FIC: Temptation, PG Temptation By Emerald Embers [email protected] Rated PG for suggested yaoi Fandom: Queen of the Damned Pairing: Marius/David Non-profit fanfiction, please don't sue. Notes: First is that I've gone for the movieverse, but pinched some spoiler-free ideas from the book *ducks tomatoes*. Second is that while the prompt 'Last Red Death' immediately brought up thoughts of turning, the fic itself veered away from the subject.
"Hello David." The accent is strange enough that David picks up on it with four syllables alone, startling him though that is no difficult task after the unsettling but depressingly unsurprising visit paid him by Lestat and Jesse. The visage, though - that is what pins him to his seat, albeit a foot further away from the desk than it had initially been. A face that has fascinated him through the years, changing his path from the art student he was when first he noticed the impossible similarity across centuries - separated paintings to that of a Talamascan. One that has haunted his dreams since that too-brief meeting at Lestat's concert. "Come now, I thought you English knew all the subtleties of being a good host." The over-elaborate speech reminds him of his cousin, a sufferer of Asperger's Syndrome, but he manages to curtail his rushing thoughts long enough to offer Marius the seat he had been sitting in and clear space enough on the table to perch on. He's torn between running, phoning fellow Talamascans, and begging Marius to tell him everything. *Everything*. History lessons on art and life told truthfully, by someone who wasn't guessing from shreds of paper and fragments of pottery. His eyes mustn't be giving away as much as he feared because Marius' question is irrelevant to everything he has been thinking so far. The jumble in his mind would be too much for the understanding of any telepath. *Which Marius is*, he reminds himself, and puts up a mental shield. "You refused the gift." "I did not want it from them," David replies, and nearly curses at the slip. "Vampirism does not appeal to me." "Liar," Marius responds easily, tongue silken as if he'd delivered a compliment. "You spend half your life collecting my work and now act so brazenly foolish? I'm disappointed, David. You know how I love my students." The smile he flashes David is fanged despite the vampiric ability to disguise the length of their canines, a sign of danger and his confidence in David's knowledge. The Talamascan knows alright. He's read and watched through paintings and diaries how Marius loves his students. Painting, seduction, turning, not necessarily in that order. And Marius loves so easily it's a wonder as to why vampires aren't more numerous than humans. "How long have you watched me?" David asks, his thoughts starting to order themselves through that strange calm he often gets in a crisis. "When you came to Italy and began asking every museum curator if they knew of work featuring my face. It's a wonder that you did not spark a national crusade. There are subtler ways to get attention, but your method was endearing." "I did not ask for your attention," David retorts, affronted, but only succeeds in making Marius laugh. The laugh is a chilling reminder of what long term vampirism does - all the human warmth and inflection had long since gone. "So speaks the same young man who trimmed his hair, shaved, and ironed his best suit before turning up to every showing or auctioning of one of my works! I do not recall you turning the same tenderness you used reading my diaries to any pretty art collector." "I was young," David insists, thankful he has never blushed outside of illness in his life. "A genuine supernatural being makes a big impression." "It still does, if your hands are anything to go by," Marius responds and David follows his eyes to see his fingers have indeed been betraying him by stroking the edge of his desk in a manner that could never be taken as obscene, but certainly as suggestive. Words elude him this time. "I believe we should move on to getting you out of those clothes." Words return. With a vengeance. "*What*?" Is the most coherent part of the ensuing splutter as he attempts to say 'no', 'never', 'I'm not that sort of man', and many other statements in the space of one exhalation, all the while fighting the part of him that is still twenty-three and utterly besotted with the vampire sitting in front of him. "I meant you should prepare for warmer climes," Marius explains with a grin that indicates he only said the first part to see David's reaction. "I plan on taking you to Sonoma." "Why?" David decides he can figure out later what made that the first question to come to mind. "I only ever let you see tasters of my work. The best I saved to see your reactions up close." No matter anything else he's thought about the vampire, David has to credit him for being *good*. No one has ever made him an offer this tempting before. "You knew I couldn't resist before you asked, didn't you?" "I had a back up plan," Marius says with a small smile, reaching inside his decadently comfortable-looking coat and pulling out a small Polaroid album. A particular photo already pokes slightly out of its plastic shield and David takes it when the vampire nods permission. Even the enamoured twenty-three year old inside him shuts up and stares at the image. "Is that..." "Louis de Pointe du Lac. You can see why we all talk of him in our diaries." David nods, finds himself reluctant to hand the photo back, but does so when Marius takes it from his fingers. Louis' beauty is incandescent, the sort that burns into your retinas and won't fade. "Do you need to call anyone before you leave? I've already taken the liberty of packing a suitcase for you." "You knew my clothes size?" "I guessed," Marius replies, though his smirk suggests it may not have been so much of a guess after all. “And you’re not the type to take no for an answer.” The vampire shrugs, managing to make the movement look elegantly disinterested. “I could be persuaded.” David’s fingers are telling the truth again, tapping nervous excitement along his table, and he remembers an old friend telling him you spend your last hours thinking about what you didn’t do. Before the sanity in him can speak up he walks behind his desk, picking up his coat and briefcase, and heads for the door. “Are you driving?” Marius grins. “We have a taxi waiting.” It is only on the plane hours later, just shy of English dawn and therefore certain to be dark when they land in America, that David thinks to ask why a picture of Louis was Marius' back up plan for seducing him to Sonoma, failing to see the connection. "I painted him naked." David's laugh matches Marius' grin, and he suspects being turned by this man could be something to desire even now that the twenty-three year old is far behind. - The End
