Custody

by ajaystillblue

Summary:

Daniel mutters, "Why am I mediating my own custody battle?"

(Fledging custody gets messy. Everyone gets involved.)

Notes:

congrats to everyone who left a comment on Taking Care because you got my ass!! This is a direct morning-after sequel to that fic and it's gonna be a long one oof

I've had folks asking, nicely and not as nicely (lmao) about who this fic is about since Armand/Daniel is tagged. A bunch of other shit is also tagged. Simply, this is a Danlou fic. It's a bit more complicated than that in practice, so I made a diagram of my ideal dynamics between Louis, Daniel, Lestat, and Armand. See below.

 

If any of that isn't your cup of tea, might not be the fic for you. If it is, we're shaking hands.

Chapter 1: wilted flower act

Summary:

He needs the visual barrier, the comfort. Firmly under Louis’s wing and protection. Real fledgling shit. 

Notes:

thank you to notreallythatuseful for the beta u are the wind beneath my wings

Daniel wakes first. 

In his life, his internal clock was shit, destroyed by too many late deadlines and corresponding benders.

In his death, he wakes a perfect three minutes after the sun sets, without fail. It’s been an early autumn that dragged into a miserable winter, one that even the hygge of Christmas in New York could not combat. January has been sleet-filled, its short, dark days dragging into long, dark nights. Suits him well enough. 

He blinks awake to an inky blueness and soft breath on his cheek. The coffin lid is closed and Louis is pressed against him from shoulder to ankle. 

Daniel studies him for a long while, tracing over the jut of his nose and the lines beneath it that curve toward his mouth. Louis looks exhausted even at rest. There’s a furrow between his brows, a slackness to his mouth that still isn’t relaxed. Daniel keeps his touch light, and Louis relaxes a little bit and nuzzles into Daniel’s hand, unthinking. 

His mind is wide open in his sleep; Daniel wonders if that was on purpose. Louis had mentioned being a poor mental block in his earliest days, but his past seven decades with—in his life, must have taught him better. 

Grab that, Daniel thinks absently, the careful way he’s wording things even in his own thoughts. Doing a little blocking of his own. It’s pointless. He needs to learn from Louis, properly, and soon. 

But that’s for later. For now, he closes his eyes and lets himself see what Louis sees: 

Lestat. Of course. 

Daniel realizes this is the first time he’s seen him. He’s much bigger than Daniel imagined, with broad shoulders and a square jaw. He wonders if Louis’s memory embellishes the gold in his curls, the raw beauty of the man, but the image feels true in the way dreams do. There’s a sliver of a scar on the corner of his mouth, something real in his eyes. 

The dream is full of warmth and color and Daniel lingers in it, nosy bitch he is—this must be their parlor in New Orleans. He takes in the pattern of the sideboard, the rich textiles of their bespoke gay little suits as Louis and Lestat sit close to one another. 

Rain pounds at the window, a hurricane, torrential, and there’s a high, girlish laugh a room over. Lestat leans over a piece of driftwood and delicately touches on grooves worn like keys. Something swells, poignant, aching. Daniel swears he hears music. 

He only leaves Louis’s memory when the real world intrudes with a gentle rap on the door. When Daniel clambers gracelessly from the coffin, he slams his shin in the process and curses, but Louis stays asleep. 

Rubbing at his eyes, he walks down the hall and through the kitchen. When he checks the oven clock, it’s ten ‘til five. Early, early dark. 

He takes his shirt from where it ended up discarded on the floor last night and buttons it hurriedly. Daniel tries to rack his brain for who it could be; the building is good about not buzzing in solicitors—if it is a solicitor, maybe he’ll drain them, call it a public service—but then again, the board of the co-op has too much time on their hands. Bunch of busybodies. Daniel didn’t go to building meetings before, and that was pre-getting got. No shot of it now.

For a moment, he imagines some weirdo mortician behind the door, Louis waking at noon in a dead sweat, groping for his phone to rush-order a new coffin. It makes him snort a laugh. Damn, but he feels good. It’s not just the morning—night?—after kind of feeling. It’s having company, the promise of Louis and his waiting, warm dreams across the apartment. 

He’s still smiling when he opens the door. 

“Hello,” Armand says in a wavering, small voice. 

Daniel’s brain has stuttered to a halt. Good thing he’s dead, or his heart would follow. Stop right in his chest. “Oh my god. He’s gonna kill you.”

Armand’s lips, thinned into a frown, curl for just a moment, a silent snarl before he smooths over his expression. A human might have missed the micro-expression. “He might try.”

“He will try. What the fuck. What the fuck.” Daniel fights the urge to turn his back and see if Louis is already there, up and ready, but he cannot tear his eyes from his Maker. If does, he’ll disturb the mirage of Armand before him, scatter his heat waves, the bending of light rays passing through the pocket of his breath until he burns off for good.

Daniel reaches back mentally instead, grasping for Louis—still under, still in the parlor in New Orleans. 

Armand doesn’t move. It’s like he’s abandoned the charade of being a human, reverting to the ancient stone truth of himself. His only movement is in his left hand, his fingers tapping against his thumb, a quick, featherlight five count. 

“Why are you here?” Daniel asks. 

Armand takes a moment to respond. His eyes are crawling over Daniel’s body, from the crown of his head to his feet. He lingers on Daniel’s neck; Louis hadn’t healed his bite wound before they slept. The rest took care of the worst of it, but Daniel’s sure the puncture marks are still visible. Especially if you know what to look for. 

Daniel studies him in turn. It’s the first time he’s Armand dressed down—he’s wearing a strange green squared-patched hoodie with a thick black zipper and a ballcap: I ❤ NYC. His hair flips up beneath it, curling around his ears. 

He looks like a boy. Seventeen, if a day, and he looks…brittle, almost. Like a stiff breeze would knock him down. His eyes are heavy in his beautiful, stupid head, ringed with dark bruises of exhaustion.

“This is the worst disguise I’ve ever seen, and I endured the full servant act," Daniel says instead of Are you eating? “Aren’t you supposed to be a theater guy? What are you, going method?” 

He says nothing. Just stares with his fingers twitching at his side. 

Daniel can’t fucking stand it. "Answer me. Why are you here?” 

Armand takes another wavering breath. “You will not believe me,” he says, tepid. 

Sharp pain starts to wrack up in Daniel’s temple. Can vampires get migraines? “If you were here in a jealous rage, I feel like you would’ve scaled the building.”

Armand attempts a smile. It’s garish. He really looks like shit. “Not a…rage.” 

“We have to—you have to—“ Daniel rubs at the bridge of his nose. “You have to leave.”

“Is that what you want?” Armand says. He barely keeps disbelief from his voice, in the twitch of his brow; Daniel can’t believe he thought him hard to read, once. 

“Like you give a solitary shit,” he hisses, finger flying out to poke his chest, “What I want.”  

Even that brief contact, just the tip of his finger to Armand’s elegant clavicle, is good enough to send his brain spinning. The Maker’s bond, he tries to remind himself, All that bullshit. It’s white noise. It’s nothing. 

He ignores the truer, smaller voice saying, It’s everything, actually. 

Armand doesn’t rise to the challenge. He wilts before him. It’s infuriating. Daniel wants to kill him. Daniel wants to wrap his hands around his slender neck and squeeze, thighs around his waist, squeeze, there, too—

“Okay. Okay, okay.” Daniel runs his hands through his already disheveled bedhead and spins in a stupid little circle, finally letting himself peek down the hall. “Wait by the elevator.” 

Armand doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. 

“Go,” Daniel snaps, “Or I’ll wake up your ex-husband and he’ll chew a hole through your sternum. Wait, where are your shoes?” 

Armand seems surprised he’s barefoot. “I suppose I hurried.” 

“Fuck’s sake.” 

Daniel steps back inside, and Armand stays outside his door. Not invited in, Daniel thinks, and a hysterical little giggle escapes him. He steps into his boots and digs around in his coat closet for the slides he bought two summers ago when he was optimistic enough to attempt swimming laps. 

He grabs his keys, finds a mismatched pair of socks for his dumbass Maker, and scribbles on a Post-it that he leaves on the pillow beside Louis. Not the good morning he deserves, not by half, but what else can he do? 

Going for cigs. I recognize the irony. Back soon. 

With only a moment’s hesitation, Daniel grabs Louis’s coat and shrugs into it. It smells like him: the lingering vetiver and sandalwood of his cologne, and something clean and close that is just Louis. Daniel’s probably bringing some mothball, bargain-coffin smell into the mix but can’t make himself care. He needs the visual barrier, the comfort. Firmly under Louis’s wing and protection. Real fledgling shit. 

Armand is staring down the hall at the elevator, but seems frozen in place, unmoving but for the flick of his fingers. He turns and stares again, scanning Daniel’s face over and over. If he recognizes the coat, he says nothing. 

Daniel shoves the slides and socks into Armand’s chest and turns to lock up. His hands are shaking; Parkinson’s didn’t magically disappear with his vampiric transformation. It’s locked into him, dormant, frozen, but it only really pops up when he’s under a lot of stress. Like right about now. He barely gets the key in the lock, but he manages, and when he turns back, Armand is wearing the socks and sandals. 

He forces himself to walk at a human pace—he likes living here, damnit, would not like to have to kill all his neighbors and move—and Armand walks with him. 

Daniel jabs the button for the elevator. They step inside it silently, and he has to stop himself from chewing the inside of his cheek bloody because there’s a good chance he wouldn’t stop. The close proximity makes his head spin, the smell of Armand, the honey-sweetness of him, the blood slugging slow through his veins—Daniel can feel it. Feel him for the first time in half a year. 

When they reach the lobby, he glowers at the doorman—traitor, even if he was almost certainly hypnotized—and pushes out into the biting cold. Before Armand can say anything, Daniel grabs his hand and interlocks it firmly in his own. It’s half to prove he’s actually here, not some love-lorn Maker-shaped hallucination, and half to prevent him from running away again. Never mind that he could split Daniel in two in a second if he wants. Never mind that he could tear him to shreds. 

Armand flinches at the touch but doesn’t pull away. The point of contact is searingly, disturbingly good. The bond between them thrums, yes, yes, yes. It’s sick. 

When he gives him a sidelong glance, Daniel is surprised to see Armand’s eyes trained on the ground. He looks frightened, skittish and wan. Daniel wonders why he bothers with the performance and rages at it at the same time. He’s got to keep it under wraps, though—the optics aren’t great. He picks up the thoughts of people passing them on the sidewalk on the way over, wonder and curiosity that tip into concern for the young man and Daniel’s vice-like grip on his hand. 

He grits his teeth and schools his expression. They still don’t speak as he leads them past his favorite bodega, the Walgreens, a tiny pocket of a park, until they reach a shitty corner diner that got Daniel through many, many hangovers. 

He stops before reaching for the door. “You gonna answer my questions?” he asks. “If we’re doing this.” 

Armand gives him a wide-eyed look. It’s really pissing Daniel off, how beautiful he is even so wrecked. Maybe especially like this. Despite it all, Daniel wants to hunt down whatever troubles his Maker, take those problems between his teeth, and shake until they stop moving. 

“I will…try."

“No, you fucking won’t try. You will answer me, or I’ll go back home and you’ll…go back to wherever you crawled out of.” 

“I can’t tell what you’re thinking.” Armand blurts. He sounds mournful. 

“Now you have to rely on what I say like every other shmuck. Tragic.” 

It’s a tragedy to Armand, clearly, but he amends: “I’ll answer your questions. You might not like the answers.” 

It’s more than he’d expected. “Wonderful.” 

Daniel stomps into the diner, its bell chiming, and leads them to a corner booth. Armand sits and begins picking at sugar packets from the dispenser and shredding them in quick succession, his fingers working fast. He’s keen on making a mess however he can, apparently. 

He asks the first thing he can think of: “What the fuck are you doing here?” 

Ripping a packet with particular gusto, Armand says, “I…received Louis’s message.” 

Daniel feels a grim satisfaction. A flush of guilt, too, which pisses him off. “Oh. yeah?” 

“I could not bear it.” 

“Too bad,” Daniel says hotly. “He’s not your husband anymore. He doesn’t belong to you.” 

“He doesn’t,” Armand says. His expression is inscrutable. 

Daniel feels himself go still. Ignores the thrill of the implication, of what is unsaid. “You’ve got some nerve,” he says, and his voice is entirely too low, laced with that thrill. He can’t hide it. He feels like he can’t hide anything. 

Armand shakes his head. Dips a finger in the pile of sugar he’s created on the diner table. “I didn’t know.” 

“Know…what, exactly?” 

“The weight you’re carrying. Your…misery.” 

This is an angle Daniel was not ready for. He’d thought, in the throes of passion…but it had been when he was drained. Weak and wanting. Fuck. He’s shown his belly. 

He won’t do that again. “Like you don’t get off on it.” 

Armand looks up. He looks…Daniel can’t press words to how he looks. “You think I relish in your pain?” 

“Uh, yeah. Very specifically, you do. You did.” 

He shakes his Botticelli head. “Only when I am its source.” 

“You are,” Daniel says. His anger spins into incredulousness. “You are right now. You did this to me.” 

The waiter, a greasy little teenager, takes that moment to step up. “Hey, uh. Hi. Welcome in.” He only seems to realize the tension at the table post-greeting. Daniel skims his thoughts; he forgot to put in the side of hashbrowns for the couple at the counter, he took a generous hit of his vape in the walk-in, which scattered his already-scattered focus, he recognizes Daniel, remembers he tips well, he recognizes—

“Nice Creeper hoodie, man,” he says to Armand. 

Armand, against all odds, manages a shy little smile. “Thanks.”  

It’s absurd to be jealous of that smile. Daniel’s absurd, then. He’s all over the place. “Black coffee,” he snaps. 

The kid takes it in stride. Being high helps with that. “You?” he asks Armand. 

“The same.” 

“You got it.” 

He goes. They’re quiet again. Daniel feels like he’s lost momentum. He feels everything and everything roars under his skin. 

“I don’t know how that kid clocked your vibe so fast,” he mutters eventually. “Took me a week in Dubai.” 

Armand gives him a look. “It’s from—never mind.” He seems, for a moment, amused, before he remembers himself, and his expression clouds over. 

The waiter’s back before they can say anything else, placing two steaming cups before them, then says he’ll give them a minute. Gonna need more than that, Daniel almost says. 

He takes a swig: hot chalk. He savors the coffee's burnt, shitty acrid smell, at least. It's a comfort. Familiar. “How long have you been here, anyway?” he asks. “You said you hurried. Hurried from where?” 

“Hoboken,” Armand says mournfully. 

Daniel avoids a spit take, just barely. “You’re in New Jersey.” 

“Sometimes.” 

“Why?” 

“To keep an eye on it all.” 

“It all? ” 

Armand looks away, resuming his tracing of the sugar. 

“How long? How long have you been lurking—” 

“Two months.”

Daniel wants to scream. He considers the logistics of ripping their booth out of the wall or throwing Armand through the window. “How am I not feeling you through the bond? I thought—” 

“I…have been trying to hide my presence.” Armand stumbles over the explanation. He draws squares through the sugar, smaller and smaller. “Use the Mind Gift to dull the connection. I didn’t know if it was working.” 

Daniel slams his hand on the table. “Why?” 

He looks up, surprised. “I…as to not… disturb you.” 

Throwing him through the window seems more and more viable. “You piece of shit.” 

“What are you—” 

“You didn’t give a fuck about disturbing me when you were teeth-deep in my jugular, or watching me piss myself in San Francisco because you’d locked my body in place too fucking long, or…you…” 

Armand looks baffled. “You don’t want anything to do with me. You hate me.” 

I love you. 

He’d said it first, of course, the fucking idiot he was, twenty-four and high as fuck on Armand’s blood and delirious after an afternoon of pleasure that reduced Daniel a crying mess. 

Armand was tortuous, pleased with him, licking the tears from his cheeks, stroking his head as Daniel wept through the aftershocks.  Cloudy light leaked in through the blinds. The hotel was far nicer than anything he could afford. 

“I mean it,” Daniel insisted, tears unrelenting. “You don’t believe me. You need to believe me.” 

“I believe you think that,” Armand said. It was as gentle as he’d ever been with Daniel. It scared him. 

“Armand—” 

“Shush, now.” 

They were in New Mexico, but he can’t remember why. It rained that night. The air was drenched with creosote. 

A cold hand closes around his wrist. 

Daniel has crumpled back into the booth. Back in New York, in his new life and new body. The memory sits thick in his throat. His head might split down the middle. 

“Daniel,” Armand says, and it’s clearer now, as if he’s repeated himself multiple times. He’s halfway across the table, lurching towards him. 

“You’ve tried not to disturb me,” Daniel says through clenched teeth. “And look where I’m at, ‘cause of it.” 

“What just happened? Where did you just go?”

He skews his eyes shut. “Just tell me the truth,” he says. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s asking for, and he hates how it comes out as a plea. He hates that he has to plead for his life back, his own mind.

“Fine, the truth,” Armand says. He speaks quickly, clipped. “I went back to Venice after Dubai.” 

That’s enough to make Daniel squint his eyes open. “Oh, shit. Why?” He’s read every file from the Telamasca enough times that the words are burned into the backs of his eyes. Marius de Romanus. Forced Prostitution. Venice was not a good place to Arun. To Amadeo. To whatever was left of those boys that then became Armand. 

“It felt…fitting, to return to my place of origin.” 

Daniel lets his head tip back against the booth. “You went to punish yourself.” 

“And why shouldn’t I?” Armand bursts out. “What I did was disgusting. It disgusts you.” 

“No, it doesn’t.” 

“You are miserable, Daniel. It disgusts me.” 

Where is his infuriating calm? The cold poise of the predator? Armand sounds wobbly. The least convincing he’s ever been, even worse than the interviews when he sat primly in Louis’s lap and claimed to have never harmed him. 

When Daniel laughs, it’s a flat sound in his own ears. “You bastard.” You poor bastard. 

As he loses energy, Armand seems to gain it. A frantic momentum. He keeps talking. “I held vigil in Venice,” he says. “I remembered…what I needed to remember, and then, I…a few other places. Naples. Greece. Like we’d always said.” 

Ruined columns. Cool breath on his neck, cool hands on his body, the same hand that still clutches at his wrist. Daniel’s head aches. 

“I thought you might come for me,” Armand says. 

“How would I know where to go?” 

“We always said…” he repeats. He stops, then tilts his head, birdlike. “You wanted your turn playing hunter. I thought this would be it.” His frown deepens. “Do you withhold to …make me say?” 

“Really rich to talk about withholding, fake Rashid.” 

Then Armand says nothing, long enough that Daniel forces himself to really look at him. His eyes are, somehow, wider. He looks like something just clicked into place, the tumbler turning in the lock. “Tell me what you remember.” 

“We’re not doing this now.”

The grip around his wrist tightens, enough to hurt. “What do you remember?” Armand repeats. 

“We…you found me after San Francisco. We hooked up a few times, and we traveled.” 

“You traveled. I followed you.”

“Okay, sure, you followed me. Sounds like something you’d do. Are currently doing.” 

The lock turns fully. Armand looks like the diner’s checked floor has been ripped from under him. Like he’s tumbling through a void. “You don’t remember,” he says faintly. 

“I don’t know if I do or don’t, you asshole. That’s the problem.”  

He shakes his head. “I gave them all back,” he says. “All your memories.” He speaks faster. If Daniel didn’t know better, he’d say he’s panicking. Maybe Daniel doesn’t know better. 

“You don’t know what you did,” he says. “You tried to, maybe, but who knows how many holes you left up here.” Daniel gestures at his temple, spinning his finger in a loose circle. “When I was human, it hardly mattered, did it? It was all shutting down anyway. The end in sight. Who gave a shit if I was fucking haunted by these weird… fragments. But you decided I’m here forever. So, I’ve got forever to fucking wonder.” 

“I made sure—” 

“You made sure to wipe me well enough that I forgot two decades of my life. An entire love of my life.”

And now he’s said it. It’s spoken between them. What he’s just remembered. What he’s known, somewhere in his shitty bones, tugging at the back of his mind. 

Armand looks like he’s been struck. 

Daniel is getting really sick of the wilted flower act. Of the way it’s not an act at all.

Can he be both? The predator who took his life? The man who gave it back? The boy, still chained in the hull of a ship? 

He chugs the rest of his coffee for something to do besides cry. The sludgy taste of it scorches his throat. Goddamnit. 

“I can fix it.” Armand’s eyes flutter, a fast blink, a deer in the high beams. “I’ll fix this. I will ensure they all return to you—”

“You want me to let you in my fucking head again?” 

“I,” Armand stutters. “I—I’ll—I—” 

He looks like a bomb counting down. A robot, self-denoting. Daniel wonders if the building will hold when he does. He has never seen him so at a loss. 

It’s jarring. Horrible. Some awful, soft animal part of his brain wants to run his thumb across Armand’s knuckles.  Talk him down. Another memory pulses behind his eyes, a similar meltdown, just once, a conversation that lasted two days and two nights. A comedown. 

Daniel gets to his feet. 

“Bad news for you, I hold a mean grudge. And you gave me an eternity to do it.” 

Armand barely moves but for his chin tipping up, eyes desperate and wet. “Daniel,” he says simply. His voice breaks.

He’s seen this look before, and returned it, across the dining room table in Dubai. While Armand pleaded for Louis. While Daniel ruined Armand’s life. 

The thought strikes Daniel: now he’s ruining both their lives. 

He slaps down a twenty on the table and leaves before he does something worse. Like forgive him.

Notes:

quick someone who can draw!!! put Armand in the Minecraft hoodie and stupid hat and my life is yours

Chapter 2: all you could give him and worse

Summary:

"It can’t be fixed ‘cause he built it to break.”

Daniel has to walk the block twelve times before he catches his breath. He ducks into the bodega to actually buy the cigarettes and smokes four before forcing himself inside. One benefit of eternal unlife: he can indulge. 

His hands are still shaking. 

He hears singing when he finally gets the key in the lock. Louis, in the kitchen, still wearing Daniel’s clothes, doing the goddamn dishes he’s been ignoring. Whatever he sings is croony and sweet, not from this era. It makes Daniel's heart clench up like a fist. He wonders vaguely if Louis has ever had to wash a dish in his life or if this is another first on his behalf. 

“I’m not tryin’ to be invasive, alright,” Louis says by way of greeting, not turning from the sink. “Been here, though. In a funk. Tell me to fuck off and I will.” 

Daniel, for once, has nothing to say. He’s about to fucking lose it, really lose it, the way he’s wanted to since he answered the door to Armand. He stares at Louis’s shoulders, the back of his head, and tries to swallow the lump in his throat. 

Louis peeks over his shoulder, finally. “You look good in my coat.” 

Whatever Daniel is thinking—hell if he knows—it’s enough to wipe the smile from Louis’s mouth. “What's wrong? You look like you’ve seen a—”

His voice breaks when Daniel nods. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “He’s here. In the city.” 

There’s a split second where they just look at each other, anger and despair pinging back and forth, and then Louis snarls. Inhuman. He moves impossibly fast, darting towards the door. 

Daniel doesn’t think; he goes for Louis's knees, slamming them into the floor hard enough to leave an indent. They’re like a crater smoking out. 

Louis spits and squirms, shocked more than anything, but Daniel has him tight. He crawls up his body and lies on top of him, hands going to pin his wrists. He’s got a few inches on Louis and uses them, trying to will himself to go as heavy as he can, his newborn body grasping at the stoniness of an ancient. 

“Get off—” 

“Louis, c’mon—” 

Louis’s fangs are fully extended. He roars, fully feral. Teeth gnashing. “Daniel!” 

Daniel thrills with fear, with—yeah, he’s fucked up, he knows—but keeps his hold. “Hey, enough with the piranha act!” He sounds more panicked than punchy, so he takes a deep breath and stares Louis down with all the gravitas he can muster. “Try to calm down, alright?”

Louis does no such thing. “I’m gonna kill him! ” 

“Yeah, got that.” 

“I told you what I’d do and—” 

“And I’m asking you not to.” 

“You have no right!” 

“‘Cause I’m the other woman?” 

Louis shakes his head, furious. “‘Cause of what he did to you, Daniel! He deserves—”

“All you could give him and worse.” 

