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The fridge is large. It has to be. Louis stocks a cache of scarlet PVC pouches there in an array of blood types, varying his selection each day to keep his oft-bored palette entertained. Laid against the white inner shelving of the refrigerator, the rows of red bags look like candy stripes. A clunky allegory; the stale taste of the bags with all their additives and anticoagulants is far from a treat, but their convenience evokes confectionery if you squint; a quick, artificial thrill.
Louis stares purposelessly into the open fridge, part of him waiting on tenterhooks for someone to approach from behind to criticise his selection, to tell him it is not nourishing enough, or that it is somehow too nourishing for the occasion, this slow Tuesday spent lounging around in the cotton shorts he wouldn’t wear outside the house. He doesn’t know why he’s dawdling. He’s already picked out a blood bag to drink. It sits heavy in his hands, a chilly pouch of viscoelastic fluid moulding to the cupped shape of his palms as if getting comfortable in his grasp, a fictitious animal trusting his hold.
He should shut the fridge.
Here in Louis’ newest NYC property, an apartment chosen painstakingly with input from several realtors, there’s a wide window in the kitchen, and it bathes him with dusk light while he loiters, showering him with the last residual traces of the sun before true night. No harm. The glass is equipped with the same UV-resistant smart-dimming technology once fitted in the Dubai penthouse, although Armand is no longer the one holding the controls. Louis uses a simple remote now and doesn’t bother with an iPad. Finds them obnoxious. Doesn't bother with Armand either, as much as his absence throbs. Louis elbows the fridge shut and sinks his teeth into his meal, clutching the bag until the vinyl turns to a crumpled husk, sundown for the sky and sundown for his meal. Cold blood enters his cold body, no temperature difference, no thermodynamic reaction, nothing to equalise, just cold into cold. Some natural intimacy seems absent.
Louis is lonely. More comfortable in his skin than he’s been in decades, but lonely all the same. Nightmares– daymares– hound him and fill his dreams with cold and isolation. He’s made friends, but they do not know loss as he does, and even the ones who know death cannot seem to understand it as Louis does, the loving rot of it, the spiralling circles, the intimate self-feeding loop. Louis spends time with Lestat cautiously on and off, but it oscillates too fast between vibrant and vicious and he doesn’t want to give himself over to that feeling again. Not yet, at least. Tucked shy beneath the plate of his chest is a half-formed longing to live side by side with someone without being enveloped by them. No enmeshment, no big emptiness, no debt in either direction. How would that taste? With a pang of anticipation, Louis thinks of Daniel, who pushes and shoves and transgresses, and never quite understands, but never seems capable of enveloping either.
Speak of the devil. A heartening pulse graces Louis’ mind, a spiritual touch from a supernatural friend… Daniel is reaching out. A sentiment felt often on Louis’ wrist, an invisible bracelet of connection.
There’s no obligation to reply, not with words, at least. Usually, Louis sends a thrum back to Daniel like a cursory email, an ambient summary of his status, confirming that no, he has not yet been murdered by any of the fierce-fanged malcontents who want him dead for baring the secrets of vampirism to the public. The ‘haters’, as Daniel calls them, have followed Louis cross-continent and are still out for blood, and Daniel worries as if he’s a helpless onlooker, which amuses Louis, because pray tell, who released the book to the world? Who published all the details that Louis thought he’d destroyed when he set Daniel’s laptop alight? Daniel would be better off culling his impotent worry and throwing his hands up like Louis has learned to do. Louis has resolved to never again let discomfort fester inside him. He deals with matters as they arise and doesn’t let shit stick around to rankle him unless it’s well and truly his business.
(You know you’re vulnerable in the penthouse, Louis, Daniel nagged last time the two of them got to chatting with words. Everyone knows you’re there. You might as well have a giant ‘kick me’ sign on your back. Daniel is under the impression that Louis is still living in Dubai. In actual fact, Louis has not set foot on Emirati soil in months, let alone the stony floors of the Al Sharaf penthouse. He has outgrown it. He keeps outgrowing things.)
Louis goes ahead and lowers his psychic shields just enough to show off his present mood, the feeling in his stomach, the painfully light weight of the crumpled blood bag in his hands. The airy emptiness. He offers it all up to Daniel, sending his heart out heedlessly to be worn on Daniel’s sleeve. No big deal. Just something they do.
Misery, Daniel concludes cynically once he’s finished appraising Louis’ condition.
Perhaps by your metric. Such is life, Louis thinks. A pause, then a confession: I’m stateside, by the way.
Yeah, so am I, Daniel thinks with mulish wit. I live here.
Louis dumps the empty PVC bag into the biohazard bin he keeps in his kitchen. He rolls up his cuff, saffron yellow cotton for her, a colour he catches himself wearing often, and rubs his bared wrist. I want you, he thinks idly to Daniel.
You already have me, thinks Daniel, still flippant. Come get it, buddy.
~
Brooklyn beckons, a reunion follows, and Louis and Daniel dive into catching up the moment they collide on the street. No hello, no chummy hug, just headfirst into conversation as if they were only apart for moments instead of a month. It all comes easily. They banter about nothing and circle the block as the stars emerge above, pinpricks poking through the early eve sky. Starlight and brake lights reflect off Daniel’s sunglasses, aviators after dark, paired rather tragically with a heavy metal band shirt and leather jacket. He looks like a jackass. Looks like a guy whose number Louis might ask for at one of Lestat’s shows just for the hell of it. Dirty scraps of power.
