#Daniel/Mael | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

monstersinthecosmos · 2 months ago

Text

Vamptember Day 26 - Funeral Pyre

{darkher - lament}

“I wish you wouldn’t lie to me,” Daniel says quietly.

Marius blinks up at him, slowly rising from a reverie. The light from fireplace dances across his face as he stares. Expressionless, but Daniel thinks he’s startled.

“I haven’t lied to you, Daniel.”

He can sort of imagine how the conversation might go, if he pushed. The condescension that comes up when he asserts himself, Marius talking down to him like he’s still unwell. Shutting it down to change the subject, or to bury it. So that he can go back to moping, the way he is now, in the silence. Fire crackling, the warmth breathing against him. Staring until his eyes hurt.

You’re being a twat, he almost says, but thinks better of it.

The huge old clock ticks away from the corner of the room, and Daniel glances towards it. Three o’clock. His eyes linger on it, just long enough to ache in his chest. Used to be a bad thing, being up at this hour. Nothing good ever happens this late.

But he signed his life away for this, didn’t he? An eternity of this.

Marius doesn’t comment, if he’s listening in. Continues to stare at the fireplace. Christ, he seems so old and sad sometimes.

Well.

It doesn’t have to be antagonistic, Daniel supposes. Maybe he can just try being nice.

He scrubs his hands across his face. Considers leaving. There must have been hundreds of nights like this, while Daniel was checked out. Downstairs, destroying the craft room, while Marius sat up here staring into space. He doesn’t need Daniel’s help with it, probably.

But his chest hurts a little bit. He has a memory—far away, unimportant, like a Polaroid of a life that wasn’t really lived—of his own father, spacing out in his easy chair. No orange firelight on his face, just the cool electric glow of the television in the dark.

His father must be dead by now. Daniel never cared enough to check.

“I’m not some ward taking up space in your house,” Daniel says. Not anymore, anyway. He chews through his bottom lip until he tastes his own blood. Waits for it to heal before he comes closer. “You can like, talk to me. Or whatever. If you want to.”

Marius’s hair is a mess. Wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday. He glances up at Daniel, finally, his eyes bloodshot and tired. It’s uncomfortable, how long he stares, before he reaches out one of his hands.

“I know that,” he says. “Come here.”

His hand is cold on Daniel’s forearm, but the fire is warm up close like this. Daniel hovers awkwardly for a moment, looking down at him. Marius has never looked so pathetic before, Daniel thinks. He chews on his lip again, to hide the thought, and Marius’s eyes widen at the scent of the blood.

“Come here,” he says again, and Daniel isn’t even sure how he winds up in Marius’s lap. Draped over him, his legs dangling over the arm of the chair, as Marius pets his bottom lip with his thumb. Fire shining in his eyes like a cat as he leans in to lick the wound.

He’s a good kisser.

Something Daniel should have expected, really. Not that it surprises him, but the reality of it makes him feel crazy on the inside. They’ve only made out a few times, while they were out hunting. Mouths full of blood, Daniel full of other people’s molly. But now, alone like this…

Ancient creature. So experienced that Daniel feels small and silly. He tries to draw back, but Marius cups a hand behind Daniel’s neck to hold him there. Every movement is so slow, so patient. For a moment, Daniel forgets he isn’t human, and imagines what it would be like to fuck him. To ride him, right here, with the fire at his back. He imagines Marius would be so collected about it, barely making a noise, huge hands on Daniel’s hips as he leans back in the chair and just watches, as he lets Daniel do all the work.

“That’s quite specific,” Marius mumbles, into Daniel’s mouth.

“Sorry, you remind me of someone,” he breathes. He bites at Marius’s lip, barely nicking it, barely getting a taste.

“Oh?”

Marius must know by now. And his face hasn’t changed, when Daniel pulls back to see him better. Daniel slumps, lets his weight relax into Marius’s lap.

“Are you asking to distract me?”

“Perhaps,” he leans in to kiss again, and Daniel presses a hand to Marius’s chest, feeling the heartbeat in his palm. “Perhaps it’s to distract me, as well. If you’ll indulge me.”