“So let me—” 

“No.” 

Louis bucks against him, taut with rage, and Daniel loses his grip. He rolls across the floor as Louis shoots up, unsteady on his feet. 

“We just talked,” Daniel says, and he hates it, the way he’s wheedling. He puts his hands out like he’s soothing a wild animal. “He said—” 

“‘I will not harm you’? ”

The pain in his voice is awful to hear, hitching in both their chests. It’s broken, but not weak, because Louis is bright with his rage. Incandescent. It’s kind of scary. No, actually, a lot scary. Daniel smells phantom kerosene. 

So he blurts the humiliating truth, “I don’t have all my memories back.” He’s indignant at how embarrassed he is, but it feels weak. His greatest asset, his only asset, depleted. Melon-balled.  

Louis stares at him, chest heaving. “What?”

“He gave me back some of what I was missing, but not…all of it. It surprised him too, I guess, ‘cause I’m missing…it seems like years, I’m missing.” Daniel doesn’t like the way his own voice sounds right now, either. It’s pinched. The inhale before a long, wailing cry. 

Louis shakes his head and spits something in French.

Daniel doesn’t need a translator to get the gist. “Agreed. He looks like shit, by the way. At least there’s that.”

Louis doesn't hear that. “Alright. Alright. So I go get him, and we get him to give ‘em back. Then I take care of it.” 

“He said I can have them back.”  

 Louis laughs, unhinged. “How fucking gracious of him.”

“I don’t need the memories yet,” and that’s the fear talking, the thought of harm coming to either Armand or Louis. "They’ll break my brain, or something. I need time, okay? Time to think.” 

“You’re never gonna have enough time to make things right. Even if we have forever. It can’t be fixed ‘cause he built it to break.” Louis’s hands shake as badly as Daniel’s. “You’re asking me to..six months isn’t…Daniel, it’s a blip. It’s barely a minute. Six decades wouldn’t be enough, but it would be a better start.” 

“Well, I’m still on human time. I need, like, a day, at least.” 

Louis jabs a finger down the hall. “While he’s out there—”

“Being a real piece of shit, I know. Yeah. I know how you—”

“Don’t.” Louis lurches forward, but it’s half-hearted. Daniel is under no illusions here; Louis could flatten him a second if he wanted. He’s letting him stop him, now. So Daniel wraps his arms around him—not quite a pin. Louis is trembling. 

“You don’t know how I feel,” he spits through his fangs. “And I don’t know how you feel. We’ve both been uniquely fucked over by him, and I’ve fuckin’ had enough of it.” 

“I get that. I do. But…I don’t think I have,” Daniel admits. “Had enough of him, I mean. I’m sorry. I need him alive. For now,” he tacks on, but it sounds half-hearted even to himself. 

“Goddamnit.” 

Louis squirms against him, getting out of the hold. He shoves Daniel. It’s just as half-hearted, but it still sends him flying across the room and slamming into a bookshelf. 

He swears and rolls into a crouch. The animal—monster—part of his brain is in charge, roaring to step in whenever anything gets physical. 

Louis just stares at him, eyes bright, chin raised. Daniel doesn’t need to read his mind to hear the challenge: what are you gonna do about it?  

He stands but stays low. Ready to lunge. “It’s like that, huh?” He cannot hide the wanting in his voice, the way it goes rough. 

At least they’re fucked up in the same way—Louis smiles a little. Then he runs for the door. 

Daniel tackles him again. They bash into a wall and roll, across the floor, skidding to a halt with Louis on top. He presses the full length of his body to Daniel’s, a mirror of their close fit in the coffin. He isn’t ready when Louis sinks into his neck over the old scar. It’s a cold bite of pain, blurry, kicking his heart up a notch. Pulsing through his body. He’s hard in a second. 

Louis rolls his body against him, grinding down, taking long, greedy pulls of blood. He only lifts from him to say what they both already know: “You’re sick in the head, boy."

Heat clenches in his stomach. "Like you’re not getting off on it,” Daniel pants, and it’s what he just said to Armand, isn’t it? 

Louis stills on top of him, shocked at the comparison, feeling sick with it, and he amends, You’re not him. You don’t hurt me like him.

It’s not a line, it’s not a lie. Louis is the safest thing in Daniel’s life, even hooked into his jugular. They need this, they both do—the real world was just outside the door, consequences, Armand, stealing away the bubble of calm they’d fucked their way into. It’s not fair. Daniel wants it back. Wants him. 

Some of the bad tension leaves Louis, and what remains is white hot. His pupils are blown wide. His mouth is wet with Daniel’s blood. He heard it all, agrees with it all—Daniel feels it, feels the way they’re suddenly clinging to each other. 

“How do I hurt you, then?” Louis asks, his voice a rasp. “Tell me.”

“However you want.” 

So he does.

Notes:

my editor, reading Daniel getting horny while Louis is about to bite his face off: NOT NOW, DANIEL
me: fortunately now IS the time, actually, Daniel

I have no self control fuck an update schedule I will update this when my whims demand it

Chapter 3: divorce court on steroids

Summary:

“I’m worried the second I stop fucking you, you’re gonna run out the door to find him.”

“This is getting ridiculous.” 

They’ve fucked their way across the apartment: the floor, against the walls, sprawled across the mess of Daniel’s desk, all swimming into one long, seething pleasure. Louis makes him work for it, but, hey, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, etc, etc. 

As he thrust into Louis, took him in his mouth, ground down on his lap, Daniel almost forgot what had them so worked up in the first place. Except that’s bullshit. Of course, he doesn’t. Neither of them does. 

Despite that, his frantic energy has simmered into something manageable after a few rounds, but Louis just gets more and more keyed up. They’re tangled on the floor again. Louis just sucked his soul out and fed from Daniel’s inner thigh, and he’s already got his hands all over him again. “Ridiculous?” he asks. 

Daniel tugs him up beside him. “I’m not complaining.” 

“Sounds like you’re complaining.” Louis, however, is the one who’s sulky. He pulls away and lies beside him, staring up at the ceiling. 

Daniel frowns. “It’s just unsustainable, babe. You came here to make sure I’m eating, and now you’re fucking all my blood right out of me. We can do that forever, and I’d be happy, I said it and I meant it. But we can’t only feed on each other. Aren’t you hungry?”

He is; Daniel feels it in the pit of his own stomach, twined with his own insatiable thirst. Louis blinks hard, assessing. He might not have noticed, Daniel realizes. He’s used to starving himself. “We need to hunt.” 

“I don’t do that much,” Louis says. Point-proven. 

“Okay. Well. Unless you’ve got an app for delivery from the blood farm, we’re shit out of luck.” 

He shakes his head. “My guy’s in New Orleans.” 

Daniel sighs and props himself up on an elbow. “Not to split hairs, but how is getting your dinner from some shady guy any better than what I do? At least I can make it quick.” He doesn’t always—he leaves that out. “Sounds like—”

Louis scowls. “It’s from a few well-paid individuals. Same as it has been.” 

“Ah. More Dameks.” 

“Just about.”

“Okay, well, unless they deliver up the East Coast, I need to hunt.” 

The set of Louis’s jaw goes mulish. “Then go hunt. I’m not stopping you.” 

“I’m worried the second I stop fucking you, you’re gonna run out the door to find him.” 

Finally, Louis looks at Daniel. He’s still pissed, but he’s himself enough to admit: “I might just.” 

Daniel blows his lips in a raspberry and tries to rack whatever is left of his brain after Louis’s onslaught. The man’s got a hell of a mouth. He reaches out to trace it mindlessly, fingertips light on Louis’s lower lip, and says, “Let’s call him.” 

Louis, honest to God, growls. The hairs on Daniel’s arms stand up. He retracts his finger quickly. “Not my Maker,” he says. “Yours.” 

That gets his attention. Louis sits straight up, a Dracula move straight out of a B movie. “You want Lestat?” he sputters. “Here?” 

“Look, worst-case scenario, you’ll need all the help you can get fighting Armand. Best case scenario, he talks you down.” 

Louis considers that. “It’s likely to be somewhere in the middle.” 

A much more measured response than Daniel was expecting. He pushes his luck. “Then maybe he’ll help me fuck you so good you don’t want to break another Great Law.” 

Turning to him fully now, Louis arches his eyebrows. “Oh, it’s like that?” 

Daniel shrugs, attempting to look as casual as a naked man covered in all manner of fluids can be. “If you want.” 

“Sounds like you want.”

“Not my fault I’m all fuck-drunk. You sucked out my common sense. My brain is barely functioning. That’s on you.” Daniel is kind of just rambling, rolling with wherever the idea came from, but Louis is seriously considering it. “What about Lestat, then?” he asks. “What he wants?” 

“You know him better than I do. He doesn’t feel like coming, I doubt he will. But…I have the feeling he wants whatever you want.” Daniel stretches out. “That’s something he and I have in common.” 

“Apparently, whatever I want doesn’t extend to the obvious,” Louis grumbles, but the battle is won. His restless energy isn’t gone, but it’s directed, now, anticipatory—he’s already thinking about Lestat. Sap. 

Daniel is only a little jealous. He’s mostly relieved. He needs backup here, even with a fledgling refractory period. 

His head spins when he sits up; he’s woozy, lightheaded. All he had today was that shitty diner coffee and his body hurts, not just in a pleasant post-sex way, but from the cramping, gutting hunger that’s back every few damned hours. 

Daniel doesn’t realize Louis is supporting him until he blinks the stars out of his eyes. Louis’s arm is braced across his lower back. “Easy,” he says. 

He doesn’t pretend not to need the support. Sighing, he leans into Louis, cheek against his shoulder. “Hey. I’m…thank you.” 

“For what.” 

“Don’t make me say it. It’ll just piss you off more.” 

Louis hums, disgruntled, but his fingers stroke across Daniel’s hip. Affectionate, despite it all. 

“Would it help if I said it’s just until we figure out the memory thing?” Daniel says after a moment. 

“Would that be a lie?” 

The kind of paternal—maternal? —way Louis asks, like he knows the answer and is waiting for Daniel to admit it…it doesn’t do nothing for him. Focus, Molloy, Jesus Christ. 

So he does admit, “It would be, yeah. I know I gave you shit for it, but I get it. Why you couldn’t burn Lestat.” 

“I still slit his throat.” 

“Hey, that’s not off the table. Mine would probably be into it, though. Fucking freak.” 

Louis surprises him with a snort. It’s a very good sign that the homicidal urges are momentarily at bay. “I can’t promise what I’ll do in the future,” he says after a moment. “He comes back here, he tries something with you, he gets what he gets, and then some.” 

“That’s fair.” 

“I mean it.”

“I hear you.” Daniel scrubs a hand down his face. He’s still lightheaded. “This is, like, divorce court on steroids,” he mutters. “Why am I mediating my own custody battle?” 

“Poor baby.” 

Louis is teasing him, but he still nudges Daniel’s chin up so his mouth is against his throat. Drink, he orders, I took too much just now. Got carried away. Daniel takes a moment to suckle at his skin before biting down, enjoying Louis’s sigh as much as the blood. 

It clears some of the fog from Daniel’s mind, lets him think a little straighter. He only takes enough to manage that—Louis needs it, too, damn it—then licks the wounds closed. 

The apartment is in disarray around them. It looks like a mailbox exploded in here, for all the papers they knocked over, and they broke an armchair. “We trashed this place.” Daniel sounds more cheerful than he ought to. It’s proof of life. “Tell Lestat to get a hotel. Coffin’s full.” 

Louis stands and extends a hand. Daniel takes it and stays close when they’re both on their feet. 

“I got a room in midtown,” Louis says. “Didn’t know if you’d want company, so…yeah. I’ll call Lestat. Pack a bag, and we’ll go.”

“You’re a genius,” Daniel says, and he’s aware he sounds a little tipsy. At least Louis’s huff is amused this time, and they kiss again, for a long, sweet while before Louis nudges him gently down the hall and looks for his phone. 

Daniel tunes out his thoughts as best he can—Louis wants privacy for this call, and he’ll have it—and wanders to the bathroom. He’d need to walk through a car wash to clean up properly, but he settles for a washcloth down his face and over his body. 

He glances in the mirror and laughs—his hair is half-stuck up the side of his head, and he’s got bruises and bite marks on his jaw, chest, stomach, hips, thighs. It kind of looks like Louis ran him over with a truck. He looks away before he gets hard again and wastes the nip of blood he just took. 

Ducking into his room to redress, Daniel wonders what kind of clothes you wear to whatever luxury, bespoke hotel Louis has booked, then promptly gives up and changes into clean black jeans and his least wrinkled button-up. He doesn’t need to dress to impress. Louis’s money will get them in the door. Daniel is, at best, some ironic arm candy. 

He grabs a duffel bag and tosses in the book he’s reading—he’s finally letting himself finish The Year of Magical Thinking now that he’s immortal and the existential dread is different—and his laptop, then all the paper notes he can locate about the book. He doesn’t put it past Armand to pull a little B and E while they’re gone. Doesn’t believe for a second that he’s not lurking in the shadows of the building across from them, perched like a gargoyle. He tries not to think about that too hard and grabs a flannel for Louis, since he ripped and ruined his shirt the night before. It feels impossible that it’s only been one day, one night since he found Daniel. 

Louis’s irritation has dissipated by the time Daniel rejoins him. He’s cleaned up, too, back in his jeans, and smiling at his phone like a dope. 

“That’s a yes, I assume?” 

“Mm.”

“It’s gonna be weird finally meeting this guy,” Daniel realizes out loud. “He’s not just a character in a book.”

“Oh, he’s a lotta things,” Louis says. He takes the flannel and slips it on—it makes Daniel feel giddy and possessive to see him in his clothes again. “You want to go now? I’ll call a car.” 

“Why don’t we walk?” 

“It’ll take a few hours." Louis likes the idea, though. Daniel can see it in his face, another way to burn off some energy. “Lestat’ll get here just before dawn.”

“At your beck and call, huh?”

He smirks a little and denies nothing. “He’s on his way to the jet.” 

“You’re gonna have to sell that thing, you know that, right?” 

Louis stops mid-buttoning up, incredulous. 

“Don’t give me that look.” Daniel retrieves his leather jacket from where they tossed it last night in their hurry to undress. “You have to start caring about climate change, like, yesterday. We’re gonna be around for the heat death of the universe, aren’t we? Let’s not speed it along.” 

“Can you, once, in your life, pick a time and place?” Louis scoffs. “Do not piss me off again. Or you’ll be the one to call Lestat back and tell him he’s flying commercial.”

Daniel pauses. “Okay, heard.” I’ll wear him down eventually. 

“I doubt that. ” 

“…I really need to learn how to shield.” 

“No shit.” 

They’re both back in their coats, but Louis takes his scarf and wraps it around Daniel’s neck. Still looked after, even when he's annoying. 

He kisses Louis’s cheek. “Mama’s fussing,” he teases. 

Louis exhales softly but doesn’t stop that fussing, tucking the ends of the scarf in carefully to his jacket. “So what if I am.” 

They get to kissing again, but it doesn’t go anywhere serious—it’s a long walk from Brooklyn to Midtown. They summon their previously abandoned self-control and make it out the door.

The night is crisp and cold. The sky is a surreal, glowing brown that comes from heavy cloud cover in the dark. They might get snow tonight. Daniel takes lungful after indulgent lungful of sharp air, relishing it all. 

“You’ll have to lead us,” Louis says, slipping a hand around his waist. He’s on edge, guarded now that they’re out in the open. His thoughts aren’t as accessible as they have been, but Daniel picks up on a pulsing thread of anxiety, that same thrum of anger. Louis has had the same thought: that Armand is probably watching them right now. Maybe walking was a bad idea.

But when Daniel slides a hand inside Louis’s coat and tucks his hand into his back pocket, it still earns him a smile. 

“I’ve lived in the city for forty years. I can get us out of Brooklyn.” 

As they walk, Daniel points out interesting parts of the neighborhood. Interesting to him, at least, little snippets of the life he’s lived. The countless shops that have been gentrified over the years, and the ones that used to be there. His favorite piece of street art tucked into an alley, a baffling mass of squiggles and colors he's never picked a tag out of. The way to the waterfront, where he used to take the girls on steamboat tours when they were young enough to delight in the sound of the boat’s whistle. The florist on the corner, where he bought many a last-minute bouquet. 

He’s talking just to talk. Daniel sort of weaned himself off of his natural chattiness over the years, because once he gained a presence in the field, more and more important people wanted to talk to him— or at him, rather. It didn’t take much from him to get them going, not like his earlier days. The work energized him, sometimes, but exhausted him towards the end. His health taking its toll, he supposed. No energy for it. 

But he’s…okay, he’s dead, technically, but Daniel feels alive with Louis at his side. It's good to share, for once, to fill the cold air between them with stupid little anecdotes, their breath clouding the crystalline air as Louis replies to him. 
 
They both, pointedly, don’t mention orange lamplight eyes. If Armand’s watching, let him look. Let him see what he’s squandered. 

The streets are mostly empty since it’s the weird time between last call and the earliest commuters. Louis surprises him by pausing at a stoop. 

There’s a homeless guy lying under a shifting mound of textiles, trying to ward himself against the cold. Daniel picks his pulse out of the air, worrying if he’s alive. It’s fucking freezing out here, but yeah, just asleep. 

Daniel has been the guy on the stoop. More than once. When he lost his keys on a bender. When a girlfriend kicked him out. When, when, when. 

Louis squats down. Daniel wonders if he’s about to bite, surprise squirming in his stomach, but he doesn’t stop him. It’s his curiosity, damning him, always has and will. He wants to see what he’ll do. 

And Louis…tucks cash into the man’s pocket. With his vampiric stealth, the man shifts and sighs, but doesn’t wake up. 

“Who’s playing savior now?” Daniel asks. He’s teasing, but he wants to know. He thought Louis was above base human struggles. 

Louis stands and shrugs. His brow is furrowed. “I told myself I was,” he says, answering the thought and not the question. “For too long. But I’ve never really managed. And, how’d you put it? We’re not pretending at anything anymore. Who’s got the time?”

“Us, technically, but, yeah.” Daniel has to reach for snark to cover how moved he is. He’s not just talking to talk, apparently. He’s being listened to. 

Louis takes his hand. “Smart-ass.” He says it like a pet name. 

They don’t talk for the rest of the way, and that’s nice, too.

Notes:

Lestat time soon >:) it's taking them some time but they needed a min

thanks for all the love on this it means the world <333

Chapter 4: first impressions

Summary:

Louis is perched on the low couch, hunched into himself, but his head is turned to the door.

Which opens to reveal one Lestat de Lioncourt.

“Oh,” Lestat says.

“Shit,” Daniel says. 

“Almost there.” Louis points to an ornate skyscraper up ahead, limestone and terracotta with a four-story octagonal pyramid for a roof.

“We’re staying in the Crown Building?”

He nods. “They just opened it as a hotel in August. Got us a suite towards the top.” 

Daniel whistles. “You bougie son of a bitch.”  

Louis waves that away, but he smiles, pleased. “We gotta get you out more, Danny.”

Hunger is still carving its way through Daniel’s stomach, but he rebukes it for now as they walk by St. Patrick's Cathedral, the MOMA. Maybe Louis can pull some Mind Gift shit and get them in after hours. Daniel would be content playing tourist with him for a long time, he thinks. 

He follows Louis inside in the lobby, still hand in hand. The interior is all artful, warm light and sleek, organic furniture—this place has Du Lac all over it—and he lets Louis handle the desk clerk, checking back in, only rolling his eyes a little when Louis assures her that no, they won’t need the complimentary butler service. 

He’s the one who booked the room, the clerk thinks, looking at Louis with appreciation and Daniel with curiosity. He sees the two of them as she does; they’re both a little flushed from the hours of walking, glistening with pink sweat. Wonder what that arrangement is? 

Daniel coughs and ducks his head. He hasn’t considered—but of course, people are gonna think what they think. Optics. Whatever. 

Louis gives his hand a squeeze; whether it’s because Daniel’s shouting his thoughts again or just because, he doesn’t know. “We’ve got a third guest joining us,” Louis says, unbothered. He glances at his phone. “He’ll be here soon. Send him up, please.” 

This only makes the clerk more curious. “Of course, sir.” 

Daniel lets Louis lead him to the elevator. He only speaks when the door closes. “She thought you were my sugar baby.” 

“Little does she know,” Louis says wryly. He’s still texting. 

“I look like a pervy old man on your arm.” 

“And I’ve got some first-hand supporting evidence to back that up,” Louis bumps Daniel’s hip with his own. “But glass walls, I know. Throwin’ stones.” 

Daniel doesn’t say anything. Louis stops teasing. He finally looks up and tilts his head. “It bothers you,” he says. It’s not a question. 

“Dunno. I just…don’t get out a lot, like you said. I didn’t think about…how it would look.” Daniel rubs the back of his neck. He feels stupid. He should have thought about it, prepared in advance for whatever this is, this one-two punch of embarrassment and resentment. Not towards Louis, to be clear. He’s not sure who or what it’s toward. Being old? Being old forever? Whatever. 

Louis considers him, then steps closer, crowding him back against the elevator wall. “Does it help,” he says lowly, “If I say I like how it looks?” 

“Oh, yeah?” is all Daniel manages. It does help. It helps quite a bit.

Louis grabs the bar on either side of Daniel’s hips. Boxing him in. “Sure do.” 

Daniel lets his head tip back against the wall. He lets out a nervous little laugh. Stupid, he’s being stupid— “I’m glad I got to marinate, don’t get me wrong,” he rambles. “Thank fuck I’m not twenty forever.” 

“So you’d rather have me join you, then?” Louis asks, teasing again, leaning in to mouth at his ear. “In older age?”

Daniel lets himself imagine it: silver at Louis’s temples, the lines at the corners of his eyes deeper after a longer life with more laughter. He sends the image over. “You’d be beautiful.” 

Louis exhales hard and stills. “As you are now,” is all he says. 

The kissing they do is some of their best work yet, enough to earn a few gasps when the elevator dings open a few floors later. They get to keep it for themselves as the other guests bluster about ‘catching the next one’.

They’re both a little rumpled, and Daniel is much happier by the time they reach their floor. He follows Louis to their suite; it has two rooms and a kitchenette, all midcentury modern furniture and tasteful earth tones. A dark-hewn fireplace crackles safely behind glass, and art with abstract brush strokes hangs on the wall. 

It has to cost more than Daniel’s monthly rent. Per night. He drops his bag and gawks a little. “You endured the bargain coffin when you could’ve been here? ” 

“Hey, you were in the bargain coffin,” Louis says, shrugging out of his coat. “Don’t underestimate the appeal.” 

Daniel wonders if he’s being coddled, and then decides he doesn’t care. “Want to shower?” 

“I’ll go after you. Lestat’ll be here in a few.”

They’ve only got about an hour left before the sun rises, but Daniel tenses at the thought of letting Louis out of his sight. “You good?” is all he manages. More concise than are you gonna sprint out of here and go kill your/our ex if I’m not pinning you down in various ways? 

Louis tries to roll his eyes, but it’s not convincing. He’s amused at Daniel’s guard dog act. “M’good,” is all he says. 

Daniel nods. He has to trust him. What else do they have? “Alright.” 

The bathroom is as fancy as the rest of the place with a double shower head he sets to ‘pummeling.’. The deluge washes away the sweat of the walk, the steam leaving him dizzy. If he were more of a masochist, he might like the weird head-high of going hungry, but Daniel Molloy is a hedonist first, and he wants to eat. 

He rests his head against the tile and tries not to think. That leads to a return to that depression in the ground, the sinkhole that is Armand. It’s hopeless. Unavoidable, really. It seems impossible that he saw him today, tonight, but he did. It feels like years. Like seconds ago. 

So Daniel thinks about granules of diner sugar on his fingertips and the bruises under Armand’s eyes. The way Armand’s hand fit around his wrist. There’s no getting around it. No getting his head on straight. His Maker lingers, a sunspot, a ghost, a cancer changing his cells. 

Already has, is the thing. 

Daniel sighs and dries off, resigning himself to it, wrapping the towel around his waist before leaving the humid bathroom. He rubs his eyes and walks back into the lounge area. “Your turn,” he’s saying as he rounds the corner.

