InsaneJournal

Current mood:	geeky
Entry tags:	american idol: fic, flyboys

AI Fic: A Rush of Blood to the Head 14/24
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
Part Ten
Part Eleven
Part Twelve
Part Thirteen



Part Fourteen

David did not think that his heart was going to stop hammering like a caged bird within his chest at any point, ever, until he was actually dead. A second later, he realized that this was probably not the best course for his thoughts to be taking, and he twisted his hands nervously by his sides. The heavy arm thrown around his shoulder took a moment to rub at his upper arm, in what David presumed was supposed to be a gesture of comfort. It was Michael, and David did not tell him to stow it until his body had stopped throwing off heat like leaning over a stove and his skin had maybe managed to look like that of a living person again, realizing that this was a cruel thing to say to someone who was never going to ever look like a living person again, ever. That did not mean that David did not want to say it, though, or wonder why he was being so nice to Michael even though Michael was going along with these other, full-fledged vampires without protest. The arm remained even after David finally tried to shove it off, and after a few seconds David realized that Michael had been beset by a fine, all-over trembling.

He’s almost as scared here as I am, David thought, and decided a second later that there were two things that he could take from this. One, he really wanted to know Michael’s secret for staying so outwardly calm when David could think of nothing other than crawling into a corner and staying there as the prelude to the lifelong therapy that he was going to be enjoying if--when, when, don’t let yourself start thinking like that or it’s all going to be over--he got out of this. And two: from where David was standing, Michael was well on his way towards being a monster who would probably rip David’s throat out and use the blood to distress his jeans. (David refused to think of what this meant for him, him with his burning puncture wounds driven into his shoulder, directly where Michael was resting his arm.) The fact that he was scared did not say much for David’s continued ability to avoid losing his mind in the slightest.

Because he’s only partway towards being a monster. David swore to God that he was going to put a screwdriver through his ear if his brain did not stop with that kind of helpful interjections, and he was going to do it soon. The people who have you right now are the real deal. David could not stop himself from making a small and not manly in the slightest sound from the back of his throat, making every less-than-human eye turn towards him. Screwdriver straight into the squishy parts, he swore.

“It’s okay,” Michael whispered to him as David was dragged rapidly out of the warehouse by the four, at least three of which didn’t seem to mind in the slightest that they were leaving a good dozen or so of their fellow vampires in there with a group of people who really enjoyed killing those fellow vampires. The only one among them who glanced backwards and seemed to be anything at all who resembled worried was Michael himself. David thought that maybe he was worried for the actual, non-murderous humans who had been left behind in there, but it was a little late for that after he had thrown himself in with the people-eaters in the first place.

“You’re not going to make a very good bad guy,” David whispered to Michael. He first realized that this was mean, and then decided that he was far past the point of no return if he was worried about the feelings of a soon to be vampire, when Michael went even paler.

“People can surprise you,” the thin, pretty blonde with the wide mouth whispered to him as he was shoved roughly into a black SUV that was waiting for them at the curb. The blonde scrambled around to the other side before David could think of bolting out that way. Michael followed afterwards, his reluctance palpable, so that David was left sandwiched between them while the one that he had heard Cook referring to as Jason and Ramiele, the one who had everyone so upset, filled the front seat. Between the blonde and Michael, David could not help but note the difference between them. Michael’s skin was so hot that David could hardly stand to brush against it and wondered how it was that Michael could even like in it, while the blonde was like...

Like a corpse.

She was cool, growing even cooler as the SUV’s air conditioning kicked in when Jason peeled them away from the curb, and slightly clammy to the touch. David leaned as far away from her as she could, even if that did leave him no other choice than remain shoulder to shoulder with Michael. Michael shifted so that he could rub at David’s arm. As much as David wished that he could appreciate Michael’s attempts at comfort, he felt more exasperated than anything else.

“Aren’t you pretty,” the blonde whispered to him. The streets of Los Angeles whipped by behind her, the lights transforming her dandelion hair into a halo around her head. She reached out and drew long, delicate pianist’s fingers across his jaw and then down to his neck, starting to stroke down against his chest where his ripped shirt left it bare.

“Hey!” David yelled, and knocked her hand away. The blonde actually giggled, and David realized for the first time just how terribly in over his head he was. Maybe he would even be better off if they just killed him over whatever it was that had them so interested in the first place, before he could turn into the thing that was making Michael burn and shake beside him.

