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AI Fic: A Rush of Blood to the Head 18/24
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
Part Fifteen
Part Sixteen
Part Seventeen



Part Eighteen

David did not like to swear, and it had absolutely nothing to do with his religion. It was just so...just so crude, okay? So nasty and unnecessary, and it was not like Paris and Colton did not give him epic kinds of hassle about it, but David just didn’t like it. It even made him uncomfortable to hear others swear around him. He stressed a little bit about whether this made him a wuss, whether girls like Carmen or even any girls at all would still like him when he just didn’t like to use bad words or posture or do any of the things that other teenaged boys around him did.

And now, in moments like this, David was starting to think that maybe he would be better off if he took up the practice, because he was epic kinds of boned.

David shivered once. Only once, before he caught himself and refused to let another gesture of fear escape him. Probably it didn’t even matter, since his heart was beating so hard that even he could hear it and that meant for sure that the vampires could hear it, also, but he could certainly do his best.

In the front seat, Jason glanced over at him. He was driving far more dangerously now than he had been before, taking corners that would have made even Syesha’s hair go gray. David looked at Jason’s knuckles, clenched so tightly around the steering wheel that they glittered, and realized that he was angry. David could feel the eyes of both of the women in the back seat, watching him. It would have made more sense for him to be in the back with them, probably, where his only way of jumping out at an intersection would have been to climb over a body, but David was very glad that they had not taken this route. He thought that the girls scared him even more than Jason himself did.

Until Jason took the SUV hard around another turn that sent it up on two wheels and made civilians scatter, and David thought that he had underestimated Jason’s own capacity for menace in a fundamental way.

“How do you know that Michael’s not going to be coming after you?” David asked. There was one option, that Michael had died after they had left, but David did not want to think about that.

The corners of Jason’s mouth twitched. He reached over and casually put his hand on David’s arm, rubbing a circle on the skin that probably would have been soothing if it had been delivered by anyone else. Am I giving off a pheromone? David thought, half-hysterically, as he jumped as far back against the door as he was able. David threw a glance over his shoulder at the pavement rushing down beneath the window, wondering if the same trick might work twice. Jason answered by slamming his foot down against the accelerator even harder, until the curb rushing by was a nausea-inducing blur. Meanwhile, Jason’s grip upon David’s arm tightened until David swore that he felt the tendons in his arm grinding against one another.

As much as David had rejoiced earlier to learn that he was not going to be turning into one of them, he would not have minded having some of their strength right now. He stared at Jason very hard and wondered if he had been the one who struck the killing blows, or if it had been one of the women in the back seat, or even some third-party evil that he had not met yet.

Jason’s lips curved. “You think that maybe I killed your friend,” he said. A sharp glance David’s way when David did not answer. “Yes, you do. I can hear your heart speeding up.” Jason looked into the rearview mirror, and David realized that he was making eye contact with Ramiele. She stared back at him without speaking. “I didn’t have to. He’ll come to us.”

“He fought you before,” David said.

“Barely.” Jason grinned at him. He had a lazy smile, soft and slow, that reminded David of all the guys in high school who played guitar in the hallways. Some of them were pretty nice; all of them down to a one had girls swarming across them constantly. The cold light behind Jason’s eyes ruined that image. “You have no idea how close he was to ripping your throat out. I could smell it.” David felt small and cold, but Jason went on. “No one fights the thirst forever. Some of them can hold on longer than others, but they all give in at some point, and they longer that they hold out, the harder they break when it finally comes.” Jason threw him a wicked grin. “Michael’s going to drown people in blood, at the rate that he’s going.”

David stared at Jason and felt very cold. “You’re wrong,” he said, because it seemed like the thing that one of the good guys was supposed to say in situations like this, but also because he believed it. Something had been off about Michael in his apartment, something that David really doubted had to do with optimism. If it came down to kill or be killed, David did not think that Michael would be willing to make that predator’s choice, and not out of a lack of stomach, either.

Jason smiled at David again. Undoubtedly he was thinking that David was a very sweet, naive kid with way too much faith in humanity, and that was fine. David was used to people thinking that he was a kid. Even his own parents had done it. David stared hard at Jason and wondered if he really had it in him, whenever the appropriate time arose, to stop Jason in the most permanent way of all. He wondered if that would make his parents proud of him, or ashamed, to know that their son had it in him to kill.