Louis is perched on the low couch, hunched into himself, but his head is turned to the door. 

Which opens to reveal one Lestat de Lioncourt. 

“Oh,” Lestat says. 

“Shit,” Daniel says. 

They stare at each other, curiosity and surprise rebounding back and forth like prisms of light. 

Louis gets to his feet. 

Before anyone can speak again, he hugs Lestat, burying his face in the curve of his neck. 

Daniel has a front-seat view of Lestat’s response, the way his mouth opens in surprise. He seems to run through a full gauntlet of emotions before his expression settles, raw. It kind of hurts to look at him. 

He holds Louis carefully, cupping the back of his head after a long moment of hesitation. “Tu vas bien, Louis?” he asks softly. 

“Better now,” Louis says, muffled. He wasn’t…not lying to Daniel, exactly, but he was shielding his anxiety more than he’d realized. In Lestat’s arms, it’s dissipating. Not all gone, but the sting soothed. It’s bizarre to see these two greet one another, given everything he knows. It’s like Daniel isn’t even there, except he very much is, so he catalogs details. Lestat is holding a sleek briefcase and has an overnight bag slung over his shoulder. He wears a dark bomber jacket, a white t-shirt, black jeans, steel-toed boots. Not ostentatious in the slightest—even his jewelry is tasteful, multiple rings and a simple silver chain. 

But then again, what did Daniel expect? The full Mardi Gras hoop skirt and pompador? Kind of, actually, but, no—he’s just a guy. A very fucking beautiful guy, sure, all strong, lithe lines and sharp features, hair gathered in a messy bun. 

Daniel is fully ogling. He only notices when Lestat chuckles. The unguarded expression on his face from Louis’s embrace is gone, replaced with a keen interest. “Hello,” he says. His voice is stupidly deep. 

“Uh. Hi.”

Louis finally untangles from Lestat, recharged for the moment, apparently, and steps away. Lestat’s hand hangs in the air, as if to close that distance before it drops to his side. 

“Sorry,” Louis says. “Introductions.” 

“Maybe I get dressed first?”

Louis looks over at him, blinking dazily. His pupils are fully dilated, from just a moment near Lestat. He glances at Daniel. He didn't notice. “Oh. Yeah.”

Lestat very much noticed. The once-over he gives Daniel now would have him hot around the collar if he weren’t naked. He wonders how much Louis told Lestat, exactly, about the purpose of the visit. He doesn’t have enough blood for a blush. His body gives it a go again. 

“Yeah, alright,” Daniel says, clearing his throat. “Gimme a…gimme a sec. Fill him in?”

It’s not meant to be a question, but it comes out like one. Lestat cocks his head, curious, but Daniel scurries away. Let Louis deal with explaining. 

He towels off properly and throws on sweats and a sweater of Louis’s. His hair will dry however it likes, and even worrying about that is so incredibly lame. If the guests in this suite are in a beauty contest, he’s dead last. And good for him, for punching so thoroughly above his weight. 

When he re-emerges, Louis and Lestat stand in the kitchenette, talking quietly. Lestat has shrugged out of his coat and placed the briefcase on the table, unlatching it to reveal—

“That’s one benefit of flying private, huh,” Louis says smugly.

Daniel can’t even care. He can’t think. He sprints to the table and rips the blood bag from Lestat’s hands, tearing it open with fangs that extend so quickly they slice at his lips. 

Is that fucking briefcase actually a cooler?  he wonders; the blood is cold, slugging through the gash. He only notices when the entire bag is empty, though, too busy drinking to string together anything coherent. 

When Daniel looks up, he’s disoriented. The blood kicks everything into a higher gear, if that’s possible: he sees the scant pores of Lestat’s skin, hears a conversation happening two floors below them. He blinks hard, trying to get a grip. 

The two elder vampires stare back. Louis’s frowning a little, concern radiating off of him, guilt, not feeding him well enough, but Lestat looks…amused. And approving. “Quite an appetite,” he says, arching his eyebrow. 

Daniel wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Haven’t eaten much lately.” Besides your ex-husband. “Give me another?” He’s counting blood bags—there’s a glut of them. Might be enough for an appetizer. 

“At least let us heat it,”  Louis protests. 

Daniel’s never been above eating leftovers over the sink, but he shrugs and lets him fuss. He draws the line, though, when Louis licks his thumb and goes to wipe the corner of Daniel’s mouth. 

“Seriously, Mom?” he grumbles, ducking away. In front of Lestat? 

Louis smiles—bastard—and Lestat seems unbothered. He slits a blood bag open with his nail and pours it into a mug, then pops it into the kitchenette’s bougie little microwave. “Only the best for l'ange gardien de Saint Louis,” he says, turning on his heel with a flourish. 

Guardian angel, Louis translates. He agrees. 

Daniel agrees in reverse. Listen as though I’m the voice of God or an angel talking to you…

Pretty weird to have the guy who almost drank you dry also be the reason your life was any semblance of not entirely fucked. But Daniel’s life has been nothing if not weird—getting weirder by the day, since it ended—and Louis—

Whether he knew it or not, Louis was his lifeline. His guardian angel. 

Daniel shakes off the sentimentality and fills the quiet stretching out between the three of them. “So. This is how we’re meeting, Lestat. Heard…a lot about you.” 

That doesn’t even start to cover it. 

Lestat doesn’t have anything pithy to say. He tries a smile, but it’s skittish. He can’t seem to figure out how to present himself in this situation. “Louis told me just a little about the interview. I’m very interested.” 

Damn. Now, Daniel has to worry about Lestat reading the book, eventually. He’d figured that wasn’t his problem, but the guy hopped on a plane immediately when asked and brought them dinner. “I’ll, uh, get you an advance copy,” he blurts. “Once I get something legible together.” 

Lestat barks out a laugh, too loud. He seems nervous. Fidgety. His eyes keep flicking back to Louis as if he’s afraid his fledgling will disappear without his eyes on him. It’s kind of…endearing? Daniel was expecting a smirking, snarling, larger-than-life trainwreck. Maybe he’s in there, somewhere, but this Lestat is not him. Not yet, at least. 

“Thanks for coming,” Daniel tags on awkwardly. 

The microwave hums. Lestat claps his hands together briskly. “But what are friends for!” he says with too much enthusiasm. “If not times like these.” 

Louis starts to speak and stops, looking at Lestat with barely concealed fondness. 

“Friends,” Daniel says, fighting hard against sounding like an asshole, a fight he loses handily. 

Lestat doesn’t notice or pretends not to. “Yes,” he says, deadly serious. “Louis is…how did you say it, cher? ‘Companion enough of his own’, yes? He and I are becoming reacquainted, as you and I will become… acquainted.” 

Louis nods. “That’s right.”

Laying it on a little thick, Daniel thinks. That greeting at the door was more than friendly; it had a whole ‘doomed lovers at the end of the world clinging to one another’ kind of vibe. 

“I was wondering, Daniel,” Lestat says, “If you and I may speak in private? I would like to thank your friend, Louis.” 

Daniel raises his eyebrows. He’s about to say any thanking that needs to be done behind closed doors in a little more serious than a handshake, but Louis nods, retreating. “Yeah. I’ll go shower. Take your time.” 

He doesn’t know what to say, so he watches Louis slip into the master suite. Nervousness churns in his gut alongside the blood, but his curiosity is much, much stronger. 

“There is a certain something about him, isn’t there?” Lestat says, watching Louis go as well. His tone is careful, but the wistfulness in him is undeniable. He opens the microwave right before it beeps and hands Daniel the mug. The scent of the hot blood makes his fangs itch, but he, very politely, resists the urge to chug it. “What do you mean, exactly?” 

Lestat grabs two more mugs and repeats the process, carefully emptying the blood bags. He seems to need something to do with his hands. “Louis is…special. He’s got something that makes villains want him all for their own. There is an impulse to cage him. You saw as much.” 

If Daniel’s eyebrows were any higher, they’d join his widow’s peak. “Which makes you—?” he asks before he can stop himself. 

“One such villain, I admit it.” Lestat exhales through his nose. “I must admit it.” 

He waits for the inevitable but. It doesn’t come. The only sound is the microwave again. This is the last thing Daniel expected. 

Lestat fidgets, spinning a ring around his thumb, and then he keeps talking. “I sought to keep him all to myself, and look what happened? I lost him for seven decades. Even though he is mine as I am his, until the sun burns herself out and we all scatter amongst the stars. That is inevitable.” He waves a hand, airy. “I don’t need to explain the Maker’s bond to you. I can feel your yearning in my teeth.” 

Daniel’s stomach swoops. “How?” 

Lestat shoots him an incredulous look. It’s, somehow, kind. “Darling boy, it is obvious.”

He doesn’t know what to say. He does not like his fucking yearning being called out, he knows that much. And he doesn’t know if he’s Lestat’s darling anything, yet, never mind his boy. The whole thing is loaded. 

Lestat nods, like he heard that—which he did, because Daniel’s mind is apparently a megaphone—and puts a hand up in surrender. “Assez juste. I only say it to say… I am Louis’s. Perhaps he is not mine. But however he’ll have me, I am his.”

He turns to stare at the microwave, drumming his fingers on the counter, and Daniel stares at him. Studies him. Did Lestat spend the last seventy years journaling, or something? Like father, like daughter? This is shockingly self-actualized. 

“I think you’re serious, actually,” Daniel says after a moment. 

Lestat smiles for just a moment before his expression clouds again. He’s all over the place. “It will not be a simple thing, but…I have made enough things hard enough for him. If he permits my friendship, he shall have it. He will have me however he wishes, and I will be grateful.”

Being near Louis is a gift in itself. Daniel nods again. 

“You understand.” 

“Trying to.” 

Lestat turns to him fully. “And yet, you do not share the impulse to limit him. You freed Louis from his clutches. You made him free, Daniel.” 

His eyes well up with tears, red against blue. Like an ambulance, Daniel thinks stupidly. Like an emergency. Lestat is nothing if not urgent. 

He clears his throat. “It’s nothing.” 

Lestat lurches forward. He takes Daniel’s hand. “It is everything, Daniel Molloy,” he says, and his earnestness might make Daniel keel over dead. 

He really might, when Lestat bends down to kiss his hand. This fucking guy. What is this, a Harlequin Romance? And why is Daniel actually blushing, now? 

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” he says, but his voice cracks a little. 

Lestat removes his lips from Daniel’s knuckles and straightens, as if he didn’t just do something super fucking weird, and wipes under his eyes, smearing bloody tears across his stupid, perfect cheekbones. “Obviously, I am in your debt. And at your disposal, as well.” He sniffs and takes a sip from his mug. It paints his lips dark, wet red. 

“My disposal, huh.” Daniel keeps his thoughts as PG as he can and asks, “You any good at shielding?” 

Lestat smiles at him. There are still drops of blood in his eyelashes. “You tell me.” 

Daniel frowns and gives his mind a poke. 

It’s strange—Louis’s thoughts have, so far, rested out in the counter of his mind, ready to Daniel to interact with at will. Almost tactile, sentiments he can pick up and feel. Daniel didn’t realize it wasn’t just like that—no, Louis has only been so open for his benefit, it seems. 

Because Lestat’s thoughts are tucked away tight, but not quite locked up. He’s more fluid than that—his mind is like water, like smoke. Shifting, shrouding itself. Daniel wonders if that’s a feature of high-quality mental shielding or if it’s just a feature of Lestat’s mind. 

All me, Lestat thinks, the thought projecting loud and clear. It is different for each of us. Your Armand locks his mind down like a fortress. Turrets and moats, buttresses and battlements. I am not so rigid. 

I guess I’ll have to take your word for it. And he’s not mine. The loss stings—Daniel will never know what Armand’s mind is like. Not beyond what he knew as a mortal, which was apparently fuck all. “He’s not mine,” he repeats out loud. 

Lestat leans back against the counter. “Sure,” he says easily. “Not a bad first attempt.” 

Daniel is going to interpret that as a Mind Gift comment, thank you very much. “What is mine like? My mind?” 

“Damn noisy.” 

They both turn; Louis rounds the corner with wet hair. He didn’t seem keen to leave them alone too long. Lestat smiles, nervous again, and gestures with one of the mugs he’d prepared. “Nightcap?” 

“Thanks.” Louis takes the mug and leans on the counter beside Lestat, a polite distance away. Weird. These two are being weird. 

“I need a little bit more than noisy to work with,” Daniel grumbles, redirecting them. “I don’t know where to start. Louis hasn’t shown me jack shit.” 

“We’ve been a little busy,” Louis says, and he’s smiling behind his mug. “We’ll start for real, do it right. After some sleep, I think.” 

A yawn cuts off Daniel’s protest. Rather than pull a kid-up-past-his-bedtime-tantrum, he drinks the rest of his blood in one long swallow. He is well and truly exhausted—fucking and walking all night will do that, he supposes. And finally feeding. He’s never sated, not these days, but it put a dent in the hurt cramping in his stomach. Between this and the other bag, he drank about two liters. 

“There is a guest suite, non?” Lestat asks, picking up his bag. “You said as much on the phone.” 

“Yeah.” Louis says it like he wants to say something else. 

“I’ll take to it, then.” Lestat smooths his hands down his thighs. “And we’ll see the city tomorrow. Ça marche?”

“Alright,” Louis says. “Yeah, then, good night. Thanks for, uh. For being here.” 

“Of course.” 

Lestat steps forward and kisses Louis’s cheek, the way bougie people do, or just French people—Daniel supposes, not like a lover does. Not the way Lestat wants to. The ‘feeling the yearning thing’? Yeah, that’s going both ways, now that he’s paying attention. 

Daniel wonders if his own state is quite so desperate. It’s probably worse. 

Then Lestat steps up and does the same fucking thing to Daniel, lips light on his cheek. “Shielding practice tomorrow,”  he says. 

Daniel blinks. “Sure. Yeah.” 

Lestat claps him on the shoulder. “Good.” He waves at the two of them as he goes. “Bonne nuit, mes amis.” 

The energy in the room dips significantly as Lestat wanders down the hall. Louis’s shoulders drop like he’s letting out a held breath. “You want to eat more?” he asks, turning to unload the contents of the briefcase into the artfully concealed fridge. 

“Nah. I’ll pass out mid-blood bag. Bed.” 

They go. When Louis turns down the covers, Daniel doesn’t need to be told twice. He slips into bed and sighs, kicking against the tight tuck of the sheets. 

Louis follows him and tucks up against him, his arms going around Daniel easily. He seems just as tired. 

“Always the big spoon, huh.” 

“Not my fault you’re little spoon-shaped.” Louis nuzzles at the back of his neck. “What did you think?” he asks, much quieter. 

“About…”

“Come on.” 

“He’s…nice.” 

“I can hear your nose wrinkling from over here.” 

Daniel unscrunches his face, even though Louis can’t see it. “Look, the weird thing is, I mean it. I don’t know what I expected, but he’s not it. He’s…a lot of things, like you said. A lot, full stop. He kissed my hand. ”

Louis chuckles. “Heard you thinking about it across the suite, yeah.” 

Daniel huffs. They quiet for a moment before Louis says, “You’re skeptical.”

“A professional hazard, I’m afraid. Always bringing work home.” He squirms back against Louis. “Serves me well, sometimes, though. Got us here.” 

“Oh, I’m work, now?” 

“A piece of work, yeah. Is this whole thing gonna be weird?” 

“Weird how?” Now he can hear Louis’s frown. 

“Like ‘you two staring longingly at each other while making small talk’ weird.” 

Louis’s sigh tickles Daniel’s neck. “You never mince words, do you?”

“Another professional hazard.” 

“We’re still figuring it out.” Louis rubs a hand down Daniel’s side idly. “Every time I’ve seen him, it’s been—it’s too easy to just slip back into each other. I’m tryin’ not to.” 

“Not when you said hello, you weren’t.” 

He sighs again. “Allow me a moment of weakness.” 

“I wouldn’t know anything about that kind of thing,” Daniel says around another yawn. He lets his eyes shut. “We’ll figure it out.” 

They’re going to have to, or, somehow, Armand will be the least of their problems. Daniel wonders if he’s stumbled across the point. 

Only one way to find out.

Notes:

here's the hotel, it has a real Louis vibe imo

thanks for reading!! more soon!!

Chapter 5: a journalist's innovation

Summary:

“Your friend is clever, Lou. I see why he won all those awards.”

“He didn’t win Pulitzers for being horny, Lestat,” Louis says vaguely. He’s staring at Daniel like he’s a revelation.

Notes:

I tried to make this short but they would not stop YAPPING!!!

“We’re snowed in.”

Daniel blinks awake, groggy. His internal alarm clock didn’t go off yet, but Louis is up and out of bed,  a long column lingering by the window. He’s got the curtains open; the world is a dark, inky blue rectangle, slashed with white blurs of snow. 

“Yeah?” 

“Came down all day. They’re plowing in the morning. Front desk called.”

“Shit.” 

“Mm.” 

“Any chance I get you back in bed?” 

Louis turns at that. He’s almost smiling, but not quite. His anxiety is back, a kettle hissing on a gas flame. There’s something unsettled in him that Daniel can’t quite grasp. “And we keep your guest waiting?”

“My guest?”

“Your idea, at least.”

“Did you tell him—“

“About your other big idea? What do you think?”

Daniel doesn’t really know what he thinks. He rubs his eyes. “I think it’s too early for this.”

“Go eat your breakfast.”

Louis turns back to his staring out the window. Daniel gets a moment of Deja vu, not the freight train of remembering his stolen past, but another Louis, silhouetted in front of another window: I prefer you like this. All dark and real. He snorts. He really was a fucking idiot. 

He thinks he catches a real smile at that thought but doesn’t push for more. Let the man brood. He’s earned it. 

So Daniel slips out of bed and the room, padding down the hallway. 

Lestat is sprawled on the couch. He’s wearing grey sweatpants and a hoodie the exact color of Louis’s eyes. Could be a coincidence, but Daniel doesn’t think many things about Lestat’s appearance are. He has headphones on and balances a Macbook and a little travel keyboard on each knee, tapping out something on the keys while his other hand scrolls, humming all the while. He mouths a full phrase in French, then slips into a falsetto Daniel thinks has no right to sound so good. He’s frowning in concentration. 

“Morning,” Daniel calls. 

Lestat looks up, blinking heavily like he’s coming up from deep water. Dreamy artist act, but again, Daniel doesn’t think it’s an act at all. He’s just like this. He pops the headphones off. “Good morning!” he says, entirely too cheerful. That’s the act, the ease Lestat tries and fails to project. 

“You eat already?” 

“Not yet.” He hesitates. “Is Louis—?” 

“He’ll be out.” Maybe. “Did you, uh. Sleep well?” Daniel cringes. Jesus, it’s like small talk after a one-night stand. Worse, since they don’t even have that much in common. Yet. 

Lestat laughs out loud, a bright bark. "Louis was right. A loud mind on you." 

Flushing, Daniel stomps to the kitchenette and busies himself with blood mugs. “So I’ve heard.”

“We’ll work on it.” 

“I guess we’ve got nothing better to do,” Daniel lies, thinking of several better things the three of them could do and shoving the thoughts away. “We’re snowed in, Louis said.” 

Lestat turns and peeks at him over the back of the couch. “I watched it fall this afternoon. A fierce storm.” 

“You didn’t sleep?” 

He shrugs. “I need to, less and less. Older age making itself known, I suppose.” 

Daniel does some quick math. “You’re, what, two fifty?” 

Lestat flicks his hair behind his shoulder. “Ah, do I look it?” 

Daniel laughs, surprised. It’s not that funny, but the smile Lestat gives him in return is bright and easier than his strained expressions last night. 

“Not a day over two thirty,” he replies, and it’s not that funny, either, but Lestat plays along, huffing, mock-offended. He seems to be less nervous with Louis out of the room. Daniel wonders if Louis knows that, if that’s why he lingers in their suite. 

Daniel heats three mugs of blood. The silence is a little easier now. Lestat takes his with a murmured, “Merci,” and returns to his work. Daniel chugs his breakfast, then starts sipping on Louis’s when he doesn’t appear after fifteen minutes. He retrieves his duffle from the floor where he’d tossed it last night and gets out his laptop, taking the armchair opposite Lestat. 

He’s already decided to take a break on the manuscript with Louis visiting, and that was before Frenchie came to town. His loud thoughts, such volatile raw material, now in combination with close quarters…yeah, he’s picking his battles. Not that one. 

So he decides to dig through Telamasca's files instead. A copy of everything waited in the cloud by the time he made it back to New York and remembered something besides blood lust. He’s been trying to find some evidence of Real Rashid. 

It’s a nothing task, but one he’s keen on, mostly because he wants to find a way to get in contact. Say thanks for hightailing it outta Dubai without me, jag-off, and then ask a million questions about being a spy né household manager. Interview with the Real Rashid, he thinks, and chuckles. Maybe that’s the sequel. He’ll request him when the Telamasca gets involved in publishing rights. Put it in the contract, or something. 

Lestat keeps a steady stream of hums and little exclamations under his breath as he works. It becomes a pleasant white noise, a faint melody bleeding into the air through his headphones. He’s entirely engrossed in whatever he’s doing, or seems to be. 

An easy hour goes by; Daniel only notices when his laptop is dying. He blinks, looking between them, and can’t stop a smile. “Do you know what co-working is?”

Lestat’s brow furrows. Daniel shakes his head, amused. “Never mind.” 

His weird life has gotten significantly weirder in the last few days. A lot better, too. 

He gives up on the laptop and leans forward in his chair. “Can you show me some Mind Gift shit?” 

Lestat nods and takes a minute to detangle from his wires and save his files. He still clutches the mini keyboard in his lap, absently tapping on the C key. It makes no sound. 

“You said it’s different for each person,” Daniel prompts. 

Lestat nods. “Not all of us have such a Gift. You’ve met an exceptional little corner of vampirekind.” 

“That’s one way to put it,” Daniel mutters. His Maker is an exception to every rule that makes sense. The laws of nature, for one. “How did you figure out your method?” 

“Truthfully?” 

“No, just go on and, fucking, lie. Sure. Yeah.” 

Lestat leans back onto the couch, assessing. “Armand taught me all I know.”

Daniel, to his credit, barely flinches. 

Lestat carries on: “I tried to learn his way, then decided to do the opposite.” He studies his nail beds. “Perhaps I was being difficult.” 

“You don’t look too upset about that.” 

He flashes a smile. “Ah, but he was a rotten bastard. What recourse was left to me?” 

Some stupid, animal part of Daniel rankles to hear Armand spoken of like that. The majority of him firmly agrees. 

There’s something lurking there, too, just beneath that practiced dismissiveness. A deep, unrelenting fury. A howl of rage, and it’s old, older than Daniel or Louis, though just as furious on the latter’s behalf. 

Nicki, Daniel remembers. His first love. His stomach lurches. What had Armand done?

“So you just…think really hard about not letting someone see what you’re thinking,” he fumbles. 

Lestat’s jaw tightens, any mirth gone as quickly as it came. “You must think a little more abstractly. If we were merely having a conversation, speaking aloud, how might you dodge a subject you’d prefer to avoid?” 

Daniel winces. Always stepping in it. He’s kind of amazed it took this long, but Lestat was snooping in his brain—not the point to push right now. “Yeah. Uh.” 

Lestat’s voice is flint. “Not a rhetorical question, dear.”

“I would…I’d bring up something else.” 

“So bring up something else.” A low warning, even as Lestat shrugs, languid, and drapes his arm along the back of the couch. 

Daniel doesn’t buy it. A predator in repose is still a predator. 

Point taken, he rubs over the tops of his thighs and says, “I didn’t understand when Louis explained it. I couldn’t visualize it, not really.” 

“How would you block a blow?” 

Daniel thinks back to the fights he’s been in—bars, pubs, back alleys. Usually ends in him getting the shit kicked out of him, high out of his head, but he can scrap if he needs to. “I’d duck.” 

Lestat snorts a laugh. Back on track, then. “Then duck.” 

Lestat’s presence brushes against his mind. It’s weird, makes his head hurt. It’s like squinting at the sun, but squint Daniel does. He resists. His vision falters. 

It only returns when Lestat withdraws. “A poor first attempt.” 

Daniel blinks hard. There’s a trickle of blood slugging out his nose. “Jesus. You’re melting my brain.” 

