#daniel's madness

[desertfangs]

Truth in Taverns

Daniel/Marius - 1002 words

Short fic for the @vcmicroficmay Prompt "Parallel." Crossed posted to AO3 but the whole fic is under the cut here.

I think a lot about the parallels between Daniel and Marius, and the fact that they were on a quest for meaning in bars when they met the person who introduced them to immortality (albeit in very different ways) always gets me.

------------------------

Daniel feels uneasy in the crowded tavern, even though he’s seated in a dark corner at the back. The cacophony of voices laughing and talking, the music blaring from unseen speakers, and the clinking of glassware makes it hard to think. 

He clenches his fists and forces himself to take a deep breath, filling his vampire lungs with oxygen they don’t need. He lets it out slowly. He tries to remain grounded, present. This is a test and one he’s determined not to fail. 

This tavern is in a small coastal town, slowly expanding in the modern era as new development springs up around the old city center, where the tavern resides. Inside, it’s like a thousand other bars Daniel has been to. The smell of sweat, hairspray, and stale beer permeate the air. He can endure this: the noise, the aroma, the constant movement that keeps catching his eye despite his best attempts to stare straight ahead.

Marius arrives back at the table with two pints of beer in glass steins with handles, frosted to keep the beer cold. The smell of hops and barley make Daniel so nostalgic his stomach roils. Or maybe that’s just his vampiric senses reacting to the beer. 

Marius watches him carefully, gauging his expression. Daniel feels a soft pressure in his mind, Marius reading his thoughts. 

“I’m fine,” he mutters. He doesn’t feel fine but he wants to be true. He wants to know that he can trust himself in a crowd without becoming disoriented or confused. And Marius wants the same.

Hence this little test.

“Experiment,” Marius corrects his thoughts. 

Daniel gives him a dubious look. 

“You enjoy experiments,” Marius says, as if to remind Daniel of that fact. “You used to experiment with all kinds of things, did you not?” 

He doesn’t say Armand’s name but he doesn’t need to. Daniel knows that’s what he’s referring to. The stories both he and Armand told him about their time together, when Armand would push things like vacuums and blenders to their absolute limits, filling them with wet concrete and pennies. 

Experimentation, mad science. Same thing. 

He laughs at the thought. 

Marius quirks an eyebrow, his gaze steady on Daniel’s face. Daniel clears his throat. 

A new song comes on and someone shouts to turn it up. The bartender obliges and the decibels rise. Daniel can feel the noise of this place vibrating in his bones. There’s an itch in his veins. They ache for blood even though he already fed. Perhaps part of him thinks more blood might soothe the agitation of being in a loud, crowded space. Perhaps he’s just greedy. 

He focuses on the table in front of him, picking out patterns in the wood grain. Focusing on that helps quiet the oppressive energy around him. He looks up. Marius is still watching him. 

So Daniel studies the people around them. A couple fighting at a booth nearby. A man slumped over his cocktail alone. A woman drinking a martini and reading a book on the sofa across the way. People arguing over the pool table in the next room, just visible from his vantage point. So many different people with different stories and lives, all ending up in the same bar on the same night. If fate exists, it draws people to places like this where their lives can change.

“You used to frequent places like this as a mortal, didn’t you?” Daniel asks. “Hoping to find some deeper meaning?”

Marius smiles. “As did you.” 

Daniel snorts, almost bitterly. But he’s not bitter, not really. How can he be? Meeting Louis altered the course of his life. He might have spent a mortal lifetime in taverns and bars, seeking out stories from strangers hoping to find a deeper truth. And he did! He discovered a secret world, one where he could live forever! 

“And you will,” Marius says firmly. 

Some of the self-help books Daniel’s read recently in an attempt to mitigate the lingering symptoms of his madness would call that a positive affirmation. The idea makes him laugh again. Suddenly the loud music and acrid smell of alcohol don’t seem to weigh as heavily. 

“If you were still doing your interview, whom would you speak to?” Marius asks, gesturing at the room.

Daniel sits back against the booth and considers. The fighting couple are sniping at each other over the bar bill. The sad man is wallowing and empty, his thoughts a fog of whiskey and loneliness. The woman with the martini is just unwinding from a busy work week. He closes his mind to their thoughts and just watches. One of the guys playing darts is carrying himself with a seriousness the game doesn’t warrant. There’s something in his posture, in his soft, sad smile that intrigues Daniel. He watches as the man gracefully loses to his friend and then walks to the bar to get another round of drinks. 

“Him,” Daniel said, pointing surreptitiously while the man has his back to them. 

Another quirk of a blond eyebrow. “Why him?” Marius asks.

“Because he has a story to tell,” Daniel says. 

“What story?” 

“I’d have to interview him to find out,” Daniel says, smirking. 

