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There’s a light on in Daniel’s apartment.
This wouldn’t be unusual – it’s a little past four in the morning, which is a still-reasonable hour for a vampire in New York in the winter – except that Daniel is the one looking up at his own window, and he is absolutely positive that he didn’t leave one on before he went out for his nightly hunt. He remembers flicking the switch as he closed the door, the still-surprising catch of his nail against the plastic (it had probably left yet another deep groove in the switchplate, the fourth one he’s had to replace since coming home), the brief moment of photo-flash disorientation as his eyes adjusted to his night vision and the apartment came back into view. And if he didn’t leave it on, it means that someone else did, and he wasn’t expecting a visit from the building super. Or anyone else, for that matter.
He’s cautious and quiet as he ascends the steps – he hasn’t taken the elevator since his turning, too enthralled by the sudden lack of ache in his knees – and tests the door. It’s locked, as he left it, but that’s not reassuring, given that it’s perfectly possible to lock it from the inside . He lets his fangs descend as he slides his key into the deadbolt and turns it, as quietly as possible. If it’s a standard human burglar, he’s got a pretty obvious upper hand, but it’s not impossible to imagine that he might be in for a visit from someone more … on his level. Louis is the subject of his book, but he’s the one writing it, and it’s not impossible that the news is getting around – the official deal announcement went up on Publishers Marketplace a few weeks ago.
He pushes the door open as quietly as he can, and peers into the room.
His visitor is sitting cross-legged on his sofa, a book open in one long-fingered hand, and he looks up when he hears the door. “Good evening, Daniel,” says Louis de Pointe du Lac. “I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion.”
The relief Daniel feels is almost embarrassing, or it would be if he had any intention of letting himself think about it. As is, he heaves a sigh; his fangs recede, and the tension slips out of his spine. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks.
“I had a connecting flight through JFK on my way back to Dubai,” Louis says, “and thought that … I might drop by.”
“You could have called first,” Daniel points out, shedding his snow-dusted leather jacket onto the floor and kicking off his shoes, “instead of breaking in and scaring the … can vampires have the living daylights scared out of them? Both of those feel wrong.”
Louis doesn’t bother to reply to that, which is fair, just turns the page of the book he’s reading – something from Daniel’s own shelves, probably, but his hand is obscuring the spine. “I wanted to see how you’re faring, in light of –” There’s a hint of discomfort in his voice.
“About as well as anyone could be expected to,” Daniel says, “in light of –” He’s copied Louis’ phrasing, meaning it as a jab, but faced with what to put after it, he understands a little more. In light of your ex-husband turning me in a fit of demonic anger and then immediately disappearing, after you fucked off to New Orleans to see your other ex-husband and left me alone with him? In light of my new nocturnal schedule, or my having just gotten home from dumping a random jogger’s body in a dumpster? In light of the fact that I’ve been figuring out this vampirism thing based solely off of instinct and my notes from our interview?
“I really am sorry, Daniel,” says Louis. “I didn’t think he would … well. I had asked him not to harm you, and I really did believe he wouldn’t. I certainly didn’t anticipate – what happened.”
“You couldn’t have,” Daniel says, “it’s not like the behavior had a precedent.” He cocks his head at the vampire on his couch. “That’s why you’re here. You wanted to apologize in person. Like you haven’t apologized enough through the vamp-phone.” In fact, Louis has apologized at least eight times for what happened in Dubai, because Daniel has made eight telepathic collect calls to him since gaining access to the immortal hotline – mostly to fact-check bits of the manuscript, at least after the initial “hey, guess who’s a vampire now” contact, which had rendered Louis speechless for so long that Daniel had begun to worry that the chaos of his turning had resulted in an underbaked Mind Gift. He’d apologized at least four times during that first chat, actually, so that made at least eleven total.
“I just wanted to see how you’re faring,” Louis repeats, and it’s not exactly a rebuttal, but it’s not a confirmation either. “The first several months can be … difficult. You’re adjusting to a great deal of physical and psychological change.”
“Yeah,” says Daniel, “vampire puberty. You’re telling me, buddy.” At least, he thinks, resentful, your maker was there for it.
I regret that yours has not been for you. Louis’ voice is loud in his head, and he swears, surprised.
“Sorry. Wasn’t trying to think that loud.”
Louis waves a hand, dismissive. “It’s not a problem. If it’s easier for you to converse that way, by all means.”
“No, it’s – I’m still figuring that part out. I’m still figuring out most of the parts,” Daniel says, figuring that honesty is probably the best policy for this conversation, since Louis is going to get the answers out of his head if not out of his mouth. He’s not had any problems with projecting his thoughts, but not projecting them is another matter. “I’m not gonna say it’s been easy, but I’m managing.”