At Daniel’s request, the pair of them stop at the library so Daniel can work on a contractually obligated article he’s “gotta get out of the way”, and there, they turn their chatter telepathic to keep the noise down, seated opposite each other on uber-modern acrylic lounge chairs. Louis thumbs through the novels on the shelves within his reach, seeing which authors’ names he recognises and which he has yet to discover. Daniel types away on a library laptop as if his life depends on it, busy mining a new sensational tale out of some other marginalised soul.
All this work for a legacy you’ll have to relinquish so soon, Louis thinks to Daniel. Cooking a meal that cannot satisfy, boiled out of the bones of the vulnerable. (Distantly, Louis chews on the fact that he’s partly responsible for stoking this fervour in Daniel, this force that continues to drive Daniel on fifty years later, even in death, and frequently to Louis’ detriment. The thought leaves a knot in his belly, one best not detangled.)
‘Legacy’ being the operative word, Daniel replies brightly. Doing this for my daughters and for my pride. Reputation is forever.
Louis smiles. Yeah? Get back to me in a century or so, see if you stand by that. Louis’ old Rue Royale home springs to mind, now a gimmicky tourist spot telling a tale so watered down that it no longer relates to him at all. Reputation is nothing. Even if it endures, it will turn into a story about somebody else in the end.
The library shuts at nine. Next stop is the closest nightclub, where Louis loosens up his limbs in the crowd while Daniel breaks away to go do a shitload of coke in the bathroom. It’s hard to tell whether stimulants have any effect on him anymore but he seems to find fulfilment in his old practice anyhow. He comes back to Louis fresh and friendly so Louis matches the mood, perks up, and lets himself get handsy, which Daniel has never minded. Strangers eye up the overconfident senior citizen and the elegant thirty-something with their arms slung around each other’s hips, laughing and whispering into each other’s ears, and when the showoff gag at the club gets boring, they head home to Daniel’s apartment just in time to beat the first twinge of dawn.
Louis has his own key. He unlocks the door for them, which pleases Daniel, stirring up a flicker of nostalgia in him which Louis senses right away through Daniel’s criminally lax psychic walls. The memory in question: both of Daniel’s ex wives had a habit of being the one up front unlocking the door for the family, and it was a sight that Daniel had loved.
I’m not your wife, Louis chides, but it’s a toothless complaint. He has a soft spot for Daniel’s habit of projection, and besides, he’s prone to the same thing, and possibly in a more shameful way. More than once, Louis has lost his equilibrium and called Daniel by Claudia’s name in ardent moments of fatherly feeling, or made remarks about boisterous fledgling hunger that drew more parallels than intended; a natural hazard given that Claudia and Daniel are the two most ravenous beings Louis has known, both his stubborn juniors, and both so dear to his heart that sometimes he can hardly bear it. So yes, these perceptual transgressions balance out. Once in a while, Daniel, lonely divorcee, needs to feel as though this clever, young-looking gem could be his spouse, meanwhile, Louis needs to feel like this old card could be his child finally grown up and grey. A melancholy thought, but it doesn’t hurt. If anything, it heals.
Shut safely in the apartment now, away from the rising sun... Louis wanders through the living room with light feet, inspecting every small detail that’s changed since he was last here, and Daniel collapses onto the couch like a ton of bricks. There are spare jackets and pants strewn over the back of the cushions, a phone charger loose on the floor by Daniel’s shoes, random bits of trash here and there, and at least five too many lamps in this room alone. Daniel’s home is nice, beautifully eclectic, but he doesn’t exactly take the best care of it.
“Run out of steam?” Louis asks the potato on the couch.
“Are you kidding? I’ve got enough steam to power a turbine locomotive, my blood’s chock full of so much fucking fledgling nepo power from Armand and his thousand year old daddy that I’m practically a god,” says Daniel. He’s chewing gum, a hint of the boyishness he spent the past few decades largely denying himself but which he seems to be rekindling as of late. “I’ve just been getting really into chairs lately. Simple pleasures. You should try this shit.”
Louis smiles to himself as he runs his fingers delicately over the assorted junk trinkets arranged on Daniel’s shelves, tracing their shapes, guessing each item’s value on both the financial and sentimental fronts. Treasures upon treasures. A novelty magnet not magnetically attached to anything. A bookend not propping up any books. A figurine of a jackal missing one ceramic foot.
“Hands off,” Daniel says.
Louis withdraws his hand. He devours with his eyes instead, gaze catching on a family photo album he’s not sure he’s snooped on yet.
Lou, Daniel thinks, breaking Louis out of his reverie.
Yeah, I’m here, Louis thinks absently, his back to Daniel.
You wanted me, Daniel reminds him.
When Louis turns to face Daniel again, Daniel is lazing comfortably on the couch with his feet planted on the floor and his thighs spread for comfort, jeans gone taut at the knees. He’s pulling the collar of his tee shirt away from his neck with one hand, exposing pale skin textured with crepe paper creases, intricate like lace, gravity-weighed. Louis can see the edges of a couple of age spots on his shoulder. Fetching. The sight leaves Louis lightheaded with thirst, lip quivering, fangs emerging. His body feels not unlike an empty blood bag, a dry husk.