“Ne sois pas stupide,” Lestat says, clicking his tongue. “You did that yourself, andouille. I told you to dodge. You leaned in.” 

“Did you just call me a sausage?” 

“Focus.”

When Lestat reaches out again, Daniel can’t figure out how to move his brain out of the way, so he goes defensive instead. He encases his mind in the thin plastic wrapping that protected his cassettes back in the day. It’s the first visual that comes to him. And…it does something. Lestat’s tides lap at his mind, but don’t quite touch. 

He hums and leans forward. “Now, that is interesting.” 

“Did it work?” Daniel only realizes he’s been holding his breath when he tries to speak and needs an inhale to get any words out. 

“In a way. It’s creative. And devious.” Lestat sounds approving. “Allowing an interloper a peek, but nothing real.”

“So it did work.” 

“It might ward off the incurious. Settle simple minds.”

Daniel wonders if there are simple-minded vampires. Everyone he’s met so far has been…multi-faceted, to put it kindly. Uncategorizable by the DSM-5, if he's being honest. “And what about complicated minds?” 

“A more complicated matter. But I like the approach. It’s strange.” Lestat still sounds appreciative. 

Daniel shrugs. “I’m not much of a visual thinker. Words guy, y’know. Algebra, not geometry.” 

“You’re overthinking it. Again.” 

They run through the exercise a few more times. Daniel fights every one of his instincts, the ones calling to confront, to push, and he dodges instead. It becomes sort of a dance, a push and pull, waves on the shore, that kind of thing. There’s definitely a pattern to it, and some weird new part of his brain is almost able to make sense of it. 

He normally hates unquantifiable shit, and this is all touchy-feely woo woo fuckery, but it’s the method to the Mind Gift. He does better when he’s not dwelling on it, Lestat was right. 

And Lestat is relatively patient. He seems amused by the whole thing, but beyond that, he’s focused. Honed in on Daniel. Having his full attention is a good feeling. Daniel can’t name it beyond that, or doesn’t care to—he’s focusing too, isn’t he?

And then he finally, finally stops thinking so hard and goes with an instinct he doesn’t understand, letting his mind surge forward and out. 

Lestat claps his hands, the sound bright and too loud. “Te voilà!” 

“What?” 

“You kept me out! Very good!” 

Daniel grins. Whatever just happened felt correct. 

“It was strange to have a moment of silence,” Lestat says, a smile playing on his mouth. “Our first since I arrived.” 

“You’re teasing me.” 

He leans back and assesses. “And you’re on your way, fledgling.” 

“Daniel?”

They both turn—Louis stands in the hall, finally drawn out, concern radiating off him like an afterimage. His shoulders curl in, an anxious hunch. “You alright?” he asks. 

“I’m fine, Louis. You okay?”

Louis hesitates. His hands clench and unclench at his sides. “I lost you for a second.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Your mind. I was—you went quiet.” 

Daniel lets himself be proud for a moment. “Then it is working. We’re practicing blocking stuff.” 

“Oh.” 

Lestat’s entire demeanor changed the moment Louis stepped in. His ease is gone. He’s suddenly stiff and unsure, his body tensing into a taut line. A second of Louis and he’s a wreck again. 

You were just sitting in the other room listening to me think? Daniel asks. Helicopter mom, much? 

Louis has no answer. His eyes flick to the door of the suite and then back to Daniel. It’s only a second, but Daniel’s new insight surges forward again and slips past Louis’s shield. His thoughts pour over, undeniable: It’s still coming down out there. With the snow, I could find him in the open, probably, let Lestat hold things down here, keep Daniel fed, and then I could, I might—

“Seriously, Louis?” Daniel bursts out. 

Louis looks taken aback, then his expression goes defiant when he realizes what just happened. His hands clench back to fists. 

“Qu'est-ce que c'est?” Lestat asks.

“He’s been working on his murder plot in there.” Consumed with the idea of tearing Armand limb from limb. 

He was hiding from me, Daniel projects to Lestat. Not from you. 

He shoots Daniel a surprised look, then nods. He looks grateful. He likely didn’t realize his worry was transmitting so clearly. 

Louis hisses out a breath, then rubs at his eyes. “It’s easier if I’m not lookin’ at you,” he says wearily. “You see too much.” 

“You promised me, Louis!” 

He goes immediately indignant. “I did no such fuckin’ thing!” 

“Okay, yeah, technically not, but I thought we…I still…you can’t.” Daniel wrings his hands. “Like, you literally can’t. And I can’t have him hurt you.” 

“Who says he could—” 

“You. You said. In Dubai, you told me Armand was the most powerful vampire in that hemisphere. And now he’s here, and...” 

Louis doesn’t meet his eye. He stares past Daniel, looking to Lestat. “You think you could take him?” 

“Don’t go batting your eyes at him!” Daniel warns, but he can already see it—one compelling look from Louis and Lestat will be out in a snowbank, ready to snipe Daniel’s Maker or die trying. 

Lestat makes a displeased hum but considers the question. Then he looks to Daniel. “How is he?” 

Panic clutches at Daniel’s chest. It’s irrational, an escalation, but it’s here regardless. “How is he how? What d’you mean?” 

“I mean, what is Armand’s capacity at the moment? You saw him, didn’t you? Is he strong?” 

Daniel’s back in the diner booth, watching Armand’s wan face fall. Watching his fingers stim at his side. He’s fucked right now, actually. He thinks it before he can stop himself. 

Lestat nods, just barely, and Daniel shoots to his feet. “You can’t,” he says, and it’s to Lestat now. He hates how desperate he sounds. “It’s not gonna fix anything. It’ll make it all worse.” 

“What, exactly, could be worse—” Louis snaps. 

“Me. I would be,” Daniel snaps right back, spinning on his heel. “Hard to imagine, I know, but you won’t have to if you hurt him. And it’s not like we brought Lestat out here in a blizzard to babysit, did we?” 

“Why did you, then?” 

They both look at Lestat. 

He’s still holding himself carefully. His hands are folded in his lap, but his physical precision is at odds with the raw look on his face. “Why am I here with you both?” 

So you didn’t tell him. 

Louis frowns. I told him enough. I said I wanted to introduce you two.

Daniel scoffs. “And what a great job you’ve done at that.” 

Lestat looks confused but says nothing, and Louis gnaws on his lip, hard enough to break the skin if he keeps it up. “I wanted to go after Armand,” he says. “Fine. I did. I do. So Daniel thought…he thought you might calm me down. Having you here.” 

Lestat’s eyebrows shoot up at that—he’s surprised, pleased, too, a simmering, low warmth at the thought of being something that could help Louis. He uncoils a bit, determination overtaking his worry. “I have not succeeded at my task so far, then.” 

Louis scrubs down his face. “I haven’t given you a chance to,” he admits. 

It’s like these two are in their own world again, a little corner of the universe that belongs just to them. Daniel feels superfluous, suspended in the air between them. 

“Daniel’s right,” Louis says. “I’ve been…feels like I’m going crazy, with him nearby.”

Lestat nods, solemn. “He has that effect on people. Armand gets to the best of us.” 

“I’ll…yeah." Louis nods, exhaling hard. "It’s fine.” 

Daniel is still on alert. His voice and hands both started shaking at some point. “Are you fine, Louis? Because I can’t stop you if you’re not, but I’ll try. And if you go and get your dumb ass killed by Armand, I will never fucking forgive you.” 

His voice breaks. He feels stupid. Fragile. Fraying at his seams. 

Louis steps forward. He takes Daniel’s hand in both his own. “Sorry. I got you all—I came here to help you, and look at you.” 

Daniel shakes his head, rebuking that. “You’re helping plenty. Just…fucking, relax, okay, with the vigilante shit? You’re here with us. Be with us.” 

He pulls Louis in, and Louis tucks into him easily. He shudders with a sigh when he puts his face in the curve of Daniel’s neck. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles again. “Not thinking clearly.” 

Daniel’s sudden burst of adrenaline scatters. He’s shaking for real now, like a goddamn leaf. “No shit.” 

They clutch at each other for a long moment. Daniel kisses Louis’s temple, trying to settle the matter of his heart clutching in his chest. 

He is good for Louis, Lestat thinks. Good to him. 

It’s not projected with intent; Daniel’s eavesdropping without intending to, apparently. He doesn’t let himself look at Lestat or feel the full force of his yearning because Lestat wants, very much, to be good for Louis, too. He has no idea how to. 

Maybe Daniel can help with that. 

He untangles from Louis eventually and gives him a gentle shove toward the kitchenette. “Go eat something.” 

Lestat shoots to his feet. “I’ve got it.” He gestures to the couch and goes to fill a mug. Louis sinks into the couch with a heavy exhale and reaches for a book he’d left on the coffee table, something heavy in French. His thoughts are open again to Daniel; he’s brushing up, he feels rusty, and he wonders if that was another thing Armand took from him when he altered his memories—his second language, his drawl, scattering. 

Then he’s trying very hard not to think about that, him, so he thinks about Lestat, instead. About Daniel. About the fear on Daniel’s face, raw, just a moment ago.

Daniel doesn’t want to see it. He tries to shut him out, dodging away from Louis’s mind like Lestat showed him. It works. It gets a little clearer in his head, quieter. 

He sits back down in the armchair as Lestat returns with a mug for Louis. 

“Thank you, baby,” Louis says without thinking. 

Lestat’s heart skips in his chest so loudly it startles Daniel. He and Louis both freeze for a moment, staring at each other, Louis’s hand curled around Lestat’s as he reaches for the mug. 

Daniel laughs out loud. “You two are so fucking hopeless.” They both look at him, indignant and guilty, caught out, but he waves them away. He’s sick of pretending at anything. “Just call it how I see it.”

“Well. Let’s see if you can call up a mental block as quickly as you speak,” Lestat sniffs, flouncing into his seat beside Louis. His irritation is put on; he’s teasing. He’s relieved. Relieved to have Louis in his sight. Relieved he really is wanted here. 

Daniel understands that a little too well. “Get ready, Louis. You’re next. I'm getting good at this." 

Louis is still shaken, but he manages a strained chuckle. “Confidence is key, I suppose.” 

“Right after I crack Lestat,” Daniel says, putting on some bravado. 

Lestat tilts his head and simpers, “Eager to be dealt with, hm?” 

Daniel laughs again, but now it’s to cover the jolt in his stomach at the idea of his own eagerness. Of Lestat dealing with him. 

One track mind with you, Louis tuts, but he’s just as interested. An idea is sketching itself out in his mind, a want he just needs to articulate correctly. Daniel’s gut rolls with heat. He had to strain to focus as Lestat says, “Now, the most important part Is your continued practice. C'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron, non?” 

Probably a few hours too late, but: “I don’t speak French.” 

Lestat just laughs. They try a few more drills, Daniel attempting some offense again, but it’s getting harder by the moment since Louis’s emotions don’t settle. Daniel blocked his thoughts, sure, but his feelings seethe around them both. Louis is burning up with want. He doesn’t attempt to flip a page, not once in twenty minutes, and drinks his breakfast in strained little sips. 

Daniel decides to do something about it. “Louis, you grind your teeth any harder and you’ll have nubs for fangs.” 

Lestat raises his eyebrows as Louis looks up, startled out of his scorching thoughts. “I thought this is what you wanted,” he says, frustrated, gesturing between the three of them. 

Finally, this frustration is one Daniel can help with. He looks at Louis and says, voice low with intent, “I want what you want. So.” 

Louis gives him a white-hot look, then looks at Lestat. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. 

“He and I are in agreement, you know,” Lestat says. His voice is low, too, but quiet. Not confrontational in the slightest. Driving it home. “Whatever you want, Louis—it’s yours.” 

We’re a good team, Daniel thinks, and Lestat’s lips curl in a little smile before he schools his expression. 

Louis struggles, for a moment, then gingerly puts aside his book. He’s still coiled tight, even as he caves, and oh, this is gonna be good because he says, fiercely, like it’s a challenge: “Alright, then. Yeah. I’d like someone to fuck me.”

Finally, Daniel and Lestat think in unison. 

“One or both of you,” Louis carries on, I don’t care—” 

“In a row?” Daniel asks. “Or, like, at the same—?” 

Louis exhales sharply. Lestat’s eyes go sharky, like there’s blood in the water. Daniel’s stomach swoops low. “Time,” he finishes weakly. Might have been a step too far. He stares at his lap, flexing his hands. “I, uh, have a bad habit of needing to clarify. Made a career out of it, actually. Also, not a suggestion. Just—” 

“A journalist’s innovation,” Lestat purrs. “Your friend is clever, Lou. I see why he won all those awards.” 

“He didn’t win Pulitzers for being horny, Lestat,” Louis says vaguely. He’s staring at Daniel like he’s a revelation. 

“If that had been an option, though,” Daniel says, snark on autopilot. He clarifies: “You’re considering it?” 

Louis…shrugs. Still thinking. Daniel turns to Lestat. “And you’re not going to rip my head off?” 

“It’s up to Louis, of course,” Lestat says, brow furrowing. “But I don’t have a problem with it. Why should I?” You just said we’re a good team.

“Well. Because, you—uh. You are…” Insanely possessive of one Louis de Pointe du Lac de Lioncourt?  

Daniel looks to Louis. “Gonna help me out here?” 

Louis blinks, snapping out of it, but…has he? His eyes are blown wide, pupils gone huge in just a moment of consideration. Daniel’s mouth goes dry. 

“Because, historically, you’ve had a sharing problem,” Louis says to Lestat. 

“Ah. Historically.” Lestat fiddles with his jewelry for a moment, his fingers brushing over…well, isn’t that sweet. His rings are all curated, flashy in an artsy way but for the single golden band on his ring finger. Daniel didn’t notice it last night, just as Lestat doesn’t seem to notice he’s lingering on it now. 

“Well, it is a new age, is it not? I’ve heard mention of…what is it? Situationships?” 

“Oh my god,” Louis says.

“What the fuck is a situationship?” Daniel asks at the same time. 

“It is of no import. I only mean…this can be casual. Comfortable. We’re all friends. New friends,” he says, leaning across the coffee table to pat Daniel’s knee, “And…old friends.” 

Lestat looks at Louis with the least casual expression any human or vampire has looked at another person with. Might as well be the dictionary’s entry on pining. 

He waves vaguely between the two of them. “And since you already…well. I saw it myself, the other night. Your little show for Armand. I would not be opposed to an encore.” 

That is…unexpectedly mortifying. “You saw? How?” A blush blooms high on Daniel’s cheeks. He looks to Louis, who seems just as surprised. 

Lestat arches an eyebrow. “Darlings, every vampire in North America saw, if their minds were open. And I am always listening your way, Louis.” He bites his lip, faltering again as if he misspoke. “Perhaps I should not say so. It is a friendly observation, I must assure you, but since—I—” 

Louis takes his hand. “Je sais, Lestat,” he says quietly. “Tu n'as pas besoin de dire.” 

Louis speaks in French to take some privacy. Daniel doesn’t take the opportunity to point out that they all share a Gift. He doesn’t need to guess at what this means, because as he’s learning, Lestat’s worry is not just situational; it is foundational. Daniel can feel it in his bone marrow, keeps seeing little blips from his mind without intending to, a silky voice, sudden in Lestat’s ear, a September morning decades ago, the earth losing its axis—

Lestat makes a wounded noise at Louis’s touch and gives his hand a squeeze. He surprises everyone by releasing it after a moment. 

He seems to be trying very, very hard. Daniel doesn’t know what to make of it. 

“I caught the details from you, actually, Daniel, dear,” he says, leaning back into the couch, putting on practiced ease. “As we’ve learned, your thoughts have a…a particular boisterousness.” 

Daniel exhales hard. Louis stares at Lestat and takes a long pull of blood. Lestat watches Louis’s throat work as he swallows. His voice drops as he says, “Everyone seemed to have a lovely time. You are happy enough, Louis, or were, before the gremlin’s arrival.” Lestat nods at Daniel. “This one is miserable, but not on your account. So. We are all understanding one another. What’s some blood, some pleasure, between us friends, non?” 

Well. In for a fucking penny. “I’m in love with him a bit, you know,” Daniel says. 

He might be trying to get ahead of it before they swap spit or whatever, but he mostly says it because it’s true, and to see what happens. 

Louis chokes on his drink, surprised that Daniel said it so plainly. Lestat only hesitates briefly—it’s just a moment, the tightening of his jaw, before he waves it away, airy. “You have working eyes, then, and good sense,” he says briskly. 

Sputtering into the crook of his arm, Louis says, “You’re okay with that? Seriously?” 

Daniel, for the first time in his life, holds his tongue. He’s here, sure, present, but this is a different conversation happening. The ability to observe these two in the wild, their dynamic so new and yet heavy with history, is too good to pass up. 

And Lestat’s frustration finally shows itself. “How else must I say it?” he exclaims. “I have made myself clear, and patience is a newly claimed virtue of mine.” He shakes his head, tossing his hair over his shoulder. “Let us not overwear it, should it become tedious.”

Louis looks at Daniel, but then he’s right back to Lestat. A magnet to its anchor. A fledgling to his Maker. “You’re right,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m…” He shakes his head, takes his hand again. “I’m gonna take you at your word.”

Lestat’s face crumples. Daniel worries he’s about to burst into tears, but he simply nods after a brief exhale. 

He does not let go of Louis’s hand this time.

The tension in the room remains, but it turns hot, stirring, a spike of adrenaline. Daniel keeps holding his tongue and breath. 

Until Lestat turns to him. His full attention again—it’s like the force of the sun, or what Daniel remembers of it. “And you, Daniel Molloy?” he asks, tilting his head prettily. “You, who loves our Louis a bit. Do you trust my word?” 

Our is a shock, a lovely one to Daniel and Louis both. Louis is pleased to be claimed, even if he doesn’t say it. It radiates out of him, warming Daniel as the feelings bleed over. 

He has to keep his head on straight, though. Figure out how to answer that. This is way more upfront communication than he expected, but it’s good. They’ve got to lay things out first if this is to go well, and it has to, or Louis will crash out, and Lestat will become the legendary bitch Daniel knows from his own transcripts, and Daniel will fall into despair if he’s alone again. 

So. Not exactly low stakes. 

“I don’t really know you beyond a second-hand account,” Daniel says. “Not yet, at least. But…it’s alright, ‘cause I trust Louis. So.”

The thrum in the air becomes palpable, the pressure mounting again. Louis looks proud, and Lestat smiles with his teeth. “A shrewd young man,” he purrs. 

Daniel feels pinned between the two of them, even though he sits across from them. Eventually, he’ll figure out how to hold his own with vampires, since he is one, but right now? He feels every bit the young man again. They keep calling him that, and he feels it. 

And, even though he’d pitched the idea, technically, he didn’t really think they’d all end up in bed together. Maybe taking turns, or something, but…the three of them? It’s…daunting. He wonders if Lestat is humoring him, being polite for Louis’s sake—he can’t tell. It’s the fluidity of his damn thoughts, the ones Daniel can’t get a hand around—

“Cheeky little thing,” Lestat tuts. “Poking around where you’ve not yet been invited. Our lesson was short-learned, then.” 

Daniel’s mouth goes dry. Whoops. “I don’t realize I’m doing it half the time. Gremlin blood, remember?”

“And yet I sensed a question. Are you brave enough to ask it, fledgling?”

Louis tsk’s. “Don’t give him shit.”

Daniel “No, he’s right. I just, uh. Want to know what I’m getting into, here.”  He takes a deep breath, then invites Lestat into his mind. Floating his uncertainty question in vague concepts, rather than words.

He’s not ashamed of himself, alright, but he’s no Adonis. A young man to these two, sure, yet he’s got decades of wear and fucking tear on his body as opposed to their frozen, perfect thirties. He was already feeling like a grandpa in the lobby last night. It’s a lot. And it’s stupid to worry about, is the thing. This is the state of the union and will be until, as Lestat had said, the sun burns herself out. 

Daniel has made peace with it, or peace enough. He’s not sure if he’s feeling sexy about it, exactly. 

That didn’t stop you from enjoying Louis’s company, Lestat projects. You think me unappreciative? 

“Dunno.” Daniel summons his nerve. Cocks his head. “Are you?” 

Louis watches the two of them closely, something protective buzzing in him, burning beside his anticipation. He’s taking a back seat now, letting them work it out. He’s trusting them, too. 

Lestat doesn’t answer out loud but lets the guard of his mind down yet again. He doesn’t even make Daniel fight for it. He’s still smiling, pleased at Daniel’s boldness. 

Unfiltered, Lestat’s thoughts are distinctly his: loud, unapologetic, big. They have a presence. 

He’s been very curious about Daniel ever since Louis mentioned the interviews. He liked the way he kept eye contact yesterday, even undressed and vulnerable. He likes how he treats Louis, how Daniel brings out a new ease in him. He likes his spark. 

And…he likes the way Daniel looks. That’s real. Old age is a novelty, a rarity for their kind, but beyond that, he does find him attractive, and that attraction amuses Lestat. Surprises him. 

Then something strange happens, Lestat’s motions bleeding between the two of them. Daniel's Gift again, overreaching. 

The sheer volume of what Lestat feels is staggering. There is a wanting in him that no taking seems to fill, seven decades of withering and the lonely century before that. Only broken up by the fierce joy of being Louis’s companion that burned out, white-hot. Then the year of purgatory. 

Daniel had thought Lestat was being dramatic when he’d claimed loneliness was the worst thing that could befall a vampire. He’d had a running list at the time: fire, stakes, etc, but he’d learned the truth the hard way, this last half year. 

Lestat has lived that truth lifetime after lifetime. 

He only withdraws when he’s forced to; the low tide of Lestat’s defenses sweeps him away again. A thorough retreat. He blinks hard, reorienting; he’s still sitting on the armchair, across from Louis and Lestat. Louis is buzzing with anxiety, not quite sure what’s going on, and Lestat stares at Daniel. He doesn’t look…rattled, exactly, but he does look surprised. 

“Gremlin blood, indeed,” he murmurs. “You took more than I gave, just now.” 

“I didn’t mean—” 

“I know you didn’t, mon petit oiseau.” Lestat looks at him a moment longer, then nods. “Your Gift is fascinating. It will be a fearsome thing, in time.” 

“Alright?” Louis says, squeezing his hand. Lestat turns to him. He smiles, less skittish, more sure. “I like your friend, Louis,” he says. 

Louis is pleased by that. Proud, again, of Daniel for gaining Lestat’s approval, for Lestat taking it all in stride. “Yeah?” 

“Mm. A good head on his shoulders.” 

Louis leans back in his seat. His smile goes a little devious. “He gives it good, too.” 

Daniel’s blush comes back, Jesus, and it only deepens when Lestat leans forward. “Another second-hand account,” he sighs. “What is to be done about that?”

Okay, so they’re doing this. “Come over here and find out.” 

Lestat stands, slow, sensuous. His voice finds a way to drop even lower. “I would really like to see what all the fuss is about.” 

Daniel scoffs, attempting and failing to play it cool. He taps his temple. “It’s what’s between my ears, not between my legs. Takes more than a dick to make a fascinating boy.” 

“What you’re working with don’t hurt though,” Louis says cheerfully.

He has no retort because he suddenly has a very beautiful man straddling him. Lestat’s eyes are flat, dark disks, dilated beyond reason. 

Daniel kisses him. Nothing clever about it, nothing fancy. It’s hungry and honest, as clumsy as he feels. He mostly wants to know how Lestat kisses. 

Like a maniac, is the answer. Lots of tongue, a deep, low moan fluttering between their mouths. Lestat twists both hands into his hair and tilts Daniel’s head up, grinding down into his lap. He feel the heavy line of Lestat’s cock, loose in those fucking sweatpants—no wonder Louis acted the fool, Daniel thinks blearily. He’s huge. 

Huge enough to get his fangs extending in his mouth. Damn. When Daniel tries to reel them in, Lestat laughs and licks one, like a demented child enjoying a hard candy. “Go on, let’s see them,” he says breathlessly. 

He hesitates a moment—fang shy, or something—so Lestat simply sticks his pointer finger into Daniel’s mouth and pricks it on a half-extended tooth. 

