Work Text:
The second time Michael Emerson saw David, he almost drove a motorcycle off a cliff.
In retrospect, there had been several opportunities for Michael to make better decisions before they reached that point. The first was probably when he spotted the boys on the boardwalk and immediately started looking for blond hair.
He found it almost embarrassingly quickly.
David was leaning against his motorcycle beneath the boardwalk lights, laughing at something Dwayne was saying while Marko tried to interrupt him and Paul watched the entire exchange with the long suffering expression of someone accustomed to both of them. It was familiar enough that Michael felt an unexpected little spark of recognition.
Then he noticed the girl standing beside David.
Oh.
Michael slowed. She was beautiful, dark haired, dressed in layers that moved around her legs whenever the ocean breeze swept through the boardwalk, and comfortable with the boys in a way that made it immediately obvious she wasn’t some stranger who’d wandered over to talk to the band.
Before Michael could decide why that bothered him, David turned. Whatever Dwayne had been saying ceased to matter. His eyes found Michael almost immediately, went straight to Michael’s ear, and the smile that spread across his face was instantaneous.
“You kept it.”
Michael’s hand rose before he could stop it, fingertips brushing the little dagger dangling from his still-tender piercing. “You gave it to me.”
“Didn’t mean you had to wear it.”
“You want it back?”
“Nope.”
Too fast.
Michael’s mouth twitched. He’d wondered whether David would be wearing something else in the piercing he’d taken the dagger from, but apparently not. The empty hole was visible when David’s hair shifted away from his ear, along with that strange little point Michael had noticed the first night. Not dramatic. Not enough that Michael could be completely sure he hadn’t imagined it beneath the stage lights, but definitely -
David tilted his head, and Michael realized he was staring again.
“Still interested in my ear?”
“No.”
“That’s twice now.”
“I’m looking at the earring.”
David glanced pointedly at Michael’s ear. “My earring is over there.”
Michael hated that this made him smile. He hated even more that David noticed.
The girl noticed too. Her gaze moved between them before settling on David with an expression Michael couldn’t quite read.
“Oh.” David seemed to remember introductions were a thing people generally did and gestured toward her. “Star. Michael.”
Star smiled. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
That was it, and Michael refused to wonder why he felt marginally better now that David had introduced them without attaching any additional word to her name.
He also refused to acknowledge that David looked fucking good.
The jacket from beneath the boardwalk was gone. So were the ridiculous leather pants with the zipper Michael had absolutely not spent any time looking at. Tonight David wore a short black leather jacket open over a pale tank, the hem stopping around his waist, with black leather pants and boots.
Michael’s gaze dipped for half a second.
No zipper.
Huh.
“Looking for something?”
Michael’s eyes snapped upward. David’s eyebrow was raised.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Shut up.”
David laughed. Star looked between them again, and this time Michael was almost certain she was trying not to smile. Dwayne wasn’t trying at all.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Dwayne said, which meant something was absolutely fucking funny.
Michael was considering whether asking would make it worse when David swung one leg over his motorcycle.
“You ride?”
Michael looked from him to the bike. “Yeah.”
Something sharpened in David’s expression. “Yeah?”
“My dad taught me.”
The words came out automatically, and Michael immediately wished they hadn’t. He felt the old ache beneath his ribs almost by memory alone, his body recalling pain that had finally begun to fade. His father had taught him plenty of things. How to ride was simply one of the few worth keeping.
David’s attention lingered on him for a second too long before he smiled. “Good.”
There was something in the way he said it that made Michael’s stomach tighten.
David nodded toward the bikes. “Then come with us.”
Star climbed on behind him without needing to be asked. It was obviously practiced; David steadied the motorcycle while she settled onto the seat, and Star’s arms went around his waist with the casual ease of someone who had done this a hundred times before.
Michael stared.
Not at them.
At the motorcycle.
Obviously.
David looked over his shoulder, straight at him. “Problem, Michael?”
“No.”
That grin.
“Then keep up.”
The engine roared to life, and then David started to sing.
Michael felt the sound before he properly heard it. It was different from the first night. There had been something smooth about David’s voice onstage, something that slipped beneath Michael’s skin before he’d realized he was letting it in. Tonight it came out rougher, lower, with a gravelly edge buried beneath the notes, a growl that seemed to catch the vibration of the motorcycle underneath him and throw it back.
David revved the engine.
His voice seemed to rev with it.
Michael’s pulse jumped.
Paul mounted his bike. Dwayne and Marko followed, the latter already looking like he’d decided whatever happened next was going to be hilarious. David glanced back again, Star’s arms around his waist and his eyes fixed firmly on Michael.
“You don’t have to beat me,” he called.
