No more clear blue-green, the strange density of a preternatural create has set in, occasionally shifting the way his maker's shift— ten times more obvious for him, starting from blueish, instead of Armand's deep amber. Daniel barely looked at himself in the mirror. Too surreal for now.
"Thanks." Wry. Blood seems like it's going to be a reoccurring theme, from now on. Speaking of: "Do you want a shirt?"
He's not sure how much transfer Louis got stuck with via sad hugs. He collects his change of clothes and goes to get dressed, still leaving the bathroom door partly open so they can talk.
"I have no idea what that word means," is almost a laugh. Better. "I feel sort of like I'm on acid. I'm distracted by the thought of— eating."
Eating.
"Am I going to go batshit crazy if I don't get something?"
What the fuck is wrong with Armand. (A lot. A lot of things that Daniel knows specifically, now.) Why did he do this? He pokes at the thing in his head, inelegant, but nothing happens; no return rush of feeling, no shift, no closure. A new phantom limb, in addition to everything else.
He re-appears, dressed and with one remaining towel that he rubs over his hair, glasses clipped to a shirt pocket. He doesn't seem to need them, suddenly, but it feels weird to discard them.
"You tasted miserable," he says bluntly. "Which of those options is going to make you feel the least like shit?"
Daniel can fucking cope, he's not the one with suicidal tendencies. He's the Actually I'm busy this weekend in the face of an eldritch monster coaxing him into sleep one.
Apology flexes across Louis' face, a slight grimace. Not regret, only worry. Daniel shouldn't have to account for Louis. For Louis' miseries, his private self-flagellation.
"It's not about me," Louis says frankly, though he isn't certain that's true. Maybe in the most immediate sense, this is not about Louis. But Daniel is a vampire. Armand had dragged him from their home, all across the world for weeks, had made Daniel write letters.
Maybe some part of it is about Louis.
But Louis is leaving that aside.
"It's about what you can live with," Louis cautions. "I want to make this easy for you."
And so had Armand, apparently. Louis is certain that's what those mind-broken mortals were meant for. An easy hunt. An easy first kill.
A fair bit of it is probably about Louis, even though Armand did not specifically say so. Daniel is hyper-aware of the fact that Louis had, in their stolen memories, made the survival of a junkie journalist a condition of their companionship. Cynicism (and a lot of logic) says this is purely about Armand trying to set up a return, and that Daniel is coincidental; he could be anyone. A 500 year old having a panicked tantrum in slow motion.
(Armand had explained himself, in bits and pieces, concerning the trial, but Daniel doesn't know how to feel about any of that. Maybe he'll relate those pieces to Louis sometime, but it feels like taking an axe to trauma, and so, maybe he won't.)
He considers saying something like What would be easy is clear guidance, but it feels pedantic. Daniel hadn't had a choice in transforming, but he has choices now. He should take the luxury while he has it.
"Do they have to die? Is it... am I not going to be able to stop? Are they going to be fucked up forever even if I do?"
It barely has time to register before Louis is taking Daniel by the hands. The lines are all blurry. Who is standing on ceremony now? They'd had something like professional boundaries, and now everything is in pieces.
Louis draws him down, coaxing Daniel to sit alongside him.
"I think Armand broke their minds. I think they will never be as they were. They are alive only to preserve their blood for you."
A guess. Armand has had hundred of years to hone his gift. Louis is outclassed. (They needn't invoke their own personal experience of Armand's gifts.)
Louis has not let go of his hand. He imparted his own story. He had relayed the things that had made sense to him, Lestat's tutelage, his personal experience. But Daniel asked.
"It is hard to take only a sip. It took me a long time to master."
To be safe enough that Damek is an employee rather than a corpse.
"You can learn to stop. But you're very new. Your hunger will be strong, and that will make it hard to stop while they are alive."
Daniel absorbs this, sat there, one hand clutching Louis'. Thinks about how dire being an accessory to murder in Dubai felt, watching Armand skip out of the tower to hunt down some idiot crypto kid, feeling nothing for the individual but leaning into the obligatory moral outrage. He'd done it several times over the course of the interview, and it was meaningless, because he was only using it as a tactic to prod the monsters whose house he was staying in.
