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He speaks a prayer every night before sleep finally chokes him in. It's never gentle, sleep, too inundating, too heavy of a breath before he's somewhere he knows he can't afford to be. On the sun-soaked soil of Louisiana, kissing the rim of a colored glass as the water drips down his throat. Louis never tastes anything when he's dreaming.
The taste of sour cherries is still coating his gums when he meets Daniel.
It's been a month, stretching into two. He hasn't been home ever since Grace took both his hands into her palms like they're chiffon she's trying to fold small enough to keep between the creases of her skin. She smiled but she was sad and afraid to hand that grief to him. She had it. The husband, the children, the home in their hometown that she dreamed of. Her life was as quiet as the teardrops of a faucet after a morning shower that feels too early and therefore forbidden.
She has everything she hoped Louis would have before it became hers. She ran her thumb over his knuckles like one would the ridges of their car keys, memorizing and revisiting. She's as tall as him now. Sweet baby Grace. Her name couldn't be more on the nose.
He remembers it now. The way her hot forehead fell onto the clasp of their hands and she said nothing. Louis had divorced this life, the constant whisper and the love that always followed up with a condemnation that was deeply rooted in the wrinkles of their mother's face and the people who happened to hear a word too many.
Grace spoke something onto his skin while he mustered the pictures of Paul that were scattered across the living room and seemingly all turned towards him. It had been an accident. Not the fall, not the hitch in his voice when he stumbled over. But the fact that Louis had been there with the euphoria of last night and the melancholy that seemed to settle in with every summer morning. The fact that he loved him too much to truly ever heal from the dark red destiny his brother chose. The entire neighborhood prayed for him. The same ones that called him irreversibly ill, and maybe he was, but it only made Louis love him even more.
He's sure he needs war. That's why he stopped in New Orleans to reopen the wound enough to blend out the pain that would follow. Armand had accompanied him, which he had been doing for the past two years, a semi-successful Parisian film director and Louis who wasn't his muse, yet there still was something fanatical about the way he had been treated. Armand was cracked open at the center of his heart with desperation, and if he had claws he'd try so hard not to rip anything apart even if he wanted to. So constricted, and so unfortunate.
He looked good in photos. He could talk real smooth and with great intensity if he wanted to. Louis did love him and still finds some distilled version of love for him within his soul when he truly lets that thought linger. But he couldn't let Armand marry him. There never had been a ring, and marriage was always an abstract, but Louis just knew.
And whatever pieces of himself Armand had fixed into Louis, he couldn't give back. And sometimes he feels it when he shifts and lays down wrong, that whittling cut across his ribs where his last love seems to now remain forever. He'd hand it all back.
But then again, there's something liberating, something perversely beautiful about leaving someone to forever walk the world knowingly incomplete because you had been that present in their life. Between the twist of sweet-scented bed sheets and plane flight odysseys from France, to America, to France again — Louis is grateful he got to feel something when he's very well aware that he could've and would've succumbed to feeling very little instead.
He was left with a decent amount of cash as a parting gift. Armand wasn't always good, but he had a certain weakness within himself for the dreams of others. And Louis wanted to leave on his terms, so he gave him the money for it.
He never had a destination in mind. But he ends up in San Jose and Daniel sits alone at the counter of the bar, way too early to be here for fun, way too late to be unjustified. Louis sees him through the windows lined with debris and dust, but he sees him and that's enough. Loneliness attracts.
A high-pitched and audibly worn bell rings out as he comes inside, the bar desolate and the booths scarcely filled. It's about as depressed as a weekday afternoon can get. He pulls his hands out of his jacket and takes the walk until he's standing beside his stranger.
He fishes out an etui and a lighter he got for a few cents in Lyon, the slick metal plate popping open to a thin array of cigarettes. He smiles first at the lady fixing drinks for one of the tables, then tactfully at the boy seated next to him.
He can't be much older than twenty. Probably twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-something and at the very age that Louis has been blocking his mind from returning to, but he's not above himself. He's not strong enough for that, not even for the illusion. It hits with even more force, because there is something he recognizes in the boy that he also knows is still lingering within himself.