And yet… he doesn’t want to drink. Not at the moment. The feeling isn’t sitting right, and to push past that uncertainty and feed anyway would be to compromise the very sense of agency that makes this thing with Daniel so special. They’re not obligated to each other, not emotionally nor bodily, not even when Louis is hungry. All of it must be a choice or else it’s worthless.
Daniel is still chewing his gum. Smells like Juicy Fruit, a flavour that cannot possibly taste good to a vampire. Another muscle-memory habit like the coke at the club, Louis supposes. Daniel clings perpetually to his mortality. (Pot, kettle.)
Louis sighs and slouches down onto Daniel’s lap, settling his weight on Daniel’s knee and slinging one arm over his shoulder for balance, letting his other hand rest on his chest. Louis’ fangs are still bared when he lets his heavy head fall lax against Daniel’s collar. He can’t force his incisors to retract, he can only ignore them for the time being, bony little prominences against his upper lip, stinging hungrily upon exposure to the air. He sends a ripple of warm resignation to Daniel, the vague silhouette of a refusal, twined with gratefulness at Daniel’s offer.
“You’re hungry,” Daniel complains.
“Such is life, such is death,” Louis says. He faux-bites at Daniel’s shirt collar, making sure not to catch Daniel’s skin by mistake. Polyester taste, dry fuzz in Louis’ mouth as he nips at the fabric to calm himself. His eyes fall shut and his breathing slows. Eventually, his fangs tidy themselves away. He finds it easier to relax after that. “It’s good to see you again, Daniel.”
“Stay over,” says Daniel. He spits out his chewing gum covertly and stuffs it into its crinkly wrapper. “I’ll make up the spare bed. Don’t go, man, you always go. You never wait for me to kick you out. Rude.”
Louis chuckles and ruffles Daniel’s curls. “I’m not going, not for at least a couple of days. We’re not done catching up. And I want to get to know your couch, get to grips with this whole sitting thing you’re so infatuated with.”
~
Daniel makes up the spare room for Louis, clean bedsheets and crisp folded corners, the whole shebang, but Louis opts to sleep in the living room on the couch instead. He likes this couch. It’s very Daniel. Thick and structurally sturdy, yet upsettingly disordered once you hone in on the details. There’s a cigarette burn on the corner of one of the cushions and dried chewing gum stuck to the underside of another. The knitted throw blanket draped over the backrest smells like Daniel’s cologne gone stale from buildup.
At 8am, just as Louis is settling down to sleep the daylight hours away, a persistent knocking batters the front door. Daniel goes to address it, and evidently he succeeds at warding his caller away because nobody comes in.
“Proselytisers,” Daniel explains on his way back to his bedroom. “Go to sleep.”
Louis snoozes, his legs stretched out straight, his arms crossed snugly over his chest… last time he slept over at Daniel’s, Daniel referred to this as ‘Dracula sleep’. Louis wakes up hours later in the same position, surprisingly refreshed. Daniel’s art deco cat clock tells him that it’s sometime past 3pm. Daniel stumbles into the living room a few minutes later looking for clean socks, which he finds inexplicably under the coffee table and puts on while perching on the couch by Louis, weighing down the cushions. Louis pats Daniel’s back. Good morning, so to speak.
Their second day together shapes up to be far less chatty than the first. It feels languid, stretchy and patient, reminding Louis of those seemingly endless summer days spent loafing about with his siblings when school and church and chores seemed miles away, when doing nothing felt like doing the very most. Louis sends Daniel frequent pulses of psychic contact even when Daniel is right beside him. Daniel leaves his heart ajar like a cracked-open door for Louis to peek into whenever he pleases… Lord, it’s a mess in there. Arrogance stacked atop raging curiosity stacked atop abandonment. Daniel is still hung up on the sting of being ditched by his maker but Louis can guarantee he wouldn’t feel any better about it if Armand were here.
Louis sips on a blood bag defrosted from Daniel’s freezer, one from a stock which he can only assume Daniel keeps for him. The afternoon whittles itself away. There are blackout blinds on all of Daniel’s windows and duct tape beneath as a failsafe, so the apartment is guaranteed safe harbour from the sun, but the place is ridiculously dark, so the lamp surplus ends up coming in handy. No matter where Louis chooses to sit, there’s always a good source of reading light, and you better believe there’s plenty of quality reading material too. He leafs through a few of the innumerable books on Daniel’s shelves and finds notes scrawled in some of them… scathing critiques, praise, grocery lists, random curse words, a brief erotic poem addressed to a woman named Sara. The handwritten scribbles fascinate Louis more than the printed text. Something about their rawness, the fact that these words fell straight from Daniel’s brain to the page, a stark contrast to his published works where every word drips with his need to exert himself as a unique and superior voice in the industry. Louis can hardly stand to read Interview With The Vampire, that thoroughly editorialised thing, arranged by an author convinced he knew better than his subject (and tainted too by the spectre of Armand’s oversight)… but Louis would be glad to pore over Daniel’s unfiltered biro ravings anytime.
The moment that darkness falls, Daniel grabs his keys and goes out to hunt, leaving Louis home alone. It’s more than an hour before Daniel returns to the apartment, windswept, flushed, and smelling so fucking good that it sends Louis reeling. Fresh thirst soars inside Louis with lurid intensity, becoming him entirely, begging to be slaked, and this time he makes his mind up easily. At the click of the front door, he seizes the moment like a prize and collides with Daniel, grabbing him and pulling him to the couch, both of them panting as they go down, Louis’ fangs seeking pleadingly, Daniel’s body meeting the challenge. Meant for this. Meant for Louis.