What now? Those people aren't carefully curated, there's no way. Just random individuals with lives. Does he care? Is it worse if he doesn't? Was he a monster before, worse for not having an excuse? Daniel's other hand presses to his face, pinching either side of his eyes, tries to center himself through a long breath.
His hands don't shake. Steady.
"I'll just do it." Quiet. "You don't have to watch."
Louis has already pulled from some, he's said as much. He shouldn't have to cycle through more and feel like shit just for Daniel, just because Armand is an asshole.
Okay. Okay. He squeezes Louis' hand, tries to focus. Dead blood, right. All that.
Daniel stays where he is for a long moment, just getting his shit together. Coping with the things he can feel, and hear. Trying not to spiral thinking too hard about his future, his kids, getting back to New York without getting turned into a pile of ash. He needs to drink blood, and he needs to do it soon, or he'll go fucking bonkers.
Soon enough: they're out in the other room, and Daniel is contending with the sight of people Armand left. A strange feeling lances through him, perverse relief that they aren't tied up and terrified. The ancient vampire must have lobotomized them— Louis can probably hear the ragged thought, bordering on hysterical, Is this how I looked in that fucking apartment?
Daniel survived San Fransisco, these people aren't surviving Venice. Bad luck.
He's going to say something. Ask a philosophical question. Work it out. At the very least, point out it was stupid to put a clean shirt on before this. It flies out of his head, and he's not thinking, there's nothing, nothing but fangs in flesh and blood on his tongue, hot and horrible and alive.
That thought hooks in Louis' head. San Francisco. Daniel, pale and bloody, face blank while Louis stood at the window.
(What Louis looked like? Like Daniel? Had there been any difference?)
But San Francisco is pushed from Louis' mind as Daniel falls to drinking. Louis remembers it. Remembers how desperate he had been. How inelegant he had been, scrabbling across the hardwood, biting for veins.
The mortal doesn't struggle. Daniel's mind is a blank, plunged into the necessity of feeding. Impenetrable, in a way. Louis allows himself to be drawn in alongside Daniel, fingers trailing across Daniel's shoulders. Grazes bare skin at the nape of his neck as Louis sinks into his mind.
Louis can feel the mortal going, going. Life draining away. The echoing taste of blood rich in Daniel's mouth, an absence on Louis' tongue. Louis' fingers slipping through Daniel's hair, soft silver beneath his palm as Louis reaches to temper that grasping urge towards the last drops.
The drive to consume is too overwhelming to notice anything about the person he's killing— flashes he pays no mind to, they could be anything, skimming past him like spots in the distance on the highway. He gave a fuck about Louis, and that made it different. Daniel doesn't care about these people and just wants to get it overwith. That it feels good, filling him in an unearthly way, is something he can process later.
Louis' hand on him, strange, surreal. That soft voice in his head jolts him and he feels embarrassed about it for a moment, pulling away and—
Whatever he might have thought (laughing at him to put his shirt back on in '73, a mocking offer months ago) is gone, staring down at a person who he has now killed. The man - a human, a mortal, something Daniel isn't anymore - is fading away, greyish already. How much fucking blood did he have to take, to make someone lose color?
One person left, still alive. They sit there and see nothing, like a reformatted drive, blank. Daniel is more aware this time as he pushes their head back and leans down, but wishes he wasn't.
Louis would have drunk down four if he could have, that first night. He's drunk thousands since.
His fingers remain, Louis drawn along in Daniel's wake as he sinks teeth into the throat of this last mortal. Fingertips running along his scalp, grounding. Anchoring.
I'm here, whispers in the back of his head. Stay with me.
Drawing Daniel's attention, a step back from the life dwindling away between his jaws.
The last person drops and Daniel staggers back, this time feeling more sparks of their life— dull, bitter, a middling career in tourism customer service, a relationship that never resulted in marriage, a horrible feeling of a lifetime wasted and then, finally, a calming call to rest. The satisfaction of Finally, this rolls into him and Daniel can't help but feel an echo of it, even as something else takes over.