“Hey,” He calls, and it's simple but it tends to work its tricks. His counterpart musters him with natural curiosity and something else Louis can't give a name to. An eagerness, some kind of understanding. It exists outside the usual realms of these encounters.
“Hi.” He answers, timidly, eyes skimming over and over the design worked into the etui, down the bell-bottoms Louis chose to wear today. He can't help but tilt his head at the reaction as he licks a stripe over the filter to keep the cigarette burning longer.
The waitress returns and asks for his order. Louis takes a seat and settles into the backless, rounded cushion of the chair.
“A brandy. And get my friend here anything he wants.” He slips his credit card over the sleek surface, recognizing Lestat in his movements, the boldness. But he's always been smooth. No motherfucker needed.
“I'll take a mojito,” In similar fashion, though with less specific motivation behind it: his gaze wanders from the waitress to Louis. “Thank you.”
Oh, so he's been treated like this before.
His strange friend, with the heavy messenger bag that Louis only now notices on the chair beside him, thanks him again. He waves it off.
“You from around here?” He asks him.
“Here?” The guy does a circle motion with his pointer finger. “No, next door. Modesto.”
“Modesto, huh.” Louis puts his thumb on the igniter of the lighter and puts a flame to the tobacco. “Anything good happening in Modesto?”
“Nah,” He drawls, falling back into an easy smile. “That's why I left.”
“Hmm.” Louis hums, content with the answer. That's something they can bond over. “I left too.”
“Yeah,” He gives a grateful nod when he receives his drink. “I figured.”
“Got NOLA written all over me, huh.”
A bit of pride, then, in his expression. He pushes his walnut curls back with one hand. “I knew it.”
Louis puts the glass to his lips, happy to have found somebody after days of curt conversation with hotel receptionists and brief exchanges of unsure directions. A blanket of momentary silence falls over them. But curiosity, as it tends to, kills the cat.
"I didn't catch your name."
Louis huffs, hooded eyes. "Well, you haven't asked for it yet."
Another tick of no words being exchanged. “It's Louis.”
“Louis.” He repeats, like it won't settle until he tastes it for himself. Until his voice owns it too. “I'm Daniel.”
Makes sense. He doesn't say that, but he can very least acknowledge it in his head. After Lestats and Armands, he deserves something as mundane as a Daniel. Daniel, who's a bit younger than him. Louis turned twenty-nine last October. Daniel, who looks a bit sad too when he muses too long about something.
“You keeping government secrets in that bag of yours?”
Daniel laughs, giving the thing to his left a self conscious look. “It's work. Or it's supposed to be, if I get lucky.”
Louis finishes another sip, intrigued. “What kind of work?”
“I'm a writer. A journalist, I guess. I interview people.”
Louis silently gasps as a tease, but he doesn't mean to talk anything down that Daniel is confessing right now. He likes that, likes that very much. The creative ones seem to never leave him alone.
“Yeah.” He tips his cigarette off on the ashtray he has been provided with and offers it to Daniel, who takes it with very little hesitation. Louis feels something familiar and good swoop in his stomach, because he realizes that this is going well. “That makes a whole lotta sense for you.”
“You think?” Daniel takes a drag. “Best compliment I've gotten in months.”
“What if it isn't a compliment?” Louis questions as he gets the cigarette back, watching the smoke exit Daniel's mouth and materialize momentarily in the air between them.
“I really doubt that, Louis.” He smirks, lifting his drink.
Louis is taking him back to his room.
“Who do you interview?” He says, tasting the liquor, and the fatigue from the last couple days on his own lips.
“Anyone. Mostly those stuffed into the cracks.”
Louis nods attentively. “People like me?”
“Depends. What do you do?”
Louis scoffs. Now he's flipping it around.
“I sell stuff. Houses, art, anything the people want. I've got paintings back in Paris that need new homes.” He rubs his nose with the back of his thumb, cigarette still in hand and dangerously close to his face. “It's good money.”
This time it actually floods out. Daniel begins to realize that Louis has had a little bit more of life than he has. Because they're both stranded, but Louis is two thousand miles away from home, while Daniel is already drained by just being next door. Not even out of state. Probably homesick.