Drinking from Daniel is a fierce relief. It’s nothing like the woefully restrained sips Louis takes from his mortal donors to keep himself fit, nor the bittersweet power trip of sinking his jaw into a pliant, adoring Armand, nor the world-shattering high of flaying himself open to share blood with Lestat mid-fuck. No, with Daniel, it feels more like an earthing, a return to something that was already inside him.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Daniel murmurs while Louis drinks, deep fevered pulls of balmy blood, a pleasure that wraps him up in cotton wool. “We’re good, man. We’re cool.”
I love you, Louis thinks. I love you, I love you.
Tears are forming but it’s more of a physical reflex than anything else. There’s no sadness. Louis hardly even feels wistful, which is frequently his resting state. Things just feel simple. Like he can let go.
Afterward, Louis overturns their bodies so that he’s on his back with Daniel straddling him, and from there he cuts a trickle from his own wrist and offers it up for the sake of reciprocity. Daniel takes his chance gladly, dipping down to drink. While Daniel laps little droplets from Louis’ wrist, Louis stretches out his free arm, runs his fingertips over the textured cigarette burn on the cushion and lets his head fall back lazily against the arm of the couch. He basks, staring at the mural painted on Daniel’s ceiling. He likes this setup. High intimacy, low intensity. Daniel is hard against Louis’ thigh, a side effect of fledgling adrenaline; Daniel probably won’t bring it up unless Louis does first, and Louis takes pleasure in that thought. They’ve slept together a few times since the interview’s conclusion but every instance has felt spontaneous, discrete, existing only in itself.
“Luxuriating?” Daniel says against Louis’ skin.
“Yes,” Louis says breathily, too content to bother with flirtation or wit.
“Princess,” Daniel accuses, and licks up a stray rivulet of red, soothing the slow-oozing wounds.
Louis gives another long sigh, long enough to empty his lungs all the way. Feels like catharsis, a featherlight sensation, airy as Daniel’s cloud-covered ceiling, which Louis’ gaze is still dancing across. This is what being a vampire should be, Louis thinks in his satisfied haze. This, all the time. Nothing too myopic, nothing too lofty, just power and peace, and the sharp glut of fresh blood from a body who loves him, as much of a bulldozer as Daniel may be.
Daniel is chuckling into the skin of Louis’ wrist, stroking Louis’ arm as he drinks. He sends a pulse of companionship to Louis, and guess where it goes? Straight to Louis’ wrist, and Daniel drinks it right up again. Louis laughs.
~
“Relax, boy,” Louis placates. He’s deeply attuned to Daniel’s constitution; Daniel gets tense sometimes, holds himself stiffly, the lingering grip of early Parkinson’s on an undead body.
“I’m relaxed,” Daniel says. He’s sprawled horizontally on the big corner-couch with a laptop balanced on his knees and Louis’ head pillowed on his calf. They’ve been lying here together for hours. Better than bed. Permanent sleepover. “What the hell about this setup gives you the impression that I’m not relaxed?”
Louis blinks up at the mural overhead, false blue skies, fluffy painted clouds, a dreamland fit for delicate souls. (Daniel had the ceiling painted after his second divorce decades ago as a symbol of hope, proof he wasn’t dead inside. The daytime-themed decor screams of irony now.) “You tensed up all of a sudden,” Louis points out. He likes reading Daniel, and Daniel tends to welcome scrutiny when it comes to body language. There’s plenty of shit the two of them hide from each other, complex and private facts that will never be disclosed in detail– Louis’ furtive visits with Lestat, for one thing, which have only grown more frequent over the last year– but if there’s one thing Daniel never shields, it’s his bodily instincts. His head may have its secrets but his guts are always wide open for Louis to press into for comfort. It’s become one of Louis’ fondest hobbies, revelling in the throb of Daniel’s sprawling emotions, feeling the physical changes unfold as Daniel responds to the burdens of his inner experience, even if the nitty gritty details remain out of Louis’ reach.
“It’s eight,” Daniel admits with some mysterious discomfort. “In the morning.”
Louis furrows his brow, trying to parse the issue here. Daylight? Is Daniel worried about daylight spilling in? “You’ve got blackout blinds.”
There’s a knock at the door, and this time, Daniel doesn’t answer it, nor does the eight-o’clock caller go away. A key turns in the lock. A man in his thirties enters, wearing a blue smock and little stud earrings. Louis first thought: a relative? But no. He’s ginger and far too friendly in manner to be a relative.
“Ethan,” Daniel greets, closing his laptop. “I forgot you were coming.”
“Well, that’s okay,” Ethan assures. He halts beside Louis, who still has his head rested on Daniel’s leg. “Is this your…” Ethan begins to ask, then gives up, unsure how to finish his sentence.
“My pal Louis,” says Daniel.
“Another writer?”
Louis hauls himself into a dignified sitting position and says, “An artist.” Not a traditional one by any means, but photography is its own craft, albeit one Louis hasn’t practised in earnest for decades now, and art trading too could be argued as an art in itself; it takes heart, takes soul.