The brief bead of blood is enough to send him snarling—Lestat tastes like full-bodied vermouth. Annihilation, too, Armand had said, but that’s a little dramatic, isn’t it, not concrete, and the man in his lap is very, very real. His blood is dry and floral and scorching all at once, the embers and the fire, both. 

“We have a poet on our hands,” Lestat says. He’s not even being sarcastic, the bastard: the sincerity in him aches and spills over. “That’s very nice, cher. I’m flattered.” 

“Butt out, will you?” Daniel says, but there’s no bite behind it, not with Lestat’s finger on his tongue and his blood in his mouth.

Lestat tosses his hair and laughs. “Keep me out, then. You said you want to practice. This is hands-on.” He waggles his eyebrows—God, these theatrical queens, they’ll be the death of him— “Or distract me well enough, so that I butt out. ”

Daniel doesn’t need to be told twice. He grabs Lestat’s ass, pulling him into a deeper straddle. His other hand goes to the back of his neck, and he makes a fist in his stupid, gorgeous hair. Nothing nice about that. 

Lestat’s appreciative. He moans, throat straining, and slips his finger from Daniel’s mouth to trace his lower lip. He grinds down, bucking his hips with abandon, and Daniel rocks back into the chair with a groan. He forces his eyes open, looking past Lestat, seeking out Louis. He’s still on the couch across from them, legs spread wide, an easy stance. 

He’s leaning back, taking in the show. Daniel still asks: This okay? You okay? 

There’s a bright burst of affection at the check-in, a warmth Daniel revels in. “I’m really enjoying the view,” Louis says out loud for Lestat’s benefit, and he does benefit; they both do, because when Lestat looks over his shoulder at Louis, the gesture pushes his chest into Daniel’s face. 

Daniel makes a very stupid noise and presses forward, instinct pulling him, uncaring of anything but getting in there, nuzzling through his thin hoodie. Lestat laughs again, a sound Daniel feels in his mouth, rumbling through his sternum. “This boy’s an eager thing, Lou.” 

“Sure is,” Louis agrees. “You two look good like this.”

“Be better with you,” Daniel says. 

“What was that? You’re all muffled in Lestat’s tits.”

Daniel rolls his eyes for no one and peeks around Lestat’s torso. “We’d be better with you. C’mere.”

Louis tilts his head and smirks. Daniel barely bites back a moan. 

“I just said I’m enjoying the view, didn’t I?” Louis says slowly. He jerks his head in a nod. “Why don’t you bite him.”

Daniel’s gut goes warm and rolls over. “Who?” he asks dumbly. “Me…him?” 

Louis chuckles. “Yeah. You, him.” 

“You, me,” Lestat tags on helpfully. He’s still staring at Louis, and he’s still laughing a little, a slow rolling chuckle he can’t seem to keep in. 

Daniel re-establishes his grip in Lestat’s hair. Gets his attention, again. “Yeah?” he asks, and it’s breathy as hell. Jesus, what’s getting into him? Hopefully these two.  “You want it?”

It’s not only dirty talk; he’s actually checking, but Lestat takes it how he wants to, which seems to be how he takes most things. “Oh, I want it,” he simpers. “Finally putting those big fangs to use, hm? Or do they only serve as decoration?”

Daniel scoffs. Bizarrely, he feels like he knows this guy. Lestat is becoming more and more familiar to him the hornier they both get. 

Is it a bad sign? Is Lestat retreating into this? His old role? Is he really here, with Daniel, or is it all for show? 

Plainly: is this real? He’s surprised at how badly he wants it to be. And he’s surprised when a slender finger taps the center of his forehead. 

His eyes cross when he tries to look at it, then he gives him and just looks up. Lestat studies him. “Do you always think this much in bed, mon poussin?” 

Daniel squirms, which just sends Lestat grinding in his lap. “We’re in an armchair,” he pants out. 

“Pedantic.” Lestat waits for an answer. Damn it. 

“I try—ah, try not to.” 

“What is it, then?!” Lestat says hotly, smacking him lightly on the chest. “Must I reveal my every thought to ensure your comfort and my wanting?”

Daniel clears his throat. He feels hot all over, embarrassed, and not in a sexy way. He’s being extremely high-maintenance. 

He doesn’t remember needing so much reassurance during sex in his human life. Admittedly, it had been a long time, years—the last decade or so kind of blurs, random encounters, then his own company, then pain and shakes and the great winding down, down, down. 

And now—this. Now, he’s trying to establish clear consent with the guy he’s been writing about, thinking about, for the last six months? While the guy he’s been thinking about for almost fifty years is watching? For fuck’s sake, Lestat was a character to him in the great vampiric telenovela up until yesterday. 

They’ve been getting to know each other, sure, but he’s still larger than life. A folktale. An urban legend. It’s like trying to fuck Bigfoot or Paul Bunyan. 

Lestat’s nose wrinkles. “Qui est-ce? Pas le cryptide, l'autre." 

“Um.” 

Losing interest immediately, Lestat waves off the question and says, “Ça ne fait rien. Tell me this, instead—how, exactly, may I put you at ease, Daniel Molloy? I would like to do so.” 

He really is trying very hard. Another kindness. Daniel tries to find the right words and fails as Lestat stares him down. He’s wrapping a curl at the base of Daniel’s neck around his pointer finger as he waits. 

The truth: Daniel has to get over his worry and self-consciousness and whatever the fuck else, or he’s gonna have to call this off. And he has never, in his life, wanted to see where something goes more. 

And they’re both still hard, is the thing. 

Lestat’s 'new-claimed patience' fizzles out, or he hears that thought and takes mercy on him. “You trust Louis,” he says. “You told me as much.” 

“I do, yeah.” Daniel doesn’t look over, but Louis sends another ping of warmth his way. Reassurance. He’s ready to step in if Daniel wants him to, but he also really, really wants to see where this goes. 

It’s okay to want that. They’re all okay. 

Lestat ducks in close. “Then trust him,” he murmurs directly into Daniel’s ear. His voice is low enough that Louis might not even hear it. “He’s got us right where he wants us. Why don’t we give him what he wants, hm?” 

It’s very close to what Daniel said to Louis on their first night together: if there’s something you want, you should have it. 

The heat in Daniel boils over. 

Without another thought, he sinks his teeth into the long column of Lestat’s neck. 

Notes:

me: maybe this fic will be short
also me: writes a 7K and they don't even start fucking yet

the french (please correct me if I'm wrong here, not a native speaker):
(UPDATE thank you sm Loligi!!)
“Ne sois pas stupide" Don't be stupid and then Lestat does, indeed, call Daniel a sausage lol
“Te voilà!” There you are!
“Qu'est-ce que c'est?” What is it?
“Je sais, Lestat. Tu n'as pas besoin de dire.” It's okay, Lestat. You don't have to say.
"C'est par la pratique qu'on devient forgeron" It is by practice that one becomes a blacksmith (French idiom that I LOVE)
"mon petit oiseau" my little bird
"mon poussin" my baby chicken (he's using all the bird nicknames for the fledgling ok)
“Qui est-ce? Pas le cryptide, l'autre." Who is that? Not the cryptid, the other one. (lol)
"Ça ne fait rien." It doesn't matter.

Chapter 6: entirely uncharted territory

Summary:

“Look how well your friends treat you."

Notes:

Ahem. The Tags Have Updated. read accordingly and MERRY CHRISTMAS
(also added a note to the beginning of the fic for folks asking where Armand is. I made a chart.)

Daniel’s brain rattles in his skull with Lestat’s blood blooming on his tongue, pouring down his throat. Dry heat, that scorching, urging ache. Citrus, absinth sage, fire. And more—beyond that—

Lestat’s fist in his hair unlatches him. He’s not sure he’d stop if left to his own devices. 

“S’like feeding,” Daniel slurs out. His tongue darts out to lick his lips. 

Lestat frowns down at him, confused. “Hm?” 

“My Gift.” And it’s all slotting together, making sense, finally, with a second point of data to compare to. “I can—it’s like giving through the blood. The feelings,” he says impatiently when Lestat’s frowns deepen. “It’s nothing like it is when I’m drinking properly, but when I get the little blips—that’s what it’s like.” 

“You got all that from a sip?” Louis asks from his perch on the couch. Daniel peeks past Lestat to look at him, shaking his head. “I just figured it out. The blood just amplifies the emotions I can feel. I thought…” That it was just because it was you sounds too silly to admit. Louis doesn’t have magic empath-inducing powers. If he did, he might have a kinder line-up of ex-husbands. 

A theatrical huff pulls his attention back to Lestat. He’s actually fucking pouting, his lower lip in a full tremble. “If you are able to formulate a hypothesis, I suppose I am not holding your attention well enough,” Lestat snipes, and there he is, Daniel knows this guy. 

And he remembers what he could be doing instead of conjecturing. Right. Back at it. Focus, Molloy. 

“I’ll hold something for you,” he grunts, and okay, not his best work, but when his hand reaches between their laps to cup his cock, they both groan. Lestat really is ridiculously hung. Daniel’s never had any complaints in that department, but fuck’s sake. No wonder Lestat acted like such an asshole for centuries. 

Grinding into his palm, Lestat leans close to his ear. “Again,” he growls, “You are thinking very loudly, dear.” 

“Shut me up, then,” Daniel hits back, and Lestat needs no further instruction. He kisses him hard, licking into his mouth, still tugging at his hair, angling for a deeper kiss. Daniel rubs at him as well as he can at this angle. It’s awkward positioning, but it doesn’t really matter, because Lestat seems happy for anything he can get. 

More things in common. 

When Lestat lets him breathe, not that either of them needs it, Daniel runs his free hand down his spine, pushing him into a deeper straddle, a curved arch. Lestat responds beautifully and tosses his hair over his shoulder. 

“Fuck,” Louis says, and Daniel feels Lestat’s body respond to just his voice. He lets out a low, pained sound and rocks his hips. 

“You want what you said?” Daniel asks Louis, peering around the man writhing in his lap. “Both of us?”

Louis is on the edge of his seat, any ease gone from his posture. He nods. “Yeah, I do.” 

“Alright.” Daniel shifts around and gets to his feet, still holding Lestat. He’s heavy—Daniel wonders if that’s an older vampire thing, the stoniness catching up to them, weighing them down with time, and then remembers he’s not supposed to wonder anything at all. It’s no match for fledgling strength anyway, especially with a mouthful of Lestat’s blood in him. 

Lestat gasps, genuinely surprised. Then he tips back his head and laughs, slinging his legs around Daniel’s waist. He’s like a delighted, blonde koala. 

“Lead the way, Louis,” Daniel says. “Feels like we need a bed for this.” He kind of manages to sound calm, somehow, like this isn’t an insane turn of events. Like they’re not about to cross into entirely uncharted territory. 

Louis isn’t waiting around, either. He jolts to his feet and starts down the hall, directing their odd trio to the primary suite. 

Lestat drops from Daniel’s arms gracefully, then plants a kiss on his cheek. He’s still grinning. “Full of surprises.”

“You have no idea,” Louis says, and then he’s in Lestat’s arms, kissing him the way he’s wanted to since Daniel suggested they fly him out. Daniel feels it all, the rush, his stomach swooping as they finally, finally let each other have it, Lestat crowding him back until Louis falls, breathless, onto the bed. 

As he strips out of his hoodie and shirt, Daniel wants to roll his eyes. Lestat is gorgeous, of course, his body tight and rippling, with an insane, nipped-in waistline.

Louis looks at Lestat like he’s the beginning and end of the world. Maybe he is. 

Daniel speaks before he realizes he will: “You guys have…uh. Had. Sex? Right? Since…yeah?” 

The two tear their gazes from each other to look at him, Louis with absolute disbelief, and Lestat with a charmed, indulgent expression, as if Daniel is a stupid child or a particularly clever dog. 

“Yeah, Daniel,” Louis says, like duh, like who the fuck do you think we are. 

He holds his hands up in surrender. “Yeah. Alright. Fine. Just—fucking, thought I’d ask.” With the way Louis’s staring—never mind. “So, how do you guys normally do this?” Daniel asks, trying to recover. 

They exchange another look. A longer one. “This, in particular, we’ve never done,” Louis says after a heartbeat. 

“Really?” 

It’s a long life, Daniel figured they got up to some shit, especially after Louis compared Lestat’s cock to black tar heroin, Jesus Christ. Then again, they did have only a human’s marriage of time together, and Louis was…withholding, is a charitable way to put it. Deep in his shame. 

And: “Sharing problem,” Louis and Lestat say at the same time. 

Daniel nods, then tries to rack his brain for a suggestion on positioning. Lestat’s not ready to let him off that easy. “What is your experience in this particular arena?” he asks. Daniel kind of wants to kiss the smirk right off his stupid, beautiful mouth, but he answers instead: “I’ve only done it once. I was, ah, receiving, and I was on a cocktail of drugs that I’m not sure exist anymore. Don’t remember much.” He remembers liking it quite a bit.  

Lestat nods, still smirking, and Louis raises his eyebrows. Daniel’s face feels hot, and he shrugs. “It’ll take some work, is my guess.” Good thing I love my fucking job. 

Louis reclines back on the bed, breathless, looking at the two of them. “We’ve got the time. Nowhere to be. Your hand first, Les? Get me started?” 

Daniel’s eyes flicker to Lestat’s hands. Jesus, they’re big. They seem impossible to think about inside Louis, but if they’re both about to be, his long, piano-player fingers are as good a place to start as any. 

Lestat is reverent. “Whatever you want.” 

Louis is pleased with that. He wiggles out of his sweats and strips out of his shirt, not putting on any show because he simply doesn’t need to. He’s the brightest light in the room. Daniel and Lestat both can’t look away. For the moment, they’re both frozen in place, just watching. 

But Lestat really falters, those big hands clench and unclench at his sides. “A request, if—” he says. His voice is so low it rumbles and breaks, and he has to try again. “If we may, I think, we should speak our needs aloud? Not relying on the Gift.” His eyes skip between Louis and Daniel. “I would not want to overload the fledgling’s mind, and playing emissary can be distracting.” 

Daniel hears what he means, what Lestat feels: a desperate need to be included. To be wanted, and to hear that want affirmed out loud. To be sure. 

“Yeah,” Daniel says, “That’s good with me.” 

Louis’s face folds into a soft expression. He understands, too. He leans forward and crawls until he’s at the edge of the bed, kneeling where Lestat stands. He reaches out a hand and cups his face. “Good thinking.” He says it so tenderly, Daniel hears I love you. 

These two really are hopeless. It’s…nice. Sweet. Bittersweet. It’s quite a few things at once, it turns out. 

Lestat nods, exhaling hard, and then Louis is pulling him onto the bed, down on top of him. They tumble together, kissing again, until Louis breaks away to gasp, “Daniel. Lube.” 

“Where?” 

He gestures vaguely at the door. “There.” 

So Daniel ducks into the connecting bathroom. He doesn’t look in the mirror, doesn’t want to see the flush on his cheeks from Lestat’s blood or how wrecked he probably looks from a little heavy petting.  He looks through Louis’s sleek toiletries bag, instead, and finds a beautiful beveled glass container— of course he has bespoke lube, this silver spoon motherfucker —and grabs it. 

Lestat has wasted no time; he’s sucking at Louis’s neck, stroking his cock with a loose fist. Louis’s hands are tangled in his hair, one leg wrapping around his waist, guiding him in, even with Lestat fully clothed. His eyes are closed, and the look on his face—

“Jesus,” Daniel says involuntarily. Louis’s heavy eyes flutter open, flitting to him, but Lestat doesn’t even turn. He merely gestures impatiently for the lube, one serious grabby hand. 

Daniel tosses it onto the bed beside him, then hesitates—this is a stupid thought, alright, but he feels like he’s entered their marital bedroom. That fabled battleground. He’s an interloper. A spy. Lestat is entirely wrapped up in Louis, and Louis doesn’t seem to want to be anywhere else. Always one extraneous guy in a threesome, he supposes. 

Louis’s gaze focuses on him. A little furrow etches in his brow, and he frowns. “What’re you standing around for, baby?” 

Daniel tenses at the endearment, nervous at Lestat’s reaction, but he says nothing; he’s too busy sucking on Louis’s collarbone. 

So Daniel shrugs. “Uh. I’m—” 

“I want you here,” Louis orders, his head tipping back against the headboard. “Can you sit behind me?” 

He doesn’t ask it like a request; he asks it like he’s testing comprehension. Like Daniel is some sweet, dumb thing who needs every move spelled out for him. 

Point taken, he supposes. Who knew being condescended to would make his knees go weak? Louis, apparently—he looks smug in the way correct people do. 

Daniel goes to him. “I’ll put up a fight one of these days,” he warns under his breath. 

Louis chuckles. “I’ll believe that when I see it.” He holds the s in see , going shaky as Lestat works him over. “Here. Come hold me.” 

Who is he to say no? 

Daniel shuffles on the bed and slips behind him. Does as he’s told. His arms go around Louis’s waist, and Louis’s head knocks back onto his shoulder. He’s entirely boneless in Daniel’s arms, legs bent and spread wide. 

Lestat gets his own fingers in his mouth and bites down his nails. He runs their edges over his pants, smoothing any snags, then starts slicking them up. “One to start, cher?”

Louis is breathless. “I can take two.” 

“I hope so, or this is going to be a whole fucking ordeal,” Daniel says without thinking. 

Lestat snorts. Louis rolls his eyes, even as he shifts back into Daniel. He nudges Lestat with his foot. “No, don’t go encouraging him, or we won’t hear the end of it. He’s a chatter.” 

“And now he has met me,” Lestat says, still chuckling. “Perhaps met his match.”

Louis flops back into Daniel with a groan, every bit the swooning Southern belle. “I’m gonna get talked to death before I get somethin’ inside me.” 

“Ah, we can’t have that,” Lestat says cheerfully, and, like that, his fingers are inside Louis, slow but deliberate. Daniel guesses by the way Louis tenses in his arms, and it’s a pleasant tension, a guitar string quivering with sound, a simmer kicking up a notch. 

“Oh,” Louis says. 

“Oh,” Lestat agrees. 

“You clipped all five,” Daniel says stupidly. “Your whole hand, are you—?”

Lestat doesn’t miss a beat. “Would you like that, Louis?” he asks. He manages to make his voice casual, somehow. Acting chops at work. Daniel doesn’t know why he bothers; he can feel him, all three of them. There’s nothing fucking casual about the way they’re all feeling right now. 

Louis takes a shuddering breath. “Yeah.” 

“Why not, then, if you are to take both of us?” Lestat says, but the mask slips, his breath hitches a little. “Seems practical.”

“It’s something, alright,” Daniel says. “You done that before?” 

Louis nods, then lets his head fall back onto Daniel’s shoulder.  “He…gets fucking mean about it, too.” 

“Mean,” Lestat tuts. “Pleasuring my…pleasuring you, luxuriating in your bliss, this is mean?” 

He barely stuttered over the possessive pronoun. Daniel wonders what he stopped himself from saying: husband, lover. Love, simply? Nah, probably some flowery endearment, real corny shit.

“He likes to hear me beg for it,” Louis says with effort. 

“Ah, and our friend will hear for himself, soon enough, if I may be permitted to be mean once more.” 

Again, surprising pronoun. Our. Daniel likes it. Likes being claimed, likes being friends. Weird. 

The noises are obscene as Lestat works Louis open. Daniel can barely see his forearm flexing over the long line of Louis’s body, but he must do something clever with his fingers because Louis tenses again, grinding back against him. Daniel’s hands skim up his body, trying to ground him, and end up on each pec. 

“End up,” Louis says, choking on a laugh, “Like you didn’t—fuck, like—” 

“What happened to not overwhelming the fledgling?” Daniel asks with mock exasperation. “Butt out of my head. You want something, I’ll give it to you. Just gotta say as much.” 

He rubs his thumbs over each nipple. Squeezes the little softness of Louis’s chest, cupping his tits, almost like—

“Like that,” Louis says desperately. “Just like that.” 

“Whatever you want,” Daniel says, and he means it, he really fucking means it. He kisses Louis’s temple, gives each nipple a mean little twist. 

Lestat times something well, because Louis keens right about then. “S’good, s’good,” he babbles. “Please.”

“Whatever you want,” Daniel repeats, holding him firmly now. “We’ve got you, Mama.”

He doesn’t realize he’s said anything out of the ordinary until it’s too late. Lestat hums, questioning, and Louis whines, pressing the side of his face into Daniel’s neck, tucking beneath his jaw. 

Sorry, Daniel thinks immediately, worried at the misstep, but Louis shakes his head. His feelings bleed through: he’s squirmy, sure, warm with the pleasure of being focused on, centered in both their attention. And then this—Louis is pleased. He likes having something new and good to bring to this, something established outside of his past with Lestat. 

Daniel still worries about Lestat’s reaction, but he doesn’t need to. Lestat is all wonder, watching them carefully, trying to understand. There’s joy in him, to learn something new about Louis. An appreciation so immense it could never be half-measured.

It’s…really sweet, actually. As sweet as things can be with Lestat’s third finger slipping inside Louis. “Tu es la maman de ce garçon?” he asks breathlessly.

Louis groans at the stretch, then nods. His face is hot where it’s pressed to Daniel. “C'est une nouveauté.” 

“Hey, enough of the French,” Daniel pipes in. “I’ll learn it now that I’ve got the time, but not in bed.” 

Louis laughs and nuzzles his cheek into the side of Daniel’s neck. “It’s new, I said.” 

Lestat looks like he’s about to speak; Daniel cuts him off. “I’m not calling you Daddy, alright. Don't jinx it. You’re not my real dad, anyway.” 

He said it without thinking, but it’s worth it for the absolutely baffled look on Lestat’s face. 

Daniel barks out a laugh, he can’t help it, and it rumbles into Louis’s back, getting him, too. His chuckle is high and beautiful, soft. He reaches out to squeeze Lestat’s shoulder. “Not laughing at you, darlin’,” he assures. “Laughing at this one. Mouthy thing, I told you.” 

Lestat looks surprised at the explanation, but it wipes away a fold in his brow. “You could laugh at me all day, ma chérie, and I’d be honored to be near the sound of it.” He says it with gravity, a painful earnestness. 

And Louis gasps. Something pings in Daniel’s brain. Ma, not mon.  Chérie, not cher. Feminine version? 

Clever boy. Learning that French already, Louis thinks. His mouth is too busy making little punched out ah ah ahs to speak out loud. He squirms in Daniel’s arms. 

“You’re tensing up, Louis. Go on, be good and relax for me, hm?” Lestat says, his voice low, and yeah, that’s not helping with thinking comprehension. It’s got Daniel dizzy and he’s not even doing anything. And isn’t that a waste? “Can I help?” Daniel asks, unsure whether he should address Louis or Lestat. 

Lestat answers. “He gets beautifully pliant after he comes,” he says thoughtfully, and Louis and Daniel moan in tandem. 

“You want my mouth?” Daniel asks, right in Louis’s ear, and Louis nods before he can finish the question. 

It’s a matter of positioning, then, Daniel slipping out from behind him, getting him propped up comfortably before leaning over his lap and licking at the head of his cock. He’s leaking pre, the sweet blood of him wet and smearing across Daniel’s tongue before he dips his head. He doesn’t go crazy with it—just enough pressure and slickness to nudge Louis’s focus away from the knuckles splitting him open. 

Louis is chanting a litany of pleases and yesses, mindless, shivering, the wanting rolling off him in waves. He’s fucking beautiful. 

“Look how well your friends treat you,” Lestat murmurs.

He reaches out and strokes the back of Daniel’s neck with his free hand. Not even a suggestion, but there’s a question there. Daniel lifts off to say it, ‘cause he wants to, ‘cause they all should hear— 

“Yes,” he pants, “Yeah, Lestat, do it.”

Lestat hums, low and pleased, and cups the back of Daniel’s head, guiding his mouth back down. Gets Daniel in time with the way he’s moving his fingers, and like that, it’s over, Louis is crying out and coming across Daniel’s tongue. 

“Don’t swallow,” Lestat commands. His voice leaves no room for argument, and Daniel groans when he pulls him up by the hair after Louis’s done. Lestat kisses him furiously, coaxing Louis’s spend out of Daniel’s mouth and into his own. He groans at the taste. “Exquisite,” he breathes when they part. 

