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AI Fic: A Rush of Blood to the Head 9/24
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
Part Eight



Part Nine

David followed the directions that the club manager had given him and found himself sitting across the street from a nice-looking apartment building less than two hours before dawn would arrive. He sat low in his seat and felt terribly exposed like this, waiting for Johns to arrive back home again from the hospital. This was a fairly nice neighborhood, better than what David would have expected a struggling musician to be able to afford. It was the type of neighborhood where prowlers were reported by concerned neighbors. David really did not want to get into a physical thing with a cop tonight. It would shoot his plan all to hell, and besides: even if there was no way in hell that the average beat cop could really know what was going on in the world unless they were crooked and in on it--David had known it to happen, cops giving the leeches an inside line on prostitutes, homeless, people they knew would not be missed--they were still part of the good guys. It would be the absolute perfect cap to a crappy night, David thought, having to hit one of the good guys in the face.

“Nothing that you can do about it,” David muttered to himself, sinking down a little lower still as a drunken couple walked by on their way to their own unit, giving him a curious look as they did so. If he didn’t watch it, he was going to be the crazy guy who was clearly also not where he belonged.

Finally, blessedly, a car pulled to a halt in the lot of Johns’ building. David watched as he got out accompanied by a blonde woman; they joined hands before heading up. The mystery of the nice place was on its way towards being solved, at least.

David waited for several minutes after they had gone up before he got out of his car and, looking cautiously both ways for witnesses first, loped across the street. He hated what he was about to do more than he hated every other aspect of this job by a long mile, definitely, but he told himself that Johns was already dead, his body just didn’t realize it yet. And maybe by taking him out now David was going to be saving the life of that pretty lady that Johns was living with and God only knew how many other people besides.

“Whatever helps you sleep,” David muttered to himself. Johns’ unit was easy to find, and the lock was a joke. David knew by now that people did not tend to keep nearly the eye out on their own security that they ought to, even before they knew about the various things that bumped in the night while David and the girls did their very best to bump back, but come on. This was just asking for trouble. Maybe that would work in his favor. Maybe the police would look at the lock and just think that this was a home invasion gone wrong. Maybe the pretty lady could tell herself that, too, to help her believe that there was nothing that she could have done to prevent this. David really wished that Johns had lived alone. He hated to bring loved ones into this. The pretty lady was in no danger from David’s hand--he knew damned well that the only reason that this was acceptable was because Johns was now on an unavoidable crash course towards becoming a leech himself--but David was still going to leave a mark on her for life with what she was about to witness, and that put a sour taste into his mouth.

David stood in the center of the living room after he had gained entrance and swore softly to himself as he looked at the way that the decor was mingled between masculine and feminine and the way that the happy couple was featured together in pictures, and realized that it was even worse than he had thought. Finding an actual wedding picture on one of the shelves was just a bonus.

The only thing that could have made his night even better were the sounds that David started to hear coming from the bedroom less than a minute later. He rolled his eyes up towards the ceiling and mouthed, “I hate you,” to God before he drew his weapon and made his way slowly down the hallway. David stopped in front of the door, honestly not sure which course of action he should take next. Killing the man in the middle of lovemaking seemed unconscionably cruel, not to mention an excellent way to send his pretty wife straight into a lifetime of therapy and anxiety medication.

So you’re going to what? David’s mind chose the moment to pipe up for him helpfully. Let him have his happy ending first? The gravity of the situation altogether was the only thing that kept David from having to bite the inside of his hand, and hard. There were days when he thought that he was doing a good thing with his job. There were days when it sucked so hard that he thought settling down near the equator--try to fight the light there, bloodsuckers--would not be the single smartest thing that he had ever done. Forget days, this was going to be one of those weeks.

David stayed poised on the walls of his feet in the hallway, listening to the sounds of two people making love while he held a weapon of death in his hand, unable to bring himself to quite go in and finish the job. He thought about what seeing her husband die in front of her would do to the pretty blonde, because he did not want to think about the man himself, who had saved David’s life earlier in the night, was well on his way towards becoming a monster, and had to die.

No one does this job because they enjoy it. Not for long. After they reach that point, burnout does not take long to follow.

David spun around, fought back the urge to punch the wall, and then turned back again as the sounds from the bedroom changed. It didn’t sound as if the occupants of the room were having fun any longer. David nearly rushed into the room then and there, only to stop himself just in time. The change could not nearly be wrought yet. It generally took a few days; fine, so long as he continued to hear two voices rising and falling together, he would hold his place. When one of those voices shifted and sounded as if it was coming towards the door, David thought that he was getting his first lucky break of the night. He raised his gun in front of him and drew his finger back on the trigger.

Michael Johns--David had been very carefully not saying the man’s name, even to himself, as he struggled to keep someone that he knew that he was going to have to kill from fully becoming a person to him--exited his bedroom without a stitch of clothing on his body. He was soft, unused to fighting, David knew immediately. The body had seen a gym recently, but it still took him a full three seconds to realize that there was a man standing in the shadows of his hallway at all, and longer than that to notice the gun.

