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The retching sound that wakes Daniel is so incongruously human that it is impossible to ignore. He is distantly aware that he isn’t the only mortal in this penthouse of horrors: there’s Rashid, for one thing—Louis’s uncannily omniscient…what? Personal assistant? Valet? Igor? Add to that a nearly silent waitstaff that ghosts in and out like clockwork when needed, and a revolving door of blood donors, and Louis is outnumbered ten to one, at least.
But the silence during his stay has never once been broken by the more base sounds of human existence—it occurs to him suddenly and with great clarity that he’s never even heard a flushing toilet that he didn’t instigate. The sound is anomalous enough to pique his curiosity, even as he tells himself that he doesn’t want to know.
He shuts his eyes tight, as though that will somehow block out the noise and allow him to drift off to sleep again. He hears it once more. Daniel, against his better judgment, sits upright and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He stands, with the cracks and creaks of old age, rolling his shoulders and twisting his spine to limber up.
He isn’t used to navigating the penthouse in the dark. His room has an en suite bathroom, which is for the best as he rises several times a night now (not a symptom anyone felt the need to mention in that first brief flyer about what Parkinson’s Disease entailed, but one that his doc has retroactively assured him is normal and to be expected). Still, the place is so sparsely decorated that it isn’t hard to move blind. And even if it was, he would have only needed to follow the sound, which hasn’t stopped yet.
It leads him to a pale rectangle of light down a corridor that he is sure he would recognize in the daytime. The dim light from that open doorway is broken by a lithe silhouette that he recognizes as much by its halo of curls as by its slender form. It looks as though it is standing guard, which clears up any lingering doubts Daniel may have felt about who is making the painful sounds that have dragged him out of bed. He briefly wonders why the guest room would have an attached bathroom, but not the master bedroom or master coffin room or whatever the hell Louis calls that place where he sleeps. Then again, he supposes vampires don’t need bathrooms. Except when they do.
His shuffling gait is anything but silent these days, although he guesses it really doesn’t matter—no mortal footsteps are silent enough to escape vampiric detection, and it’s clear that he’s already been spotted by the human sentry in the doorway. It’s equally clear, as soon as he’s close enough to make out the details of the scene, that he isn’t welcome. Rashid’s expression is guarded, his dark eyes stormy. He doesn’t look like he’s been awakened in the middle of the night. He appears fully dressed, down to his gloves. His hair isn’t mussed or flattened, just tousled in the same careful way it always seems to be. He breathes “Don’t” from between barely parted lips, so softly that Daniel isn’t sure how he hears it, only that he does. He raises his eyebrows in response, a silent dare if Rashid can see it in the dark. He may be old and enfeebled (and dying, a stubborn voice adds, ricocheting through his head), but he’s pretty confident that even he can shoulder his way past this kid if necessary.
And so he does. Rashid steps in to block the side of the doorway that he is aiming for, but not before he has wedged his shoulder into the small remaining space and navigated his way into the bathroom with all the grace of the world’s most geriatric linebacker. He glances back to see the dark glare this has earned him, even as he has a strange feeling that he has been allowed to pass, in the end. Once he is through the door, Daniel leans against the wall of the bathroom and crosses his arms, taking in the scene at a glance.
Louis de Pointe du Lac is huddled on the floor, a shivering mass with eyes streaming blood. Daniel fights back a distinctly human urge to call for emergency services at the sight of the stuff, which also runs in thin rivulets down his chin. Instead, he swallows back the bile and acid rising in his own throat and says, “Probably a coincidence that this is happening after your one human dish a week.”
Louis sags, his chin dropping to his chest. He lifts a shaky hand and gestures wearily towards the doorway. When he speaks, the old accent comes through strong, “Go back to bed, Daniel.”
He doesn’t think he will. He glances aside. Rashid is still cataloguing his every move. Louis falls into a seated position, leaning against the sandblasted glass door of a shower that Daniel suspects is bigger than his first apartment.
“So that’s the deal? Become a vampire and swear off all of your old favorite foods? It’s not just paste, it’s poison.”
“An oversimplification,” Louis warns. His eyes have slipped closed, “It depends greatly on the food, on the individual vampire. Some manage better than others.”