Marius laughs now, the sound rich and reassuring. “So you would.” 

Of course he could use the Mind Gift to delve in and see what he could learn, but the way to get the whole story would be to sit down with the guy and have him tell it. 

“What about you?” Daniel asks. He remembers to pretend to take a swig of his beer while Marius scans the room and picks out the woman who keeps coming out of the kitchen. She wears an apron. Probably the cook. 

“She has a world-weary look about her,” Marius says. “And deep brown eyes.” 

“You have a type,” Daniel teases. 

Marius laughs. “I suppose I do. But it’s the soul I see in the eyes, not the color.” He takes Daniel’s hand and squeezes it reassuringly.  

[inexplicablepeas]

The Surface of the Abyss

Drabble written for Marius/Daniel Week (@maridaniweek).

Day 5: typewritten notes / deep waters

Marius holds in a breath he never needed to take as he reads the typewritten page. With an exhale of some small relief and a hum of consideration he places it back on the pile of typed paper next to the typewriter. It sits on it's own little desk in the corner of this chaotic room. This is where Daniel has taken to spending his nights obsessively working on his little miniature towns and cities. The space is dominated by a huge dining table, a little too big for the room really, which is two thirds covered in a growing cityscape. Models in progress and all kinds of other crafting materials and tools litter the rest of the table and every other available surface in the room.

He's certain this is a good sign, this page imprinted with the uniform, boldly inked markings of a typewriter. He had placed the (already rather outdated) device here in this room a number of weeks ago. He was uncertain that Daniel would take any interest in it, so single minded is he about his models these days. Most nights, the good nights, he gets up and makes his way straight to this room, silently starts his work. Marius isn't sure what it means, this obsession. He cannot deny that his mind seems a bit more... ordered while he works on this little world. So he has encouraged it.

It is surely an improvement on how he spent his nights before, staring into the space in front of him, or gazing blankly, and seemingly uncomprehendingly, at the huge television in the lounge, on the occasions he allowed Marius to sit him in front of it. Marius has tried reading to him sometimes, it was clear that he wasn't really following any story he read though, just contentedly absorbing the sound of his voice if anything.

And still, on the nights he does not go straight to work on this project of his, he may not move at all, he can just lie for hours in the dark in in his below-ground room well after the sun has set. On those nights, despite his stillness, his mind is often a chaotic whirl of images, his heart sometimes races at a concerning pace... As he works on the models, on the other hand, sometimes memories surface all the same, but his mind seems in a calmer state, the memories have a little more context... it's almost a narrative. And he thinks that may be just what he needs - narrative. After all, Daniel is a story teller. That was his vocation before knowledge of their kind consumed his mortal life.

And for Marius narrative has always been something that has kept him grounded when the weight of time presses down on him, when he feels he may be swept up in it's unrelenting currents, might lose himself entirely in a bewildering new century. The exercise of recording has always calmed him, helped him to put things in order. Countless thousands of pages he's written over the years, most lost or burnt...

He saw the typewriter in Daniel's mind one night as he worked away – that's what had given him the idea, the image of his long, elegant fingers clacking away on a typewriter in a motel room, absorbed in transcribing from a tape, the memory continued on and suddenly he froze, a spike of panic going through him. He had the sense that he was being watched, staring at the empty blackness of the room's window for a beat, hitting stop on the tape player and forcing himself shakily to get up and close the curtains, staring distractedly for a little too long at the quiet parking lot before pulling the thin curtains shut. Sat back in front of the typewriter, lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. The thought cut off there as Daniel put the model in his hands down to search the cluttered table for a particular tube of paint.

For the next few nights, after making sure that Daniel was fed and settled with his models, Marius went out alone to hunt the second hand stores of the surrounding area for the right machine. Marius himself had used a number of typewriters off and on throughout the years, he always liked the satisfying clack of the keys. The staccato press of his fingers on the machine so different from the flow of a stylus or quill, for a time he had been enchanted with them. He didn't bring any of those machines with him to this dwelling, now he has a rather cutting edge word processor in a humming little plastic box of a computer in the study upstairs, and pen paper of course, when a more individual touch feels appropriate. But he thought that it might be best for Daniel to try using what he's most familiar with, so he went looking for an electronic typewriter like the one he saw in his memories.

After three nights of searching the cluttered little second hand shops in nearby towns he spotted just what he was looking for, an old Selectric typewriter. A similar model to one he had himself some years ago - sitting on a low shelf surrounded by colorful board games in battered boxes. It even had a couple of ink ribbons with it. He made the purchase, insistently overpaid for it, and spirited the little machine back home.

