idk man i keep thinking about lestat proposing to louis in a church, at the altar, the dark gift craddled between his blood-stained hands and hungry eyes, “be my companion, louis” and “be all the beautiful things you are and be them without apology”, and louis accepting, fearful, desperate, Seen, after having spent his entire life at the shadow of his father, scrambling to provide for his family and facing zero recognition for it, the proposal sounding blissful, the promise of companionship keeping loneliness at bay, lestat Knows Me, Feels Me, he is mine and i am his alone, of course i said yes
and how that directly juxtaposes daniel’s alleged proposal to alleged girlfriend alice some eight decades later, alice, whose eyebrow grew a little blonde on one side, and she hated it, always dyed it back to brown, even though daniel always preferred it when she left it alone, “alice”, who daniel felt freer holding her hand in paris for some odd and unrelated reason, who rejected daniel’s proposal because “she thought he wasn’t ready”, whose memory inside daniel’s head turned uncomfortably armand-shaped the minute louis started poking around in his brain and daniel, anxious, panicked, turned to find armand’s eyes for comfort, Armand’s Eyes, amber and clear and Familiar, who armand can willingly disguise as brown if needed, but one glimpse of them in their true form sent daniel spiraling, tripping down memory lane, armand’s hands disguised with gloves when undercover as rashid, because surely one remembers their lover’s hands just as well as they remember their eyes, but surely that all has nothing to do with alice, nothing to do with armand, just a regular proposal gone awry, a rejection, another fuck-up in the long line of daniel fuck-ups, but it sure is interesting how daniel still took to the dark gift another four decades later, non-consensually this time, violently, as punishment for being the bright young reporter with a point of view
