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Blood smeared the tiles in the small bathroom and fluffy hand towels were marked with such a plethora of scarlet fingerprints that even the strongest of laundry detergents wouldn't have a chance in hell of restoring them to white.
In the middle of this carnage a shirtless blond lay slumped over the toilet bowl, long golden locks matted and stuck to his face.
“Jesus”, murmured Daniel as he crouched down beside Lestat and dipped an elongated nail in a pool of blood. It didn't smell poisoned, but a quick taste confirmed it was laced with most of the drugs Daniel was familiar with and a few he wasn't, topped off with enough vodka to fell a polar bear.
Stirring, Lestat’s already pallid features turned a whiter shade of pale as his chest heaved. Just before he chundered again, Daniel scooped the Frenchman’s hair up in both hands.
“Do not - ugggh-” Lestat started before he was interrupted by another wave of O positive vomit.
“You wanna try saying that again without a mouthful of groupie?” Daniel asked.
Lestat brought up a few last dribbles of his latest victim with a weak cough before raising a hand to wipe at his mouth. “Do not sully me with your touch. Va te faire foutre.”
There was no venom in his words; they tumbled out of his mouth limp, like the discarded limb of an unfortunate human, a reflex action of bitchiness without the bite.
“Okaaay”, Daniel drawled, letting a few tendrils slip through his fingers to dangle against Lestat’s lips. “I’ll leave you to stew in your own filth, then-”
“Wait”, Lestat said quickly, spitting one of the dropped strands out of his mouth. He turned a tear-stained cheek towards Daniel. “On this occasion, I shall allow you to hold my hair.”
“Very generous of you”, Daniel deadpanned as he reclaimed Lestat’s mane. “So, how did the defamation meeting go?”
“We discussed Armand. And I believe Louis is fucking his lawyer.”
“That well, huh?”
Lestat emitted a mirthless chuckle.
Daniel glanced around the gory room again. “And you decided getting well and truly fucked to the point of throwing up what looks like at least half the blood in your body would be the perfect end to such a shitty day, huh?”
“You are one to talk”, Lestat countered. “Do not think I missed you sinking your oversized fangs into those two cocaine soaked ingénues in the green room earlier tonight.”
“Alright, yeah, but that was because-” Daniel broke off, unable to articulate the reason for his own leap off the wagon. Ever since his turning there had been something strange and flitting nudging at the peripheral of his consciousness, and he knew instinctively it was something he really didn't want to fucking remember, hence the drugs. But despite his best efforts to block them out, memories that had once seemed so concrete resurfaced with odd details altered, in particular memories of Alice. Her hair was a little shorter, her skin a little darker, and in one specific memory she was wearing a purple shirt rather than a dress-
“Because quoi?”
“Uh, nothing”, Daniel replied quickly, keeping his mind carefully blank. “Anyway, both of us may have got fucked up but one of us is clearly handling it better than the other-”
“I am handling it fin-” Lestat started, before heaving up another wave of bloody vomit.
“Uh huh. Look, right now we just need to focus on getting back to the bus before sunrise, otherwise the only thing going on stage in Buffalo is gonna be a pile of ash.”
“I am two hundred and sixty-six years old and I have the blood of Akasha in me, I cannot just burn”, Lestat retorted, saliva clinging to his chin.
“Akasha”. Daniel tilted his head to one side. “I remember Louis mentioning you saying that name in Magnus’ lair. Who is she?”
Lestat started to try and stand shakily. “Patience, Monsieur Molloy. We will get to that part of the story in time.”
“Will we? Because we haven’t even got to the bit where Magnus turns you yet, it’s been like two weeks of recounting every minute detail of your Commedia shows followed by you fucking Nicki six ways to Sunday-”
Knees buckling, Lestat was narrowly saved from thwacking his head against the toilet bowl by Daniel using his quick-vamp speed to wrap an arm around his waist, keeping him upright.
“Christ, alright, bus now”, Daniel commanded.
“I do not take orders from you”, Lestat shot back, even as he coiled one of his arms around Daniel for support.
“Uh huh. Just - uh - give me your other hand.”
“Pourquoi?”
“I need one of your bracelets.”
Lestat curled a lip. “It is hardly an appropriate time to think about accessorising.”
Daniel sighed deeply. “I’m not - look, it’s to tie your fucking hair up with, OK?”