He wasn't sure how to approach it, how to get Daniel's attention. He brought a little desk down from upstairs and set the machine on it in a corner of the room, without saying a word. Daniel was undisturbed by the activity. He was on the floor, working away at gluing the parts of a minute little house together. Marius crouched down in front of him, studying him gravely, this spare, pallid boy-man, surrounded by crafting detritus as he was, sticking his tongue out as he concentrated on his work, seemingly oblivious to his presence. He cleared his throat, which did not draw his attention in any noticeable way. He started talking to him anyway. He knows some part of him hears him, he just chooses what he pays attention to.

"Daniel, I found this in town – this older model of typewriter, from your time. Quite a lovely machine. I thought you might like to put down some of your thoughts," done gluing the house, he turned his back to him, went up on his knees to set it down on the empty part of the table to dry, "I'll leave it in here, by the door, if you feel like using it. It might help you... make sense of things... put them in order perhaps," Marius continued to study him intensely. Daniel had turned his head, so that Marius saw a side profile, as he stared off into space for a moment. His mouth momentarily quirked into a cynical little smile before he went back to assembling another building.

He had tried this with Amadeo too. Of course, his mind was locked to him after he turned him, and he went through those periods of awful, withdrawn silence. Those silences frightened him so, not knowing what troubled him or how he could help him. Marius tried forcing him to record his thoughts in ink on paper, in the hope that it would ease his solitary suffering, in the hope that in reading what he wrote that he would know how to help him. And he thinks it did help him, even just the exercise of it, at least for a short while...

It helps that he can see the content of Daniel's mind, but the lack of order disturbs him, flashes of faces, swirling colors, noise rising into a cacophony before dying away. Often Armand is there: clad in denim like a youth of this time and looming over him in some dim, ruined place, staring at him with those huge, steady and ever mysterious eyes through a crowd, just flashes of images, and fragments of thought and sound, all a jumble. Marius has rarely seen anything surface from before the boy's fateful interview with Louis, that gentle and thoughtful creature who put his world to ruin in a single night. But here on this page – he has gone back and written of his youth, in fact of that first spark that ignited in him that lost passion to record the stories of others. And he has written it with such clarity! Clarity the likes of which he has scarce seen this young immortal capable of. He's sure that this is the key to restoring him to some kind of lucidity of mind - putting some order to the events of his life. Connecting this child on the page with the powerful yet confused creature he has become. This is perhaps a start.

[rocktheholygrail]

oh? 👀

[justanerd]

Spent 20 minutes editing the Casino Royale poker scene to be chutes and ladders instead of finishing my English homework.

[philsthighpower]

[iheartmonaco]

Calling them "good boy"

🔸inc.: Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen, Daniel Ricciardo, George Russell, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel

🔸Gender Neutral reader

🔸masterlist

[princessmadelines]

big fan of psychosexual torture🫡

[heather-collins]

CASINO ROYALE (2006) dir. Martin Campbell

[ozmosiis]

re watching reanimator and it's just like. dude. dan isnt even just 'down bad' for herbert, no, hes down lower than hell for herbert. he watched herbert shove a syringe full of green glowstick juice into a corpse (not to mention dan checked it out), saw it sit up, and immediately MURDER his fiances dad, and still said 'mmm yeah gonna stick around' like dan isnt even enabling herberts behavior. hes actively supporting it. herbert, at 3am, could whisper in his ear, "daniel lets commit medical atrocities together" and dans already getting his shoes on. he never signed up for science but by god did he sign up for that evil twink

[nyree2712]

Formula 1 - Incorrect Quote 120

Max (first year at RB): Daniel Ricciardo, if you don't shut up in 5 seconds. I'm throwing myself out this moving car

*Click*

Max:... Did you just turn the children's lock on?

Daniel: Yep

[desertfangs]

Is it possible you never knew? [AO3]

Armand/Daniel (with Marius/Daniel and some minor Armand/Marius) - Mature - 5,181 words

As Daniel starts to recover from his madness, Armand pays a visit to the little house in Norway where Marius and Daniel are living, and Daniel worries about what his maker will make of him now.

This is a fic I've been writing on and off in my head since I wrote Into the Midst of Madness but I was never sure if I thought Armand had actually seen him at all during this time. Of course, a lot has changed in my opinion since I wrote that fic and I would probably change a lot of things about it now. After rereading Blood and Gold, TVA, and some of Anne's notes, I decided that yeah, I actually do think they had some contact before PL. Still undecided on how much or how frequent, but it now feels more likely to me that visits such as these occurred.

Anyhow, I digress. I could talk about this stuff and the wonky timeline of it all for hours. (Please hit me up if you ever want to discuss this stuff, it's wild.)

The title comes from a line in the Devil's Minion chapter that felt exceptionally relevant here.

Short Excerpt:

Daniel’s mind is clear. He’s not entirely used to the feeling, but he likes not being mired in a mental fog all the time or singularly obsessive over one thing.