“Are you eating enough?” Louis asks. “If you’d like, I have contacts in New York, and I could set up bag deliveries, if you need to supplement —”
Daniel rolls his eyes. “I’m eating plenty.” He considers for a moment, then drops down onto the other side of the sofa. “Look, I get that you feel guilty about the way everything went down in Dubai. But it’s done now, and I’m not mad.” At you, anyway, he thinks.
“You would be perfectly within your rights to be,” says Louis. “I shouldn’t have left you with him. I shouldn’t have left him with you.” He sighs. “Did you even want the Dark Gift, Daniel?”
“Well,” says Daniel, “it was better than dying.” Which had been his other option, when the vampire Armand finally surfaced out of his furious haze, and saw Daniel, grey and pale, bleeding out on the concrete fucking floor of the penthouse. Daniel remembered the look in his wide amber eyes, panicky and somehow wounded, as he’d said something soft and incomprehensible and definitely not in English, and then ripped his own throat open with one sharp claw, leaning down and pressing his neck into Daniel’s mouth like a lover. And Daniel had found that, despite all the peace he had tried to make with the idea, he was not ready to rest, after all.
He sees Louis wince, and realizes he must have been replaying the memory a little louder than he intended. “You certainly should not have been coerced into it,” Louis says, voice heavy.
“Yeah, well. What did you say to Claudia? All vampires are born of trauma, right?”
“They don’t have to be,” Louis said. “Madeleine proved that to me. I had hoped to repeat my findings, if you wished for it, with you.”
Daniel blinked at him, momentarily stunned into silence. “You mean —“ He remembered a night early on in that second interview, Louis’ intense green eyes on his as he said, I’d give it to you now. A still hand, time to watch your daughters marry.
“You meant it, when you offered?”
“Every offer I made you in Dubai was genuine, Daniel.” And of course, his memory calls up another image there, Daniel and Louis smiling at each other as a strange tension slipped out of the air, laughing as Louis said, Do you want to now?, both of them laughing because it was a joke, obviously a joke, he —
He realizes that Louis probably has a front-row seat to this replay, and feels his face redden with the blood he so recently consumed. “Well,” he says, trying desperately to get back on topic, “you’ll forgive me for not taking you seriously, after how you felt about the idea in 1973.”
And which of those ideas do you mean, Daniel? comes the voice in his mind, but out loud, Louis just smiles at him and says, “Time grants perspective. You needed it. So did I. But yes, I would have given you the Gift then, if you’d agreed. If you’d wanted it.”
Fuck off, he thinks back, and then, because it’s somehow better than going down the other road his thoughts are so enthusiastically trying to take him, he says, “I mean, sure, it would have been better that way. But what’s done is done.”
Louis sighs. “I know. But if there’s a way for me to … ease the burden on you, I’d like to.”
“Oh, okay, I get it. You’re here to assuage your guilt? Feel better about yourself? Make a donation to the kid in need at Christmas, then fuck back off to your perfect cushioned penthouse life feeling all warm and fucking fuzzy on the inside –” He’s aware that he’s off the rails, a little, but it’s been a long six months, and much as he doesn’t want to admit it, Louis is the closest thing to the responsible party that he’s seen during them.
Louis puts a hand on his shoulder, firm and insistent, and he shuts up.
After a long minute, Daniel breathing hard – it’s soothing and familiar as a motion, if not strictly necessary anymore – he says, softly, “I take it you still don’t know where he …”
Louis shakes his head. “Radio silence, I’m afraid. He’s old enough that he can make himself pretty near unfindable, if he wants. I’ve been reaching out, but – well, I’m not sure how likely he is to pick up for me.”
“Typical,” mutters Daniel. “Didn’t even have the decency to leave a phone number. He could be dead for all I fucking know.”
“No,” says Louis, “you would know, if he were.”
“Says the man who thought his Maker was dead for several years, and was dramatically proved wrong,” snaps Daniel, which is unkind and he knows it, but Louis meets it with an unbothered equanimity.
“Yes, and it should have been a clue that he wasn’t when I didn’t feel … severed,” says Louis. “I’ve talked to him about it, how it felt with Magnus. Like a … snapping. I never felt that. Grief, and guilt, yes, plenty of it, but the thread was always there. I don’t believe he would have been able to haunt me, if it wasn’t. If Armand is dead, I believe you’d know it.”
“Doesn’t have the decency to haunt me, either,” mutters Daniel.
“Six months isn’t long for him,” says Louis. “His conception of time is – not the same as yours, or even mine. Give him whatever patience you can.”
“Lotta compassion for a guy who planned your death, and your daughter’s.” Daniel raises an eyebrow, but Louis just shrugs. “Of all the vampires in the world, I had to get stuck with your ancient asshole ex, huh?” He thinks, but cannot quite bring himself to say, it couldn’t have been you, instead?