Fuck you, Armand.
Louis' hand on him feels crazy. All of this is making him cognizant of how long it's been since anyone's touched him in a way that hasn't been medical, or, recently thanks to Armand, gently threatening. He blames the resentful misery of this last victim.
Too many fucking emotions. He's dead, he's not dead, this can't be happening, this is very much happening.
Staring down at four bodies, the final one shivering their last. Blood on his mouth, a bit on the shirt, but it's not so bad. Too hungry to let anything go to waste. At least he feels more grounded, now, the thing inside of him demanding more, now, more, has shut up. He can still sense it, a creature that's grafted into himself like a fucked up horror movie monster, but it's been temporarily tamed.
"Okay."
Okay??? Tries again.
"Okay." A breath. "I have a question, and I want to preface it with saying that I don't want to, and that I'm asking from a purely practical standpoint, considering the logistics and morals of it all. Given that there's no fucking reason to have turned me into a vampire, and how many people I will apparently have to eat, and there's apparently thousands more vampires around today than at any time in history— should I just torch myself? Or sit in a locked room and starve? I was dying anyway. I had a lot set up to just go."
Again, he doesn't want to, but it might be a decent fuck you to Armand. Oh yeah, jerk?
That was, probably (certainly), a question that shouldn't be posed to Louis, but Daniel doesn't have anyone else. He meant it, he doesn't want to, and yet there is a vicious self-loathing kind of practicality that puts the option on the table. It wouldn't be a heroic sacrifice, Daniel Molloy is not the type, but it would solve a swathe of problems that seem beyond overwhelming from his current vantage point.
Louis touches him again, sounds so shattered. It makes Daniel feel cared for in a way he hasn't in decades, but there's also a contrary part of him that's— you know, like, hey, you didn't even consider that from a logical standpoint.
Death has not changed him from being a weird asshole, apparently.
But Daniel makes himself crawl up out of his own bleak pragmatism, and reaches out to rest his hands on Louis' sides.
"Alright. Alright, Louis. I'm not going anywhere."
A moment where Louis simply looks back at him. Studying Daniel's face, fear in his own expression ebbing slowly into something near to relief. Breathes out.
In the coming days, weeks, he'll turn Daniel's question over and over in his head. In the moment though, Daniel touches him, and it is steadying. Eases the panic the had risen in him at the thought of Daniel walking into the sunlight.
"Stay," he repeats, soft. "We can figure all of it out, together."
Vampirism. The demands it was going to make of Daniel. How he'd answer them.
—Sounds a little lost, but sincere. Not his problem-causing Yeah.
Standing in a room, holding on to each other, surrounded by bodies. How much money has Louis blown, chasing after him? Where the fuck is Armand? What is he going to say to his kids? Is he ever going to see them again? (Does he care?)
"Do we... put these in a vat of acid, or some other horror film shit?"
It's Venice, though, maybe they just go out the window into the canal.
Louis' thumbs stroke over and over Daniel's cheeks. Smooth away the traces of blood. Find reassurance in the warmth of him, breathing and alive, caught up between Louis' hands.
"I'll take care of it."
Penance, maybe, for the number of bodies Armand dealt with on Louis' behalf. His turn now, to clean up.
"I'm not so far out of practice that it's beyond me."
Unfortunate facts, and please. Shit has to get way more traumatic than dying for Daniel Molloy to not want to know something. There's no fucking way Louis' going to magic anything else away while Daniel sits quietly in the other room.
So. The clean up.
Having something to do, no matter how gruesome, centers him. A project to work on, take mental notes on, even as he occasionally spaces out due to sensory overload, or looks spooked because his hands are steady and it's starting to sink in how much pain he isn't in anymore. Neurons repairing themselves, or the elusive, half-theoretical lifelong neurogenesis is happening now, erasing or otherwise outpacing the flawed ones. Armand gave Daniel his blood instead of medication, while they were traveling, and maybe it kept Daniel slightly more stable than nothing, but it hadn't healed him like this. A mortal can't properly benefit from death. The damned work best with the damned.