“How’s he been?” Ethan asks Louis, talking about Daniel as if Daniel isn’t in the room.
Good day, Daniel suggests.
“It’s a good day so far,” Louis says, piecing the puzzle together. “We’ve had breakfast. Done some writing, some reading, taking it easy.”
Ethan has begun to collect the trash off the floor and fold the items of clothing strewn about the room. “Personal care?” he asks. He whips a ledger from his pocket.
“We covered that,” Louis says, presuming Daniel would rather not be shaved and washed by a home care nurse he doesn’t even need.
Ethan jots that down. “Gosh, you two are close, then.”
“I’ll say,” Daniel pipes up. “I took my shirt off in front of him fifty years ago.”
“Cognitive impairment… mild to moderate…” Ethan mutters as he writes, a look of vague perturbation on his face. When he lifts his head, he addresses Daniel directly. “Done your range of motion exercises?”
This is the first question that Daniel seems to mull over sincerely. “Probably should get onto that,” he concedes. Then he takes a deep breath. “Ethan, thank you so much, you’re a gem, but we’ve got it handled. I’ll enlist Louis’ help for passive stretches, I promise.”
Ethan gives a distant smile, looking like he’s used to this kind of recalcitrance. “Look, I don’t mind getting paid to do nothing, but your daughter hired me for a reason.”
“If you don’t mind it, then just take the paycheck,” Daniel suggests. He fumbles in his pocket for a hundred dollar bill. “And this, take this too. Go get a Starbucks.”
Ethan doesn’t touch the bill. “I’m boycotting.”
“Right on, brother. Go dance in a meadow, then.”
“I’m sorry about this,” Louis tells Ethan with polite shame to mask his amusement. He plucks the bill from Daniel’s hand and pockets it for himself. “If it’s any comfort, he’s always been this way.”
“Ever since he took his shirt off in front of you fifty years ago?” Ethan says witheringly as he heads to the front exit. He reaches for the pull-cord for the blackout blinds on his way, and both Daniel and Louis make immediate sharp protests, tensing up. Ethan shakes his head. “You and the light! One of these days I’ll get some sun in here, mark my words.” This is his closing statement. He shuts the front door behind him.
Daniel sighs heavily, hissing through his teeth like a beast.
“Quite the advanced ruse,” Louis chuckles in awe. “A little bit sick, isn’t it, Daniel?”
“Deceitful, sure.” Daniel opens his laptop again and returns to work. “Sick is kind of a loaded word, though. It’s not like I don’t actually have Parkinson’s.”
“How often are the carers coming in?”
“Twice a day.”
“Eight o’clock, morning and evening,” Louis guesses, recalling Daniel ushering yesterday’s visitor away at the door. “Is it Lenora who’s paying? Has she not seen you in person lately, seen that you can take care of yourself?”
Daniel smiles at his screen and leans back against the cushions. “She’s seen me on live TV swearing at show hosts and proclaiming that vampires are real. I'm not exactly giving off ‘sound of mind’.” He types a rapid few sentences on his keyboard. The clacking is a pleasant noise. Daniel’s obsession with writing is less pleasant. Makes Louis unwell, in fact. Makes him feel helpless. He wishes Daniel would stop.
“About those range of motion exercises…” Louis says, “Do they help?” He’s seen how Daniel rolls his shoulders to ease the rigidity when his joints gel.
I guess, Daniel thinks. The passive ones that Ethan does, those especially.
Yet you sent him away, Louis thinks, considering a way to wrangle a little power back. He stands and requests, “Arm.”
“Busy,” Daniel rebuffs.
Daniel seems to have gotten carried away in behaving like a teenager. Perhaps Louis owes it to him to remind him that he is old. Like once before, Louis indulges in the mind gift to incite Daniel’s tremor until the jerking sends fear and frustration flickering across Daniel’s face. A tasteful betrayal of trust between good friends who push each other well. Louis so hates to see Daniel living in denial.
“Oh, seriously? Seriously, Louis?” Daniel’s laptop slips from his lap as his left hand clamps over his right to subdue the tremble. “Dick move.”
“A kindness.”
“A humiliation ritual.”
“Arm,” Louis requests again, relishing this moment of tender condescension, success in steering Daniel away from his fixation even if only momentarily. “We promised Ethan, didn’t we?”
Daniel snarls but the sound turns into a wild laugh as he capitulates, offering his arm for an assisted stretch, and as soon as he does, the induced tremor resolves. They spend a few minutes patiently flexing Daniel’s joints. A certain peace ensues. It feels like alchemy, a sort of study, coaxing the recalcitrant body to respond with the desired answers. By the time they’re finished, Louis is in a state of triumphant serenity and Daniel’s blood smells radiant with guilty pleasure. It’s obvious he enjoyed this. For all he likes to position himself as press in the wings, he soaks up the spotlight like a sponge.
With the real physio out the way, Louis moves on to the purely recreational and begins bending each of Daniel’s thick fingers backwards, slowly, curiously, flexing the joints as far as they go just to see what they’ll look like at their limit. Daniel is wincing in pain. Daniel’s middle finger, which Louis feels is vastly overused, gets pushed hardest.
“Relax,” Louis says to preempt any complaint.
“I’m fucking relaxed!” Daniel cackles. “Bewildered, as seems to be my standard status when I’m with you, but relaxed all the same.”
