' gift, this prodigious hunger, this love of his prey.)
Stood there among blank-eyed humans, skimming their minds and finding nothing at all, Louis has the urge to press farther. Find Armand. Scream into his head.
He sinks his fangs into the throat of the nearest unresisting mortal instead. The man's life flows into Louise' mouth as he hangs limply from Louis' arms. (Shades of the tenor from so many years ago: a sweet life, a little sailboat, a father swinging him up into his arms.) Louis drains him down to nothing and lays him down. Feels the blood in his body. Listens to Daniel, still alive. Still here.
Drains a second mortal, the sweet-faced woman sat on the settee. (A little dog, a half-completed canvas on an easel, a woman turning in her arms beneath a white sheet.) Feels sick. Feels anger.
Louis leaves the rest. Practical, isn't it? Having prey that will make it easy for Daniel to learn. Crosses back into that blood-splattered bedroom, mouth painted red.
"Daniel?"
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Control slips away like blood into the drain. He holds a towel (patterned, delicately embroidered on the end), stands in the doorway back into the bedroom, and the world does something strange. It feels... euphoric, and terrible.
"I can feel myself losing it," he advises. To his own ears, he sounds far away. "Lost it already, I think. If I. Louis, if."
He can smell the blood. Taste it in the air. His eyes change again, green vanishing into yellow. Staring at himself from some spot high up, observing the interaction. Ears ringing.
"You'll make me stop, right?"
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A promise given softly, sincerely. Daniel has heard all of Louis' turning, listened to Louis describe that first kill.
Louis can spare him that, at least. Spare Daniel a clumsy, frenzied attempt at drinking down a human while out of his mind. What comes later, they can manage it together. What Daniel wishes to attempt. What sort of vampire he decides to be.
Louis takes the towel carefully from his hands.
"You won't hurt me," Louis promises, laying the towel aside. Reaches up to take Daniel's face into his hands. "Look at me. Can you hear my pulse?"
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Too quick of an answer. Daniel is blinking too rapidly, pupils quickly dilating, fangs appearing in his mouth. He touches Louis, startles at the difference, having only become properly aware of the way his nails have changed while washing his face.
Yes turns out all he's capable of communicating. Stuck after that, knowing better than to try and struggle against Louis on a lizard-brain (monster-brain) level, but unable to formulate anything else. He's so fucking hungry. Everything in him is dead, made up of crumbled, burned paper, and if he doesn't get blood, he's going to turn to nothing but ash, even just standing here in the middle of the night.
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Wrenching, to watch Daniel struggle. Louis had wanted to give this to him, to have made it easy. Something Daniel chose.
He can only make this easy. This, the sating of his hunger. Filter the blood through Louis, let Daniel have as much as he needs without leaving a corpse behind.
Fangs gleam in Daniel's mouth. Louis' heart aches. Says anyway, "Keep listening to it."
The sound of blood moving through his veins. His heart, steady, even as Louis uses a nail to slice open his wrist.
"It's for you."
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Holding Louis' wrist in his hands, simultaneously cradling him carefully and clutching with ravenous desire. Reality moves too fast for Daniel to think about. Consciousness is buried away somewhere behind a brand new monster's wild desperation. Blood, in his mouth, around fangs he doesn't know how to use. It's like light painting his insides. He doesn't have the presence of mind to compare it to Armand's (different, insane, an incident he will spend years unpacking), too wrapped up in it.
Not just food. Life, pleasure, connection. Does he feel Louis? Too much, for right now. He drinks, and loses himself.
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Louis feels Daniel. (Had Lestat felt Louis like this?) Louis is not Daniel's maker. The Gift has been given, and Louis is granting him nothing but nourishment after the fact. It's painful. But Daniel is drinking, is taking what he needs, and Louis will survive it. That is more important than anything else in this moment.
The connection it forges between them—
Louis' eyes are wet again. His freed hand hooks into the blood-sodden front of Daniel's shirt, reeling him closer so Louis might hold onto him. Murmur encouragement. Lays his hand at Daniel's nape, give over to the depth of connection between them.
There is the instinct to give everything, and then some. Let Daniel drain him to dregs and filter the remainder of Armand's offerings through his body once more. Take it all. Anything. Everything. It's what Louis owes him, wants still to give him.
no subject
In fiction, vampires are bats, and spirits, and wolves. This is something else, some other order of thing, demonic and angelic at once. Unearthly. Here-but-not.
And Louis—
The flinch at seeing him open his wrist comes back. It hits him, in the wave of feeling. Daniel won't drain him, he won't do this even if Louis is caught in a trap of despair. He recognizes that Louis is clinging onto him and has tears on his face, and he shifts, pulling his mouth away from his friend's wrist and grabbing at his side, then more, scrambling at him until he can hold him. Fierce and sorrowful but thankful.
Stay with me, he thinks, and he means here in this world on this plane of existence. Don't go. The thought echoes, out of his control, away from him and into Louis.
no subject
What had flowed between them? So many things. Assortments of memory, of deep affection, deep regret. All of it accessible to Daniel, beyond even the boundaries of what Daniel had wrung free of Louis in Dubai. All the rest, all that Louis did not speak of, it flows into Daniel's jaws.