Louis makes a noise Daniel will remember for the rest of his life. He’s trembling all over, the muscles in his stomach contracting with the aftershocks, and Lestat is still fingering him. Working him through it all. 

Absentmindedly, Daniel reaches down to grip the base of his cock through his sweats, trying to stop the pleasure threatening to pull him under its tide. 

“No, Daniel,” Louis chides. It would have more authority, but his voice is still shaking. “I want—ah, hah, Lestat—you feelin’ good.” 

Daniel shakes his head. He’s a little delirious with all the sensory input, the emotions in the room, the wanting in each of them. “I’ve got to—” 

Lestat catches at his wrist with his free hand. “You’ll have another in you, surely?” he says. “We have the time, as Louis said. Let me?” 

Daniel nods, still up on his knees but wobbly. He groans as Lestat frees his cock, and it springs up and slaps against the soft of his stomach. It’s obscene, silly, almost, but the reaction he gets is dead serious; Louis makes another one of those noises and Lestat’s eyes lose their last ring of blue, submitting to the heavy dark wanting of his pupils. 

His hand is around Daniel in a moment. Daniel cries out and leans his weight entirely into Lestat when he flicks his wrist. There’s no lube on this hand, and his grip is tight, a little mean. It’s perfect. Daniel’s hips jutter and his eyes skew up. It’s embarrassing to be so undone, so fucking eager—

“That’s it, mon petit bout,” Lestat croons. “Chase your pleasure. You’ll have it soon. Show Louis, hm? Look at him. Look how glad he is to see you.”

And Daniel listens. He forces his eyes open. Louis looks back, wondrous. There’s a flush high on his cheeks, a wet shine to his lips where they part in a gasp. Daniel watches as four of Lestat’s fingers work him open, now, then looks back to Louis’s face, the dreamy, heavy look he wears. Louis smiles and nods, just once, go on, then, and it’s over, Daniel’s lost to it. The orgasm that rips through him is disorienting and powerful; he spills across Louis’s perfect inner thigh and closes his eyes, pressing his face into the curve of Lestat’s shoulder. 

He’s embarrassed at how quickly that all went down, and blushes harder when Lestat rubs his hip and says, “ Very good.” It’s the same tone of voice he used when they were practicing shielding, and, fuck, he really does not need to know that except he does and he’ll never be able to shield again without thinking about this—

“You good, Danny?” Louis asks, and Daniel looks up, back to him, like he always will. “Yeah,” he rasps out. “Yeah, that was…” 

Louis smiles at him, still a little dreamy, and nods at Lestat. “Here, let off a minute. Hold him.” 

Daniel tries to scoff, but it comes out as a plaintive little whine. He’s proving the point since he’s still relying on Lestat to keep him upright. 

Lestat slips his fingers from Louis and pats his leg gently, then scoops Daniel into his arms. Daniel crumples into him, any awkwardness gone for the moment. Might as well roll with it, right. This is already so fucking weird.  

When Lestat lowers the two of them to the bed beside Louis, they press together in a big puddle with Daniel in the middle. Everyone attempts to catch their breath. 

When they’re all a little more with it, Lestat lounges back into the bed, arms above his head. “So. You like a little instruction, then?” he asks. He reaches out lazily and tucks a curl behind Daniel’s ear, grinning. “I can oblige.” 

“Um,” says the two-time Pulitzer winner. Daniel’s got nothing. His cheeks burn. 

“No shame in it,” Lestat says airily. “Or in anything, really. We’re here to enjoy ourselves, aren’t we?” 

Louis tucks an arm around Daniel’s waist and holds him tight. “Don’t let Lestat fool you,” he says, mischief in his voice. He’s back with them, then, back in his body. Daniel realizes he knows the exact face Louis’s making even without looking at him. “He’s barely a top, forget a dom.” 

“I play any role with grace and finesse,” Lestat sniffs, but his annoyance is put on. He’s fighting a smile. 

Daniel promptly gets a grip and forces some snark into his voice: “What did you two do, then? Back in the day? Oblige each other?”

Lestat wrinkles his nose, immediately indignant. “Our lovemaking was transcendent! An obligation? Pah! You wound us with this assumption!” 

“Sorry.” He’s not. Daniel’s smiling, too, now. 

“We switched,” Louis answers with a chuckle. “Sometimes. But mostly, we knew what we liked. Or, I did, I guess. Lestat’s open for everything, but I’m—“

“A bossy bottom, yeah. Got that.” 

It’s Louis’s turn to be indignant, and Lestat’s turn to laugh. He roars with it, head tipping back onto the headboard. Daniel joins him, and Louis releases him with a playful little shove. He attempts a scowl that keeps turning into a smile. “Laugh it up, you two. Yeah, alright.” 

Lestat laughs again, then holds up a hand and whispers behind it to Daniel, conspiratorial. “You might not know this, Daniel, but Louis has a way of getting what he wants.“

“Yeah, I’ve fucking noticed.” 

Louis cocks his head, and, oh, they’re fucked, aren’t they, because the look in his eye is keen. “And I’ve noticed you’re both glad to give it to me.” 

Like that, any teasing is gone. The air is electric again, a current of want ready to rip through Daniel and unmake him down to atoms. 

“More glad than I can say,” Lestat says, and his voice goes a little hoarse, even lower. 

Louis’s smiles slowly. “Give me another one, then,” he says plainly, not pretending to be coy.

“Je te donnerai ce que tu veux,” Lestat says. Daniel doesn’t bother grumbling for a translation. He agrees, just from the look on Lestat’s face. 

He stops watching when Louis’s hands fist in his hair and pull him into a lingering, filthy kiss—Daniel hasn’t properly kissed Louis yet today, an egregious oversight, one he is keen to correct—and Louis hums, pleased, licking into his mouth, then moaning into it. When the kiss breaks, he ducks into the crook of Daniel’s neck. 

“You want to feed?” Daniel asks, but Louis shakes his head. “Not yet. I’m just…it’s just…” 

“A lot?” Daniel offers helpfully. 

Louis doesn’t even roll his eyes, which is a sign of how far gone he already is. It makes sense, with the way Lestat’s working at him, a look of blistering concentration on his face. 

“A deep breath, now,” Lestat directs, “And you’ll have it all.” 

Louis listens for once, heaving in the air he doesn’t need, relying on past human function to get what he wants. 

And he does. Daniel feels the moment he does because he’s feeling everything Louis is feeling: white-hot need, exhilaration, a flutter of nerves, as he takes the widest part of Lestat’s hand, the broad expanse between his knuckles. 

“Feel good?” Daniel asks quietly. He doesn’t need to, he knows, he knows how glad Louis is to take it like this, but they’re speaking aloud, aren’t they, and Lestat should know, too. 

Louis nods, breathes out, "Yes, yes, yes", squirming against Daniel as Lestat gives him a moment to adjust. 

“Daniel, dear,” Lestat says, nodding to the glass container of lube that got tossed aside at some point. “If you would?” 

“Got a better idea,” Daniel says, untangling from Louis with some effort. He moves down the bed and leans over Louis’s lap again, not to take him in his mouth, but to press his mouth to Lestat’s wrist. He looks up, eyes his eyebrow, yeah?, and Lestat groans. Nods. 

So Daniel lets his fangs extend and rips into Lestat’s wrist, unable to resist a quick pull of his own. Then he lets the blood dribble down his chin, down Lestat’s wrist onto where he works into Louis. Easing the way. 

“There we are,” Lestat says, pleased, as if it were his idea. His gaze is still trained on Louis. “Getting you nice and wet, chérie, you like that? I know you do. You always have. Just as you like being fucked full.” 

Louis’s head knocks back against the headboard. He lets out a sound that isn’t a word but very much affirmative. His cock, hard again, jerks against his stomach.
Daniel sits to the side of him, torn between scooting up to kiss Louis again and getting a real look at how he takes it. 

He startles when Lestat takes his hand and guides it to the flat of Louis’s stomach, splaying it just below his belly button. Daniel thrills with something—apprehension? Arousal? In his experience, they’re one and the same—when he feels movement. 

“You—” he stutters. 

“Me,” Lestat agrees easily. “Stroking him from inside. To know him here, to feel him? It is beautiful. He is so, so beautiful.” 

Daniel’s eyes flick to Louis as Lestat talks about him like he’s not in the room. Like he’s not the center of their collective universe. 

Louis’s eyes are wide and glassy. He looks entirely fucked out. “Les,” he croaks. “Give it to me. Touch me.” 

Lestat turns to look at him and flashes a smile that’s all teeth. “Am I not doing that?” he asks, like it’s a silly question, and oh, Daniel gets it. Gets why Louis categorized this as mean. Daniel’s cock, half-hard after his wrecking orgasm, fills so quickly his head spins a little. 

Louis groans and tosses his head. “Wanna feel you,” he slurs out. Lestat does something Daniel can feel, a slight movement in Louis’s body, under his hand, and Daniel breaks out in goosebumps. It’s so fucking weird, like something out of an Alien movie, and—

Louis sobs. He’s coming again, untouched, up his stomach and chest. He’d be writhing, but Lestat’s free hand rests on his hip, and Daniel’s hand stays on his stomach, so he’s pinned in place as pleasure takes him, muscles contracting wildly under Daniel’s palm, Lestat still working him from the inside out. 

“Good,” Daniel says, the words flooding from him in a stream, senseless, thoughtless, all true. “You’re doing so good, babe, that’s so nice. There you go. Good.” He strokes up and down his stomach, smearing the blood there, trying to soothe, but it only sets Louis off again, cock twitching against the back of Daniel’s palm, and Daniel has the thought: what if I’m touching him where Lestat is touching him, but on the outside? We’re holding hands in reverse. 

It doesn’t really make sense, but it does, and Louis’s still working through more aftershocks, and Lestat seems content to just look at him and look at him. Louis clutches Daniel’s wrist, pricking bright pain where his nails dig in. 

“Good?” Daniel says, and it’s a question now. 

Louis pants and nods, eyes rimmed red with tears, sliding between him and Lestat. They’re heavy with pleasure, with want, and coming twice in quick succession seems to be doing nothing to stop that wanting. It’s just growing, like a wildfire, like something Daniel can’t find a fucking simile for. 

“Now,” Louis cries, “I want you now.” 

“A moment, and you’ll have us,” Lestat promises. 

He moves again and Louis curls into Daniel, claws at his shirt. Daniel brings up his wrist, newly bloodied from Louis’s touch, and coaxes it into his mouth as Lestat works his fist slowly out. Louis groans—at the emptiness or blood, Daniel’s not sure—and bites down properly into his wrist. 

“There you go,” Daniel says again. He’s got no words but praise for Louis, no thought in his head besides yes, yes. His free hand slips around the back of his neck, squeezing gently, bringing his mouth in closer to drink. 

“Louis, how you look—” Lestat seems lost for words, too. Apparently, this is all it took to shut the two of them up. Daniel swallows a laugh when Louis unlatches from him. His mouth is so wet. 

“Now,” he repeats, and his voice is stronger, sure. 

So it’s time.

Notes:

I thought updating with this particular threesome on Christmas morning was funny enough to split the sex scene lmao more coming as soon as I can manage!!

Chapter 7: a perfect circle

Summary:

“You haven’t come yet. He wants you to.”

Lestat beams. “So considerate, Lou, even as we ravish you.”

“Gross,” Daniel says weakly.

Notes:

thanks for your patience with this chapter!!! took me FOREVER

(also xoxo to all the commenters I love you guys sm I'm replying to the last chapter asap---I've been sick as a dog since Christmas and am finally back on my feet. Just know you made my fevered brain light up with serotonin, big thank you to y'all <3)

Lestat’s busy staring at Louis with wonder, so it’s up to Daniel to get things going. 

“I think,” he offers, “If I lay on my back, then we can—Louis, on top, and then, you, Lestat, behind him? On your knees? Or vice versa. Whatever.”

Louis nods, already crawling forward to grab at Lestat. They tangle in a kiss before Louis pulls away and climbs onto Daniel with no preamble. 

“Oof. Hi.”

“Hi,” Louis says. He’s still trembling, from head to toe. He makes to straddle Daniel properly, but Daniel cups the small of his back and holds him close. “Hey. No rush, sweetheart. Take a breath.” 

Louis wants, very much, to be in a rush, and Daniel is unsure if the instruction is welcome, since Louis tenses for a moment. But it was the right call; he exhales and goes entirely boneless against Daniel, languid. 

“There we go,” Daniel murmurs. He rubs Louis’s back, pets down to cup his ass. “We’ve got you. Gonna get you everything you need, alright?”

“You better,” Louis says, muffled into Daniel’s neck. Daniel can feel him smiling. 

“There he is,” Daniel says fondly. Then he shifts beneath Louis. Finding the right angle. After a little maneuvering and a guiding hand lifting Louis’s hips, Lestat’s work pays off and he slips inside him easily, the way eased by Lestat’s blood and the bespoke fucking lube. Louis isn’t loose, exactly, but relaxed, flushed and hot, Daniel’s blood warming him from the inside out. 

Louis whines, grinding down without thought, mouth still pressed to the corner of Daniel’s jaw, lips flush on his pulse point. 

“Good?” Daniel asks again, as innocently as he can manage, so, not very.  

“Could be better.” 

“Okay, ouch.” 

“You know what I mean,” Louis tuts, kissing his cheek. “Don’t get your feelings hurt. I need both of you.” With great effort, he turns his head and peeks behind him. Daniel looks past the curve of Louis’s cheek, up to Lestat. He kneels between their legs, looking down where they’re joined. There’s that same look of devout concentration on his face.

“Lestat,” Louis says softly, and that concentration shifts, is not broken but heightened when Lestat's eyes snap up. 

“Louis,” Lestat says simply, and his voice is more fervent than a prayer. More dear than any endearment could be. 

Louis shivers, and it has a trigger effect on Daniel, pebbling his skin. He moans, full-throated, surprising himself when he feels Lestat’s fingers stroke at the base of his cock. 

Lestat chuckles. “I was about to ask if you are ready, fledgling,” he says, “But your body answers well enough.” He traces Louis’s rim where he’s stretched, puffy, and then he cups Daniel’s balls. It feels like his hands are everywhere, enormous, dexterous, slick and sure. “I’d like to hear you say as much, regardless.” 

Daniel’s head is kind of spinning. “Mm?” 

“Are you ready, Daniel?” Lestat’s smile is back. Blindingly genuine, but also…coaxing? A little condescending? Fucking hell. Lestat tilts his head, probably hearing the thought, and smiles wider. “As you told Louis, no rush,” he says mildly. 

It drives Daniel fucking crazy, for how obvious it is. “Yeah, yeah,” he tries, but it comes out eager, not sarcastic. “C’mere.” 

Lestat hums, considering, and reaches over for the lube, wetting his hand again. Then his fingers slip inside Louis, flush with Daniel. It’s a bizarre feeling to be stroked two ways. Daniel has to skew his eyes shut in concentration—he’ll be damned if he shoots off again so soon. It’s an intense pleasure, though. Overwhelming. And if he’s feeling that way—

“Breathe,” Daniel urges Louis, forcing his eyes open. The right call; he’d gone still and tense on top of him, lungs frozen. But he exhales. Breathes in. High, fluttering breaths. 

“M’so,” Louis pants, “So full, with you, and just his fingers, I can’t…what if I can’t?” Any boldness from a moment earlier has slipped away. He’s fucked out again, bleary-eyed. The way a fever takes you and wipes you out. 

Before Daniel can answer, Lestat coos, “Ah, dear heart. None of that. You know you can take it.” 

Daniel looks up sharply, even as those words spike heat through his body. “He doesn’t have to do anything,” he says, but his voice is gruff. Betraying him. 

Lestat doesn’t take offense. He nods. “We all know, Daniel, dear. But he needs a little coaxing sometimes, don’t you, Louis? Needs to know he’s good for it.” 

He strokes down Louis’s back with his free hand, pulling a whimper from his throat,  rocking him down onto Daniel that much more. Louis grinds his hips in thoughtless little circles, eyes fluttering closed. 

“You’re right to ask, though,” Lestat says. His tone stays light, patronizing, even, put on for Louis, but his expression is serious as he looks down at Daniel and nods.  

When he adds a third finger, tugging just that much at Louis’s entrance, Daniel can feel it, can feel the space around his cock. It’s obscene. It makes heat curl in his gut.  “I wish you could see,” Lestat continues, mostly to himself. “Both of you, like this...tu m'ébahis.” 

Even though they promised not to use their Gift, Daniel prods at Lestat. He wants to ask a dozen follow-up questions, but limits himself to one: And how do you know if he’s not alright? 

Lestat’s answer is immediate: He tells me as much. And we stop. Those are lines we’ve never crossed, will never cross. Louis demurs, sometimes, to take more pleasure. It’s all play. 

That he can work with. Nothing to worry about. It’s not a side of Louis that Daniel has seen yet, but hey, it’s only been two days, (somehow) and he himself has been a needy fucking trainwreck. 

Lestat sees him hesitate anyway. You’re right to ask, he affirms, and it’s insultingly gentle. You know him well. I simply know him differently. 

Daniel gets the sense he’s being treated with kid gloves. Maybe he needs to be. Maybe they all do. They have to do this right, or it’s not worth doing, and everyone here has hurt enough for many lifetimes. 

Lestat is inscrutable. “Ask him yourself,” he prompts out loud. 

Daniel clutches Louis’s waist, thumbs rubbing careful arcs over his lower back. “You tell us if you want to stop, yeah? Don’t push it.” He wants to say don’t push yourself but that seems to be the point of this exercise. 

Louis jerks his head in a nod, still tucked close. “He’s right,” he whispers, as if he’s quiet enough it won’t break the immersion he’s decided to seek. “M’okay.”  

There’s something real happening here. Something in Louis skittering away. A flinching at this vulnerability, at asking for something he wants so fucking bad. Not just the two of them, how he wants them—it's the comfort of being where he is wanted and nowhere else. The coaxing. A little freedom from choice, maybe. 

What had Louis said the other night? Shame is where he lives. And he’s trying, desperately, not to be ashamed of wanting this. 

You can have it, Daniel thinks. Anything.

Louis exhales shakily and kisses him on the cheek. “Sweet boy,” he says, voice low and breaking. “Thank you.” 

Literally the least we can do, Daniel thinks back, but he’s relieved. The worry twisting in his gut settles into a seething, pulsing heat. Into resolve. 

Daniel captures his mouth and kisses him, slow and deep. He licks across his teeth, into his mouth, catching the honey notes of his own blood lingering there. His hips hitch up, he can’t help it, and Louis groans low into his mouth. 

“You need a little help, huh?”  Daniel asks when he pulls away. He borrows the condescending lilt Lestat’s putting on and bucks up into him, punctuating the question. Louis clenches around him and Lestat’s fingers both as the angle deepens. “Need us to talk you through it?”

He nods, desperate.

“Tell us so,” Lestat suggests easily, adding another finger.

When Louis tries to speak, his voice wavers and gives out. 

Daniel chuckles. He’s been on the back foot in every encounter of theirs so far, which has been fucking incredible, just what he needed, but this feels good, too. A bit of his brattiness is coming back to him. “Where’d all that spitfire go, huh, babe?” he teases. “Now you’re shy? Can’t get that pretty voice out for us?” 

Louis’s breath hitches. He grinds against Daniel’s stomach, cock smearing across the softness of his gut. His mouth is open, lips slack on Daniel’s throat. His fangs are retracted, back to dull human edges, scraping Daniel’s skin. 

“Merde,” Lestat says. He’s stroking at Daniel’s shaft inside Louis. “Learning very quickly, Daniel. That’s it. Just what he needs.”

And Louis wants to argue, prove some point. But he can’t hold a thought long enough to try, not like this, not so full, already. His guard is down, thoughts leaking out of his head: Lestat is right, this is exactly what he needed, a flaying, a splitting down the center. Overwhelmed by sensation, surrounded by the two of them, drowning in them, the way they’re talking, moored only by the impossible fullness inside him. 

Used. Useful. 

It makes Daniel’s stomach twist with so much lust he’s almost sick with it. 

So he decides to follow a hunch. Daniel kisses Louis’s temple, then murmurs into his ear, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ll both find a way to fit in your little cunt.” 

Lestat and Louis gasp in tandem, but Louis’s voice slides into a moan, his thoughts going even more incoherent, blooming color, sensation. His cock jerks where it’s trapped between their bodies, and he shudders hard. 

“Did you just come again? ” Daniel bursts out, too surprised to make the question sexy. It doesn’t matter; Lestat’s laugh is low and triumphant when Louis nods and shivers. 

“The right word and he’s undone,” Lestat says, stroking down Louis’s spine with his free hand. “Very good, darling, lovely.” 

Louis lets out a trembling sigh at the praise. He’s crying again, fat drops of blood caught in his lashes. 

Daniel holds him tighter and marvels, “You’re insane. Insane. Fledging libido’s got nothing on Louis de Pointe du Lac.”

Louis and Lestat both think something close to you have no idea. 

“Now,” Louis chokes out, “Make it fit, I want…you have to do it. Make me.” 

And then Daniel feels a new pressure, the blunt head of Lestat’s cock nudging between Louis’s legs. It’s easier than he thought it would be—a handful of orgasms helps, as does the resilience of a vampire body, he’s sure, but still, Christ alive—

Louis keens. 

“Keep breathing.” Daniel urges, petting down his back. “You’re good. We’ve got you, we—” His voice warbles into nothing when Lestat slides home. He’s made speechless by it, the connection, the stretch, the feat of their joining together. 

No one moves, breathes, for a long beat.

“How is that, Louis?” Lestat asks. His voice is calm. Solemn, again, returned to his blistering focus—the only sign he’s affected is the absolutely wrecked look on his face, and Louis can’t see it, tucked into Daniel’s neck as he is. 

So Daniel’s the only one who gets to see them both like this. Raw. Undone. Both Lestat and Louis are still trying to hide, just a little, but there’s too much they can’t hope to conceal. It’s intoxicating to witness. To claim. 

“It’s in,” Louis says, and his voice is a tiny, shattered thing. “You’re both...you…” 

“We’re both inside you,” Lestat confirms. “I told you, chérie, you’re made for this. A perfect vessel for any gifts you deem worthy of receiving.” 

Where Lestat still has the capacity to sprout flowery bullshit, Louis might be going nonverbal. He’s making desperate little noises, breath hitching against Daniel’s jaw, hands clawed to fists in the pillow beneath Daniel’s head. 

Full, is all Louis thinks, full, full, my—God, my cunt. Both of them, both of them. 

Lestat’s words, Daniel’s words, feelings that are more colossal than language, all bleeding into each other. And a want, a worry, for Lestat, what he has not yet taken, his pleasure, waiting—

“He wants you to feel good, Lestat,” Daniel says, and his voice is wrecked. Thick with borrowed emotion, Louis’s. Desperate with it. “You haven’t come yet. He wants you to.” 

Lestat beams. “So considerate, Lou, even as we ravish you.” 

“Gross,” Daniel says weakly. 

Louis manages something like a laugh, a delirious little chuckle that pulls into a raw, desperate sound when Lestat rolls his hips. He guides their rhythm easily, fucking up against Daniel, sliding beside him, rocking Louis back and forth. At moments, they’re alternating, gliding past each other, and then they’re both inside him at once. 

Louis is, at all times, always full. That’s the important thing. 

Lestat seems to agree. “The pleasure I’ll feel cannot hold a candle to seeing you like this,” he promises, and he’s not pretending at calm, anymore, not acting like he’s not entirely enraptured. “Tu es une merveille. Un miracle, Louis.” His smile turns to Daniel again, just for a moment, reassuring: “You’re not so bad, either, little bird.” 

“Let me show him,” Daniel offers with great effort. “Show you both.” His voice sounds like a stranger’s, all low and wrecked and gravelly. 

Lestat doesn’t stop the undulation of his hips when he asks, “How?’ 

“I’ll open my mind to you both. Since it’s an open book, anyway. Might as well.” 

“An ambitious effort. You might…you’re sure you can manage?” Lestat hedges, but the hunger is clear on his face. 

The decision is made when Louis thinks, Danny, please. Wanna feel you both, all the ways I can get you.

“He wants it,” Daniel says, decided. “So I’ll try.” 