By the time they're finished he's nearing the ability to say I'm okay and mean it.
Rote work, for Louis. He is practiced still, even if it has been long decades since he cleaned up after his own meals. His patient, gentle direction guides Daniel through the most immediate aspects of the process. Wrapping, tying, obscuring. Corpses vanishing into rolled carpet and bedding, explanation and advice given while sending a handful of text messages. Security cameras, service lifts, all things Louis' staff knows to manage and Louis imparts to Daniel for whenever he might need to manage the process alone.
Which does beg the question—
"Whatever you want," is the truth, even if it sounds regretful in Louis' mouth.
He knows what he wants. To stay near to Daniel. Never let him out of sight again, never endure the frantic search while he slips farther and farther away.
They could go to Dubai. They could go to the States. They could go anywhere.
"You'll need to sleep," is true too. "And eat again before any prolonged travel."
Softer: "I would pay your ticket, wherever you wished to go."
Because Please stay close sticks in his throat. Uncertain. What does Daniel want? To never see Louis again? To go be a vampire where it pleases him, keep his own company?
The idea of home feels daunting. His apartment is far from sun-proof. What if he shows up thirty minutes before dawn? He's got blackout curtains, but how good are they? Has his editor reported him missing? Fucking declared him dead? Has anyone besides Louis noticed? Should he just 'die' now, or go work on the book?
Because
he's still going to write the book. Obviously.
The impression he got is that Louis is no longer as enthusiastic about the idea of publishing it (the whole laptop fire and whore number thing), but yeah, no, he's not complying with that, and figures Louis owes him for leaving him with Armand anyway, so it's fine. They'll be even.
Speaking of Louis, Daniel looks at him, and wonders if the longing he thinks he hears in him is imaginary, or... fucking mind reading. What's that about.
"What if I wanted you to keep me company for a while because I'm fucking lost?"
A perk for Daniel, perhaps, is first hand experience of the way Louis shields his mind.
Which is to say, rarely. Which is to say, with only Daniel in the room, not at all.
Maybe it will come to Louis in time. Recall that Daniel is a vampire. Recall that Daniel is a reporter. But in the moment, it is as open as Louis' face, looking at Daniel as he asks this thing. The Yes forms there before Louis says:
"I'll stay as long as you like."
Maybe there are better choices for touchstones, for teachers, than Louis. Louis who is newly returned to the world. Louis, who had been sequestered for decades.
Louis, who Daniel is intimately aware has been far from an adept vampire.
It's fine. They have Lestat for all that Louis is incapable of.
"I want to stay," Louis amends. Before Daniel can second-guess him.
It's going to take a while for Daniel to really understand what he's experiencing, in his head. The feelings and senses manifesting in him now are indistinguishable from being able to read Louis in a new way, particularly while he's still half-grappling with half-willfully ignoring the fact that he can feel Armand in his head.
He doesn't know why - he's not a touchy person, neither is Louis, he doesn't think - but he reaches out and grabs the other man's hand again.
Not totally to support the older vampire. Daniel is also freefalling a little still.
"Let's get the fuck out of here first, then."
Staying can come after. Daniel crams everything he has left into his abused suitcase, startles a little at picking it up (! weighs nothing ? cool), and then they can just... get out, and away, and he will try not to stop every three feet and stare up at the sky or out at the ocean.
Louis does not relinquish his hold on Daniel's hand. The link of contact remains, soothing the fretful anxiety that Daniel might vanish. That Armand will simply take him, play keep away as effectively as he had before.
They've walked a little ways before Louis asks him, "Would you like to go back to New York?"
It would make sense to Louis, who couldn't bring himself to leave New Orleans for thirty years. May never have left New Orleans, if it had gone differently with Lestat then.
May go back still, because Lestat is in New Orleans. Might intend to stay in New Orleans, if not in the waterlogged cottage.
"I have to, if not immediately, then sooner rather than later. Even if only to get my shit out of the mail room."
