Ficlet: The Wolf and the Vampire
Fandom: Original
Word Count: 636
Pairing: implied Darius/Rowe
Summary: Banishment is the worst, for wolves. To be banished is to be without pack, and to be without pack is to lose one's self to the wolf inside. But Rowe... learns to adjust. With help.
Banished. It was something he never thought he’d be, he who was one of the earliest wolves, who was one who put together the very laws they all lived by. But the laws were ever only as good as the alphas, and his alpha banished him. Cast him out, for refusing to follow.
So he went.
This land was still so new, still so strange. It was barely touched by axe and by plow. He found he loved it, loved the wildness of it, loved the fact that he could still make camp, strip off his clothes, and leap through the brush for nights upon nights and still not come across humans.
But he was a wolf, not a vampire, not a dragon. He was not a solitary creature, to love the silence. At night, he put his head back and he howled, low and mournful, and in the morning he trudged back to his campsite and curled up in the clothes that held scent memories of his pack, of his beloved, of the world he had lost and the world he could no longer regain.
It was many months, almost a full year, into his exile that he first heard sound that did not come from his own throat or paws, that did not come from the wild around him. He stood up from his camp - little of it remained that would mark it was human-made at one point, long ago - and stood, poised, ready to leap away should a threat make itself known, but instead, the brush parted to reveal…
Vampire. Darius.
“I should have known I would find you lying about in your own filth,” Darius sniffed. His neat waistcoat and trousers were out of place in the West, and the wolf wondered how this vampire evaded the native tribes that did not take kindly to outsiders traipsing through their woods. Then again, for all that Darius was stuffy and fussy, he was a fighter to the core.
“Well? Transform!” Darius said imperiously, and before the wolf could think it responded instinctively to the authority in Darius’s voice, body twisting painfully until he shivered in the cold fall air, human once more.
Darius delicately crouched down, perfectly balanced, and ran a gentle hand over the man’s sweat-soaked shoulder. “What did your pack do to you?” he murmured.
“Dar-i-us,” the man whispered back, voice rough from disuse all these months.
With a sharp nod, Darius stood and made his way back the way he had come, disappearing in the greenery.
For a while, the man shivered on the ground, uncertain whether he’d hallucinated the vampire’s appearance or not - but it was dark, not daylight, and he was in human form, not wolf.
Then an imperious voice called out, “Well, will you remain there all night? My wagon and horse are here, and tomorrow you can start building me a proper home.”
It took him a few tries to remember how to work human limbs, and he stumbled and staggered about the dilapidated camp, gathering up the bits he would definitely need (like underclothes and trousers and suspenders) before tripping through the brush towards Darius’s voice. When he came out into the clearing, his shirtsleeve shirt ripped and torn, fingers aching from the cold, Darius was sitting near a fire. The vampire looked up and shook his head. “What a mess you are, Rowe.”
And reminded of his human name, of his human nature, Rowe stepped into the light of the fire and sat down beside his closest and dearest friend, the reason he’d been cast out from his pack. He had never expected Darius - perfect, fussy Darius - to follow him away from the colonies to here.
“Not as bad when you’re here,” Rowe replied roughly, just to see those fangs glint in Darius’s smile.
Word Count: 636
Pairing: implied Darius/Rowe
Summary: Banishment is the worst, for wolves. To be banished is to be without pack, and to be without pack is to lose one's self to the wolf inside. But Rowe... learns to adjust. With help.
Banished. It was something he never thought he’d be, he who was one of the earliest wolves, who was one who put together the very laws they all lived by. But the laws were ever only as good as the alphas, and his alpha banished him. Cast him out, for refusing to follow.
So he went.
This land was still so new, still so strange. It was barely touched by axe and by plow. He found he loved it, loved the wildness of it, loved the fact that he could still make camp, strip off his clothes, and leap through the brush for nights upon nights and still not come across humans.
But he was a wolf, not a vampire, not a dragon. He was not a solitary creature, to love the silence. At night, he put his head back and he howled, low and mournful, and in the morning he trudged back to his campsite and curled up in the clothes that held scent memories of his pack, of his beloved, of the world he had lost and the world he could no longer regain.
It was many months, almost a full year, into his exile that he first heard sound that did not come from his own throat or paws, that did not come from the wild around him. He stood up from his camp - little of it remained that would mark it was human-made at one point, long ago - and stood, poised, ready to leap away should a threat make itself known, but instead, the brush parted to reveal…
Vampire. Darius.
“I should have known I would find you lying about in your own filth,” Darius sniffed. His neat waistcoat and trousers were out of place in the West, and the wolf wondered how this vampire evaded the native tribes that did not take kindly to outsiders traipsing through their woods. Then again, for all that Darius was stuffy and fussy, he was a fighter to the core.
“Well? Transform!” Darius said imperiously, and before the wolf could think it responded instinctively to the authority in Darius’s voice, body twisting painfully until he shivered in the cold fall air, human once more.
Darius delicately crouched down, perfectly balanced, and ran a gentle hand over the man’s sweat-soaked shoulder. “What did your pack do to you?” he murmured.
“Dar-i-us,” the man whispered back, voice rough from disuse all these months.
With a sharp nod, Darius stood and made his way back the way he had come, disappearing in the greenery.
For a while, the man shivered on the ground, uncertain whether he’d hallucinated the vampire’s appearance or not - but it was dark, not daylight, and he was in human form, not wolf.
Then an imperious voice called out, “Well, will you remain there all night? My wagon and horse are here, and tomorrow you can start building me a proper home.”
It took him a few tries to remember how to work human limbs, and he stumbled and staggered about the dilapidated camp, gathering up the bits he would definitely need (like underclothes and trousers and suspenders) before tripping through the brush towards Darius’s voice. When he came out into the clearing, his shirtsleeve shirt ripped and torn, fingers aching from the cold, Darius was sitting near a fire. The vampire looked up and shook his head. “What a mess you are, Rowe.”
And reminded of his human name, of his human nature, Rowe stepped into the light of the fire and sat down beside his closest and dearest friend, the reason he’d been cast out from his pack. He had never expected Darius - perfect, fussy Darius - to follow him away from the colonies to here.
“Not as bad when you’re here,” Rowe replied roughly, just to see those fangs glint in Darius’s smile.