“How are you feeling?” Daniel, gentle and attentive Daniel, asks him. He turns over on his stomach, hugging two pillows as he watches Marius sort around their clothes looking for Daniel’s scarves and the sweater his companion always says Marius looks especially good wearing.

Marius turns to look at him, a calm smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes. “What do you mean?”

Daniel breathes out a chuckle. “I mean what I asked. How are you feeling? About… Y’know, all that we learned last night, your maker is alive, blah blah blah.”

“I’m alright, Daniel,” Marius replies and knows it doesn’t fool Daniel in the slightest, the ingle blonde eyebrow raising on his lover’s and the slight tilt of his head face tells him that much. “You needn’t worry about me.”

“But I do,” Daniel rebukes easily. He sits up and scoots over, waiting for Marius to come and join him, which he does in barely a second’s wait. “It’s common to worry when you love someone, to care about their feelings abd such. I don’t know if it wasn’t like that when you were born back when Jesus wasn’t even a thing.”

Daniel shrugs and a cheeky smirk fights its way onto his face. Marius knows he’s taunting him, Daniel tends to do so when the topics start to get too sensitive for either of them. It’s his way to try and coax Marius to open up when he’s feeling gentle, when he doesn’t want to upset him even though Marius had never outwardly shown him any annoyance — Daniel knows though, Daniel can tell when the slight line between his eyebrows denounces anger, that wretched feeling, even if Marius doesn’t reprimand him, isn’t cold and cutting, Daniel knows.

When he cares more about the answers than the consequences of asking is when the usual bombarding of — very direct — questions happens.