Scowling, Lestat proffered a wrist.
Daniel shimmied off a gaudy band of pink and gold beads.
“Right, I’m just gonna rest you here-”
Leaning Lestat sideways against the least gruesome section of wall he could locate, Daniel pinned him in place with a hip while the fingers of his spare hand worked fast to tame the golden tresses into a ponytail. As he pulled the Frenchman upright again, Lestat craned his long neck to catch sight of himself in a blood spattered mirror.
“Surprisingly, that is an almost competent attempt at an updo, Monsieur Molloy.”
“Yeah, well”, Daniel replied with a shrug as he started to steer Lestat out of the bathroom and down a blessedly dim corridor. “I have two daughters, so…”
For a few beats the only sounds were of their shoes against cheap linoleum; the twin stomp stomp stomp of Daniel’s Dr. Martens and Lestat’s chunky platforms.
Then Lestat spoke, his tone softer and less obnoxious, and Daniel could tell without even looking at him that his lip was wobbling around the words.
“I had a daughter, once.”
“Yeah”, Daniel replied, fingers tightening slightly around Lestat’s waist. “I know.”
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. A sullen silence descended upon them.
“They’re not talking to me, Kate and Lenora”, said Daniel after a while. “Haven’t for years, not since they were in their late teens. I, uh, wasn’t always the most present of parents, I’ll admit, and then my memoir came out and apparently they weren’t exactly thrilled to learn how much of a dick I was to their mom while I was still using, so…”
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
“At least they are fucking alive”, Lestat responded dully.
“I mean, technically Claudia wasn’t-”
Razor-sharp nails dug into Daniel’s hip, drawing a little blood; a warning that even in his weakened state, saying the wrong thing to Lestat would not end well for the bright old reporter. And OK, maybe what he’d been about to give voice to had been a little insensitive, even for him, but that didn’t mean he was ready to drop the subject; he just had to find a more tactful way to approach it.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. They took a right turn at a potted fern. A too-bright light flickered into illumination above them. Lestat raised his head to shoot it a baleful glance and it quickly fizzled back to black.
“Maybe you could write a song about her”, Daniel continued. “I mean, the best songs on the album are the ones that are clearly personal to you. Not those weird fucking Egyptian numbers, which, yeah, cultural appropriation much? Not sure how you got your record label to sign off on those-”
Lestat huffed haughtily. “The presence of the ancient Egyptian rituals in my songs are essential to the story they weave. My label saw that vision.”
“Uh huh. And who was it you threatened to eat that made them see things your way?”
“What makes you think they needed persuading by such unsavoury methods? My vision-”
“Your vision resulted in a music video that was recently voted the most offensive moment of twenty twenty-six and made The Mummy Returns look like a serious documentary in comparison. Nobody would’ve signed off on that shit until they were deaf, blind and dumb or there was a life on the line.”
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. They turned left.
“It was the wife of the CEO.”
“There we go. You know, if you wrote decent songs you wouldn’t have to threaten people with homicide to produce them.”
They took a sharp right at the end of the corridor and were spat into another linoleum lined stretch.
“Jesus Christ, where’s the exit in this fucking building? It’s more serpentine than Minos’ Labyrinth and Barbra Streisand’s underground mall combined. I’m surprised any of the bands that play here make it out before dying of dehydration. Anyway, my point is you're at your strongest when writing about people you have, uh, complex feelings about; Nicki, Louis-”
“Those are chansons d’amour”, Lestat countered stiffly. “The types of melodies that have been à la mode for many centuries, songs of lovers lost and found. I highly doubt Mademoiselle Swift would have the same success if she ceased singing about the many men who have spurned her and instead began warbling about dead chil-”
“Yeah, love songs are always fucking popular, with or without ice cream”, Daniel interrupted. “But you can't compare yourself to Taylor Swift; she’s way more successful than you and has far better hair.” The nails pierced Daniel's hip again but he ignored them, ploughing onwards. “And anyway, there are loads of popular songs about parents and kids with screwed up relationships; Father and Son by Cat Stevens, No Son of Mine by Genesis, uh, Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach, half of Eminem’s discography and that one Kate always played by someone who won American Idol. So you can’t use the excuse that no one will wanna listen to a song about Claudia because believe me, they will.”