“And what about this individual vampire?” Daniel challenges. He’s learned enough during his career to know when a subject is dodging a question, often before they know it themselves. “You know. Louis de Pointe du Lac, in the dining room, with the dessert plate?”
To his surprise, this earns him a quiet laugh from Louis. He arches an eyebrow, and then can’t resist glancing at Rashid to see if the joke has landed with him. It hasn’t. He clears his throat pointedly, a reminder that his question has not been answered.
“My body,” Louis says, appearing to choose each word cautiously, “is loathe to accept anything that is not the blood.”
Shit.
“You knew this would happen.”
“I had my suspicions.”
“So, it was a lie. You’re not ‘maintaining the human thread,’” he scoffs over the words as a point of emphasis, “you’re committing some elaborate and fucked-up attempt at self-flagellation. It’s punishment for not being a man who doesn’t exist anymore.”
“To practice consumption even when we know it will cause us harm, is there anything more human than that, Mr. Molloy?” He whirls towards the door to stare at the speaker. Rashid’s hands are folded placidly in front of him, and his head is cocked to the left, dark eyes probing. Daniel has the uncanny feeling that the young man is somehow seeing track marks on his arms, in spite of decades of healing, in spite of the fact that he is wearing sleeves. He grunts in irritation and, suddenly unable to keep still, turns on his heel, angling for the pristine white hand towel hanging unused by the sink. White, he thinks, is an absurd color for a towel, even in a non-vampiric dwelling. When he touches it, he finds it absurdly, almost comically plush. He runs it under the tap, soaking it and wringing it out one-handed. He’s on the verge of underhand lobbing it at Louis, who will probably somehow manage to catch it even with his eyes still closed, but he can feel Rashid staring at him from the doorway and the nervous energy of feeling trapped in this small space propels him onto his knees. It’s a vulnerable position, face-to-face with a vampire. Then again, what isn’t a vulnerable position here, in this place? He reaches forward, hesitates, reaches again. This instinctive response is an old one, from when his daughters were too young to hate him yet, and still wanted his comfort when ill. He touches the towel to Louis’s face, swiping at the mingled blood of tears and bile. Brilliant green eyes fly open, stare at him with burning curiosity. Neither of them draw away from each other. The skin under the coating of blood is marble-smooth, practically pore-less. It makes Daniel’s quaking hand, with its wrinkles and faint liver spots, looks all the older for the contrast.
He hears the clenching and unclenching of gloved hands, and his lips threaten to twitch into a grin. He thinks Louis notices, but his expression remains inscrutable. His eyes slip closed again as he leans infinitesimally into the touch. Daniel realizes that he has been forgetting to breathe. He takes in a lungful of air, both fortifying and dizzying, as he wipes away the last trace of blood and pulls the towel away. It’s probably ruined.
“Leave it,” Louis suggests, opening his eyes again, “Rashid, could you—“
“Of course, Mr. de Pointe Du Lac.”
Louis stands with so little warning or effort that Daniel reels back slightly. There is no trace of the earlier weakness. He offers a hand, which Daniel ignores, bracing against the floor to stand. The pride of the rejection is acknowledged with a nod, a wry smile, and a flash of teeth with just a hint of fang.
“Will you require extra time before we continue our interview tomorrow? I didn’t intend to wake you.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“Very well, then. Good night, Daniel.”
Louis slips past him so quickly that he almost misses the movement altogether. He turns back towards the door, dropping the towel to the floor as he does so, and sees that he and Rashid are alone. He turns on the sink and scrubs his hands clean, drying them on his shirt.
“Is there anything else you will require before retiring once more, Mr. Molloy?”
“Yeah, a field guide to that guy’s brain.”
This earns him a tight-lipped smile at last. “There, you see?”
“See what?”
“The desire to consume that which can harm us. It really is the most human of traits.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Rashid sidesteps to give Daniel access to the corridor behind him. “Goodnight, Mr. Molloy. Leave the mess. I’ll clean it up shortly.”
Daniel doesn’t recall navigating back to the guest room in the dark. All he remembers is finding himself seated on the edge of the bed and noticing that his hands still smell faintly of iron.