Reunion - 448 words - Marius/Daniel
This was written for the @valenfangs VamPride event but it's like 2 weeks late (life has been lifeing and also I had to go out of town last weekend to celebrate Pride at the closest event to me, hazards of living in a small mountain town.) Anyhow sorry for the belated entry, it's just a little ficlet featuring Marius and Daniel during the events of Prince Lestat.
Marius packs Daniel’s suitcase. Daniel is perfectly capable of packing it himself—though admittedly he’d probably take more t-shirts than Marius seems to deem necessary—but Marius is moving at a frenetic pace. He’s worried. About the new round of burnings, about what might happen this time all the immortals convene, about this new threat they’re facing.
Round and round. Same old dance.
Daniel laughs and Marius tenses, hand hovering over the suitcase, long pale fingers squeezing the pair of folded socks in his hand. He glances at Daniel, worried. Laughing at nothing is something madmen do. Daniel is better now, and has been for long enough that a single laugh should not even raise concern, but Daniel sees the fear in his eyes. Not just for Daniel. For Armand, for Lestat, for Pandora, for all of them. For what might happen this time.
We’ve survived worse, Daniel thinks, remembering Akasha, a terrifying goddess, glaring at them as she ranted and raved about her new world, admonishing all of them. Except Daniel.
She’d barely noticed Daniel or Jesse, just two new vampires loosely connected to the ones Lestat knew and loved. But for a moment her cold eyes had landed on him and he’d been entranced by her, the way her ancient limbs moved with impossible grace. The way she glowed with inhuman light so radiant it was far beyond anything that surrounded Armand or even Marius.
Marius drops the socks into the suitcase. “We don’t know what’s in store,” he says, but gently. He doesn’t want to scare Daniel, but he wants him to take this seriously.
But Daniel always has. He laughed the first time because he was giddy with the blood newly coursing in his veins, finally the creature of the night he’d longed to be, with Armand at his side. He laughs now because he’s giddy with the prospect of seeing Armand and the others again, of all of them gathering together once more. It’s hard to be afraid when you’re surrounded by powerful immortals who’ve seen the world turn over hundreds of times, who’ve faced down worse and survived.
Marius closes the sock drawer with force, shaking the dresser. A pile of rocks that had been perched on the edge fall to the ground. Marius stares at them, faintly surprised. Daniel bends to pick them up.
“Do you know the meteor that killed the dinosaurs left a line of iridium buried in the earth’s crust all across the planet?” he asks.
“Did it?” Marius asked, watching Daniel rearrange the rocks on his dresser.
“Big events leave their mark,” Daniel says.
Marius sighs. He sits on the bed next to the suitcase and examines the contents, as if worried he’s forgotten something.
Daniel leans against the dresser and smiles at him, hoping he looks reassuring instead of like an unhinged mad man gleefully facing down another apocalypse.
Marius, finally, relaxes his shoulders and smiles back.