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1. The Billboard
The heat is stifling. Of course it is, it’s Dubai. There’s a reason why locals and tourists alike flock to malls and other heavily air-conditioned places, and why they use cars to get to and from them.
Still, Daniel fancied a walk and it’s only three blocks back to Louis’ apartment. He enjoys the sun, blazing as it is, and he still has half a smoothie—a healthy one, with greens and everything—left.
He crosses the road and turns his head to look left and right, like any good pedestrian, and almost freezes in his step.
There is a billboard, which in itself is not all that unusual a sight to see in Dubai, but this one depicts a blonde man, dressed in leather, his skin glittering and one hand raised to a microphone, with what have to be his bandmates in the background behind him.
He blinks and keeps walking, at least until he gets to the other sidewalk, then stops and stares.
He is sure he’s never seen the man in his life, and yet he is eerily familiar, matching a description Daniel's heard again and again and again over the past few days, down to the pointed fingernails which appear as if made out of glass.
He takes a sip of his smoothie. The ice has almost completely melted, which is not surprising, considering that this city was built in a desert, and yet what he is seeing cannot be a mirage.
But what else can it be?
The similarities are striking, and Daniel would almost think them a joke, that Louis based his descriptions off of this band’s frontman, if he hadn’t already heard these same features described in detail decades ago, down to the name.
The Vampire Lestat, the billboard reads. Debut Single Out Now.
He picks up his pace. He has to get back to his laptop now.
2. The Interview
He makes it to his room unbothered, the security check at the building’s entrance a mere formality.
He boots up his laptop before he so much as sits down.
He’s sure he hasn’t heard of this band before, has never heard the name Lestat outside of his interviews with Louis. And yet there is a giant billboard with just that name plastered all over it in blood-red letters right around the block.
A quick google search tells him that this band indeed exists, and is currently topping the Spotify charts, among others.
Apparently it exploded onto the scene mere days ago, their debut single having dropped the day after Daniel arrived in Dubai.
This cannot be a coincidence.
He turns to YouTube.
The first result he gets is two hours old.
Oprah Interviews The Vampire Lestat (Teaser Trailer), it says.
The setting is a hypermodern apartment, the furniture a startling white, no doubt an attempt to make the deep red accents all the more striking.
It’s a very successful attempt.
Lestat is sitting across from Oprah, smiling and charming, and yet with a fierceness in his eyes Daniel has rarely seen before, if ever.
Oprah thanks him for the interview and wonders why he’s decided on a tell-all interview so early into his career as a soon to be rock superstar.
Lestat flicks his hair back and laughs.
It is not a nice laugh.
"Well," he says, something salacious in his tone Daniel can’t quite place, "One has to get ahead of all the lies, doesn’t one? No doubt others are already hard at work preparing to spread them."
Lestat pauses, his eyes flicking straight to the camera. They are gleaming, a challenge, as if he knows, although what exactly he might know Daniel is not sure.
"But yes," Lestat continues, "I am a vampire."
3. The YouTuber
The trailer ends there, promising the full interview to be released in a week.
Lestat, because it has to be Louis’ Lestat, must at the very least suspect that Louis is currently doing his own interview. Louis or someone else, but if Louis’ tales of their relationship are anything to go by, then Daniel’s bet is that Lestat's suspect is Louis.
What has he gotten himself into?
He doubts he will find the answer in the next video which just started playing without his prompting.
Lestat is in it as well, although not being interviewed.
No, this Lestat is different.
For one he is wearing much less leather, for another, he is waving two makeup palettes in the air, urging his chat to vote and choose one of them.
The chat window next to the video is scrolling past faster than Daniel can keep up with, all he can make out is that there are a lot of heart emojis.
"Today," Lestat says, "I had a nasty fight with my boyfriend."
The heart emojis are immediately replaced by crying emojis and question marks. There’s also a not insignificant number of knife emojis, but Lestat’s smile only widens, proud of the reactions he's sparked with just that one simple phrase.
"I kid you not, blood was spilled," Lestat continues, before pausing dramatically. "Not as much as on the night our as of yet unnamed victim died of course, but then again I do love my boyfriend, despite him disapproving of most of my hobbies."
It is only then that Daniel’s gaze drops down to read the title of the video.
Lestat’s Makeup Murders (Episode 31), it reads, and Daniel blinks.
A stream of BLOOD!!! fills the chat.
"Yes, exactly!" Lestat nods, cheerfully. "Now if you find yourself inspired by these gentle blue tones, then please vote A. I promise you it won’t stay gentle for long."
He laughs.
A super chat window pops up.
Leslestatatat donated 70$
Was distracted by your glorious hair. Can you post the link to the poll again? Pleeeease!
Lestat flips his hair back and smirks.
"Yes of course. Mods! Do your thing, or better yet start spamming the link so that everyone gets a chance to see. You have three more minutes. Go, go, go!"
A handful of bold links scroll past, but they are drowned out by the speed of all the other messages flooding in.
Lestat switches to the second palette.
"Now this one starts out a bit more fierce, but will it stay that way? There is only one way to find out!" he says, his pause this time no less dramatic than the one before.
"One more minute! Be glad you can’t see my boyfriend rolling his eyes behind the screen. Someone’s in a mood today and it’s not me."