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
Clau-” Lestat began, but his voice broke before he could complete the name and he leant a little heavier against Daniel. “She will never be able to hear any songs I compose for her.”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write them, man”, Daniel responded. “Sometimes just getting traumatic shit down on paper helps, it can be cathartic. And whatever you come up with can’t be worse than you dressing up as a pharaoh and trying to sing in hieroglyphs, which makes no fucking sense by the way because hieroglyphics were a written-”
A left at the end of the passage deposited them in front of a fire exit.
“At fucking last!”
Daniel kicked open the door unceremoniously, splintering the frame and shattering a hinge. The broken rectangle of glass and plastic thudded against the exterior wall as they finally made their escape into an almost deserted parking lot, a stiff breeze ruffling Daniel’s curls and threatening to collapse Lestat’s makeshift ponytail. Darkness still hung heavy as a weighted blanket over the Cleveland skyline, but a preternatural prickling on Daniel’s skin warned him that dawn would soon be breaking. A burst of quick-vamp speed from Daniel shot them across the concrete expanse to the obnoxiously large tour bus in a blur of motion that would be unrecognisable as two moving bodies to any watching security cameras. Supporting Lestat with one arm, Daniel patted his own pockets and then the vampire’s in quick succession.
“Hey, I’m not feeling you up, Frenchie”, he explained quickly as a rumbling growl of protest formed in Lestat’s throat. “I’m just trying to find keys to this fucking monolith.”
“I do not carry keys”, Lestat declared, as if Daniel had said something that dramatically offended his sensibilities, such as suggesting his tale about slaughtering an entire wolf pack by himself was bullshit or he wasn’t a natural blond (and yes, Daniel had absolutely done both of those things).
“Fuck. Where the fuck are those fucking-”
“I believe that when you were graciously gifted a set you were told to keep them on your person à tout moment”, Lestat reminded him cattily.
“Yeah, well, apparently I left them in the green room along with my dignity and a metric fuckton of cocaine, so-” Fingers curling into a fist, Daniel rapped sharply on the bus door. “Hey, Larry, you in there?” When no reply was forthcoming he thumped harder. “TC, Salamander, Alex? Fucking anyone? Fuck, fuck, fuck-”
“Cease your histrionics”, Lestat instructed. “I already told you, I cannot burn-”
“But I almost certainly can and although I’m sure you’d just love to be rid of me there's no way I’m dying in fucking Cleveland-”
“Oh please, I would easily be able to shield you long enough to seek shelter once again in that dismal théâtre.”
“Wait”, said Daniel, quirking an eyebrow. “Are you saying you’d protect me?”
“For Louis’ sake only, of course”, Lestat answered perhaps a touch too quickly. “He is inexplicably fond of you and I would rather not give him an excuse to feel even more wrathful towards me than he already does at present-”
“You know you could just, like, not sue him for libel, right? That would probably dissolve a fair portion of his ‘wrath’-”
The prickle of pain on Daniel’s skin sharpened to a burn, and he realised that in the time he and Lestat had been vocally volleying the black sky had taken on a decidedly pinkish tinge.
“Shit, fuck, right, I’m gonna need to take you up on your shield offer and Captain America me back inside right fucking now-”
“Qui est Captain America?”
“What, you’ve managed to watch Apocalypse Now forty-seven times since crawling out of your shack but you’ve never caught a Marvel-”
The bus door slid open to reveal a young woman yawning widely as she groggily pushed sleep-tousled hair out of her eyes.
“Thank fuck for that!”, Daniel exclaimed, shoving Lestat into the vehicle and hurrying in behind. “Just in the nick of time, TC.”
“Oui, merci beaucoup Mademoiselle Cookie”, said Lestat, momentarily dropping his surly demeanour to smile charmingly.
Two pink spots appeared high on TC’s cheeks as she grinned at her bandmate. Then, ignoring Daniel completely, she slouched back to her room.
Daniel hauled the Frenchman to his ridiculously lavish quarters where a gleaming black coffin was open and ready to receive its owner.
“OK, you need help getting in, or-”
A disdainful expression clouded Lestat’s face. “You expect me to sleep in this state? I require a bath first, and then clean and pressed-”
Grabbing what looked like a cape from the back of a chair, Daniel used it to haphazardly rub the blood from Lestat’s face and neck. “There you go, good as new. Now, do you need help getting in?”