“Why don’t you knock it off?” Michael growled from the other side of David. He reached out, snake-quick, and snatched up the blonde’s arm when she reached out to stroke David again. “Or do you guys list pedophilia on your resumes, too?”

I’m eighteen, David could not help but think, even though he was not going to turn down anything that would make that blonde...thing stop touching him.

“I don’t think that I fought it as hard as you did,” the blonde said as she withdrew and stared at Michael. David could feel Ramiele watching him through the rearview mirror suddenly, but he stubbornly refused to look her way. “Had a lot more fun, too.”

“I don’t want to have fun,” Michael said shortly. His shaking beside David grew even more pronounced, and David could not help but think for a moment, Did you forget the part where I’m here because of you?

“Forgive Brooke,” Jason said from the front seat. He was indisputably a better driver than was Syesha, remembering that the brakes were more than just a funny spare pedal in case he broke the gas, but that did not soothe David in the slightest. “Sometimes she doesn’t know how to contain herself.” Brooke smiled her wide smile at David again. Michael tried to put his arm around David once more, but this time David threw him off.

“Why couldn’t we just kill him back there?” Ramiele interrupted. This time David had no choice but to look her in the eyes. Jason and Brooke each had absolutely no one standing behind their eyes, but Ramiele was worse, because in Ramiele David swore that he could still see the shadows. “Why did we have to go on this extended nonsense in the first place?”

“We couldn’t risk spilling his blood,” Jason cut her off in a curt voice. Ramiele arched an eyebrow at him that made her look much larger through the power of her menace than she actually was physically. “Too dangerous.”

“Look,” David said. He had little hope of it actually working, but everyone was running around and shoving him back and forth as their own personal chess pieces with such enthusiasm at this point that he did not believe he really had that much to lose. “Okay, if someone could just slow the fuck down--” He was as amazed to hear himself actually swear as Michael was, blinking slowly at him as if he was having to replay it within his own head before it made sense. “And tell me what’s going on here, maybe we can figure something out.” Jason looked at David through the rearview mirror. David kept his face very still and took deep breaths though his nose so that Jason would not be able to detect what David was really thinking. And then after we work it out, I’m going to kill you and scatter you in so many pieces that they’ll never find all of them. Such violent thoughts might have shocked and frightened him once, but that was before he had found his baby sister and both of his parents dead within their own beds.

“You’re going to appreciate the irony of this, I hope,” Jason said to him. He continued to watch David through the rearview mirror, still driving so effortlessly that David half-wondered if there was not an extra set of eyes hidden beneath all of that hair. “But you probably never would have come to our attention in the first place if you had not gone to that blood drive.”

“I did that so that I could get into a good college!” David blurted. Okay, not really, he had done it because it was going to help people, but he didn’t think that this was a motive that the people in this vehicle with him were going to think was just the neatest thing that had ever happened on the planet. The looks that he was being given all the same did not suggest that they were altogether impressed with a desire for higher education, either. Michael tightened his grip on David’s arm. David tried to fling him off, but this time Michael hung on.

“That is so sad,” Jason said with great finality before he finally twisted around and began to watch the road again.

Brooke reached out and began to touch at David again, ignoring all of his attempts to throw her hand away. She ran her fingers through his hair like he was a pet, which coupled with the way that she was looking at him made David seriously wonder about the fate of her childhood animals.

“Will you stop that already!” David finally cracked and yelled at her.

Brooke jerked back only far enough to give him time to draw a full breath and then realize that he had just screwed himself over so epically hard before she said in a conversational tone, “You little bitch.” Brooke’s hand cracked out almost faster than David’s hand could follow and struck him hard enough to knock his head to the side and send him tumbling back against Michael. Michael caught him, but David was not in the mood. He elbowed himself back up on a burst of rage that would have stunned him if he had time to think about it and would have thrown himself at Brooke if Michael had not grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and yanked him back again. David would have accepted a vampire’s strength in that moment, if for no other reason than so that people would stop doing that to him.

“Leave him alone,” Michael ordered Brooke in a low voice that sounded wrong, and David realized seconds later that he was actually hearing Michael growl. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that twin trails of blood were trickling down from Michael’s lower lip, consequence of the punctures that his set of honest to God fangs had pierced there.

