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Entry tags:	american idol: fic, flyboys

AI Fic: A Rush of Blood to the Head 7/24
TITLE: A Rush of Blood to the Head
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: R
PAIRING(S): Michael/David
DISCLAIMER: This is a wild-ass AU. Nothing that happens in it is true.
SUMMARY: There’s someone in Los Angeles who could change the dynamic of vampires versus humans forever. Naturally, both sides want him dead.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Due to subject matter, most of the details of David Archuleta’s family have been changed.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six



Part Seven

The kid was messed up pretty bad. Syesha guessed that it would be a far bigger sign of wrong if he could be anything close to functional right now, seeing his whole family dead like that, but there was no denying that what he was was altogether still pretty hard to look at. She and Carly had managed to get him out of the house, somehow, and into the car that waited outside. It had involved doing a lot of touching of everything inside the house that was doubtless going to be crawled all kinds of over by the cops in a few hours, but she and Carly had both been off of the grid for years and hadn’t had anything in the way of criminal records before that. Their prints would turn up nothing. The kid’s was something different, but it was his house, they were supposed to be all over the place. They were hopefully going to be able to turn him loose again as soon as they figured out what it was that had the leeches so fired up to kill him, and Syesha really hoped that they could let him go towards a future as a victim rather than a suspect. He had been rolling with everything pretty well, all things considered, though Syesha hadn’t thought that he had quite managed to believe them on the vampire front just yet. He deserved better than what he had gotten so far. Just about anyone did.

The kid shrugged off Carly’s attempts to nudge him back into the front seat with her and crawled into the back instead. He lay down immediately. Carly stood at the curb looking slightly helpless; she and Syesha had both known without speaking that now was not the time for the implied force that had gotten the kid cooperating with them earlier. “Sweetheart,” she tried.

“Leave him alone,” Syesha said quietly as she shook the keys in her hands. There were still traces of vampire blood under the nails that she had not managed to wash off in the bathroom. She and Carly were leaving the corpses of the leeches up there. Someone would come along and deal with them before anyone ever managed to really look at them and catch a clue. Someone always did. “He doesn’t want to be touched.”

“I don’t want him to jump out at an intersection.”

Syesha took a look at the kid in the backseat and made note of the hunched shoulders, the staring eyes. He probably saw it all, all over again on a clip show that he could not turn off, every time that he closed them. “He won’t run,” she said. “He’s not up to it.”

Carly nodded and chewed at the edge of her thumbnail for a moment before she looked at the house again and shook her head. “Let’s get out of here.”

The car was a black Ford that was just starting to creep into hoopdie territory--the sleek, masculine machines that dominated movies took up money that was better used keeping them in food, weapons, and information--but it still made hardly any sound at all as it pulled away from the curb. Carly blew out the air in her lungs on a long sigh and rubbed her hands over her face. Syesha caught her throwing several glances at the kid in the rearview mirror before they had even managed to get a full block away. That was a thing about Carly; when someone was hurting, she couldn’t manage to stop worrying about them until they shared their pain with her.

Even, Syesha thought, remembering the way that she and Carly had been snapping at each other earlier, when they really wanted to share their pain with her by smacking her right in the face.

“That was messed up,” Carly said in a low voice. Syesha immediately reached out and flicked on the radio so that the conversation would be even more between the two of them, though she doubted that the kid was up to either listening or caring in the first place.

“We knew that it was probably what we were going to find,” she said softly. Neither of them had known any way to tell the kid that would not result in him freaking right the fuck out before they ever got to the house, even if they had been able to find a way of doing so that would not have been unconscionably cruel.

“Doesn’t make it any less messed up.”

“No,” Syesha sighed. “It doesn’t.” She happened to glance back herself and caught the kid looking directly at her. There was way too much in his eyes that she was not ready to see. Unnerved, she looked away. “David say what his deal was?” Carly looked at her. “Oh, please, like the two of you don’t tell each other things all the time that you don’t tell me.”

