Re: [log: antique store - daniel/claire/louis]
Daniel's eyes hadn't left Louis' face since he became himself again, the vampire pale and ageless with his black eyes unmoving in the wake of the shifting air around him. Daniel wondered if the drop in temperature was something that always occurred, and it seemed too easy, an almost flagrant display of power. It was clumsy, but perhaps age made creatures clumsy. His expression turned reflective and his thoughts tumbled inward on themselves as he pondered this new development, drawing on experience gone and ages past. The sound of Claire and Louis speaking passed over him as if he was under an expanse of cold water, their voices garbled and distant, almost nothing in comparison to the thud of their heartbeats and the rhythmic current of their blood moving through their body. Daniel drank as he stood there, eyes remote, tipping up the glass with its cuts of bronze and glinting glass diamond.
Daniel only looked up when Louis spoke directly to him, bringing some of the focus back, though the intensity did not wane. "No," he said, as if in agreement, his tone genial. There was something about his face that was not reassuring, a remoteness that had not been there before, when he had been driven by anger and thirst.
The glass tipped up and down several more times, not sips but gulps, and Daniel barely tasted it. He refilled the glass, took the bottle, and sat down where he had sat before, not noticing the mess of the teacup. "I'll stay here," he told Temperance, in a voice of finality and growing calm. "Do not spread this further." His dark eyes narrowed slightly as if he read her thoughts. "We don't know enough to do anything yet." And with that, he sat deeper into the cushions, and drank yet more.