I wish it had been, Louis thinks back. And what is there to say to that? They lapse into a silence which feels – not comfortable, exactly, but not awkward, either. Like every silence between them since 1973, which is comforting, in its own way.
“All I’m trying to say is,” Louis says eventually, “if there is any way in which I can help you, you need only ask. It’s the least I can do.”
And Daniel doesn’t really want to admit it out loud, but he’s pretty sure Louis will get the message regardless, and he doesn’t try to keep a lid on it: even this has helped, a little, this first real human – okay, vampiric – interaction he’s had in six months. (He doesn’t count his emails to his editor or agent, or the rapid-fire texts he sends his researchers; those are work.) Even having Louis sitting here on the couch, a foot and a half away, has given him a kind of ease he hasn’t felt in … well, he doesn’t even know how long.
“It gets lonely,” Louis says, softly, in response to whatever garbled mess of thoughts and feelings Daniel has just telepathically provided him.
“Yeah,” says Daniel. “I got that.”
“It’s different to feel it,” Louis says. “If … company would be helpful to you, I would be glad to give it, Daniel.”
Daniel’s traitorous asshole brain flashes again to that moment, just the two of them in the penthouse, their easy laughter. He’s trying to tamp it down, cast it out, silly, stupid, but then there’s Louis’ voice, internally, saying, It’s your call what sort of company.
Come on, Louis. It’s easier to have this conversation telepathically, easier to think these things than to get them past his lips.
I’m not sure why you have such a difficult time believing me, Louis sends back. I do not, as a general rule, make offers which I’m not willing to back up.
Please. I mean, look at me, thinks Daniel, derisive and harsh. The first thing you said to me in Dubai was that I’d grown old.
I hardly think I need to attempt to impress upon you how little your age affects – any of this, Daniel. You’re younger than me, and I see no faults in the changes the years wrought in your body. They’re – something I will never get to experience, and I think there is a great deal of beauty there.
Sure. Beauty . Daniel exhales, long and slow, putting his face in his hands. “Anyway,” he says out loud, “you were in New Orleans for a long time.”
“And?” asks Louis.
“Well, I can only assume that means things went well with you and him,” Daniel says, somehow unwilling to bring up Lestat’s name out loud. “I’d prefer not to … get in his way, yeah?”
“We are …” Louis considers for a moment, and settles on, “taking it slow. I’ve told him I need to be on my own, for a little while. He’s got no more claim to me now than Ar – than any maker would have to his fledgling.”
Daniel can’t decide whether he’s annoyed at or grateful for the last-minute pivot. “Louis,” he says instead, “are you here to proposition me?”
And that finally slices through it, cuts the tension’s strings: they’re both laughing, a little hysterically, Daniel bent forward and wheezing and digging his nails into the couch. It’s not good for the fabric, but he can buy a new one if he wants to, it’s whatever. When they both manage to settle down and look at each other, Louis’ sclera are tinged red with tears. “I really did just want to check on you,” he says, his smile wide and easy, and that sets them both off again for a minute, until Daniel is wiping away blood-laughter-tears of his own.
“I know that the situation is not … uncomplicated,” Louis offers. “But this doesn’t have to be.”
“Sure,” says Daniel. “Simple, no-strings-attached is totally possible. It’s not like any of this is weird. It’s not weird at all that I ruined your marriage and got turned into a vampire by your insane ex-husband –” who tried to kill me in the seventies but in the most weirdly intimate way possible, and whose absence I now feel like a hole in my chest, because you really weren’t kidding about that maker bond thing – “and now you’re showing up at my apartment to ask if I want to fuck.”
Do you? Louis asks, gentle in his head.
“I don’t think I can give you an answer to that that’s not complicated,” says Daniel out loud, “and I don’t know if I want to make this any more complicated than it already is.” He’s not sure he can trust his telepathy to provide a comprehensible or consistent answer along with his words, full of too many images – the disappointment he’s sure radiated off of him when Louis had told him we didn’t in Dubai, and the not-entirely-unpleasant twisting in his stomach when Louis had first brought out the fangs in that apartment on Divisadero, and Louis’ startling green eyes in the low yellow light of Polynesian Mary’s, and then another pair of eyes, warm and gold and utterly inhuman, and a taste like honey on his tongue, and then a screaming cold dark emptiness – and god, he doesn’t want to go there , not right now. So he does his best to gather up all those thoughts and shove them in the mental equivalent of a hall closet, pressing his back into the door to get it to click closed.
If Louis notices, he doesn’t let on, just nods. “I understand,” he says, and smiles, soft, a little sad. “We keep missing each other, don’t we?”