He’s been feeling better for weeks. He’s still building his models most nights, but he’s paying more attention to the radio Marius that left in his work room, actually listening to some of the programs. Occasionally he comes out and sits on the sofa with Marius and they watch an episode of some old sitcom. 

And now, finally, after over a month of Daniel feeling more present and comfortable in his own mind, where he can focus on things besides the models in front of him and the need for blood, he dares to hope he might be improving. 

Marius says as much, speaking the thought into existence as he ruffles Daniel’s short blond hair one night. Neither of them will say that he’s recovered, but they can both agree he’s further along in the process. 

Armand takes the news by deciding to visit. 

Daniel isn’t sure how he feels about it at first. He longs to see him, of course, but he’s anxious about being seen. The Mad Fledgling, the one who giggled his way through his immortal rebirth and lost his goddamn mind. The only one Armand ever turned and Daniel can’t help but wonder if he regrets it. 

He fears he regrets it. 

He fears it every time they have a stilted phone conversation, every time Armand hurries off the line, every time he thinks of their last fight, or how Armand tried to end it all. 

He tries hard not to think of these things, but sometimes the thoughts are inescapable and all-consuming. 

And now with him coming here, there’s nowhere to hide. Daniel is what he is. Almost two decades in the blood and already a mess.

“Not a mess,” Marius assures him, a gentle kiss to his temple as he dresses Daniel in his finest pair of jeans and a brand new polo shirt. He stands behind Daniel in the mirror. Daniel stares at his reflection: a pale young man in his early thirties whose violet eyes shine with preternatural light, whose long fingers tap nervously against the dark denim on his thigh. His short hair falls neatly into place. 

Immortal, forever.

Or as long as he can stand it, anyhow.

“Don’t be morose,” Marius chastises, answering his thoughts out loud. Getting Daniel to speak out loud, to vocalize his thoughts, is part of his recovery. 

“I’m not,” Daniel mutters.

He has no desire to end things. He’s finally coming out of a very long, dark tunnel and seeing the light again. It’s a new lease on forever. 

But there’s that nagging fear that he won’t measure up in Armand���s estimation. That his heart will be weighed and found lacking.

“You’re perfect.” Marius claps him on the shoulders. 

Daniel snorts, laughing slightly as he pulls away.

The doorbell rings. 

He’s early. 

Read the Rest on AO3

[ldrloversblog]

Biologically I can’t So you hate me.

get you pregnant.

[amid-fandoms]

they're crazy but they're free

[bet-on-me-13]

Ellie is a Clone Misunderstanding

So, I' sure most of us have seen a story/prompt or two about Ellie being on the Teen Titans or Young Justice right? Here's my question, does she tell them about her being a Clone, or does she just omit that from her resume?

Imagine a scenario where Ellie is on a mission with her team (Let's say YJ for this). They are nearly done, when she gets hit by some type of Ecto-Weapon in the middle of the fight?

She is hurt, but shrugs it off and continues the battle. In the end, the team manages to come out on Top, and they return to Base.

The others are fretting over Ellie, asking how she is doing and if she needs ant help. She's never once been hit while in Battle, her Phasing Powers are stronger than even Miss Martian, so they are understandably concerned for her health.

She tells them that she's fine, and goes off to her room to rest, telling them to drop it.

Later that night, one of her teammates goes to her room to fetch her for Dinner. They knock on the door, but she doesn't respond. After a while, they decide to just open the door and find Ellie collapsed on the floor. She never made it to her bed.

They rush her to the Medical Station, and call in the League.

While there, they try to figure out what happened, but nothing comes up with the Weapon that hit her. (They took it after the battle for study)

Eventually, they get the results back from the Doctors. Her cells are dying at an alarming rate. Her energy levels are Unstable. Her DNA is deteriorating. She's Destabilizing.

She's a Clone.

All the evidence is there. Her DNA is deteriorating because she wasn't made complete, and her Cells can't keep up with the damage anymore because of that.

If this Ellie is a Clone, what happened to the Real Ellie? When was she kidnapped? How did they not notice their friend being replaced by a Clone?!

They need answers, and unfortunately Ellie isn't waking up any time soon.

[iheartmonaco]

imma just send ideas at the randomest of (uk) times everr lmfaoo

texts with the grid (+ollie, if possible. im predictable i knowwww) where the drivers send a spicy pic to (male or gn) reader to distract them whilst at work? heheh

-bear anon

Bb boy I love your prompts

When You're At Work

🔸 including: Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen, Daniel Ricciardo, George Russell, Lewis Hamilton, Ollie Bearman

🔸warnings: mature, mentions of sex

🔸Gender neutral reader

🔸 masterlist

[box953]

first name (derogatory)