And then stops. They stop.
Daniel holds him so tightly that Louis can do nothing but wrap arms around him in return. The wound is still bloody, a ring of teeth marks sunk in to the flesh of his wrist. It doesn't matter.
"I'm here," Louis promises, voice gone thick. "I won't leave you."
Doesn't occur that Daniel is seeking a promise beyond their immediate circumstances.
no subject
Maybe they're both shitty people when you get right down to it. Daniel who ruins marriages and children, who picks apart peoples lives; Louis exploited women, digs deep into capitalism, and now Daniel has joined him in being a blood-draining monster. But Daniel's world is better for Louis being here. He is a light, and for every harsh word and cruel trick they played on the other during the interview, for all the horror they survived one week in the past, Daniel might just fucking love him.
"I'll be okay. We'll be okay."
How, he's not sure yet. But Louis made it, and that gives Daniel hope.
no subject
"I'm here," Louis promises, a soft repetition. "I ain't leaving you."
A promise skewing near to what he had once offered Claudia: As long as you walk the Earth, I'll never taste the fire, you understand me? Similar, but not the same. He and Daniel have suffered together, survived together. They are linked. They walk into rooms and emerge side by side. Daniel is alive. They will survive this too.
Louis is holding Daniel so tightly. His wound is healing, but not quickly enough to avoid trickles of blood soaking into the back of Daniel's shirt. Cradles Daniel's head, allows himself to shudder through the rush of relief, held in check while so much else demanded Louis' attention.
"You aren't doing this alone. I got you."
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But he can sense Louis' relief, and finds his own in how tightly they're clinging to each other. Louis doesn't feel like he's about to slip away over guilt. Fuck, this is ... a lot.
"This is—"
What is it? C'mon, Daniel, you're a writer.
"Fucking crazy," is what he ends up saying, teary laughter in his voice.
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Though it doesn't quite compare. Lestat had rushed Louis, but he'd been present. He'd provided some kind of guide. He'd offered, Louis had accepted.
Daniel had none of that.
The guilt will come later. It waits, circling at the edges of Louis' mind, waylaid by all that requires his immediate attention. Holding on to Daniel, feeling his breathing, the lingering closeness that comes from Daniel's teeth in his skin.
"Do you need more?" softly, fingers playing gently with the curls at the nape of Daniel's neck. "Or do you need the blood washed away?"
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No matter what happened after, Louis spoke with such reverence about his changing. He loved Lestat, he got at least the illusion of a choice. This seems fucking stupid in contrast, but Daniel's stubborn, he'll deal with it. Memories of 1973 were stranger— in a way, it's a relief to have this overwith, and stacking onto that, he's kind of annoyed that Armand didn't stick around so Daniel could yell at him.
Shit to think about later, when his head's not turning itself inside out.
"Probably both." Another weak laugh. Incredulous. "It doesn't... feel like hunger usually does."
Feels, again: fucking crazy.
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Had thought of how gentle he would be with Daniel, who still wears the scars of Louis' fangs on his skin.
"It won't. We call it hunger, but it's something else," is a little lofty, even as Louis draws just slightly back. Cups Daniel's cheek with his hand. "Does it still burn you?"
Hunger so vast and overwhelming that it is like drowning. Like burning alive. Like suffocating.
His fingers hook into the front of Daniel's blood-sodden shirt. Remembers San Francisco. Daniel hooking off his own shirt, a single easy motion. Does he still move that way? Had age slowed him, and has that now been restored?
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"It does. It is." But he doesn't feel as insane as he did before he drank from Louis. Not sure he wants to do it again, worrying too much about the despair he could feel in the other man. "I need to just— I need a minute, I think."
A glance down at his shirt, with Louis touching it. Gross. Great.
"I can change," he says. What else is there to do? "He supplemented my luggage like a considerate freak."
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"Shower," Louis tells him softly. "Use hot water."
Daniel needs a minute. Louis understands this as, perhaps, his cue to step away.
He is finding that difficult.
"You'll feel better afterwards," is true. "You can feed again. We can decide what to do."
How much privacy had Armand given him? None, Louis would guess. So he owes Daniel this. A closed door. A few minutes.
Only it is very hard to convince the animal instinct kicking in the back of his head to let go.
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Months ago?
Doesn't matter. It's all different. He doesn't have the same priorities, he doesn't have the same life.
"Come here," he ends up saying, and pulls Louis into a hug again. A shuddered exhale, and he stays like that for a while. Longer than necessary, probably. His own nerves feel fried and tangled, and Louis' presence, despite being part of the aforementioned fucking everything, is grounding.
After a while, he brings his hands up to hold Louis' face, and looks at him. Silently checking in.
"Help me pick something out, yeah?"
A task to do besides sit and wait. Best he's got. Unless Louis wants to come scrub blood off of him, insert bleak laugh.
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🎀 territory?? unless you had further desires