And he does, taking a breath, then lowering his guard. He reaches out for Lestat and Louis simultaneously, following that instinct he barely understands. Both the other men’s minds are open to him, and Daniel strains to connect them—

And it clicks at all once. They lock in together. Louis is the one being filled, but Daniel has become the vessel, the channel connecting the three of them. He feels himself and Lestat in tandem, the burn in Louis’s body, the roiling, consuming pleasure of having and being had. 

Best yet, Louis and Lestat can feel each other’s desperation, the full depth of each other’s longing. It’s the first time their minds are open to each other in this new life. It’s stunning. 

The depth of feeling alongside the sensory input staggers him. Daniel cries out, cannot help it, as Louis and Lestat do the same. He grips Louis’s hips hard enough to bruise, nails carving into him and he cannot stop. His stomach churns, tight, tight, pulling with want. He teeters on the edge, ready to tip over, but strains to—

“Don’t hold back,” Lestat snarls. He thrusts in hard, a wild thing, entirely unmoored. “Not on our account. I’ll fuck you both through it.” 

That promise rips a mewl from Louis. He clenches down, and that’s all it takes—Daniel is gone. He tumbles into the void, the orgasm white-hot and searing. This pleasure, theirs, it’s the sun, or what he remembers of it. Strong enough he might not withstand it, but what a way to go. What a fucking way to go. 

In the dizzy blizzard whiteout of it all, there’s something else, something strange. A prick of light in his consciousness, something brighter than the whiting out of his vision. 

A shiver in the bond. Pleasure. Anguish. 

Armand, Daniel thinks helplessly. 

He’s listening. Reaching out for me. He tries to wrap the realization in cellophane, guard them from Louis, at least, and thinks he succeeds for the lack of reaction from either people he’s in bed with.

To summon Armand’s specter here, a ghost in the chair to the side of the bed, a ripple in the water of the three of them—he shouldn’t. But he didn’t, did he—it’s Armand reaching out. Making himself known. 

Do you feel this? Daniel thinks, delirious. Can you feel this, too? He shouldn’t want it, but God, he wants it. Wants everything he can get his arms around. 

He can’t let himself dwell, though, cannot let the bond overshadow this moment. It wouldn’t be right. And his Maker hasn’t earned it, not a fucking moment of this, so Daniel blinks hard and focuses on Lestat, still working above them. His expression is close to some saint at the pyre, a perfect, beautific anguish. 

“That feels,” he says, “ You feel, God, you—” His speech dissolves into soft shushing sounds, French, again, mindless, heedless. His pace picks up, brutal, exacting, and the contact spirals into overstimulation. Daniel trembles and takes it, pinned by Louis, his body screaming for more or less. He doesn’t know which. He doesn’t care. He’s taking what he’s getting. 

And Louis, the miraculous, punished creature he is, arches into it. He pushes up onto his elbows, head tipping back, his throat a long, perfect curve. His cock jerks where it’s trapped between their bodies, but Daniel can’t tell if Louis has been coming this whole time or not at all, He doesn't know if Louis knows. All he knows is that his pleasure is continuous. An ouroboros, jaws eating tail. A perfect circle. 

None of them can take much more. “Give it to us, Lestat,” Daniel says before he realizes he will. Staring up at him. “Don’t keep him waiting.” 

It’s less of a challenge and more of a plea, but it gets the job done: Lestat’s expression goes surprised and then twists into desperation, pleasure tearing through the link between their minds. He stares at Daniel as he comes, pulsing hot beside him, inside Louis, making them all slick and senseless. 

With enormous effort, Daniel closes the link between them, unsure how much longer he can keep it open. They all react to the loss, relieved and confused and missing it already, but it’s good to get a little quiet.

Louis’s body gives out all at once, another swell of pleasure washing him away. He collapses onto Daniel more completely than before, languid and depleted. His only movement is those little stuttering sobs, shaking in his chest. 

Daniel gathers him closer if such a thing is possible. “Did so good,” he murmurs into his hair, “You took us so good, baby. That’s alright, now. You’re alright.” 

Louis nods and tries to speak. He tries a few times before it comes out. “M’good,” he gets out, “It’s just, oh, I…it’s—” 

“Oh, sweetheart. We know. We know, Louis.” 

Speaking of we—Lestat is still inside him, leaning back but not unsheathed. He’s wild-eyed, unsure, again, gnawing on his lip.  He looks overwhelmed, and fuck, but it suits him, flushed from cheek to chest, a lovely rosiness to his skin. His eyes are bright with tears of his own. 

“Lestat?” Daniel asks.

He stares helplessly down at Daniel. “C'est vraiment beaucoup,” he says helplessly. 

Doesn’t need much translation. “Yeah, well, don’t just lurk up there like an asshole. Get down here. We need you.” 

The magic words, it seems—Lestat blinks hard and trails of red spill down his face. He wipes the tears away with a clumsy hand and puts the other on Louis’s lower back, soothing, as he pulls out.

Louis makes a wounded sound. 

“Okay?” Daniel asks. “Does it hurt?” 

He shakes his head vehemently. “No. I want—w-want you both, I—” 

“You’ve got us, honey. Want me to stay put?” 

Louis nods, pleased with that, it seems, and lets himself be maneuvered onto his side, facing Daniel. He does his best not to slip out from inside Louis. It’s not easy, with all the fluid and blood and how he’s gone half-soft, but he mostly manages, fucking gently back in. 

Louis keeps his eyes closed, slowing his breathing, and hums when Lestat tucks around him as a big spoon. Lestat buries his face in Louis’s neck, and slings his arm over his body, hand settling on Daniel’s hip. 

They stay quiet and close. Daniel, for once, is not interested in breaking the silence. 

Louis does, eventually. “You’re shaking, Les,” is the first thing he says. His voice is hoarse, accent thick in his mouth. 

Daniel stays quiet, watching.  Observing again, but not apart from them. 

Lestat hums. Daniel can just see the curve of his cheek, the perfect tangle of his hair. “I’m well enough,” Lestat answers. “But you…good, Louis? Everything you wanted?” 

That’s where the anxiety is coming from. The enduring question: was it good? Am I good? 

Turns out Lestat is not that complicated when it comes down to it. 

“Uh-huh,” Louis says, a smile spreading over his mouth. “I kinda missed you, though. I wanted you closer.”

Lestat lets out a warbling laugh. His relief colors the air. “Closer than we were?”

“Close as I can get you.” 

It’s starkly honest. A step in some sort of direction, closer to each other. World’s away from yesterday’s cautious greeting. Daniel wonders what it means. It doesn’t change whatever he and Louis mean, he’s sure of that, or almost is. 

“If you want to do that again, we can swap,” he offers. “Get me on top.” The thought of this experience repeated has his cock giving a valiant little twitch. 

Louis sighs and slings his leg over Daniel, scooting in closer. “Where you were was perfect,” he protests. “I want you both that close.” 

“Dunno if that’s possible, babe. We'll have to practice."

Louis’s eyes open slowly. He looks at Daniel, and Daniel stops breathing entirely. 

He is so, so beautiful. Wrecked and open and present. Miraculously clear-eyed, even with tears drying down his cheeks. 

And Louis runs his knuckles under Daniel’s eye, and he smiles wider, and that’s the sun; Daniel had it wrong before. He’s the thing they’re all orbiting. The point of it all, the center of the universe. 

“I loved it,” Louis says. “Thanks, baby.” 

“Thanks yourself,” Daniel says, suddenly exhausted and giddy in equal measure. “And glad to properly meet you, Lestat.” 

Lestat’s laugh is a more sure thing this time.

Notes:

here's some French!

toi m'ébahit. You amaze me.
Tu es une merveille. Un miracle, Louis
You are a marvel. A miracle, Louis
C'est vraiment beaucoup. It’s just a lot/really a lot.

Armand in the cuck chair via mind link smh

the level of communication in this encounter might be a little ooc but I need them to have a nice safe sexy time ok let me let the old men make each other happy!!!!

(if you've been keeping an eye on the chapter number, you'll notice it's changing--I've got an outline for the rest of this by story beat but not by chapter, strictly. Just now there's quite a bit more on the way!!)

Chapter 8: the kids are alright

Summary:

Daniel gets the distinct feeling he’s being allowed to get away with something. It’s irritating how grateful he is.

Notes:

we're so back

Daniel goes quiet in the afterglow. 

Maybe he’s been pushing his luck in the endorphins department, or maybe it’s the fact he just got a message from his maker mid-threesome. He’s pretty sure it’s the second one. He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, other than a lot.

“Nous sommes en désordre,” Lestat says cheerfully. He’s attempting to recover from his burst of vulnerability earlier, but his smirk can’t hold its shape; it’s a smile, small and pleased at their closeness.

They’re covered in too many fluids to linger in bed; the sheets are stained with blood in all forms. A problem for housekeeping and someone’s black AMEX.

Louis idly strokes down Daniel’s arm. “Bath?”

Lestat nods. Daniel shakes his head. “That tub’s for two at best,” he dodges. “I’ll shower.” 

It’s taking all of his concentration to keep a shield up, and it’s working, evidently, since Louis hasn’t attempted to sprint out of the suite. 

He might not be able to, actually—when they all get to their feet, Louis sways a little. Mission accomplished. Daniel takes his arm and tucks it in his own. He’s wobbly-legged, too, but wills himself to pull it together. 

Louis pecks him on the cheek. “Helping a little old lady across the street, huh. What a Boy Scout.” 

“Yeah, well. You’re limping.” 

“I better be, after all that work you two put in.” Louis is still smiling, so Daniel resists the urge to fuss and lets him gingerly pick his way across the room and into the en suite. He helps him sit on the edge of the beautiful, austere tub, with Lestat trailing after them. 

“You want a drink?” Daniel asks them both. “I need a drink.” He needs to not be looking at them, actually. He needs to get his head on straight. 

But before he can retreat to the kitchenette, Lestat gets in space, capturing Daniel’s chin between his pointer finger and thumb. “How are you, Daniel?” 

“What? Why? Fine. Why?” 

Lestat tilts his face back and forth, appraising. Daniel tries not to squirm. “How’s your head?” Lestat asks mildly. 

Instead of caving and confessing to the Armand-shaped hole in his grey matter, Daniel says, “Louis seemed pretty happy with it.”

Louis snorts, turning on the faucet. Everything about him says not getting involved, but Daniel knows he’s listening in. 

Lestat smiles, but his eyes are intent. Searching. “It was an ambition to open yourself like that.” He prods at Daniel’s philtrum. “No bleeds? I want to make sure you didn't, as you so aptly put it, melt your brain.”

“Dunno how you’ll manage that,” Daniel snaps, “Unless you found time in the last seven decades to get a post-doc in neuroscience.” 

It’s a bad look, he’s panicking, but he does not want Lestat to get a peek under his hood right now. More than he has, that is.

Lestat hums and says nothing. His eyes are grey as slate and about as revealing. 

Daniel should know better than to let a pause get to him. “I’m hungry,” he says weakly. “Uh.”

Lestat hums and gives him a little pat to the cheek, then turns away. Daniel gets the distinct feeling he’s being allowed to get away with something. It’s irritating how grateful he is. 

“If you get a headache, tell me,” Lestat says airily. He slips into the tub alongside Louis. “Do go drink something.”

Daniel does, chugging half a blood pack straight from the fridge before opening a bottle of wine Louis must have brought with him. He pours two generous glasses. The rest of the blood goes in, too, and he stirs it gracelessly with his finger. Mastering the art of the sanguine cocktail has been kind of low on his to-do list. 

He delivers the wine with a smile that isn’t too strained. Louis is too blissed out to notice, or so he thinks; when Daniel gets into the shower and sets it to scorching, Louis’s mind prods his own. Alright? he asks gently. 

Yeah. I’ve been alone a while. Getting used to this. It’s good. Just…yeah. 

Alright, Louis says again, and Daniel hears I trust you. Hears something else. His throat feels tight. 

He puts his forehead to slick bathroom tile and exhales hard, then cleans up with little fanfare, making the water as hot as possible, ignoring the pounding in his head. Lestat might have had a point about the overextension, but he’ll sleep it off. 

He lets himself eavesdrop on Louis and Lestat—if they didn’t want him to, they ought to speak in French.

“You remember that dress?” Louis says, and oh, good time to tune in. 

Lestat’s undead heart skips a beat. “The green silk,” he says immediately. “Have you dressed for him?” There’s an edge of desperation there, bordering on hysteria. Jealous, too, under all that. 

“No,” Louis says. He sounds pleased. “Not yet.” 

Daniel’s stomach lurches pleasantly. Something to look forward to, in all the mess. 

“I would be…if you were inclined…” Lestat says clumsily—that’s it, Daniel realizes, Louis makes him clumsy—

“Then you’d be inclined?” There’s a smile in Louis’s voice. 

“More than,” Lestat says, dead serious. “I would be honored.” 

“Would you now.” Louis is more amused than sultry, but Daniel feels Lestat’s yearning all the same. He tries to tamp it down. His body cannot take any more, tonight, even through his Gift. 

“Can I ask…how did all this come to be, exactly?” 

“What?”

“With the boy.” 

“You mean me fucking Daniel?” 

“And the rest of it,” Lestat says carefully.. 

Daniel almost cuts in, but he doesn’t want to break the spell of their conversation. Getting to listen in on these two is kind of intoxicating. He’s back on the beat. 

Louis pauses, and Daniel peeks out from the shower’s beveled glass. He’s carefully washing down his neck, fingers trailing over the punctures there. His head is bowed. 

“He picked up on it before I did,” Louis says simply. “Has a knack for doing that. I really missed him.”

Daniel kind of wants to cry. He turns off the shower instead. 

They stop talking when he steps out. Daniel can only see the tousled back of Lestat’s head, and Louis stretched out. His eyes are closed as he soaks. He’s so beautiful it’s ridiculous. Outlandish. Shouldn’t be allowed. 

Daniel was right when he noticed earlier; a barrier between these two is gone. For now, at least, but as he looks at them, flushed from the water, perfectly aligned, he can’t help but wonder why they bother to pretend at anything other than this. Than each other. 

The suspiciously gremlin-sized hole in his chest aches.

When he goes to the intact bedroom—Lestat’s room, Daniel realizes he hasn’t unpacked anything. His suitcase is still on its little rolly wheels by the door, for Christ’s sake. It’s like he was ready to make a swift escape. 

Or he was prepared to be kicked out. Daniel frowns and kicks the suitcase, toppling it to its side. Then he gets into bed. 

The pull of sleep is a tangible thing. It must be close to dawn. His eyelids feel leaden. He attempts to open them when he feels weight shifting beside him, arms sliding over his waist. He scoots closer to someone, one of them, and tells himself it's enough. Maybe it is. 

Daniel wakes up to something thrown over his head. 

He flinches and sits up, disoriented. It’s just a t-shirt. He’s alone in bed, and he can’t remember if he was dreaming. It infuriates him. “What the fuck?” 

“Finally!” Lestat chirps from the doorway. He’s wearing black jeans and nothing else. “You’ve slumbered long enough, petite bête.” 

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Daniel chucks the t-shirt back at him. 

Lestat lets it fall to the floor, unimpressed. He purses his lips. “Louis, the boy is a layabout.” 

“The boy’s had a big week,” Louis calls from the other room. He sounds amused. “Let him rest.” 

“Yeah, you heard him,” Daniel mutters as he takes stock. His head no longer hurts, but he feels like a truck ran over him, a bit. 

Fucking Lestat’ll do that, huh. He has to blink hard, yesterday hitting all at once—they really did that. 

“You really did,” Lestat says cheerfully. “But I have only partially fulfilled my duties. We’re going out.” 

“We’re snowed in.” 

“They’ve plowed the streets.” 

Daniel curses. He blinks again. “Out where?” 

A phone is tossed at him now, open to Instagram. 

“Christ. We’re clubbing? ” 

“Now you’re getting it.”

Daniel squints at the screen. He recognizes the dive bar. “I didn’t know this place was still open.” 

Lestat’s at the bedside, unnervingly quick. “You’ve been?” he asks excitedly. 

“Back in the day, yeah.” It used to be a leather bar. The basement was of particular interest to him in his youth. “Looks like they, uh. Rebranded.”

Lestat swipes through the photos. “There’s a show tonight, drag and other delights. I’ve been following the host for an eternity.” 

You sure about this? Daniel wonders, thinking as quietly as he can. Should we leave, with Louis all — ?

I think between the two of us, he will be well distracted. Lestat is incredibly sure of himself, the two of them. He’s full of energy, worlds from yesterday’s hesitance. Moods striking like lightning, Daniel supposes. 

“It’s too early for this,” is all he says, even as he takes in the time: half past nine. This is the longest he’s slept as a vampire, his internal clock set to snooze.

Lestat gets up with a huff. “You have an hour to make yourself…presentable.” 

Daniel flops back into bed and sulks. How’s he supposed to get “presentable” with those two for company? He gently prods at the edge of Louis’s mind. 

Louis answers immediately. Sneaking around? 

Testing the temp, babe. 

Louis is talking out loud with Lestat, something about a show playing softly on the tv. Daniel hears the phrase ‘baby gorgeous’ in vocal fry. He wrinkles his nose. Real Housewives? 

Of Salt Lake City, yeah. You’re easily distracted this morning. 

I know I am, but what are you? 

He hears the eye roll from here. Give me some credit, Danny. The tension in Louis is there, but repressed. Louis’s really fucking good at that when he wants to be. 

Alright, Daniel says, as agreeable as he gets—he’ll leave it. He has to. Lestat’s here. It’s going well. Maybe it’ll keep going well. 

He gets up and attempts to become presentable by Lestat standards—flattens the bedhead at least—then wanders out into the suite. “Anyone seen my—?” 

Lestat is wearing Daniel’s leather jacket. As a shirt. As in no shirt beneath. He’s devastating. Daniel follows the v of his hips to their inevitable conclusion before he can stop himself. 

Lestat eats that shit up. He tilts his head and croons, “Don’t I make a pretty picture?”

“You’re gonna freeze your nipples off,” is all Daniel manages.

He gets a smirk in reply. 

“That jacket outlasted two marriages,” he says, exasperated but already resigned. “Be careful with it.” 

When Daniel goes to grab Lestat’s bomber jacket, Louis beats him to it, handing off his coat again. “We’re swapping the full set,” he declares. He’s in black head to toe, slacks and a sweater that clings to his chest and arms. Daniel’s staring again. He only stops when Louis hands him a warmed mug. “Eat something.” 

Daniel downs the blood. Lestat watches him swallow with an idle curiosity. “I offered to take you hunting, but Louis said you manage well enough.”

Louis is looking at his phone, but Daniel picks up some tension, a tightening in him. 

“Well enough,” he echoes, instead of I’m self-taught. He manages not to sound defensive. 

“There will be time later,” Lestat says. He's bafflingly sure of it. How long is he staying around? 

Daniel shrugs, unsure of what to say.  

“Car’s coming,” Louis says. “C’mon.”

Daniel and Lestat follow him like the puppies they are, down the elevator and out into the waiting Escalade. It’s colder tonight, the air bites instead of nips, really sinking its teeth in. 

The drivers get them to the club without a problem. Lestat’s chattering away, about the songs he’s working on, the show, the city. Louis looks at him like he hung the moon, even as he takes Daniel’s hand and holds it just because he can. Both things can be true. Both things are true. 

The club is festooned in pride flags out front—out and proud, compared to the discreet brick Daniel remembers. The inside is almost exactly the same: red lights, tight quarters. There’s a drag show on the small stage, a line at the bar, a neon sign that says DON’T FEED DRUGS TO THE TWINKS. He snorts. That certainly wasn’t the policy back in the day. 

Daniel throws up the best shield he can manage, and it works well enough—the thoughts of the clubgoers settle at a dull roar instead of the usual fever pitch. He’s surprised this many people are out in the bad weather, and then he forces himself to stop thinking like a grandpa. 

Lestat ushers them forward to a table—looks like they’ve got one reserved. They slip out of their coats and sit, not worrying about being distracting. There’s no way they could distract the performance underway; a queen in assless chaps and a bedazzled harness is doing some impressive crowdwork with a crop. The recipient looks thrilled, as does the mob of queer kids throwing bills at them both. 

Goddamn. Daniel’s impressed. The kids are alright, huh. 

The music is blaring. Lestat looks like he’s at Disneyland for the first time, watching the fireworks show. 

He’s gonna love Pride, Daniel thinks, and then realizes he’s thinking ahead to the summer. Planning for some kind of future. 

Louis catches some of that and turns to him. The low, technicolor lights make him otherworldly, as beautiful and strange as he is.

If my heart could stop a second time, he projects loudly, defaulting to being obnoxious, because he has to, because he’s been far too earnest the last few days. 

Louis sees right through it and leans in, planting a kiss on his temple. Daniel catches a wave of surprise from a few people nearby. He lets himself feel smug about it. “I’ll get drinks,” he offers, leaning close to speak over the music. “What’d you want?” 

“Something sweet,” Louis murmurs in his ear, and Daniel’s stomach swoops, right on cue. Embarrassingly easy. 

Louis’s a little smug himself. It suits him, like everything does, so Daniel kisses him full on the mouth before standing and picking his way to the bar line. It’s stupidly long, but he can wait. Take in the scenery. He hasn’t let himself be around people, enjoy people, since he’s turned. He’s missed it horribly, the rattle and crush of life. 

So Daniel is happy to be here until he isn’t. Until he sees Armand across the way, staring him down. 

Notes:

there's an interview where Sam and Jacob talk about how Loustat would love watching real housewives together--I personally believe Lestat would be enthralled with Lisa Barlow ifyky

I owe y'all an APOLOGY the spirit left me and I got re-energized on another project (I'm about to start querying for an original project! phew!) but s3 approaches and I felt horrible leaving this lot hanging because I have the rest of it almost done!! and will be regularly updating until it's finished I solemnly swear 2 u

Lestat says 'we're a mess' and calls Daniel a little beast in French, and that's a real neon sign from a bar in nyc

Chapter 9: take it or leave it

Summary:

Armand blinks. Once, twice. His shuttered expression is wrenched open. It looks painful. “You’re angry,” he says.

“No shit.”

“So you—” Armand stalls out. Shakes his head.

Despite it all, Daniel’s heart sinks. “So I’m supposed to hurt you right about now,” he fills in. He should have expected this.

Armand frowns. “It’s what I’d want to do,” he says. He’s still puzzled. “I’d want to hurt you.”

“Well, mission accomplished, Boss.” 

Notes:

come get your food, dm babies

The world narrows to two orange pinpricks. 

Daniel is moving before he can think, shoving through the crowd. Armand looks at him and looks at him, then moves right before Daniel reaches him. Daniel’s blood froths in his veins. The wanting in him roars loud enough to make him dizzy. He follows Armand, like he’s doomed to do, like he always will. 

When he catches up, he snatches his hand. Armand has the gall to look surprised. Daniel pulls him into a dark corner, through a door. He’s glad the club’s layout is more or less the same—this was a glory hole back in the day, but has been converted to storage for costumes and props. 

Daniel doesn’t bother finding the light switch; he surges forward, shoving Armand up against a rack of brightly colored silks and slips. 

Armand lets it happen, falling back into the costumes, still fucking staring. Cataloguing, like he’s committing each detail of Daniel to memory. Creating a taxonomy.

“Are you here to hurt them?” Daniel asks. 

Armand blinks hard. Alien. Inhuman. “If I were, they already would be,” he says. “Hurt.” He manages to sound haughty, even here, like this, shoved into a fucking closet. 

“Asshole.” Daniel shivers anyway. He’s not thinking. He can’t fucking think. “Can I kiss you?” he blurts. 

Armand’s eyes widen. He goes entirely still. 

Shock tolls through their bond like a dolorous bell. “I thought you were—that you would—” 

“What?” 

Armand blinks. Once, twice. His shuttered expression is wrenched open. It looks painful. “You’re angry,” he says. 

“No shit.” 

“So you—” Armand stalls out. Shakes his head. 

Despite it all, Daniel’s heart sinks. “So I’m supposed to hurt you right about now,” he fills in. He should have expected this. 

Armand frowns. “It’s what I’d want to do,” he says. He’s still puzzled. “I’d want to hurt you .” 

“Well, mission accomplished, Boss.” 