Yes. So is Louis. They’re sharing waves of mutual feeling, catching droplets of insight into the other’s experience, mixing it all together. Pulses, pulses. Louis squeezes Daniel’s hand, then finally drops it, relinquishing his hold on Daniel entirely.
“Thanks for the help,” Daniel says eventually. He’s pink in the face. Looks like he’s in love.
“If you really want to thank me,” Louis quips amicably. Fantasies of a full stomach flicker loudly through his mind. He wants proper nourishment and it’s only fair for a host to feed his houseguest. In Dubai, Louis had stuffed Daniel with fancy food and even provided a show with dinner when he’d bled Armand-Rashid at the table. Daniel would do well to entertain his visitor in return.
“I’ve got plenty more blood bags in the freezer,” Daniel offers underwhelmingly. “Gourmet selection. I stay stocked. Or I guess I could track down a live donor for you if you’re set on something with a warm pulse.”
No, Louis thinks, butterflies in his stomach. He settles himself delicately on the couch cushions once more, letting the pillows take his weight as a kernel of an idea solidifies in his head. Hunt for me again. Go get full for me, full as you can, then come home to me and you can be my meal. What do you say?
Daniel’s eyes have gone half lidded and his pupils look bigger, though his overall expression stays neutral, tidily schooled. He folds his arms. Crosses his legs. “That’s what you want, huh? You want me to feed you baby-bird style? Take care of you after you took care of me?”
“I think I made myself plenty clear,” Louis says soberly. “Daylight’s breaking, though. We’ll have to wait. Can you wait?”
“Of course I can. I’m not the one who’s jonesing.”
Louis stifles a smile. Aren’t you?
~
They sleep the light hours away on the couch, Louis on his back and Daniel face down, one arm hanging off the edge of the seat. When they wake, Daniel has fallen onto the floor. He pulls himself wearily up to his knees, dusts himself off, and says, “Hey, buddy. Still want it?”
“I could take it or leave it,” Louis says, then hauls Daniel up into his arms and shuts his eyes to the flurry of forehead kisses from Daniel that follows. A current of affection connects their spirits.
“I think I like you hungry,” Daniel says thoughtlessly, lips at Louis’ temple.
“Let’s not drift down that route,” says Louis. His self control is for no one but himself. The times he noticed that Armand enjoyed seeing him complacent with thirst had left him feeling disenchanted, violated. Louis' hunger is for him alone. His fullness, on the other hand, is something to be shared when the time is right, something Daniel will soon pour into him, give and receive, infinite loop. He bites Daniel’s hand promptingly as it rises to stroke Louis’ cheek. “Go. Go on, boy.”
Once the coast outside is clear and UV-free, Daniel is off like a bullet, out to gorge on shady strangers so he can come back to the apartment full as a tick and rosy with spare blood. Louis reads a book while he waits, patient, stretching his thirst tolerance to its absolute limit just like the joints of Daniel’s poor fingers. The words on the page are starting to blur by the time Daniel returns. Louis doesn’t grab Daniel right away this time. He finishes the chapter, letting his anticipation simmer and grow while Daniel stands there expectantly, arms folded, blood-stench radiating. By the time Louis stands up, his eagerness has become a fierce swell in his centre, bloomed to overripeness; his limbs feel liable to fall off like petals any moment now.
They go to the guest bedroom.
“Shirt off,” Louis says, or requests, or begs. He can hardly discern the tone of his own voice. He’s sitting on the bed now, a red-faced Daniel slouched beside him on the mattress.
Daniel tugs his tee shirt over his head. Déjà vu. It’s been fifty years and things have come full circle, Daniel serving himself up, cocksure and comfortable, looking Louis dead in the eye as he drops his shirt on the floor, only there are no misaligned notions of a social contract this time; they’re on the same page now, led by the same quick heartbeat, the same exquisite urge, and Louis is so, so hungry.
“Are you gonna tell me you love me again?” Daniel teases as they fold into one another, Louis descending and Daniel rising, flesh giving way to the bite of freshly unsheathed fangs. Louis is enjoying himself far too much to even register Daniel’s taunt. The first few sips are always a sort of oblivion, sharp gush, terrible bliss as his cold mouth soaks up Daniel’s heat. After Louis’ stomach starts to fill and his senses return to him, he comes into awareness rejuvenated, half-collapsed with Daniel, practically diagonal on the mattress with his knee wedged between Daniel’s thighs and Daniel’s fingers stroking his cheek as he drinks. “Is what we’re doing here really compatible with that tender ethics system of yours?” Daniel asks dreamily. “Someone died for this. A few someones, I should say. You’re drinking murdered blood. Out of the neck of a third party mediator, granted, but still, it’s gotta make you think.”
“Skating past the point. The way I eat isn’t exclusively a philosophy of ethics,” Louis pulls off to say. His own voice sounds unfamiliar for all its throaty softness. “I can’t deny that ethics play a part but the main driver is my own tolerance, nothing more and nothing less than whatever I happen to find bearable. My aim is to live with myself.”
“Well, good,” Daniel sighs as Louis latches on again, “I’m a strong proponent of living. You living, me living. Big fan.”