Johns reeled back as soon as he noticed that David was there. He had a half-erect member, quickly deflating. It really hadn’t been going well in there, David told himself. “What the fuck--” The Australian accent made David pause, but only for a moment.

“Shut up,” David told him. “Do not say one single word.”

“Michael?” the woman called out from within the bedroom. “Are you all right?” David winced. This was going to be difficult enough when he was just Johns, if he was allowed to become Michael it was going to be nearly impossible.

Michael stared at David hard before he yelled back over his shoulder, “I’m fine, I just stubbed my toe. I’ll be in with that ice in a minute.” To David he continued, his voice low, “Whatever you want, man, you have it. Just say the word.”

“This isn’t about money,” David told Michael. He gestured back over his shoulder towards the living room. “You keep any clothes in there?”

“Stacey’s a neat freak.” Michael made an abrupt gesture back over his shoulder towards the bedroom, only to still when the gun jerked in David’s hand. He was already seeing better in the dark. “You’re the guy from the club, aren’t you?” When David didn’t answer, Michael went on, “Look, whatever this is about, let’s keep it between you and me, okay? My wife doesn’t have to be a part of it. She doesn’t have anything that you’d want.” Michael seemed to realized, belatedly, that there was one thing that a man breaking into an apartment where a woman was present at night might want. Even in the shadows, David could see his face whiten. “She doesn’t have anything that you want,” Michael repeated.

“Michael?” The woman again; Michael had called her Stacey. She was starting to sound a little panicky.

Michael turned towards the bedroom again before he could stop himself. David knew that he needed to end this now, with one quick jerk of his finger against the trigger, and yet he couldn’t seem to make his finger move. “She’s going to miss me in a second,” Michael told David softly. He was holding his hands out in front of him slightly, like David was a frightened animal that needed soothing before it hurt someone. David stared at the neat white bandage that was wound around Michael’s forearm. It was the only thing covering his nakedness. “Just take whatever you it is that you want, okay? This doesn’t have to end ugly, I don’t even have to tell the cops that I saw you before. Just take whatever you want.”

“Into the bedroom,” David said.

Michael’s face changed. “No,” he said, and David didn’t get the feeling that he was being bargained with any longer. “No, she’s not a part of this.”

However, David had not been negotiating to start with, and when it all came down to the nitty-gritty, he was the one holding the gun. “Now,” he said softly, raising it. “If you don’t , I’ll blow your head off right here in this hallway.” And leave without hurting another soul, too, but Michael did not know that. David saw his throat working as he considered further defiance, only to turn and go.

“Promise me that you won’t hurt her,” Michael told David over his shoulder before he pushed the bedroom door back open.

“Promise me that you won’t make me,” David said, and saw Michael’s eyes change as he considered the statement.

The wife, Stacey, had one of her legs over the side of the bed, halfway through getting out herself, when they reentered. “I thought I heard you talking to someone,” she started, and then lurched back into the bed again with a small scream as she saw David behind Michael. Her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide, she whispered around her fingers, “Who are you? What do you want from us?”

“It’s going to be okay, Stace, shh.” Michael leaned over his wife to soothe her, tilting his face towards the bedside lamp as he did so. He probably didn’t even realize that he was doing it, and Stacey was riding the edge of panic far too hard to make note of such details, but David saw: the way that Michael turned his face away from the light just slightly, the way that his hand could not help stroking the place where Stacey’s pulse ran in her throat as if he was fascinated by it. However much David might have been wishing for a miracle so that this situation would not end in one grim and bloody way, it was clear that he was not going to receive it.

I should end this, David told himself. I should end this right now. The wife was irrelevant; all that mattered was how many people Michael was not going to be able to kill once the inevitable took place. David leveled his gun at Michael’s back and Stacey, happening to glance over his shoulder at the opportune time to make note of the gesture, screamed again.

Michael whirled, raised his hands. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Look, I keep telling you, whatever you want in this place is yours, please, you don’t have to do this.”

He sounded so much like a person when he pleaded with David like that. Because he still was, David realized, for however little much longer that was going to mean. He wasn’t a vampire quite yet. David didn’t have the authority to do what he was about to do. It was a cheap excuse, and David had a feeling that it was going to be called out as such as soon as he presented it to the girls, but at the moment it was a lifeline to a drowning man.

“Get some pants on,” David ordered Michael shortly. “You’re coming with me.”

Michael actually considered the offer, actually fucking mulled it over like they were deciding where to eat dinner, before he shook his head. “If I go anywhere with you, I don’t think that I’m coming back alive.”

He was smart. He wasn’t smart enough to have any idea of the full reasons that he was not going to be coming back, but there was definitely a brain working in that head. David took a moment, and not for the first time, to wish that vampires only chose the stupid, the corrupt, to turn into their own.

David’s palm was slick, his finger was shaking against his trigger, and he absolutely did not have time for any more of this horseshit. Without saying a word, David turned the gun so that the barrel had to be the largest thing in Stacey’s whole world. She started to scream again before abruptly swallowing it back, a funny, pinched sound.