“Not about the work.” Carly sounded hurt that Syesha would even consider it. She sighed. “He said that he wanted to check out a few more things at the club before he left. I think he suspected one of the victims of being bitten.”

“Shit.” That meant only one outcome.

“Yeah.” Carly leaned her head against the passenger window and watched suburbia whip by until it was becoming city again. “I used to want to be a singer,” she said. It was such a strange pronouncement, and made with so little in the way of warning, that Syesha was not at first sure that she had heard her right.

“Really?” Syesha took her eyes off of the road for a dangerous amount of time so that she could watch Carly nod. “Me, too.” And then vampires had happened, and knowing that they existed had a way of eating up every other ambition outside of trying to make sure that as many of them as possible stopped existing.

The kid made a snuffling noise in the backseat. Syesha glanced back in alarm, but he had not started to cry. Might be better for him if he did. Easier said than done, Syesha knew. He didn’t make any other sounds until they were pulling into a slightly seedy warehouse in a slightly seedy part of town, where the cops didn’t come until they had at least three cars available. It made it much easier for Syesha, Carly, and David to work; everyone who walked around here looked as if they had faced the choice between being predator and prey and decided on the option that would let them live. The kid sat up and looked around at his surroundings with a dull interest.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asked.

“No!” Carly twisted around in her seat and stared at him. “Sweetheart, why would you think that?”

The kid lifted one of his shoulders into a shrug. “You’re letting me see your faces,” he said. “You’re letting me see where you live. Makes sense.”

Syesha put the car into park and gestured for Carly to get out and pull the big metal door open so that she could drive the car into the warehouse’s interior. Carly gave her a dubious look, and Syesha knew that she was thinking that Syesha was not exactly the most nurturing presence that had ever walked the planet. “Please.”

“Don’t traumatize him,” Carly said softly before she obeyed. Any further, hung unspoken in the air.

Syesha twisted around in her seat when Carly had gone. The kid watched her with as little interest as he could possibly manage without outright being a corpse. “My full name is Syesha Mercado,” she said. “Hers is Carly Smithson, and the guy you saw with us earlier? His name is David Cook. What’s yours?” They hadn’t even bothered to ask him, earlier. Syesha was startled by the pang of guilt that she felt over that. I am a machine.

“David,” the kid said. Syesha thought for a second that he was only repeating after her, and wasn’t it great if they had to contend with all of this and a teenager in the middle of a nervous breakdown, before he added, “David Archuleta.”

“Two Davids,” Syesha said as Carly got the door open and waved for Syesha to drive the car inside. “All right. Do you mind if I call you Archuleta?”

He shrugged. “I don’t care about anything right now.”

Syesha shut the car’s engine off as Carly pulled the door down behind them and was startled by how dark it was in their space, how powerfully uninviting. She knew where Archuleta was right then. She knew it intimately. And she knew that she could not help him.

Carly, walking back up to the vehicle, gave Syesha as shocked and disapproving look as Syesha leaped out of it like she had been burned. “What are you doing?” she asked. “The boy needs help.”

“His name is David,” Syesha said. “Archuleta.” She saw Carly register a brief moment of shock that Syesha had been capable of even that much civil human contact. Syesha was surprised, too, and thought that she needed to take a shower in order to scrub it off. Whatever Carly and David might think, damn it, she was maintaining, and that was so much better than flying apart in the way that she dearly knew that she could if she was given the right opportunity.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Syesha heard Carly saying behind her as Syesha turned her back and paced away. “Let’s get you a change of clothes and something to eat.”

“I’ll throw up all over your carpet if I eat.”

“Actually, all that we have is cement, so that’s no problem.” Carly was doing her very best to sound soothing, even to sound cheerful, and it was making Syesha clench her teeth against one another. She could only imagine what it was doing to Archuleta. You couldn’t do that, she wanted to tell Carly. You couldn’t be kind like that, even though it seemed like the most logical thing to do, because when someone’s entire world had just been shattered, it was the kindness that hurt most of all.