“Come around in another fifty years, we’ll try again,” Daniel says, deadpan, then smiles back.
“Let’s try for fewer years between, next time,” says Louis, and Daniel does his best to ignore the insistent, rapid pulse of his heart at the idea of a next time.
“What time is your flight to Dubai?” Daniel asks, before he can think too hard about it.
“This evening,” says Louis.
“You could stay here today,” he offers. “If you wanted. Take a pre-flight nap, or whatever. I’ve got pretty good blackout curtains, and, uh. A king-size bed.” It doesn’t seem to matter how much, how genuinely, Louis has offered; he can’t quite bring himself to ask . He’s hopeful Louis will pick up what he’s trying to say from context and telepathy, and ideally without also being crushed under the tidal wave of Daniel’s embarrassment.
Louis has the decency not to laugh at him, but he does crack a smile, which tells Daniel that his thoughts are a little louder than he’d like. “Are you asking me to sleep with you after all, Daniel?”
“Literally. Literally sleep,” Daniel grumbles.
But Louis unfolds himself from the couch and stands up, head tilted slightly. “By all means, lead the way,” he says.
“C’mon,” Daniel says, and Louis follows him down the hallway to the bedroom, where Daniel’s bed is jammed into the corner the most out-of-the-way of the room’s single window, which is covered in – okay, pretty good blackout curtains was probably a stretch, it’s three of the cheapest ones he could buy at Target, safety-pinned together and duct-taped to the window frame, but it works , he doesn’t get any light in here during the day. The bed is unmade, comforter rumpled and scrunched into one corner, but there’s an acceptable number of pillows for two people, and it hasn’t been that long since he washed his sheets.
“You know,” Louis says, “I gave you those ten million dollars so you could use them. You could get UV-blocking panels installed. I can give you several recommendations for contractors. Or you could get a coffin. You probably should have a coffin, you know. I promise they’re more comfortable than you think they are.”
“I mean, I’m not dead yet,” says Daniel, and Louis just shakes his head.
“If that thing falls down, you’re going to be in for one very unpleasant alarm,” he says, but he pulls off his sweater and collared shirt, then his socks and his slacks, then after a moment of consideration, climbs gracefully into Daniel’s bed, shaking out the comforter and settling it across his lap.
Daniel only realizes he’s staring when Louis arches one eyebrow and says, “Did I misread something?”
“Fuck. No, sorry,” says Daniel, feeling his face heat again. “I just – yeah, never mind.”
He turns away and makes himself shed his sweatshirt and jeans, still stained from the night’s hunt, and is hunting through his half-open dresser drawer for pajama pants and a fresh t-shirt when Louis calls, “Skin-to-skin contact would probably be good for you, you know. But it’s your call.” He settles for just the pajama pants, trying not to think too hard or too loudly about how it feels to be shirtless next to the beautiful, lithe, ageless god who is dressed in only his underwear, and is currently shaking the dust out of one of his spare pillows.
“Sorry,” Daniel says. “Would’ve cleaned up if I knew I was having guests.”
“My fault for not giving you advance warning,” Louis says. “And I can assure you it’s not an issue. You wouldn’t believe where Lestat was living.”
“You’ll have to tell me about it later,” Daniel says, settling onto the edge of the bed, still a good two feet between him and Louis. But Louis leans back on the pillows and stretches out one arm, and murmurs without speaking, Come on over here. And Daniel thinks about what he’d said, about every offer being genuine, and then it’s oddly natural to slide in next to him, and tuck his shoulders under the outstretched arm, and lean his head against Louis’ collarbone. Louis’ skin is soft and cool to the touch, cooler than his own, soothing like the underside of a pillow on a hot summer night. Daniel inhales, listening to the slow rush of Louis’ blood beneath his skin, and Louis wraps his arm around Daniel’s shoulder, and god, god, but this is better than he’s felt in months. Better than he’s felt since that last lucid moment on the floor in Dubai, Armand heavy and warm in his arms, before he lost consciousness and woke up retching and alone and everything went right back to hell again.
“I know it’s not – the same,” Louis says. “I’m not trying to replace –” He sighs. “I know I can’t. But I do care about you. I hope you know that.”
“I know,” Daniel says, and he does , he really does. He sees it in every kindness that Louis has ever done him, from 1973 until now. “I …” He trails off, and then, because it’s easier than saying it, he thinks, thank you.
Louis kisses the top of his head, fond and brief and sweet. Think nothing of it.
And to be honest, it sounds pretty fucking excellent to think of nothing, right now. Daniel lets his eyelids drift closed, lets his muscles relax into Louis’, and lets the insistent tug of his circadian rhythm pull him down into a soft, dreamless sleep.