Because Armand sent everything back there, apparently. Bought him a different suitcase and clothes on the fly. He's not one hundred percent sure what all is in the shit that Armand (allegedly) sent off to his Brooklyn apartment— the ruins of his laptop, at least, but who knows what else. A part of him is itching to know. Did Armand post a dead cat in there? It could be fucking anything, the guy's got every mental illness known to humanity and probably a few extra ones no clinician has ever been confronted with.
"I don't think New Orleans is practical," he says. "I know you're an almost-billionaire, but the infrastructure from flooding and bad politics basically ensures you're exposed or stuck on a floating piece of driftwood at high noon within a year."
No awareness of where he picked up thoughts about New Orleans from, or that Louis hasn't said any of that out loud. Has not quite fished out Lestat, but they aren't talking about people, they're talking about where to go.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"Thanks." Wry. Blood seems like it's going to be a reoccurring theme, from now on. Speaking of: "Do you want a shirt?"
He's not sure how much transfer Louis got stuck with via sad hugs. He collects his change of clothes and goes to get dressed, still leaving the bathroom door partly open so they can talk.
"I have no idea what that word means," is almost a laugh. Better. "I feel sort of like I'm on acid. I'm distracted by the thought of— eating."
Eating.
"Am I going to go batshit crazy if I don't get something?"
no subject
Maybe. Less an objection to the splotches of blood on his own, more of a balm for the inevitability of Daniel's scent on the fabric.
Louis gives himself time to turn it over. Listens to Daniel shedding towels, dressing himself. Considers the question.
"Maybe," he admits. "You'll need to drink often, these first days."
And Daniel knows everything about what it was like for Louis at the start. About the tractor salesman. About Louis' reluctance.
"I don't mind, Daniel. If you'd prefer to drink from me until it's more manageable."
Until Daniel can better control the fate of his prey. Decide to take a life, rather than his hunger dictating what comes of their meals.
"He left others. Enough to blunt the worst of it for now."
What did it matter, what Daniel could glean from Louis in the process? Daniel has everything already. All that he is, it's already in Daniels hands.
"Or we can try together. If you like."
no subject
What the fuck is wrong with Armand. (A lot. A lot of things that Daniel knows specifically, now.) Why did he do this? He pokes at the thing in his head, inelegant, but nothing happens; no return rush of feeling, no shift, no closure. A new phantom limb, in addition to everything else.
He re-appears, dressed and with one remaining towel that he rubs over his hair, glasses clipped to a shirt pocket. He doesn't seem to need them, suddenly, but it feels weird to discard them.
"You tasted miserable," he says bluntly. "Which of those options is going to make you feel the least like shit?"
Daniel can fucking cope, he's not the one with suicidal tendencies. He's the Actually I'm busy this weekend in the face of an eldritch monster coaxing him into sleep one.
no subject
"It's not about me," Louis says frankly, though he isn't certain that's true. Maybe in the most immediate sense, this is not about Louis. But Daniel is a vampire. Armand had dragged him from their home, all across the world for weeks, had made Daniel write letters.
Maybe some part of it is about Louis.
But Louis is leaving that aside.
"It's about what you can live with," Louis cautions. "I want to make this easy for you."
And so had Armand, apparently. Louis is certain that's what those mind-broken mortals were meant for. An easy hunt. An easy first kill.
no subject
(Armand had explained himself, in bits and pieces, concerning the trial, but Daniel doesn't know how to feel about any of that. Maybe he'll relate those pieces to Louis sometime, but it feels like taking an axe to trauma, and so, maybe he won't.)
He considers saying something like What would be easy is clear guidance, but it feels pedantic. Daniel hadn't had a choice in transforming, but he has choices now. He should take the luxury while he has it.
"Do they have to die? Is it... am I not going to be able to stop? Are they going to be fucked up forever even if I do?"
no subject
It barely has time to register before Louis is taking Daniel by the hands. The lines are all blurry. Who is standing on ceremony now? They'd had something like professional boundaries, and now everything is in pieces.
Louis draws him down, coaxing Daniel to sit alongside him.