All of the fight left Michael as if David had physically beaten it out of him. “All right, all right, you win,” he said, holding his hands up to David again. David read a different message in them this time: please don’t, please don’t. He didn’t feel good about having the power firmly in his grasp at long last; power like this over another person wasn’t anything for any decent being to relish. He felt soul-sickened.

“Michael,” Stacey whispered as Michael went to one of the dresser drawers and retrieved a pair of drawstring pants. She looked terrified. She also looked angry. David was surprised with every moment that a lamp did not come at his head. “Michael, you’re not going to come back.”

“It’ll be all right, Stacey,” Michael said. He was speaking to her but looking at David, as if asking if David really intended to make a liar out of him. “Don’t worry.”

Stacey pressed her lips into a thin line and then whirled on David. “What kind of sick fuck are you?” she demanded, leaning over the edge of the bed and not seeming to notice that David still had a gun pointed at her and had not given any indication that he wasn’t still ready to use it. “What do you want from us?”

“Ma’am,” David said, and there was something of steel in his voice that made Stacey lean back abruptly. “You get your ass back and don’t move it again.” Michael went even more tense, but David was not in the mood to care. He gestured towards the door with his gun. “Let’s go.”

Michael went ahead of him, but not before throwing a significant look that he surely thought that David did not see over his shoulder. There was a phone on the bedside table. David had no doubt that Stacey would be lunging for it as soon as they were out of sight.

“I need shoes,” Michael said when they were in the darkened expanse of the living room.

David was almost going to refuse, counting down the seconds in his head until the police arrived, before he remembered that he had seen some glass in the parking lot outside. “Quickly,” he said.

Michael went to one corner of the living room, David following closely after him, and retrieved a pair of running shoes that had been thrown there carelessly. David tried not to show how much that small proof of disorder, that there were actual people living here, affected him. “No,” he said as Michael started to sit to put them on. Tick, tick, tick, if Stacey was not already dialing for help, then Michael had married a fool. “You can put them on outside.”

Michael paused in order to give David an unreadable look--and David did not think that he was imagining things when he said that Michael’s eyes were already starting to gleam faintly in the shadows, like those of a cat--before he nodded. His entire body was written into a line of tension as he walked away of David to the door. David touched the muzzle of the gun to Michael’s back once and watched him jump as they made their way to the ground floor, a reminder to him to behave himself. He had little doubt that Michael was actually going to obey for long. It was written into every inch of the way that he carried himself that he was only waiting until they were far enough away from his wife to avoid putting her in further danger.

“Put your shoes on here,” David said after they had made it outside by some small miracle without any of the building’s other tenants seeing them. He shoved Michael into the shadows of the alley beside it. This was a nice place, certainly better than a lot of them where David had gone hunting, but he still saw Michael’s nose wrinkle slightly as he stepped away from the streetlights. Michael balanced his back against the brick to steady himself as he put the shoes on. David watched the muscles in his shoulders and back flex while he stepped back and kept the gun trained. It was more than just a pretty visual; it also let him know exactly what Michael was going to do.

Michael hardly had the last shoe laced before he launched himself forward and off of the wall, head down, in a blind attack. From the very first second that Michael had spoken, David had known that he was not American, but now he wondered if the man had not developed a fondness for American football since being in the States. It was very brave; the man had clearly been in fights before. He had also just as clearly never been trained to do more than use his height and size as blunt weapons and hope for the best. David stepped to the side in a move so light that it could have belonged to a dancer and brought the butt of his gun down hard into the base of Michael’s neck as he passed. Michael staggered but did not go down, and the fight still had not left him yet. He turned for another round; this time David put the butt of the weapon into Michael’s mouth. David didn’t put all of the force into it that he could have, deliberately checking himself so that he would not break any of Michael’s teeth even as he knew that these bursts of hesitation when dealing with a monster in the making were not going to end well. It was still more than enough to slam Michael’s lips back against his teeth, bloodying the lower one and sending Michael colliding back hard against the opposite wall. David followed and had forced the gun into the hollow behind Michael’s chin before Michael had time to do much more than breathe.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” David told him in a grim voice as Michael went immediately still. From far away, he heard the first wail of police sirens.

“Why not?” Michael asked him. He was playing nicely for now, in deference to the gun, but David could already see that the fight was not even close to gone from him yet. And, strangely, David liked that. He wanted to know that this man was at least going to put in a good fight before the virus in his blood took him, even if David already knew that there was only one way for it to end. “You’re going to kill me, anyway.”

It was not just the gun that was keeping Michael subdued. David realized that he was also leaning up against Michael’s body and keeping him pinned to the wall with his own weight, and that the night was cold. Michael was starting to shiver; his body heat bled through David’s clothes like standing next to an oven. That part was predictable, too.

What was not predictable was the way that David had to abruptly suck in his breath and lean away. “Then live for as long as you can,” he said.

End Part Nine

Continue to Part Ten