Syesha dropped the arms that she hardly even realized she had folded over her chest and turned around. “Do as she says and take a shower,” she told Archuleta in a voice that brooked no argument. His eyes flashed with resentment, but he still nodded. Carly gave Syesha a look promising that they were going to be discussing this as soon as Archuleta was out of sight; she didn’t understand. “Hot water’s that way.” Syesha pointed, and again she did not frame it as a request. The boy went, listing slightly from side to side as he walked. There was hardly any blood on him at all, but Syesha still knew that he would want to burn his clothes.

“Are you trying to be a bitch, or is it just your happy place these days?” Carly exploded as soon as Archuleta was out of hearing range. Syesha startled backwards before she could stop herself. Even though Carly had been applying increasingly less care towards handling Syesha with kid gloves as Syesha had proven over and over again that she was not interested in Lifetime-moment working her way through what she was going through, that was harsh even for her. And she didn’t look sorry for it seconds later as she folded her arms over her chest and glared.

“He doesn’t need you to hold his hand, Carly,” Syesha said flatly.

“Christ, he just lost his entire family, I think a little empathy might be in order.”

“Empathy means that you understand what he’s going through,” Syesha corrected. “And you don’t. I’m sorry, Carly, but you don’t.”

Something went off in Carly’s eyes, and Syesha dearly wished that she had the opportunity to kick her own ass across the room. “So you think that he needs to go through it like you are?” Carly asked.

Before either one of them could say what Carly was so clearly thinking, that Syesha was not a good model for anyone’s behavior right now, Syesha spun away and dug out her cellular phone so that she would not have to meet Carly’s gaze any longer. She dialed in David’s number and raised the receiver to her ear. He was probably going to be so surprised that she was the one initiating contact with another person that he would fall right over.

“David,” Syesha said when the phone went straight to the simple voicemail that they all employed, a number and nothing else. He would have naturally turned it off if he was in the middle of delicate work, so that the ring could not either distract him or warn his prey. “We got the kid, don’t worry about that.” She hesitated, trying to figure out how to phrase the next part, because David took a civilian death even harder than she and Carly did. “Not so much luck on his family, though. Still don’t know why the leeches wanted him.” Syesha hung up without saying another word, trusting David to get the message whenever he was done dealing with their bitten civilian. She turned around. Of course Carly would still be standing there and staring at her with the expression which clearly said that she was just itching to save someone.

“Don’t,” Syesha said, holding up a finger, and turned to go back to her room. Her guns needed cleaning.

She was still there half an hour later, perched on the edge of the bed that she could not fully bring herself to relax in, when she sensed someone standing in her doorway. It did not even require conscious thought before the gun in her hand was pointing unswervingly at the person’s face and her finger was curling back against the trigger. Kid was lucky that he didn’t get his face blown off in the amount of time that it took for her mind to catch up to her reflexes and, panting and lowering the gun back down into her lap, Syesha wondered if maybe that was not the point. Surely not. Surely not, so quickly, when the grief was so fresh. There wasn’t enough of him functioning again yet to make that kind of a plan.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Syesha asked him when she found her voice again. “You really think that it’s safe to sneak up on people with guns in their hands?”

“Sorry,” Archuleta said without looking as if he was really sorry in the slightest. He hesitated in the doorway, as if he thought that she was going to yell at him again, but still unable to make himself leave. Syesha caught him glancing up once and narrowing his eyes in confusion as he caught sight of her window with its fresh planks of wood hastily nailed across it, but he did not ask. Smart kid.

“Why aren’t you with Carly?” Syesha asked him. She could not look at his eyes any longer, so she lowered her head to her weapons again. A glance upwards showed her Archuleta shrugging.

“She’s nice,” was all that he said.

Yes, she was. Maybe Syesha understood exactly where Archuleta was coming from with that one. She looked up at him once more, considering, before she scooted to the side slightly to make room for him. She didn’t intend to issue any further invitation than that. The bed hardly dipped beneath Archuleta’s weight at all, as if Syesha needed any further reminder that he was still a boy far more than he was a man, and that the last vestiges of his childhood being cruelly ripped out from underneath him didn’t change that.