"I think Armand broke their minds. I think they will never be as they were. They are alive only to preserve their blood for you."
A guess. Armand has had hundred of years to hone his gift. Louis is outclassed. (They needn't invoke their own personal experience of Armand's gifts.)
Louis has not let go of his hand. He imparted his own story. He had relayed the things that had made sense to him, Lestat's tutelage, his personal experience. But Daniel asked.
"It is hard to take only a sip. It took me a long time to master."
To be safe enough that Damek is an employee rather than a corpse.
"You can learn to stop. But you're very new. Your hunger will be strong, and that will make it hard to stop while they are alive."
Does not add: I'm sorry.
no subject
What now? Those people aren't carefully curated, there's no way. Just random individuals with lives. Does he care? Is it worse if he doesn't? Was he a monster before, worse for not having an excuse? Daniel's other hand presses to his face, pinching either side of his eyes, tries to center himself through a long breath.
His hands don't shake. Steady.
"I'll just do it." Quiet. "You don't have to watch."
Louis has already pulled from some, he's said as much. He shouldn't have to cycle through more and feel like shit just for Daniel, just because Armand is an asshole.
no subject
Just as Louis doesn't have to be here at all. Didn't have to chase after Daniel. Didn't have to stay once Daniel was found.
His fingers lace through Daniel's.
"I want to be there with you," Louis murmurs. "I'll pull you back."
The mortals were there to drink, but Louis can make himself a tether. Keep Daniel from drowning.
no subject
Daniel stays where he is for a long moment, just getting his shit together. Coping with the things he can feel, and hear. Trying not to spiral thinking too hard about his future, his kids, getting back to New York without getting turned into a pile of ash. He needs to drink blood, and he needs to do it soon, or he'll go fucking bonkers.
Soon enough: they're out in the other room, and Daniel is contending with the sight of people Armand left. A strange feeling lances through him, perverse relief that they aren't tied up and terrified. The ancient vampire must have lobotomized them— Louis can probably hear the ragged thought, bordering on hysterical, Is this how I looked in that fucking apartment?
Daniel survived San Fransisco, these people aren't surviving Venice. Bad luck.
He's going to say something. Ask a philosophical question. Work it out. At the very least, point out it was stupid to put a clean shirt on before this. It flies out of his head, and he's not thinking, there's nothing, nothing but fangs in flesh and blood on his tongue, hot and horrible and alive.
no subject
(What Louis looked like? Like Daniel? Had there been any difference?)
But San Francisco is pushed from Louis' mind as Daniel falls to drinking. Louis remembers it. Remembers how desperate he had been. How inelegant he had been, scrabbling across the hardwood, biting for veins.
The mortal doesn't struggle. Daniel's mind is a blank, plunged into the necessity of feeding. Impenetrable, in a way. Louis allows himself to be drawn in alongside Daniel, fingers trailing across Daniel's shoulders. Grazes bare skin at the nape of his neck as Louis sinks into his mind.
Louis can feel the mortal going, going. Life draining away. The echoing taste of blood rich in Daniel's mouth, an absence on Louis' tongue. Louis' fingers slipping through Daniel's hair, soft silver beneath his palm as Louis reaches to temper that grasping urge towards the last drops.
Daniel, comes as a murmur. On to the next now.
no subject
Louis' hand on him, strange, surreal. That soft voice in his head jolts him and he feels embarrassed about it for a moment, pulling away and—
Whatever he might have thought (laughing at him to put his shirt back on in '73, a mocking offer months ago) is gone, staring down at a person who he has now killed. The man - a human, a mortal, something Daniel isn't anymore - is fading away, greyish already. How much fucking blood did he have to take, to make someone lose color?
One person left, still alive. They sit there and see nothing, like a reformatted drive, blank. Daniel is more aware this time as he pushes their head back and leans down, but wishes he wasn't.
no subject
Louis would have drunk down four if he could have, that first night. He's drunk thousands since.
His fingers remain, Louis drawn along in Daniel's wake as he sinks teeth into the throat of this last mortal. Fingertips running along his scalp, grounding. Anchoring.