“It’ll be easier when you stop fighting it,” Brooke cooed at Michael over David’s head. David had the feeling that he had stopped being a person to Brooke altogether several minutes before. “Just roll with it, darling, and let it roll over you, too. It’ll feel so much better once you’re done.”

Michael was every bit as pale as Brook herself by this point, but he didn’t look like a corpse, as she did. He looked as if he was still fighting it. David was not in the mood to appreciate such small favors at this point. “I don’t want to,” he whispered. Brooke’s smile to them both said that he would.

“I could have broken his neck,” Ramiele said in a conversational tone as she continued to stare at him through the rearview mirror. “That would not have left one single drop.”

Dead, David thought in her direction. You’re so dead, I swear--

“No,” Jason ordered in a voice that brooked no argument. Brooke and Ramiele both looked at him; David began to get the feeling that Jason’s control over the little group was not nearly as strong as he wanted to believe.

“I can do all kinds of things that wouldn’t spill,” Brooke said. Her tone was pitched so low that it was surely only meant for herself, but in the vehicle it echoed.

Michael went rigid beside David, and his trembling stopped. It was the only warning that David got before Michael was grabbing him by the back of the neck again, only this time there was a thumping and clicking sound that was undeniably that of someone working at the door’s latch.

“We’re still moving!” David had room to cry before the door was yanked open and he, leaning over Michael’s body, was treated to a violent view of the street rushing along merrily beneath the SUV’s wheels. He closed his mouth before he managed to swallow his own tongue as Jason felt no need whatsoever to even touch at his brakes and Brooke shrieked and scrabbled at his back from behind. Michael snarled at her again, a sound that made David sure that he was just screwed no matter which way he turned tonight, before he tightened his grip on David even further.

David was not sure whether he should be glad or sorry that he had not bothered to put on his seatbelt as Michael wrapped his other arm about David’s midsection and ejected the both of them out of the car without another second’s warning. He dimly thought that he heard a screaming noise behind him of Jason finally deciding to hit those brakes, but it might have been inside of his head. Everything else in his world was a swirl of lights, darkness, lights again and honking horns behind them as Michael wrapped his body around David’s in a primitive sort of shield so that they could strike the pavement together. David still first grunted and then yelled in pain even with Michael’s body taking most the punishment as every bone in his body felt as if it was being shaken straight out of its respective socket and then dropped back in again while he and Michael rolled to the curb together. Several different cars screamed to a halt behind them and drivers popped out of their cars to help.

It helped David more than anything else possibly could have, in that moment, to know that there were still Good Samaritans in the world, but a little mental stability was the biggest gift that he could ask for. He felt Michael pausing and knew what the man was thinking, but said quickly, “If they try to help me, they’ll only get killed.”

Michael was able to radiate pity like microwaves across a span of eighteen inches and without saying a single word. “Come on,” he said finally. Rather than grabbing for David, he extended his hand down to David to help him up. “We have to leave.”

Right. There was still the small matter of the bloodsucking, sadistic murderers behind them. David tried to stand and then sat rapidly back down to the curb again as his legs scolded him for trying anything that resembled movement again so quickly. He didn’t think that he was hurt--Michael if anything appeared to have taken the worst of their high-speed tumble--but his head was spinning rapidly as his inner ear tried to decide which way was up.

“Oh, my God!” a woman who looked like someone’s mother cried as she popped out of her sensible, mid-sized sedan. “Are you boys hurt?”

Get away from me before you wind up in a body bag, was what David thought. What he said was, “We’re fine, we’re okay,” while Michael looked at the woman in faint amusement that she could call him boy with no trace of irony. It was David’s experience that to women like that, everyone who pinged them in an even remotely maternal way was going to be a boy, even if they were sixty-five and balding.

“We have to go,” David whispered to Michael. “Before your friends have a chance to double back.”