Daniel sighs. He laughs a little, and blows his bangs out of his face. Marius’s hand drifts gently across Daniel’s thigh, petting back and forth, as if to coax the words from him.

“Sometimes you remind me of my film lit professor in freshman year,” Daniel admits. He feels ridiculous, saying it out loud, wondering if Marius thinks of him as a child. Foolish little fledgling, with human memories so close to the surface.

“All of us have memories close to the surface, sometimes,” Marius says. He stares into Daniel’s face for a long pause, not continuing until he’s sure Daniel isn’t, either. “I used to sleep with one of my father’s friends when I was a boy. It feels quite the same as what you’re remembering.”

Daniel’s veins throb. He kisses Marius on the mouth again.

“I had sorta known I was bi when I was younger,” he says. “But I didn’t really get into it until I went away for college. He was the first man I ever slept with.”

“The first time you were penetrated?”

Daniel nods. He presses his face to Marius’s throat, breathes against the steady pulse.

“How old were you?”

“Dunno…” he wants to bite. His fangs graze the smooth skin, but he holds back. “Eighteen, nineteen. Something like that.”

“Oh, that’s not so young. Modern little thing you are…”

“He was in his forties, I think. Almost my dad’s age. God, he was…”

Marius’s nails trace lightly along the back of Daniel’s neck, so that the hair stands up. He squeezes his eyes shut, shuddering, unsure what he’s trying to say.

It had sort of felt like this. Cared for by an older man. Doted upon. And it was all petty human pleasure back then—not that it compares to the high of glutting himself on Marius’s blood—but he remembers being wrung out, the endorphins screaming in his body, remembers the lactic acid burning in his thighs as he rode his professor’s cock, and way the orgasm could tear through his body. Steady hands on his hips, guiding him through it, telling him he was beautiful.

And all the times being spoiled with good wine and real food, all the times being spanked. He remembers his eyes welling up with tears from gagging during a blowjob. Remembers the blue eyes and soft blonde hair on the man’s forearms, but can’t picture his face anymore. Just sees Marius, overlaid on the memories.

“Did you ever penetrate him?” Marius asks.

Why does he sound so soft? Does Daniel detect yearning?

“No. He never… asked me to.”

“Did you want to?”

“It didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to do whatever he told me to.”

Marius hums in consideration. His hand slips beneath Daniel’s shirt, petting over his hip bone.

Strange, how his body can still feel aroused. How the thirst can feel so desperate. Inhuman forever but his mind still works the way it used to, still burdened at times by the same instincts. If he were alone he might rub impotently at his cock, just to see, but he has enough sense to behave.

Daniel almost asks about it—he’s wondered so many times, and never quite has the courage. Always feels too foolish at the last second. Marius must know he’s thinking it, but doesn’t indulge him in offering up his thoughts.

He wants Marius’s blood. Wants it flowing into him. Imagines it filling him. He remembers being young and naive and remembers the smell of the lube his professor used, remembers jazz floating out of the man’s record player. But even thinking of sex itself, remembering the patient warm up, and the nearly-violent thrusts of climax, he imagines the blood inside him. Everything sort of blends together like that, and he’s not sure where one sensation ends and the next begins.

“I hope he gave you a passing grade.”

He had, as Daniel recalls. But he’d worked for it, anyway. The paper he’d written about Persona had fucking killed. Daniel had been sleeping with him, but the class had actually been really hard. His professor had still expected him to do the work.

Marius can be like that, too. It’s all connected, maybe. Fated. Feeding Daniel from his wrist every night, pampering him up in here in the mountains, and still holding his stupid model cities to such high standards.

“I don’t remember his name,” Daniel murmurs against Marius’s skin. The hunger pinches in his throat, and he almost bites, but manages to shake it off. “You’re trying to distract me.”

“Is it working?”

“No,” he pulls back again, to see Marius’s face. Drawn around his eyes, still cold, even as he’s gone through the motions. Handling Daniel like a child, placating him until he’ll shut up. “Cut the shit.”

“What is it, Daniel?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Marius laughs. “What a very interesting thing for you to ask.”

Daniel stares. The uncanniness is still so striking, even after these years together, when he really looks at it. Still, he can see the human beneath all of it. Soft and broken and tired. Wistful behind the eyes.