I'm here, whispers in the back of his head. Stay with me.
Drawing Daniel's attention, a step back from the life dwindling away between his jaws.
no subject
Fuck you, Armand.
Louis' hand on him feels crazy. All of this is making him cognizant of how long it's been since anyone's touched him in a way that hasn't been medical, or, recently thanks to Armand, gently threatening. He blames the resentful misery of this last victim.
Too many fucking emotions. He's dead, he's not dead, this can't be happening, this is very much happening.
Staring down at four bodies, the final one shivering their last. Blood on his mouth, a bit on the shirt, but it's not so bad. Too hungry to let anything go to waste. At least he feels more grounded, now, the thing inside of him demanding more, now, more, has shut up. He can still sense it, a creature that's grafted into himself like a fucked up horror movie monster, but it's been temporarily tamed.
"Okay."
Okay??? Tries again.
"Okay." A breath. "I have a question, and I want to preface it with saying that I don't want to, and that I'm asking from a purely practical standpoint, considering the logistics and morals of it all. Given that there's no fucking reason to have turned me into a vampire, and how many people I will apparently have to eat, and there's apparently thousands more vampires around today than at any time in history— should I just torch myself? Or sit in a locked room and starve? I was dying anyway. I had a lot set up to just go."
Again, he doesn't want to, but it might be a decent fuck you to Armand. Oh yeah, jerk?
no subject
And Daniel says this thing. Asks this question.
Louis' whole body flinches away from what he invokes.
"No," is so raw. Louis reaches for him again, hands lifting to bracket Daniel's face. "No, Daniel."
Thumb at the corner of Daniel's mouth, over that smear of blood. Holding on.
"Don't go."
no subject
Louis touches him again, sounds so shattered. It makes Daniel feel cared for in a way he hasn't in decades, but there's also a contrary part of him that's— you know, like, hey, you didn't even consider that from a logical standpoint.
Death has not changed him from being a weird asshole, apparently.
But Daniel makes himself crawl up out of his own bleak pragmatism, and reaches out to rest his hands on Louis' sides.
"Alright. Alright, Louis. I'm not going anywhere."
no subject
In the coming days, weeks, he'll turn Daniel's question over and over in his head. In the moment though, Daniel touches him, and it is steadying. Eases the panic the had risen in him at the thought of Daniel walking into the sunlight.
"Stay," he repeats, soft. "We can figure all of it out, together."
Vampirism. The demands it was going to make of Daniel. How he'd answer them.
no subject
—Sounds a little lost, but sincere. Not his problem-causing Yeah.
Standing in a room, holding on to each other, surrounded by bodies. How much money has Louis blown, chasing after him? Where the fuck is Armand? What is he going to say to his kids? Is he ever going to see them again? (Does he care?)
"Do we... put these in a vat of acid, or some other horror film shit?"
It's Venice, though, maybe they just go out the window into the canal.
no subject
Louis' thumbs stroke over and over Daniel's cheeks. Smooth away the traces of blood. Find reassurance in the warmth of him, breathing and alive, caught up between Louis' hands.
"I'll take care of it."
Penance, maybe, for the number of bodies Armand dealt with on Louis' behalf. His turn now, to clean up.
"I'm not so far out of practice that it's beyond me."
no subject
Unfortunate facts, and please. Shit has to get way more traumatic than dying for Daniel Molloy to not want to know something. There's no fucking way Louis' going to magic anything else away while Daniel sits quietly in the other room.
So. The clean up.
Having something to do, no matter how gruesome, centers him. A project to work on, take mental notes on, even as he occasionally spaces out due to sensory overload, or looks spooked because his hands are steady and it's starting to sink in how much pain he isn't in anymore. Neurons repairing themselves, or the elusive, half-theoretical lifelong neurogenesis is happening now, erasing or otherwise outpacing the flawed ones. Armand gave Daniel his blood instead of medication, while they were traveling, and maybe it kept Daniel slightly more stable than nothing, but it hadn't healed him like this. A mortal can't properly benefit from death. The damned work best with the damned.