Quietude falls for a while. Louis feasts. Every now and again, he interrupts his meal to kiss Daniel, drifting the short distance from Daniel’s neck to his mouth for soft, numb little lip locks which Daniel opens himself up to, eager for whatever he can get, perma-thirsty, even for the taste of his own blood on Louis’ lips. As their ribs press together, the fabric of Louis’ now-unfastened shirt crumples against Daniel’s bare chest, buttons digging into his skin, a comfortable clumsiness. Somewhere in the mix they’ve found a rhythm, motion, Louis’ knee against Daniel’s crotch where his cock is filling out, Daniel’s hand slipping down Louis’ pants, stroking affectionately with the cupped palm of his big hand, languid friction to enhance the treasure of blood-sharing. It’s good. It’s enough.
Fangs sink into Daniel’s neck again. Steady swallows. A low thrum of trust.
“I don’t know where I’d be today if you hadn’t sent me those tapes,” Daniel says apropos of nothing. His syllables come slow, deliberately delivered. Over time, Louis has learned that in Daniel Molloy, slowness is often a sign of sincerity. Daniel talks quickly when he’s diverting or trying to spin a point, but he talks slow when he wants you to see him for what he really is. “Glad you shipped ‘em over.”
Louis kisses the indents of the wounds he carved into Daniel and sighs as he rounds off his quality time with Daniel’s throat.
“I’d be dead without you,” says Daniel.
“You’d be dead without Armand,” Louis corrects.
“I’d be dead without you,” Daniel maintains. “Then and now. The last day of San Fran and the last day of Dubai.”
Louis purses his lips edgily, pressing the side of his head into the pillow and shutting his eyes tightly as if to escape the implication of the sentiment. “I don’t like debt,” he tells Daniel. It ate away at him to feel like he owed his family so severely that he scarcely existed in his own right; it left him a shell of himself, and he can’t afford to be a shell anymore, certainly not around the bulldozer that is Daniel.
Chuckling, Daniel bundles Louis up in his arms. It’s a boisterous hug, full with the force of the strength Daniel inherited from his maker but with none of Armand’s customary finesse. “There’s no debt, man, it’s called friendship. Try appreciating it for a fucking minute.”
That brings Louis back to earth. How well Daniel knows him. It means a great deal to him that no matter what they do together, no matter what they feel or what hats they dress each other in, the two of them are friends above anything else. All his life, the fortifying solace of a long friendship has somehow escaped Louis. Or he has escaped it. Romance and family he’s poured himself into, but this, this slow, stretching bond that survives without structure or obligations to guide the way, has been something mystifyingly elusive for the most part, and sharing it with Daniel has been one of the highlights of Louis’ century, mucky drawbacks and all.
The hug is feeling decidedly platonic. Impressive indeed that it manages to keep that tone in spirit even as the two of them sink back into kissing, and deeper this time, heavy with relief, the kind of kisses that chip away at the line between self and other, nothing but sensation washing down nerve pathways, skin contact superseding thought. Their exhales leave the air fragranced alluringly with blood; distracting; they’re grinding to the tempo of their breaths again before they know it, Daniel’s hand at work, Louis’ eyes closing tightly. He relaxes into it, warm with blood and desire, letting Daniel take care of him.
Daniel, a true pro at putting a damper on things, cranes his neck to check his bedside clock. “It’s almost eight.”
Louis lets out a burst of laughter. He will not be stopping this for a stranger. “Then I suppose we’ll just have to be fast.”
~
Midday, sleep and stillness.
Louis is woken by panic. He scrambles for his bearings and calls out. Are you there? Where are you? I can’t reach you. He doesn’t know who he’s calling for.
“I’m here,” Daniel garbles from a couple rooms away. “Louis? I haven’t even moved, I’m in bed. Where the hell are you?”
Silence then. A swirling stew of distress which cannot be put into words.
Louis is in a pit.
Daniel finds Louis sprawled on the grey couch as he has been for the last few daytimes, intact but bewildered, Dracula posture disrupted, limbs akimbo. It’s only once Daniel is there and the lamp is on that Louis recovers his equilibrium.
“Bad dream,” Louis dismisses once reality starts to sink in, shame following soon after. “Another in a long line. It was nonsense.” He neatens up his clothes, rumpled from sleepy distress, and wipes his brow, the back of his hand returning faintly bloodied with sweat. He licks it clean out of habit.
Daniel has migrated to the adjoining kitchen and seems to be clattering in the cupboards. “Shit,” Daniel says after a minute, his voice echoing against the tiling.
“Problem?” asks Louis.
Daniel returns to the living room, head hung. “I was going to make tea,” he admits. “A whole year without food and drink and my head still goes straight to tea when someone has a bad night… or day, I guess. It’s noon.”
“‘A cup of boiled blood’ doesn’t have quite the same comforting ring to it, does it?” Louis says, disarmed. He sits up, draws his knees to his chest, and drapes Daniel’s throw blanket over himself. Smells familiar.
“What’d you dream about?” asks Daniel. When Louis cringes, Daniel slumps onto the couch beside him and says, “What, taboo question?”
As it often goes, Louis can hardly recall his nightmare. From context clues, it must’ve been about Claudia. Louis doesn’t want to talk to Daniel about her, not after the book. He feels as though Claudia’s story isn’t safe in other people’s hands anymore. He hardly feels like it’s safe in his own hands, but it’s the one piece of baggage he carries along that he simply cannot let go of, the one loss that he feels he needs to keep grieving forever. “Taboo question,” he agrees placidly. He rests his hands on his pyjama knees. The fabric is blue but in the light-blocked darkness it looks almost black, a void without highlights. “Armand would lie on top of me after I had a nightmare. For comfort. He’d lie across the length of my back to weigh me down with his body, like he was worried I’d float away in my distress.” (Louis has no qualms tossing Armand’s story around indiscriminately.) “It helped.”