Daniel doesn’t know where the nickname comes from, but it feels correct in his mouth. And it’s worth it for the way Armand flinches. The flutter of his eyelashes. The twitch of his cheek. 

I am hurting him. 

Daniel feels…a lot of different ways about that. A plan starts to sketch out. He reinforces his shield, strengthening it as best he can, and repeats, “I want to kiss you. Can I?” 

Armand nods blankly. He’s staggered by this. 

“Words, please.”

“Please,” Armand echoes. “Yes. Please.”

Their bond quivers, like the plucked string of an instrument, and Daniel’s gift reaches out. He feels, for just a moment, what Armand feels. It’s staggering, the vast enormity of his yearning. He wants. He is an endless well of want. A black hole. Roles reversed, or matched, finally. 

“What is that?” Armand chokes out. They’re close enough that he’s basically speaking into Daniel’s mouth. He is suspicious and wondrous.

“Got a few tricks up my sleeve.” And now you can’t hide from me. He doesn’t need to say it; he knows Armand knows, from the way his eyes widen, the breath hitching in his throat. 

And Daniel dives in. Kisses him. Kisses him, kisses him, hands cradling his waist, circling the small of his back.

Color. Light. Life, from Armand’s lips. The life he took and gave Daniel, blood singing in their bodies—his hands slide up Daniel’s stomach and chest, then fist in his shirt. 

Gotcha. 

Daniel pulls back. Clicks his tongue. “Did I say you could touch me?” 

Armand is dazed. Panting. “What?”

“You heard me.” 

His pupils go heavier, darker, when he catches on. “May I touch you?” he breathes. 

Daniel lets himself smile. “Nope.”

Armand looks like Daniel has started speaking another language, one he doesn’t know. The astonishment on his face would be funny if Daniel felt like laughing.  

He still tries, the bastard: “I can make you feel—“ 

He doesn’t get to say good because Daniel cuts in, “I think you’re done making me do anything, actually.”

Daniel gets to his knees. 

Armand’s jaw actually drops. Daniel chuckles, then lets his hands drag down Armand’s hips, thighs, stopping at his belt. “Yeah?” he asks again. 

“Yes, but—” 

“But?” 

“I can’t—for you?”

“No,” Daniel says. He looks up in the dim light. He doesn’t bother wondering what he himself looks like, regarding Armand from his knees. He simply lets himself drink him in. If he can’t have anything else, he has this. 

Armand is haloed by his wild hair and the gaudy, colorful fabric of costumes. His face is etched with something like despair. Something raw. 

Take it or leave it. 

Armand swallows hard. It looks like it hurts. He nods. 

Triumph. 

“Grab the rack.” 

Bass thuds from the stage. Armand does as he’s told. It puts his hands near his head, where Daniel can see them. His arms flex uselessly. Daniel’s fangs itch in his mouth. He wants to bite into his biceps, drink from the swell of his muscle. Focus. 

Armand’s wearing all black, jeans, and a thin t-shirt. He’s got melted snow on his shoulders. He's still wearing Daniel’s stupid slides. 

He’s not wearing underwear. 

His cock is—fuck. Daniel falls forward, forehead pressing to the top of Armand’s thigh. It’s instant, muscle memory, it’s déjà fucking vu—he’s been here before.  Like coming home, he thinks, and then he laughs out loud. Awfully sentimental for sucking cock, isn’t he?

Armand looks baffled. Daniel laughs again, not even pretending to hold it back. Lestat’s rubbing off on me, he thinks, and it makes him laugh harder, because yeah, he really has been. 

Armand is…the word that comes to mind is peeved . And under that, simmering: embarrassment. Fear. 

That sobers Daniel. “I’m not laughing at you.” 

Armand tilts his chin but says nothing. He looks like he’s trying to do math in his head. “I can’t read you,” he says, like he did outside the diner. Like he still can’t believe it. 

“But found me. How?” Daniel asks. He trails his fingertips down the back of Armand’s taut thigh. His perfect skin scatters with goosebumps. It’s very gratifying. “Was that you? Last night?” 

“Yes,” Armand says. His voice has gone a touch higher, a little shivery. “Since you were angry that…ah, that I’d been blocking the bond, I stopped. So I heard you. Calling out.” 

Always listening your way, is how Lestat put it to Louis. A Maker, straining toward his fledgling. Something intangible but more real than anything else. 

“What else?” Daniel asks, before he can’t, before his mouth is full. He blows an easy exhale on Armand’s shaft. 

Armand gasps. “What else…what?” 

“What else did you feel? Last night?” He thinks he knows, but he wants to be sure. 

“Your pleasure, up and down the bond.” 

Daniel glances up at Armand. He’s biting his lip so hard it steals the color from his mouth. “And…I felt theirs.” 

Heat pools in Daniel’s stomach, floods his cheeks. He’s not exactly embarrassed, but he is, a bit, and he’s pissed in turn, and, of course, undeniably turned on by all of that. “You felt them, despite their shielding?”

“They let their shields down for you.” 

Whoops. They won’t be happy about that. Lestat might be, actually, a chance to rub it in, but Louis didn’t sign up for accidental exhibitionism. Louis, specifically, signed up for murder. 

Guilt twinges in Daniel’s gut. If he knew… he’s having a grand ol’ time out there. Don’t think about him. 

He needs to pivot. So: “Would you? ” Daniel asks. “Let your shield down. If you could. If I asked you to.” 

Armand stares down at him. It’s like…like the bug under the microscope is staring back at you. Maybe Daniel’s the bug. It’s a bad metaphor. They’re studying each other, is the point. 

“I would,” he says, stilted. 

“You’re lying.” Daniel’s not mad; he’s enthralled. He can’t stop being fascinated by the clarity he has regarding Armand now. He feels like…it’s like he can actually see him. 

They both make graceless, desperate noises when Daniel works his foreskin back, licks a stripe up the underside. 

Armand trembles like he’s been struck. 

“Tell me,” Daniel demands, staring up at him. 

He doesn’t even know what he’s asking for, but Armand skews his eyes shut. He opens his mouth. “I’m furious,” he says, panting. “I’m so angry I could crush them both to ash.” 

That shouldn’t be hot—Daniel loves Louis, likes Lestat a lot, he thinks—but it is. Maybe it’s because it’s the possession Daniel has longed for. Maybe it’s just hearing Armand say the truth for once. 

Daniel takes his cockhead, perfect, heavy, on his tongue. Works it, takes him down. He hums, urging him: more. 

“Their hands on you,” Armand gets out through gritted teeth. His fangs dropped at some point, tiny, pearly things digging into his lip. “I almost broke down your door.” 

Daniel pulls off to ask, “You know where we’re staying?” It’s a little alarming, but his demand is lessened by the thread of spit connecting his mouth to Armand’s cock. 

Armand isn’t so far gone; he gives him a withering look—if an ancient vampire were one to say duh. 

“Why are you angry?” Daniel asks, stroking him tight, slow. He intends it to come out low and taunting, but his voice takes on the same measured tone Louis’s used on him, that Lestat used on Louis. A sort of guiding condescension. Knowing the answer, but wanting it said. It does something for Armand, that’s for fucking sure; the noise he makes is unpracticed. High in his throat. It surprises them both. 

“Why am I angry, ” Armand spits back, marveling at the indignity of the question. “You’re mine. My firstborn, my fledgling. My blood .” 

What is this, the Old Testament? Daniel’s brain attempts to argue, but the blood in his veins, every cell of this new self, sings yes. 

He dips his head down, taking Armand as far as he can manage, sputtering only when his nose nudges skin. He keeps forgetting he doesn’t need to breathe, so he relaxes, lolling his tongue, savoring the weight of Armand’s cock in his throat. 

He only moves when fabric falls on him, slipping over his head and shoulders—the costumes—

Armand broke the clothing rack. 

Daniel looks up at Armand, looks at Armand looking at the wood beam he crushed to sawdust in his hands. He’s radiant, swathed in magenta and fishnet and rhinestones, the costumes caught on his shoulders. There’s a feverish, furious look in his eyes. 

Armand drops the halves of the ruined beam, and his hands clench and unclench at his sides amidst the vivid fabric. He doesn’t dare touch Daniel, not without permission. 

It makes Daniel feel alive. Giddy. He swats away the pile of taffeta and grabs the base of Armand’s cock. 

“I’m not yours,” he lies, to watch Armand’s brow twist, to watch the hiss he can’t swallow back. 

“Whether you like it, or, ah, Daniel— ” His name, his name, not a terse Mr. Molloy. Armand’s head tips back into the wall as Daniel twists his wrist on the down stroke. 

He takes him down again, savoring every inch. He’s doing this for himself, sucking Armand’s cock exactly how he wants to, and it’s working because Armand knows that’s what he’s doing. 

Armand keens when he lets a hint of teeth brush over his shaft. 

“You are,” he chokes out, “An infuriating creature. And you’re mine. ” 

Daniel pulls off him with an obscene, wet noise. “Prove it.” 

He doesn’t plan on coming up for air again, and he doesn’t need to. When he pins Armand’s hips back to the wall and throws himself onto him, fucking his throat without any input or movement from Armand, it drives him crazy; Daniel can feel his muscles coiling tighter, the sounds he’s making get sharper and louder. 

Right where I want you. 

Armand lets out an entirely unpracticed moan, his voice cracking down the center, and that’s the only warning Daniel gets before heat floods his mouth. He pulls back and sucks hard, staring up at Armand as he comes apart. He’s shuddering, head thrown back against the wall, eyes skewed shut like he’s in pain. Like Daniel has a hand in his guts that he’s twisting. He might if given the opportunity. 

Daniel almost swallows but thinks better of it. Keeps the suction tight in his mouth until Armand writhes above him, hips juttering helplessly. 

He lets off and gets to his feet, putting on a show of steadiness despite the ways his knees ache and legs want to fold in. 

Armand is breathing, heavy, through his mouth. 

Daniel takes his cock out with one hand and spits in the other. Armand’s spend is out of his mouth and into his hand. 

Armand’s jaw drops. Daniel laughs again, wild. He’s this side of hysterical—this little interlude’s just part of the fever dream, a delusion. He’ll wake up any moment now in his shitty bargain coffin, alone—

He takes himself in hand and strokes. Wet, tight, like—he can't imagine what it's like, like he's had it, he had it, once—

Armand whines. His hands are clutched in such tight fists he’s drawing blood, perfect pinpricks from his nails, tearing into the meat of his palm. 

“Gimme,” Daniel rasps, incoherent, delirious with it, and Armand understands, somehow. He extends a shaking hand. 

Daniel licks the blood from Armand’s palm and comes immediately. 

Something unhitches in him. The bond is a tangible thing, a live wire, a crack to the head. It makes and unmakes Daniel. The taste of him, both tastes of him—

He sways on his feet. 

There’s a hand at his waist. Another slides across his chin, palming his cheek. Daniel falls forward into Armand, senses entirely overwhelmed. The two of them slide a little in the waterfall of costumes, slipping against polyester and fishnet. 

Daniel’s forehead falls to Armand’s shoulder. 

“Give them back.” His voice is pathetic. Tiny. 

Armand lifts his hands from Daniel and lets them hover, just shy of a touch, nothing like what they both want. 

“I want,” Daniel says, and his voice breaks. “I want them back.” 

He can’t think about the after, not properly. Cannot consider what happens after he has the details again. If it’ll even work. If they could work. If Armand refuses. 

“Your—” 

“Our life.”

“I offered—” Armand says. He has the audacity to sound confused. “In the diner, I—”

“I want it back,” is all Daniel manages.

“Alright,” Armand says. His voice is just as small. “Alright. When? Where?” 

“My place. I’ll…can you get there?” 

“Now ?” 

Daniel considers it. All he knows is he can’t look Louis in the eyes, cannot look at him and lie. “In an hour.” 

He steps back. 

“And if they follow?” Armand asks. He’s wild-eyed. 

“You’ll just have to do it fast.” 

It’s probably not the sort of thing you should rush, now that he thinks about it, but Daniel can’t let this slip through his fingers. He refuses to lose this chance. 

“I’ll see you there,” and it’s a threat, a promise, a plea. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Armand doesn’t show. He doesn’t know what will be left of him. 

He pushes away from Armand and leaves the closet, only stumbling a little. 

When he peeks back at the stage, a new performance has started. It hasn’t been long enough to warrant a rescue party. Not yet. He sees Lestat tip the queen onstage a crisp 50 from Louis, which gets him a pair of silicone tits in his face. Lestat roars with laughter, delighted, and Louis is smiling hard enough to crease the corners of his eyes. 

Daniel ducks away before they can spot him, then shoulders through the crowd to the exit. He sends a message to Lestat: My publisher’s calling. I haven’t been answering her emails the last few days.

Lestat answers immediately. We were wondering where you’d scampered off to. 

Daniel’s stomach twists. I’m calling her back. He tries to sound confident. Tell Louis? 

The shielding lesson was well timed—he shrouds the truth of his thoughts. Using the skills he learned from Lestat against him feels pretty scummy, but there’s nothing to be done. 

It must work: We’ll be here. Lestat’s almost gentle. 

Daniel doesn’t let himself think about how that makes him feel. He can barely stomach feeling it. 

He steps outside and hauls in crisp mouthfuls of air, sharp enough to hurt on their way down to his lungs. 

Then he hails a cab.

Notes:

updated chapter count!! we're close to the enddddd

Chapter 10: Imprimatura

Summary:

“This is fucked, Boss.” 

Notes:

cw: overdosing/discussion of past drug use! It's not super graphic, but I'd say medium graphic. Starts at “You’d overdosed on diacetylmorphine.” and ends at "I could say any number of things"

also cw: discussion of homophobia/AIDS crisis

Daniel’s apartment is unlocked. Armand beat him there. 

He’s standing in the middle of the wrecked living room, still and silent. He didn’t turn on any lights, so Daniel flits around the room, brightening up the place. It’s a fucked up mirror of the other night, when he brought Louis back. The fact that was earlier this week —Jesus. Weirdest week of his fucking life, that’s saying something. That’s including San Francisco and Dubai. 

Armand stays coiled tight. “Have you eaten?” he asks. 

“Uh-huh.” 

“Good.” He doesn’t elaborate on why. His voice is measured. Far away. “You should lie down for this. Is your bed available?”

To his credit, Armand barely hesitates over the question, but Daniel has to hide a wince. The bed is covered in days-old blood from his first night with Louis. Besides, it’s too…it’s not right for this. 

“Here’s fine.” 

Armand nods, inscrutible, and waves his hand, clearing a roughly Daniel-sized patch on the floor. They both stare at it. 

Daniel rubs hard between his eyes. A headache is brewing. There’s no way it’ll improve with whatever is about to happen. “This is fucked, Boss.” 

Armand softly exhales at the pet name. It loosens him up a little, if only to make him droop. Like his strings have been cut. Without the colored club lights, he looks harried and small. Worse than a few days ago, somehow, eyes bright and gaunt in his head. 

“Look, are you up for this?” Daniel asks. 

“I—yes. I can do it.” Armand’s fingers flick at his side again, that anxious fidget he’d worked so hard to hide before all this.

They really should be hurrying, but Daniel falters. "Now what?" 

“Lie down," Armand says, then, more to himself: "I really did think you had them all.” 

“I have no way to know if you’re lying or not,” Daniel says. It’s a habit at this point. 

“What would the point be, to withhold them?” 

“Whatever the point of you ditching me was.” He sits on the ground in the place cleared for him. “Withheld that just fine.” 

Armand sighs again. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now.” He sounds very tired. Distant, still. 

Daniel doesn’t want him far away. 

“Before we do this,” he says, looking up. “When I was telling Louis what you did, in Dubai, I…I called you every name I knew.” 

Armand stares down at him. His brow furrows. “You hardly—“

“I called you Arun,” Daniel says plainly. He’s thought about it a lot. “It was wrong of me. To say it that way. It’s not…it’s your name . I shouldn’t have.”

Armand’s face is ruinously open for a moment. “What is this?” he asks faintly. 

“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” Daniel says, willing his voice to firm up. “If I’ll come out of this…the same. Am I right?” 

The guess is well-founded—Armand’s face falls. He crumples into a crouch and tucks his chin on his knee. It’s the stance a child takes to make themself small. Daniel wonders if it’s part of the show. Wonders why he’d bother at this point, but who fucking knows with Armand.

“So, if…I wanted to say that.” Daniel swallows hard. “That’s all.”

“Alright,” Armand almost whispers. “That’s alright.” Like he’s soothing Daniel, or himself.

When he sits down, Daniel puts his head in Armand's lap. He is very still. “Am I allowed to touch you?” 

Daniel laughs, a rough barking sound. “Who fucking cares, man. You’re about to be in my brain.” 

Armand stares down at him. The bond trembles. Daniel sees it in his face: I care. 

He stops laughing. “Yeah, you can. You can touch me.” 

Armand’s hands immediately go to his hair, smoothing the curls off his forehead. 

A part of Daniel, the very animal part, the fledging, the creature, says it’s all been worth it for this point of connection. The rational part of him, whatever’s left over, isn’t sure of anything. 

“So, you gonna talk me through it?” Daniel asks. He tries to be light. His voice is anything but. 

The face Armand makes is gratifying, at least. “I don’t know if that would be…helpful. I must focus.” 

“Doesn’t have to be about this, I guess. I’m just—”

“What?”

“I’m scared.” No point in lying. Not now. Daniel knows there’s going to be a before and an after this. That’s the only thing he’s sure of. 

“What should I talk about?” 

Daniel squints up at him. “Explain what you’re doing while you do it.” 

“I fear that would hurt your mind.” 

“Well, tough shit. I want to know.” 

Armand hums in consideration. He traces the lines above Daniel’s eyebrows. “Have you ever painted?” he asks after a moment. 

“Walls. That’s it.” 

“When you’re taking a layer from an oil painting, you use what’s called solvent. In my time, it was di essenza di trementina. Spirit of turpentine. Works in oil take weeks to dry, so if a layer needs to be stripped, you scrub the canvas with that turpentine.” Armand’s voice is lulling. Just as lovely as it has always been. His hands card through Daniel’s hair again. “You must be cautious, though, not to scrub too hard, or the previous layers might be disrupted. A painting can have hundreds of layers if you use a glaze. Linseed oil helps thin and spread the pigment.” 

Daniel blinks up at him, suddenly sleepy. He thinks to panic, he’s resting, he’s getting fucking got, but with effort, he lets the fear go. If this is supposed to work, he has to let it work. 

Armand nods, pleased. “That’s very good. Let it pass through you.” 

“You felt that?”

“I can’t seem to stop feeling you.” I tried goes unsaid. 

“So you’re a painter,” Daniel says softly. He remembers mentions of a studio in Telemasca files. 

Armand stiffens. “My maestro was. I attended to him and his materials.” 

That ratfuck bastard. “You turpentine-scrubbed my brain.” 

Armand exhales again. “In a way. I mostly…moved things around. Adding layers on top. Explained things away. It’s not a perfect metaphor.”

“Few things are. Is it…” Daniel swallows hard. Stares up at him. “You think it’s all gone?” 

“I don’t think so. I think the foundation is there. So, we must return to it. Imprimatura.” 

“How do we do that?” 

“You are doing exactly what you need to. I must concentrate.” 

“Does that mean I should shut up?” 

Armand’s lips quirk despite his focus, despite everything. “No, beloved.” 

He can’t stop the sound that comes from him—Daniel chokes. A missing piece returned. A part—something he knew was missing, even when he didn’t know—

“I’m sorry,” Armand says immediately. “I’m sorry.” His fingers are light, soothing on Daniel’s forehead, unfurrowing his brow manually. “You’re doing very well.” 

Daniel wasn’t aware that anything had started. He tries not to panic. Tries not to think about being beloved. His hands tremble on top of his thighs. 

“What happened the first time?” he croaks out. 

“What?” 

“When you did this. When you took them.” 

Armand goes very still again. Forgets to pretend to be living with Daniel’s head in his lap. “You’d overdosed on diacetylmorphine.”

Daniel exhales, surprised. He’s never…then, he supposes he has no way to know if he’s ever OD’d or not. “You sound like a pharmacist.” 

“Heroin, then. Smack.” 

Daniel rolls his eyes for show. “Now you sound like a cop.” 

Armand’s fingers still at his widow’s peak. “Someone gave you a bad batch. You took so much, it would have hardly mattered, but I hunted the dealer down regardless. I killed him very slowly.”

“Thanks."

“I found you in your apartment.” 

“That sucks.” 

Armand nods, slowly. “It did suck.” His ancient mouth pursues around the slang. “Your pupils were tiny. Like the head of a needle. Pinpricks. Your tongue was discolored, and your nailbeds had gone blue. You were…mostly dead.” 

Daniel has witnessed more than one overdose. Held more than one friend through the end of things, before easy access to Narcan or cellphones to call for help. He feels sick. He has to swallow twice before he can speak. “And you still didn’t turn me.” 

“I did not turn you,” Armand parrots back. His voice has gone narrative and flat. He’s taking distance to tell this. “I called paramedics, and they revived you with naloxone, and took you to the hospital.” 

“Why?” 

Armand is silent for a moment. “I could say any number of things.”

A strange answer. Daniel trusts his instincts and waits him out. It doesn’t take long. 

“I could say…I didn’t know how you would turn, so sick,” Armand says. “How did Louis put it, in your interview? ‘All vampires are born of trauma’. You’ve seen how his turning locked him in his grief. An eternity of it.” 

“You could say that,” Daniel echoes him now. “But—?”

Armand shakes his head. “It’s partially—no. I didn’t know…I had told you I was leaving you. You had no way to know I didn’t mean it. We’d had a fight, a very…an awful fight.”

“What was it about?” 

“Katherine.” 

Daniel exhales hard. “Alice was pregnant.” 

Armand nods. Tries to speak, then stops. “I could not account for your state of mind, or if my absence prompted your overdose. And I…could not bear to have you hate me forever. Not in that way.” 

“You are so fucking stupid,” Daniel says helplessly. “If I hated you, it was…that’s love, you idiot. I loved you. I hated you because you were leaving me.” 

Armand raises his chin, even looking down at Daniel. A glimmer of defiance. “And you tried to leave me.” 

“Don’t blame me for shit,” Daniel snaps. “It wasn’t on purpose.” He has no way to know, but it feels correct as he says it. 

“You hated me, regardless. I could not live with it.” All defiance goes with the admission. Armand’s chin wobbles. 

I could not prevent it. Heard that one before. 

But that’s not fair. This isn’t that. Some things aren’t like anything else. 

And Armand did prevent it, didn’t he? Kept Daniel from two deaths. “Tell me the rest of it,” is all he can think to say. 

“The doctors were wary of us. The eighties, AIDS.” Armand sounds exhausted again. “I read the minds of a few of the nurses—some didn’t want to treat you since they guessed we were together. I didn’t want…I left, so it wouldn’t complicate things. I did not have much time.” 

Armand traces the lines feathering out from Daniel’s eye. Daniel has a solid view of the taunt line of his throat. He can see each heavy swallow. 

“So I did it in the hospital room that night,” Armand says quietly. “In the dark, surrounded by the clicking of machines. I scrubbed your mind clean of me. You fought me very hard, even half-dead as you were. Your fists were curled tight around each moment.”

Daniel lets his eyes close against the burning there. He can see it too vividly. Their bond thrums with grief. 

“There better be some good shit in there,” he forces himself to say, rough and wavering. “So you can make it up to me.” 

Armand smooths down his eyebrow. “Don’t fight it now,” he says softly. “Let me in.” 

A vampire at the threshold. That old chestnut. 

Daniel takes a deep breath. He lets him in. 

Everything goes white, and then it just goes.

Notes:

can you believe I had THIS written before the threesome? this is the second thing I wrote for the fic it's just been collecting DUST

cryptenby wrote some some incredible meta that made me think about Daniel's experience during the AIDS crisis

they're disasters!! they make me insane and they are disasters!! alexa play comfort by julie jacklin!!!

Last update for a little bit as I noodle on the end---they are, predictably, giving me trouble but I wanted to share this chapter so bad we're getting a lil early

Notes:

thank you for reading!! <3 come say hi in the comments or on tumblr (same username)I love to yap about these guys

update soon!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Bataille Pour La Garde