By the time they're finished he's nearing the ability to say I'm okay and mean it.
A deep breath.
"What now?"
no subject
Which does beg the question—
"Whatever you want," is the truth, even if it sounds regretful in Louis' mouth.
He knows what he wants. To stay near to Daniel. Never let him out of sight again, never endure the frantic search while he slips farther and farther away.
They could go to Dubai. They could go to the States. They could go anywhere.
"You'll need to sleep," is true too. "And eat again before any prolonged travel."
Softer: "I would pay your ticket, wherever you wished to go."
Because Please stay close sticks in his throat. Uncertain. What does Daniel want? To never see Louis again? To go be a vampire where it pleases him, keep his own company?
no subject
The idea of home feels daunting. His apartment is far from sun-proof. What if he shows up thirty minutes before dawn? He's got blackout curtains, but how good are they? Has his editor reported him missing? Fucking declared him dead? Has anyone besides Louis noticed? Should he just 'die' now, or go work on the book?
Because
he's still going to write the book. Obviously.
The impression he got is that Louis is no longer as enthusiastic about the idea of publishing it (the whole laptop fire and whore number thing), but yeah, no, he's not complying with that, and figures Louis owes him for leaving him with Armand anyway, so it's fine. They'll be even.
Speaking of Louis, Daniel looks at him, and wonders if the longing he thinks he hears in him is imaginary, or... fucking mind reading. What's that about.
"What if I wanted you to keep me company for a while because I'm fucking lost?"
no subject
Which is to say, rarely. Which is to say, with only Daniel in the room, not at all.
Maybe it will come to Louis in time. Recall that Daniel is a vampire. Recall that Daniel is a reporter. But in the moment, it is as open as Louis' face, looking at Daniel as he asks this thing. The Yes forms there before Louis says:
"I'll stay as long as you like."
Maybe there are better choices for touchstones, for teachers, than Louis. Louis who is newly returned to the world. Louis, who had been sequestered for decades.
Louis, who Daniel is intimately aware has been far from an adept vampire.
It's fine. They have Lestat for all that Louis is incapable of.
"I want to stay," Louis amends. Before Daniel can second-guess him.
no subject
He doesn't know why - he's not a touchy person, neither is Louis, he doesn't think - but he reaches out and grabs the other man's hand again.
Not totally to support the older vampire. Daniel is also freefalling a little still.
"Let's get the fuck out of here first, then."
Staying can come after. Daniel crams everything he has left into his abused suitcase, startles a little at picking it up (! weighs nothing ? cool), and then they can just... get out, and away, and he will try not to stop every three feet and stare up at the sky or out at the ocean.
no subject
Louis does not relinquish his hold on Daniel's hand. The link of contact remains, soothing the fretful anxiety that Daniel might vanish. That Armand will simply take him, play keep away as effectively as he had before.
They've walked a little ways before Louis asks him, "Would you like to go back to New York?"
It would make sense to Louis, who couldn't bring himself to leave New Orleans for thirty years. May never have left New Orleans, if it had gone differently with Lestat then.
May go back still, because Lestat is in New Orleans. Might intend to stay in New Orleans, if not in the waterlogged cottage.
no subject
Because Armand sent everything back there, apparently. Bought him a different suitcase and clothes on the fly. He's not one hundred percent sure what all is in the shit that Armand (allegedly) sent off to his Brooklyn apartment— the ruins of his laptop, at least, but who knows what else. A part of him is itching to know. Did Armand post a dead cat in there? It could be fucking anything, the guy's got every mental illness known to humanity and probably a few extra ones no clinician has ever been confronted with.
"I don't think New Orleans is practical," he says. "I know you're an almost-billionaire, but the infrastructure from flooding and bad politics basically ensures you're exposed or stuck on a floating piece of driftwood at high noon within a year."
No awareness of where he picked up thoughts about New Orleans from, or that Louis hasn't said any of that out loud. Has not quite fished out Lestat, but they aren't talking about people, they're talking about where to go.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
🎀 territory?? unless you had further desires