And he's got young dreams. Everyone wants to write, and act, and detach from themselves. It's either that or some kind of drug. Power, LSD, just a glass. Sometimes it's both.
“What's with the look?” He asks, though he very well knows.
“It's just,” Daniel fixes his posture in the chair. “Every time I think I understand you, you say something and it completely wipes you clean again.”
Or doesn't. Maybe Daniel is just sweet, slipping words out like receipts so Louis can remember what kind of fleeting conversation he spent his seemingly endless time on. And childishly, with his fists intertwined on the table top, he just doesn't want this to end yet.
Always this, always that. But this is different. Because he can't feel the wave brushing against the protruding bones of his back, kissing him until he's warm enough to be numb. Daniel lets his eyes flicker down to his fingers, then to his lips (always abrupt and delicately), his eyes, and to the bottles that are all bejeweled and cosmic in the hot pale sunlight.
“I wouldn't survive out here if I was predictable. Can't be predictable in that field of yours either, Danny.” He quips. “Is Danny okay?”
In case it makes him feel like a boy. Which he is, but Louis gets that too. Wanting to feel larger than you are.
“Yeah, that's fine.” He breathes, on the last sip of his drink. He leaves only crushed ice and a beautifully ripened slice of lime back in the glass. A small gem of sugar stays stuck on his lip before he licks it off.
They talk in bits and pieces and order again. Of why Louis should avoid Los Angeles, why it has been raining so much this summer and how the pavements are still warm despite. A little of childhood, though mostly the vague and pitiful parts. Riding in sand-coated cabrios and leaning too far out of windows when the night sky went kaleidoscopic.
Eventually, their second round goes empty. Remains. He pays, with a casualty that he has missed. Daniel watches him bashfully. The entire world seems to follow where this is going — at least that's what he must be thinking (after years of photography Louis has made guessing a habit turned second nature, looking through the membrane and the white paint to see what's actually there) with the way he's shelving his bottom lip under his teeth.
Maybe new to this. Louis doesn't care about anything but the way Daniel gains a slither of confidence each time they discuss something that hasn't explicitly to do with him. The world matters to him more than what one, beating heart is able to handle, but he'll carry that weight. Must be why he needs the papers and the publishers. Needs to know if people out there are seeing it all like he is.
They get up and leave under the chime of that dissonant bell. Louis fishes out another cigarette. He offers Daniel one too.
“You got a place you're staying at?”
“Yeah.” Daniel speaks, once again, through the smoke. “I got lucky. Met some guys that are letting me crash at theirs.”
“That's good.” Louis exhales, head slightly tilted back. “Having company and all.”
“And what about you?”
He lets his eyes droop to Daniel's direction. Louis decides to play with the question.
“You said you can't figure out who I am.”
He nods, intrigued.
“I am a twenty-nine year old man who just broke up with my partner of two years. I'm from Louisiana, but it feels like nobody wants me in Louisiana except my sister who's got kids and a whole life built out for herself. I take things. I'm good at taking things and making something of them.” Another inhale. Discarding. “If anything haunts me, it's the relationship I had before my last. I don't think I ever want to go back to France again. My first partner brought his daughter along and I made her my own. I get to call her when the world stops spinning for a moment. Stuff is always spinning.”
Daniel just listens. His eyes are clear from any sort of emotion other than unfiltered, amazing interest that makes Louis want to cry.
“I don't like selling things. I make people think I do. But I'm a photographer. I liked being a photographer.”
A conclusion to his turbulence. The smoothness sets in again, but it's not the same anymore. He's never been so eager to spill.
Daniel stands beside him, cigarette between two fingers, saying nothing still. His eyes are really green when the sun finds its way through his lashes.
“Do you know who you are, Daniel?” He asks. And it's all he's been trying to do.
A moment of consideration. He hesitates with his answer. He thinks too deeply of it. It's a simple yes or no question. There is no wrong answer.
“No, I don't.”
Louis was hoping for that. A paradoxical thing.
“Good. It's only a five minute walk to my hotel.”
Daniel's lips go crescent like they haven't before. He tosses his cigarette to the ground and puts it out with the tip of his shoe.