“They’re not my friends,” Michael answered, and then seemed to realize that arguing to a kid at least a decade his junior while they were being pursued by vampires bent on killing one or both of them was maybe not the best use of time. “Let’s go.” He grabbed for David’s hand again, and if his grip was initially too strong, he realized this within a second and loosened it. David followed him at a stumbling run past a run-down convenience store, a car lot that made David think that he would be better off riding his bike, and finally into an alley that seemed to be deserted, at least for the moment, though there was a smell about the place which made David think that more than a few deals in sex and drugs were made here. There was a liquor store on the other side, and the light over its back door cast down a feeble yellow circle which allowed David to get a good look at his would-be rescuer. He wasn’t better off having stayed in the car, not even seeing an atom bomb strapped around Michael’s waist could have made David think that, but what he was seeing still was not terribly soothing. Sweat ran in droplets down Michael’s milk-white skin, pooling in his spine. David could see them because most of Michael’s shirt had been ripped away in rolling out of the car, and along with that a good portion of the skin that should have been covering his back. He twitched every time that a spare bead of sweat rolled into one of the open wounds. Not for long, though. David could already see the skin closing up from where he stood several feet away.

“Do you have anything at all that resembles a plan?” David asked. He didn’t care if it was mean; he thought that he had been dealing with everything that had happened to him over the past twenty-four hours amazingly well, all things considered, and if Michael was going to run away with murderers only to change his mind, then David guessed that he could deal with his maybe-hostage and maybe-companion being just a little bit cranky.

David was not cut out to be cruel, though, clearly, because Michael braced both of his hands up against the brick wall and then leaned his head down between them like just the act of standing was the most exhausting thing that he had ever done before in his life, and David felt bad immediately. He watched as a few more of the smaller lacerations in Michael’s back closed up and disappeared.

“No,” Michael said finally. “I have absolutely no idea.”

“Are you going to try to stop me if I run away?”

Michael looked at David and shook his head. “They weren’t what I expected.”

“Then I guess that I can stay,” David replied, rather than saying something else nasty. They had been worse than David had expected, too, even knowing that they or something like them were responsible for the deaths of his family. They had been so controlled, when David thought that he would have been able to cope so much better if there had been more frothing at the mouth.

Michael looked suddenly, absurdly grateful to learn that he was not going to be left alone, and David remembered that Michael was turning into a monster, that this was the most terrifying thing that he had probably gone through in his entire life, and that David would not want to be left alone for it, either. He was not about to take Michael’s hand, but he did shuffle a few steps closer, reaching back to run at the shoulder where the virus had started in him. The fall from the SUV, Michael taking the brunt of it or not, had still managed to tear open the bite wounds all over again, and David’s fingers came away wet with blood.

Wait. Wait.

David stared at his hand and a few seconds later actually had to remind himself to blink before his eyes fell out of his head. “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

“What.” Michael had gone back to dangling his head between his arms again, though David could count the muscles in his back and knew that Michael was smelling the blood.

“You look terrible,” David blurted.

“Please tell me that that is not the intellect you brought to your SATs,” Michael said. He still wasn’t looking. He wasn’t seeing.

“But I don’t feel terrible,” David continued, flapping his hands and slinging drops of blood against the cement. He was too giddy to possibly worry about what he looked like from the outside. “I feel like I was bitten on the shoulder, thrown into a mirror, and then dragged out of a car, but that’s all.”

Michael’s head jerked up so that he could scrutinize David hard. David had no mirror with which to view himself, but he already had a good idea what Michael saw. He was pale, probably, but pale from strain and exertion. Nothing at all like Michael’s pallor. He wasn’t sweating. He wasn’t licking his lips almost incessantly like Michael was.

“Holy fucking shit,” Michael whispered. He grabbed at David’s arm to yank him closer, let go immediately when David gasped. Seeing how close Michael was to losing it made David rethink the wisdom of this plan somewhat, but a murderer in process was still better than a group who were already there. Michael was breathing fast as he circled around behind David and stared at the bleeding bite marks in his shoulder. David still, in spite of everything, not stop himself from clapping his hands over his mouth.

“I’m not going to be one of them,” he whispered around his fingers.

“No, it doesn’t look like you are.” Michael touched his fingers lightly to David’s back before retreating again. It was not until David heard the shake in Michael’s voice that he realized that not everyone here was mysteriously immune, and maybe Michael was not able to unambiguously share in David’s happiness with him.

“Do you have a plan yet?” David asked Michael as Michael circled around in front of him.

“Not even the slightest, tiniest bit,” Michael said, but for a second the two of them could still not help but grin at each other. Michael’s was bittersweet, and David felt bad about that, but he was not going to be a killer. Not until he caught up with the things that had murdered his family, he thought, with that edge of violence that managed to both shock and frighten him. And there was a word for what he would do then, but he did not think that it was murder, after all.

End Part Fourteen

Continue to Part Fifteen