It was a ballsy move, and one Daniel was ninety percent sure would earn him another vicious dig from the blond’s nails. Instead, Lestat simply sighed in a long suffering manner, detached himself from Daniel and practically fell into the coffin. Clearly his wild night combined with the narcoleptic pull of the sun had made him choose sleep over violence, luckily for Daniel.
Lestat’s body relaxed into the plush velvet interior. “You can leave now, si vous plaît.”
“Oh sure, thanks for excusing me, otherwise I might’ve made the mistake of waiting on you hand and fucking foot all night”, Daniel shot back, but instead of moving away he found his gaze lingering on the creature before him. Lestat could almost pass for human in the muted lamp light, and for a moment his features seemed to shift - hair shortening and becoming darker and curlier, eyes turning from blue to green - and Daniel found himself staring at another young man whose crippling fear of abandonment had resulted in him isolating all those he loved most dear.
“I know I am hard to look away from, but I would rather you did not spend all night gawking at me like a common spectator watching a performance you do not fully comprehend.”
Daniel shook his head, shattering the illusion. “Uh, yeah, I’ll leave you to your beauty sleep.”
“I do not need sleep to be la belle”, Lestat clapped back as his eyes drifted shut.
Daniel turned, ready to slink away to his own quarters, but it was as if some unseen force propelled him back round and then words were falling from his mouth.
“Look, you’re not as much of a failure as you think you are, man. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you are definitely on, like, Rasputin levels of fucking shit up, although even he eventually stayed dead. But you endured when a lotta vamps wouldn’t. And, you know, Louis probably isn’t as lost to you as you seem to believe; he might’ve been with Armand, but it was you he was hallucinating sitting in the fucking corner for seventy-seven years, so yeah.”
An eyelid rose and Lestat, barely suppressing a yawn, asked “Are you trying to be nice to moi, Monsieur Molloy?”
Daniel cracked a shit-eating grin, quickly shrugging his irascible persona back on. “Hey, if you want instead I can call you a whiny existential queen, slap you round the face and ask if you fucked you mom. Would you prefer that?”
The eyelid lowered again, and now it seemed that rather than a yawn Lestat was trying to quash a smile. “Hmmm, maybe tomorrow. And secure me before you depart.”
“Secure me before you depart”, Daniel mimicked in an abysmal French accent as he lowered the lid of the coffin. “If you wanna be tucked in you can just ask, you know.”
The lock clicked shut, and for a second Daniel was sorely tempted to tamper with it in a way that would make it impossible to open from the inside, just for the hell of it.
If you do I shall remove all of your fingernails one by one in a manner so excruciatingly painful you will be reduced to a blubbering heap of useless flesh within mere minutes.
Great, good to know! Daniel thought back with sarcastic cheer. Also, stay the fuck out of my head.
Only if you stop thinking about ways to sabotage my sleeping apparatus.
Fair compromise. Sleep tight, Lestat. See you in the evening. Daniel slapped the lid of the coffin once, producing a low thought-growl from the vampire within. He left Lestat’s opulent boudoir and was nearly back at the far more frugal quarters he’d been allocated on the bus when silky tones sounded once again in his mind, uncharacteristically hesitant.
I - I shall consider your suggestion for a composition.
It took Daniel a second to recall their earlier conversation. Oh, you mean about Clau-
Yes. There was a pause, in which Lestat seemed to take the telepathic equivalent of a deep breath before he spoke again with a gentle reverence. Claudia.
The name hung between them for a moment until Lestat graced Daniel with a final thought.
Good morning, Daniel.
Good morning, Lestat.
Leaping smoothly into his own coffin, Daniel hunkered down for the day, getting comfortable in what he tried not to think of as a padded cell. As the disconcertingly twisted memories of Alice started to trickle back into his brain, he pushed them firmly aside, instead mulling over the events of the night as he grinned to himself. Interviewing Lestat would never be a walk in the park - more like a sprint over a minefield - but at least it was never boring. And he was self-aware enough to admit that they had more in common than he had first realised. As his eyes closed and he was pulled down into the quiet dark, he comforted himself with the thought that although the interview would probably never become less tortuous, it might at least develop into the good kind of torture they both enjoyed.