୨ৎ
Naturally, everything always leads to bed.
Louis has slipped out of his sweater and his shirt is circling in above his navel, one hand behind his head and the other holding a book that he fished out of Daniel's bag.
( When they entered the room, he acknowledged the singular camera seated on the small round table near the balcony. Olympus OM-10. Lens always clean, the shell a bit chipped and loved over every corner and lane. Louis shrugged and pretended like he doesn't hold it all closer to his heart than everyone seems to believe.
“I could photograph you right now.”
Daniel spilled with mellow laughter, posture straight then slightly crooked. His curls were matted by the dry weather.
“I don't know ‘bout that.” He said over the barely there hum of the AC.
“Why? You think I'm bad at it?”
“Oh,” Daniel senses the challenge. He's finally easing into Louis. “Never. It's just that nobody has ever taken a photo of me like that.”
“So let me be your first.”
He's pretty sure Daniel was hiding a short frenzy behind his hand when he went to rub his nose with it. )
He hears the small drool of the sink, splattering down the drain and around the porcelain bowl.
Daniel comes back running the fabric of a shirt — that he got to borrow from his temporary company — over his wet face. It gives view to his light-kissed stomach, tensing and then untensing as he lets the fabric go. Small details. Louis is looking over the rim of the book. To a God Unknown. Yeah, alright. He closes it again and puts it on his chest.
“You big on Steinbeck?” Louis asks to swerve back into conversation.
Daniel presses his lips together. “Not really. Stole that one from a library.”
“How evil.”
“You think so?” He asks, unserious.
“No,” Louis’ mouth draws into a lazy smile. “I know evil. You're far from it.”
He pats the empty space on his queen sized bed, which Daniel takes with new fluidity. The pillow fills out the pretty curve of his neck where Louis takes a petite moment to trace the pegs of his spine, protruding politely and intimately where he lays.
There's a faint scar running over his collarbone and into the shirt. Another petite moment and he just watches him swallow around nothing. He swears he can hear Daniel's heart beating, feels it crash and foam like the waves at the beach.
“I can be really mean if I want to.” Daniel admits, but it sounds more like a confession. Louis feels his ribs throb for a split second with a need he hasn't experienced in years. He props himself up on one elbow now so he can look at him better. Daniel's pupils go wide with relief when he sees him properly again.
“Of course.” Louis borders a whisper. He reaches out to brush the baby hairs from Daniel's gleaming forehead. He's lukewarm. “But you ain't evil.”
“Okay,” Daniel says through his next breath. Louis lets his hand trail and touches him as lightly as possible, over his cheekbone and down his sternum. Then he retreats again.
His new ami is breathless by the time he stops doing anything. Louis thinks he could love him if he wanted to. Daniel, who's like a bug's wing. It's such a change from the old routine of callus and leather. Louis wants to say something to him in French and make him guess what it is. He wants him to guess wrong over and over just to never lose that moment. And the laughter. The laughter — just the thought makes him crack up.
Daniel's eyes crease just to match. Even if he doesn't get it.
“You should've told me you're a photographer.”
“I wasn't trying to lie to you.” Louis drops his head a bit. “Some folks just get weird sometimes when I mention it.”
“I don't care about that.” Daniel argues with no malice. “It's just … I want people to think they can tell me the things they normally don't tell anybody.”
Louis watches his chest rise. Then his lips unclasp again. “I want them to trust me. I want you to trust me.”
He could give him that classic You barely know me. We met an hour ago. But he doesn't. He already likes him too much for that. This stranger, in his hotel room, where the curtains are fluttering with their feet as the wind calmly wanders in and out.
“I would've been so jealous of you when I was twenty-one.”
( Daniel pointed out, when they were walking with their shoulders brushing up over and over like a newton's cradle, how fascinating it is that Louis is eight years older than him. Something burst apart within him like a supernova at the acknowledgment. He could see the flush behind Daniel's ears and it only amplified the feeling. )
“Really?” Daniel laughs. Louis nods plainly. “Why?”
“Don't know.” And he really doesn't. Just knows it's true. “You're pushing through and I was pushing in back then.”
“You've made something of yourself, though.” Daniel says with very careless adoration smothered all over his tone.