What follows is a tale of a gruesome murder at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, cheered on by Lestat’s very generous chat as he does his makeup, sometimes pausing to explain his color and product choices, and other times—whenever the super chat donations popping up in the left hand corner exceed a hundred US-dollars or the equivalent—answers a fan question.
"And here we are," Lestat says, preening. "Today’s look! I call it Pretty Paulette, after our not quite heroine. Do you like it? Do you think she got what she deserved? Tell me in chat or comment down below if you’re watching this at a later date."
4. The Streamer
Lestat spends the next few minutes reading donations, until there is a noise in the background.
"Ah, the boyfriend’s back. And he’s still rolling his eyes. I am almost beginning to suspect someone here disapproves of my career choices."
Another noise follows.
Then, "You could’ve been a rockstar, you know."
The voice is muffled, clearly coming from offscreen and not spoken into the microphone. It is also very, very familiar.
Daniel turns up the volume.
Lestat bats his eyelashes, offended.
"No darling, I could’ve been a rock superstar. But this is better. More engagement, less distance. I am truly seen! Isn’t that right, chat?"
More emojis scroll past.
Daniel checks the date of the video.
2019.
"I understand that you think streaming on YouTube is brainless and stupid, but you have to go with the times, Louis, this is the future!"
Daniel can't quite make out the exact words of the answer, but clearly the voice—Louis!—does indeed think that YouTube, as well as doing ones makeup while staring at a camera and telling gory murder stories is stupid or at the very least silly.
Daniel agrees that it’s certainly something, especially because he’s beginning to suspect that the murder described was indeed Lestat’s, for how else could he have known so many details? Surely he didn’t come up with them on the spot, and anyway, considering the title of the video and the number at its end, he doubts that this is the only murder immortalized like this.
All of this is however not as distracting as the confirmation that the voice he heard is indeed Louis’, and Daniel can’t even imagine how Louis apparently moved from planning his sire’s murder in New Orleans to making fun of Lestat's makeup filled tales of murder and being called the boyfriend in his streams.
The conversation continues.
"Alright," Lestat finally says, after minutes of what Daniel loathes to call bickering. "Find me what you think is the dumbest popular thing to stream and I’ll prove you wrong."
It’s the end of the video.
Seconds later what he presumes is a followup begins playing.
"Do you know that my boyfriend told me I might just as well play with legos?" Lestat asks, after some guy announces that he's starting the stream.
The guy snorts.
"Let’s prove him wrong then."
"Let’s," Lestat replies. "After all we did practice, and I was assured you are the best."
The next hour is spent waiting and bantering and playing what is definitely not lego.
Daniel is both baffled and oddly mesmerized.
It is when Lestat and his teammate play a game which is called Find the Button, and which Lestat unsurprisingly excels at given his vampire eyes, that Daniel finally shakes himself and presses pause.
What has he been watching? And can this truly be the fearsome vampire Lestat?
He checks the title of the video. It's called winning minecraft monday w/ lestat by someone called Technoblade, who Daniel now knows is Lestat’s teammate in this competition.
Well, he definitely hopes this is all a dream, because if not then he’ll be suffering a decided lack of sleep when his and Louis’ interview continues later today.
He closes his laptop and goes to sleep, wondering how he can best start this night’s interview.
5. The Husband
He doesn’t have to, it turns out.
They’ve barely sat down, when a door opens out of sight and a most striking figure enters the room.
It’s Lestat, eyes glowing and hair shimmering, dressed in an ostentatious gold and red dressing gown.
He doesn’t spare Daniel a single glance as he struts into the room like a preening peacock.
"Louis, darling, have you seen my diamond studded leather pants? Someone must have misplaced them," he says, dramatically, before turning in a circle as if expecting said pants to magically appear right there in front of him on the dining room table.
"Lestat," Louis says, a hint of exasperation in his tone. "I am about to tell Daniel about our last few weeks in New Orleans."
Lestat cocks his head.
"Nothing but lies, I’m sure," he says, flippantly, finally looking at Daniel.
"Don’t believe a word my husband says,"—a pause—"Unless he’s taking back everything he said during that first interview, because our recollections when it comes to that most definitely vary."
And with that as well as a final swirl of red and gold, Lestat is gone again.
Daniel blinks.
Needless to say they don’t talk about Louis' and Lestat’s last few weeks in New Orleans that night.
"Care to explain what he meant by husband?" Daniel asks, mentally already revising all his notes.
1. The Lover
"So," Daniel asks, closer to morning and after multiple breaks of varying lengths. "Is this your apartment or Lestat’s? Because last time I checked Dubai wasn’t all that fond of gay marriage."
"Neither," a voice behind Daniel says, smooth and sultry.
Daniel freezes.
He knows that voice, that tone. He was once intimately familiar with it, and spent decades trying to forget it and all its nuances and inflections.
"It’s mine."
The attempts to forget clearly didn’t work, for there is no doubt in Daniel's mind that the voice is Armand's, no matter how long it's been. He doesn’t have to see the other vampire to be able to tell, not when he’s using that tone.
He turns around anyway.
"Hello lover," Armand says. "Do you like my new residence?"