“What are vampires like?” Archuleta asked her in that soft voice, as if he still thought that maybe she was going to scream at him and order him out of her room at any moment. When Syesha looked at him, he clarified, “Do they fear crosses, or can they turn into bats...?”

“No crosses, no bats,” Syesha said shortly. “They drink blood. They can’t handle daylight. They’re allergic to silver.”

“I thought that was werewolves.”

“That’s what you get for watching movies. Pay attention.” Syesha picked up one of the bullets that were piled beside her thigh. “Very allergic. You get one of them in the heart with a bullet or a silver stake, and they’re going down. End of story. If they manage to pull the bullet out before particles of silver hit the heart, then you’re not even going to have time to run. Beyond that, beheading and fire are your best bets. They heal very quickly, they’re strong and they’re fast, and they give less of a shit about your life than you give about your breakfast cereal.” Syesha paused so that she could weigh out her next words carefully and keep her voice from shaking. “They look like people, but they’re not. That’s just a trick, like you’ll see mockingbirds imitating other birds. They pretend to be people so that they can get close to their prey.”

Archuleta had gone rigid beside her. Syesha was certain that he was thinking about his family, and how they had all died in their beds. They had not had a chance to be lured in by a ruse; the leeches had simply taken what they wanted and moved on. “Why do they want me?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Syesha said, because comforting lies were Carly’s department and Syesha herself had never had the gift.

Maybe Carly was right, maybe there was a time to lie even if both parties knew that that was exactly what was happening, because Archuleta’s face crumpled and his entire body seemed to grow smaller right before Syesha’s very eyes. “Then they died because of me.” He put his face into his hands and finally started to let out the sobs that must have been making his chest feel like it was three sizes too small for everything that it had to contain ever since they had left his house. It was a wrenching sight, and Syesha thought desperately to herself, I am a machine, I am a machine, to absolutely no effect. She cast a wild look towards her partially open door, but Carly was nowhere in evidence.

She had never been a nurturer by heart, but she was certain that there had been a time when she was not so ineffective as this. Syesha carefully gathered up all of her weapons and set them to the side before she finally put her arm around Archuleta’s shoulders and pulled him close to her. Archuleta’s body went rigid for barely a second before he was melting against her and grabbing for her shoulders with both hands as if he thought that the comfort was going to be taken away and he had best suck up as much of it as possible while he could. Syesha rested her chin against the top of his head and wrapped her arms around him in what had to be one of the most awkward hugs in the history of the practice. She could feel his tears soaking into the shoulder of her shirt.

“No, kid, no,” she whispered without even being sure that he could hear or process what she was saying. “You don’t get it yet. They’re like dogs. They don’t think. Your family was attacked by dogs, there’s nothing different that you could have done.” She didn’t believe it, not even for a second--there was a mind and a person behind what Ramiele was doing, how she was taking the hunter that she had once been and twisting it--but Archuleta did not need to know that. Maybe Syesha could still pick up the knack for the comforting lie, if she tried hard enough. She tightened her grip around Archuleta as his entire body shook and made soothing sounds that didn’t have to mean anything at all, even rocking back and forth slightly on a rhythm that she half-remembered from being so much younger than Archuleta himself.

He cried for longer than Syesha would have thought any one person to be able to cry before they critically dehydrated themselves, and that in turn drifted into a restless sleep so subtly that Syesha herself barely noticed it. She eased him back down to her bed with care not to wake him and then stood there for several minutes, staring and unsure of what she was supposed to do. She could hardly be the giver of comfort; she was not even sure that she was still a person.

In the end, Syesha pulled her room’s single chair up close to the bed and sat down in it. She could keep watch, and when the kid woke up she could still do her level best to lie and tell him that everything was going to be all right in the end.

End Part Seven

Continue to Part Eight