“Barely.” Louis says.
“I disagree. And I don't care that I don't know you.”
Louis blurs with happiness. It's slow and lenient. After all, there's someone who believes him. Even if that's college-dropout and amateur journalist Daniel Molloy, spitting out teeth and bleeding down the curve of his chin just to write about people. Reminds him that the world really isn't so small if he stopped ignoring his periphery. Cleaning lenses and all.
“If you ever publish something,” Louis puts his hand back on his chest. He's not above anything and he never claimed to be stronger than he is. He can see the twitch in Daniel's finger with the innocent ache to reach out. And Louis wants him to. “Send it to me.”
“How am I going to find you?”
And then he does it. Does reach out and puts three of Louis’ fingers in his loose grip. It's boyish and it's good.
“You will. I'm not good at hiding. And there's not many du Lacs out there anymore.”
It comes in like the first roar of thunder that's barely audible with the downpour.
“Can I kiss you?”
If he was cool, if he still was the Louis he had been back at the bar, then he would've thrown back something witty and a little cruel just to see what it does with the shine in Daniel's eyes. But he's not all that now.
That's why Daniel's hand slides through the little gap between his elbow and torso to spread over his back, his other hand letting go of Louis’ to grasp around his throat. He shifts the balance and then Louis is the one lying on the bed, Daniel just slightly propped up as he leans in.
Louis cups his face faster than he can think on what else to do. His fingers work their way around and they end up his curls. Daniel kisses him once just to settle in. To allow himself that reality. Louis almost chases after him.
Almost.
He tugs him closer when he gets impatient and Daniel goes pliant in his demand, meeting him in the middle. Louis hums against his lips. It's chaste. He feels adored. He really likes that.
It's more of that before Louis gets him to lay on his back again, because that's where he wants him. There is no protest.
When he returns his hand and puts his thumb to Daniel's chin to open his mouth, he does so with incredible obedience. When Louis uses his other hand to pull on his curls carefully, his head goes to whatever direction he wants him to go.
If he said jump, he wonders if Daniel would. But he's not that stupid. It's still a fun thought, especially now, with his palm memorizing every highway of Louis’ back, trailing down and over whatever he can get. He puts his hand under his shirt and Louis feels a shiver ripple through his body.
Daniel's just a bit taller than him. He really gets a sense for that now. When he leans out, Daniel leads him back and gently bites his bottom lip and only then lets him go.
Louis pants. But his interest in this one isn't ceasing. "You've ever done this before?"
"What?" Daniel asks. Now his heart is pulsating through Louis too.
"Get close to a guy like me."
"What kind of guy are you?"
"You tell me, Danny."
Daniel gives him a lopsided smile. "You're really pretty. I want you to look at me like that forever."
"Forever is a long time. I don't know if I can do forever."
"I don't know if I can do forever either." And it's obviously just a tease but Louis loves the earnesty in his voice. Because he's young, they're both young but Daniel's just starting and he knows, he really knows that he can't do forever. It's just a word he can throw around for now.
Everything is just words right now.
"Don't ask for it if you can't take it." Louis lets his tangled fingers circle over his scalp. Daniel's breath skips almost unnoticeably. But Louis notices things.
"I'm a California native. We do shit like that."
"Think too big?"
"Don't think enough."
Louis grins. "You're fast. I like that."
"I like you. That's why my brain is working faster."
Louis can't stop focusing on the speed of his pulse. “Do you even know what to do with all that love you've got in your heart?”
“No,” Daniel says and closes his eyes in beautiful defeat. “I go insane in a new way every day.”
“I think you're the sanest person I've met so far.”
“I'm really not.” Daniel opens his eyes again and pushes his fingers ever so slightly into the heart of Louis’ shoulder blades. It causes a minimal reaction, a small dismantling of his composure. Daniel's eyes are wet with exhaustion. He's someone's baby. It's an overwhelming thought.
“You either love or you're not living. That's what my father used to say.”
Speaking of being somebody's baby.
“Louis de Pointe du Lac.” Daniel brings Louis’ face back down to kiss his temple. “I'm really glad we didn't meet in Vegas.”