Daniel shifts in his seat, the start of an unadvisable action.
Before Daniel has a chance to embarrass himself, Louis adds, “I don’t want you to do that. I’m only reminiscing.”
“Blame a guy for trying.”
“I do blame you, a little bit,” Louis says weightily, meaning it in more ways than one, though he doesn’t elaborate and Daniel doesn’t reply. Louis takes a few breaths, stretches his arms, aligns his back, trying to work the knot of discomfort through his body. It does him some good. That nascent festering seems to abate. “Lenora employs your carers,” Louis begins thoughtfully, to which Daniel replies uh huh. “But does your daughter visit you herself at all? Does she speak to you?”
Daniel goes quiet. This hesitation consoles Louis: it shows that his suspicion is right, that he has won. “No. Neither of them do,” Daniel finally says.
“This legacy you’re holding on to, these last threads of life to which you cling, none of it has anything to do with your family at all, does it?” Louis murmurs, letting his head fall against the backrest of the couch. The sleepy compulsion of the daytime is already making him drowsy again. Daniel, being a fledgling, must be even worse off.
“What’s the punchline here?” Daniel asks. He falls back too, and they lean their heads together, the sides of their temples brushing. Daniel’s body softens sluggishly with rest.
“No punchline. I just wanted to say it.” Louis closes his eyes, letting the dark envelop him. “We all live at the cost of others. For some, that cost is higher, even amongst parasites. You forsake everyone who trusts you for the holy pursuit of keeping your ego independent, king of its own little island. You need to hear that and understand it about yourself.”
“You think I don’t understand that? I understand that, Lou.”
“Not well enough.” Louis’ heart aches as he thinks of his own failures with his loved ones, with Claudia, more enmeshment than hyperindependence in their case. He shares the feeling idly with Daniel for comfort; wordless, shapeless.
Another silence comes, long enough that Louis suspects Daniel may have dropped off, but eventually, in a sleep-hoarse rasp, Daniel says, “You wish she could’ve lived to be as independent as me.”
Daniel has no business commenting on Claudia, not now, not ever, but in the wake of Louis’ nightmare, with the guilt of her lost potential still fresh in his mind, he manages to find some perverse comfort in the thought, the transference of what he’d wanted for Claudia into Daniel, the immortalisation of Daniel’s brutish self-interest, indestructible now. How frustrating to find relief in a trait he usually resents, but Louis will take what he can get. He reaches for Daniel and tugs both their bodies down to rest horizontally, smushed against each other on the couch cushions. They sleep that way, Louis clutching Daniel tight, face furrowed.
When they wake, Daniel hunts for Louis again, and, as soon as he comes home, tugs at his collar and offers his neck without being asked; an olive branch. The eagerness in Daniel's eyes is so youthful, coloured amber like his maker, sincere as hell, saying forgive me, I’m small.
Louis denies him, and shudders at the sight for a moment. But refusing to forgive doesn’t mean refusing to love.
~
Next time Daniel hunts, Louis agrees to eat, provided that Daniel feeds from his neck in return, a penitence of sorts, and along comes another bloodied hug on the couch, another revelatory chat, and it’s not long before things are equalised between them once more, warm and expansive and free, the way they should be, understanding running through them, wrist to wrist, teeth to neck. The universe broadens for Louis again. Daniel tastes so satisfyingly earthy and dirty that to bite into him is like kissing fresh soil. Louis lies there for a long time afterward, face down on Daniel’s chest, Daniel’s tee shirt the only obstacle between their bodies.
Daniel is the one to break the silence. A quiet murmur: “Hey. Are we good?”
“We’re the same as we’ve always been,” Louis says. “Nothing new. All on the table.”
Daniel embraces him tighter.
“What time is it?” Louis asks eventually, ruining the moment mildly before Daniel gets a chance to ruin it in some unimaginably worse way.
Daniel checks his wristwatch– no longer the leather-strapped Timex he favoured as a mortal but a silver Grand Seiko now, a handsome, tasteful choice Louis can’t help but approve of– then lets his arm fall limp on the couch. “Two. We’re fine.” He sighs. “When are you heading off? You’ve been here for nearly a week, that’s, uh, longer than you said. Haven’t you got a plane waiting to take you back to Dubai?”
“The plane is on perennial standby in the hangar. I have people to take care of it,” Louis says glibly. “I’m not going back to Dubai. I sold the penthouse.”
“Oh. Short on cash after that cool ten mil you paid me?” Daniel jabs.
“Short on company,” says Louis. Weighty words. Much implied.
Another sigh from Daniel. Louis can’t see his face, but he can feel him telepathically: surprised contentment, a little bit of apprehension. “I didn’t expect you to stay. I don’t have a plan for us.”
“I don’t want a plan,” Louis says more firmly than he intends. “I don't want anything except to feel out what we do day by day, as we’ve done so far, as we’ve loved to do. It has to be a choice each time or else it’s worthless.”
Daniel strokes Louis’ back. Telepathic mirth and satisfaction through the airwaves. “Pointe du Lac proverb.”