Just once, David thought. I swear that I’ll only do it once. He clenched the hand that Jason could not see into a fist and struggled to breathe through his nose. It was a calming technique that always did wonders when he was nervous before a standardized test.

David’s thoughts had no opportunity to go any further down this path before he heard a rustling behind him and then felt a cool body draping itself over the front seat and over him, as well. He yelled and jerked away, but the blonde--Jason had called her Brooke, and David had decided that that was way too pretty and cheerful a name for someone who scared the hell out of him so--wrapped both of her arms around his chest so that he could not pull away. Her marigold hair fell all around his face and made it impossible for him to see anyone else. She smelled like shampoo and a light, flowery perfume, altogether so much like Carmen or any of the other pretty girls that he had dated or had crushes on during high school that it made David feel faintly sick to his stomach.

“You’re so cute,” Brooke whispered into his ear before she kissed his cheek. “I could just eat you up.”

“Only if you were very stupid.” It was the first time that David had heard Ramiele speak since he had been retaken. He tried to look through Brooke’s hair and at her, only to discover that there was absolutely no one in her eyes at all. Even the shadows that they had held earlier were gone.

Brooke looked over her shoulder at Ramiele and even managed to look aggrieved. “I was speaking metaphorically,” she snotted. Brooke’s long, slender fingers still stroked at his skin in a gesture of regret. David held himself very still, already realizing that she would get far more satisfaction out of it if she could make him jerk away in fear, and breathed even harder through his nose. It was the same technique that had gotten him through his SATs; he hoped that it was not over its depth here.

“Still,” Brooke said. She ran her thumb over his lower lip. Brooke was hiked so far across the top of the seat that her rear end had to be touching the ceiling, and David wondered if there was any cop, ever, who was actually going to see that as a bad thing and pull them over. “It’s such a shame. Maybe if we boiled it first, or strained it--?”

“Doesn’t work like that,” Ramiele said softly. She leaned forward herself, stared into David’s eyes. Brooke and Jason both were staring at her now. “Viruses hang on tighter than you think.” And she smiled at him. David decided then that he preferred Brooke.

Jason finally slammed on the brakes, so hard that David would have been hurled into the dashboard if Brooke had not had her arms wrapped around his chest. Brooke lost her precarious balance and wound up going over the top of the seat and into his lap, never once loosening her grip upon him. She only transferred it to around his neck instead. David froze with a lapful of very pretty woman and wished that he was anywhere else in the world. He looked out of his passenger window and saw a movie theater that had been closed for years, it looked like, the closest thing to a haunted house that a large, modern city like Los Angeles could possibly maintain.

With the car finally stopped, David was not going to wait any longer for his chance. He grabbed for the door handle without waiting to dislodge Brooke from his lap first. She was light, and she made a very satisfying thump and squawk of surprise when David dumped her down to the pavement. David was caught for a second between running like hell and whirling to fight, the former of which was so strong an urge that he trembled with it. He stood over Brooke with his hands clenched by his sides, and that was when Jason whirled around the SUV, leaping over its hood as if it was nothing more than a crack in the pavement. He grabbed David by the throat and hurled him back against the vehicle so hard that he swore he must dent it.

“Your family didn’t have nearly as much fight in them as this,” Jason said. “Good. I got bored easily.”

Something that was calm and rational and cared about things like what his parent would think of him switched off abruptly in David’s brain. What was left was something that was hot, something that pulsed. David let out a sound that he was shocked to realize was a roar and hurled himself forward, against Jason’s chest. He did not think that he had ever even been in a fistfight before, but that meant nothing, David thought that he could figure out the basics just fine. He snapped Jason’s head back and made a sound that was nearly a scream before he was yanking his hand back for another try.

Jason laughed. He caught David’s fist and squeezed with enough force to let David know that it would not take him any effort at all to crush it before he was jerking David forward and into the recesses of the theater itself. Over his shoulder, Jason said, “There can be no blood, and we’ll have to be very careful of what we do with the body.” He looked at David. “You should be proud of yourself, you’re an evolutionary step up. The only human that we’ve ever known who has blood poisonous to us.”

“Does that mean that we can’t have fun first?” Brooke asked, looking at David with hungry eyes.

“Of course not,” Jason said, while David thought of his family and continued to ride a wave of fury and grief so strong that it made it difficult to think of anything else at all.

End Part Eighteen

Continue to Part Nineteen