It’s too awful, seeing that up close. Too terrifying to know he could live for this long and still struggle.

“I used to think that about Akasha. The more time that went by, the more frightening it was. It made me wonder…” Marius drifts off. Looks away, so that the fire glows orange in his eyes for a flash. “I shouldn’t talk to you about this. You’re too young. It’s too discouraging.”

“Don’t be a twat.”

It makes him smile. He lifts his hands to Daniel’s face, brushing his thumbs across Daniel’s cheekbones as if appraising him. Daniel grabs him by the wrists.

“Seriously, Marius,” almost pleading, but he tries to steel himself. “You can just tell me, you know. If you’re gonna sit in here and mope you can at least be honest with me that you feel like shit.”

Marius kisses him on the mouth. Breathes against him a moment later, speaking against his lips. “You are so finely made. Drink from me.”

“You’re trying to distract me again,” Daniel mumbles, but he wants it too badly to resist.

The flood hits him so hard. His hands bunch the fabric of Marius’s shirt and he squeezes his thighs together as the heat lights up his veins.

No, it’s not a distraction, he realizes too late. Marius strokes his back through it as he swallows, and swallows. All the answers are here, aren’t they? Just that Marius didn’t want to speak them out loud.

I might cry soon.

Marius shifts beneath him, adjusting them, tugging Daniel in closer so that he can bite back. The sting of his teeth shoot up Daniel’s spine, the flow of it, the life passing back and forth between them, has his head swimming.

He can’t remember his professor’s name. Not really his face, either. Doesn’t remember what sex felt like, can only picture how it feels to drink blood. To take life, or to feast on this type of power. Daniel remembers his professor’s silky duvet and the way he had bunched it up to hug into his chest, how his eyes had watered against the pillow as he’d been railed one night after a screening of Peeping Tom, but the concept of an orgasm doesn’t occur to him. Just this, the heat and life as he he swallows, as he licks at the wound in Marius’s throat.

But it’s the same for Marius, isn’t it?

Seeing things in the blood. Marius, in the dark, watching the muscles of Mael’s back as he fucks him into the furs. Fingers leaving white dents in Mael’s hips, lit by the small fire at the center of the cell. He remembers that he spilled into Mael’s body when it was over, but all he can compare it to is the shimmer of human death when they collapse in his arms.

Or seeing something earlier—in an inn, with his face numb from drinking too much, tasting the wine on Mael’s mouth and wrapping his legs around Mael’s waist. Such an old, old memory that it seems like it happened to somebody else. No feeling of fullness from some barbarian’s cock—just the blood now. Swallow after swallow. And, no, there’s no taste of wine, either. Just the blood. Just the blood.

Marius bites down harder, and Daniel gushes into his mouth. He sees spots, and squeezes his eyes closed. Makes him feel like a stupid human again, so weak. Falling victim to the swoon, and too enraptured by the visions.

All the fires, all the fear. The last desperate attempt, trying to fondle Mael beneath his pristine white robes, as if defiling him one last time could save your life. How willing Marius had been to get on his knees for it. How he’d almost wept, how he’d smelled the burning bodies.

Close to the surface, sometimes.

Obscene wet rhythm of his suckling. Heavy wet pulse pouring into him. Feeling so full, but too worked up to pull away.

Feeling like you might cry, but over what?

Soft broken person beneath all of it. Stuck on some vulgar memory, two thousand years later. Daniel chases after it, obsessed, wanting more and more and more until Marius finally pushes him away.

“Enough,” he says quietly. Eyes glassy as he runs a hand through his hair, as he presses his fingers to the healed spot on his throat.

Daniel stares. Ears ringing as if he just came. Sometimes Marius seems like a monster, but he’s just as broken as the rest of them, really.

“Did you ever tell Armand what happened to you?” Daniel asks.

Marius sinks back in the chair. Looks towards the fire instead of answering.

Eyes glassy, mouth red. Daniel licks the excess blood from his teeth and wonders if he’ll feel like this forever.

#vamptember #stuff i wrote #marius de romanus #daniel molloy #marius/daniel #marius/mael

30 notes · View notes