“Why Vegas?”
“Because I would've gotten horribly drunk and begged you to marry me.”
“I wouldn't have let you.” Louis says, almost bitterly. Marriage is a wound he has been cauterizing for years.
“I know.” Daniel most definitely senses the quiet emotional dissonance that takes place in him. It's good that he's smart. Louis forgives him. “And it would've broken my heart for the rest of the night.”
“Just one night?” Louis cocks a brow. “I'm not worth more?”
Daniel kisses him again, firmly. His fingers toy with the faux leather of Louis’ mocha brown belt. Their legs have begun to entwine.
“You want me to suffer?”
Louis shakes his head. But then again.
“I'm a saint.”
“Saint Louis.” Daniel mutters, gleefully.
He chuckles. “Damn right.”
Louis puts another two kisses to one end of Daniel's mouth, down his jaw and to his throat where he catches the faded scent of his perfume for the first time. He stays there for a moment. And then he sits up, straddling the writer he picked up in a bar while he reaches for the glass of water he left before he went out into town.
The water isn't cold anymore. He tells Daniel about it when he asks for a sip, and he takes it nonetheless, a droplet running down from his lips as he drinks.
“You're not staying in San Jose, right?” He asks as he places the empty glass back. Louis fixes Daniel's shirt just to occupy his hands.
“No. I think I'm gonna go visit my daughter in Auvergne.”
Daniel's brows pull together. “I thought you never wanted to go back to France.”
“Yeah,” Louis says as he looks down over his upper body. “And I miss Claudia like hell.”
Two hands come to hold his hips. He's not sure if it's supposed to be comforting or supposed to feed Daniel's tenacious need to hold something of him. He likes to believe it's both.
“You win some, you lose some.”
He feels like a teenager again when he tells him to shut up.
“What about you, Daniel Molloy?”
( He really can see that name on paper. Wants to run his finger over it in the company of whoever might love him in the future and relish in his secret. )
“I want to go to San Francisco. There's stories there that I want to tell.”
Louis puts a hand to his face. It molds after him.
“You gon’ tell them about me?”
“No,” He answers. “I'll save you for the autobiography. This is too monumental.”
“You're dramatic.” Louis says. But he likes the appreciation.
“You said it yourself — I love everything. And today I happen to love you.” He says it shamelessly and without any extreme intentions. He says it just to say it. It's just thrill.
Louis bends down to kiss him again. To give Daniel the silent confirmation that he liked that.
“Signed copy when you go public.” He speaks onto his open lips. “I'll make good money with it when you're famous.”
“That's greedy,” Daniel says. He nuzzles against Louis' face. “You should pass it on to your daughter so she can sell it when I die.”
“That's dark.” Louis laughs. “But yeah, maybe I should.”
Daniel stays with him until morning. He doesn't go away before Louis wakes. He doesn't get up when Louis does. He gets him back in bed faster than he would like to admit, and Louis is allowed to read something that Daniel wrote on the bus ride to San Jose.
They smoke together with the blanket running over and under their thighs and calves. Louis sits at the edge of the bed with his spine on display, Daniel lying right behind him, a cartographer the way he begins to memorize his favorite portions of his skin by continuously stirring his fingertips over them.
Louis is so glad someone is going to be loved by him later. This can't go to waste.
( He takes a photo of Daniel when he steps out onto the balcony. )
And he doesn't want to waste away either. He books the flight to Auvergne when the sky is dark blue and cloudless. He calls Lestat and tells him he's coming. And he holds back anything he can't afford to dish out yet.
Lestat doesn't even know he keeps photo albums. His own work, his ode to this life, becomes of miniscule importance because it simply doesn't exist to him. There are photos that only Armand owns now. He tears up about it when he's alone again.
But he tells him he's coming and he says he does it for Claudia and for his own peace. Lestat tells him to be safe. He tells him he has never closed his doors on Louis.
And he knows this cannot end the way he wishes it would. But there's some kind of hope that San Jose swept to shore and Louis needs to love something.
Californian hope. French despair. He laughs when he's crying about his little photos and wipes at his eyes. They all told him he's got the prettiest sadness. Louis is starting to believe it.