The engine growled. David smiled.
“Just keep up.”
And Michael, because apparently he had learned absolutely fucking nothing from the first night he met David, got on the bike.
The first few minutes were almost fun.
That was the fucked up part.
Michael knew how to ride. His father had taught him years ago, back when there were still things his father did that could almost pass for normal father son shit if Michael didn’t look too closely at everything surrounding them. How to balance the bike beneath him. How to lean into a turn instead of fighting it. How to trust the machine.
David took off with Star behind him, her arms wrapped easily around his waist as the bike surged forward. Paul, Dwayne and Marko followed, and Michael was left with exactly two choices. Admit that this was insane or twist the throttle.
He twisted the throttle.
The boardwalk disappeared behind them and the night opened. Wind tore at Michael’s clothes and shoved his hair back from his face as the motorcycle vibrated beneath him, and somewhere between one turn and the next he laughed. He couldn’t help it. David was ahead, the short black leather jacket snapping slightly in the wind, Star tucked close against his back, and every so often David looked over his shoulder to check that Michael was still there.
Or to make sure Michael saw him.
Probably both.
David was still singing. His voice threaded through the engine noise so completely that Michael could barely separate one from the other anymore. He felt it more than heard it, the rough vibration running through his chest and down his spine until the motorcycle beneath him seemed to become an extension of the sound.
His pulse climbed.
He accelerated.
David looked back and grinned.
Michael went faster.
The world narrowed to speed and wind and engine noise, David’s voice tangled through all of it. Michael leaned harder into the next turn, adrenaline singing through his veins-
And the road disappeared.
Michael stared at the place where it should have been.
There was nothing there.
For one impossible second his mind refused to understand what his headlight was showing him. The pavement simply ended, giving way to black sky and the darker expanse of ocean far below.
Then his body understood before his brain did.
Cliff.
“Fuck!”
Michael wrenched the handlebars sideways. The back tire slid out beneath him, rubber screaming against pavement as the bike suddenly fought him and momentum carried it toward the edge. His boot struck the ground hard enough to send pain shooting up his leg, but he barely felt it. The headlight swept over empty air, and Michael saw himself going over.
Not abstractly. Not the distant knowledge that he could die. For one horrible instant his mind supplied the whole thing. The motorcycle leaving the pavement, that sickening weightlessness before gravity caught him, the rocks below. His mother getting a phone call. Sam waking up tomorrow and finding out his brother wasn’t coming home.
His hands shook violently around the grips.
Look where you want to go.
His father’s voice.
Of all the fucking things his father had left inside him, that was what surfaced now.
Michael tore his eyes away from the drop. The motorcycle skidded, shuddered beneath him, and stopped.
For several seconds he couldn’t move.
His front tire sat terrifyingly close to the edge. His heart slammed against his ribs, each beat hard enough that the fading injury beneath them seemed to remember itself, and when Michael sucked in a breath he immediately winced.
He was alive.
Jesus Christ.
He was still fucking alive.
Engines stopped behind him.
Michael killed his own and climbed off. His knees felt wrong beneath him, loose and unreliable, and that frightened him enough to turn the rest of the fear into something hotter. By the time he turned around, it was rage.
Star was climbing off the back of David’s bike. David was looking at Michael, his gaze sweeping over him quickly. Face, chest, arms, legs. Checking.
Michael didn’t care.
“What the hell are you doing?! I almost rode off the cliff! You trying to kill me?!”
David looked infuriatingly calm.
“We just wanted to see if you could fly.”
Michael punched him.
His fist cracked against David’s jaw, snapping his head sideways, and pain burst through Michael’s knuckles.
David slowly turned back.
Michael expected anger.
Instead, David smiled.
“I like you, Michael.”
Michael stared at him. There was something bright and delighted in David’s expression, as though Michael hadn’t just punched him in the face but had somehow passed another one of his insane tests. David touched the corner of his mouth, glanced at the trace of blood on his fingers, then looked back at Michael.
“Looks like your dad taught you more than just how to ride.”
Michael’s stomach clenched.
Then he saw movement behind him.
Paul, Dwayne and Marko were spreading out, and the change in them was immediate. Michael’s heart was still hammering from the cliff, adrenaline still burning through his muscles, and now three bodies were moving around him with unmistakable purpose. Paul was quiet, his expression hard. Dwayne had lost every trace of his earlier humor. Marko was watching Michael with something that looked almost eager.
They were surrounding him.
Because he’d hit David.
Some distant, sensible part of Michael’s brain suggested that perhaps fighting three more people immediately after nearly riding off a cliff was not the smartest possible conclusion to his evening. Unfortunately, that part of Michael’s brain was currently being drowned beneath approximately a gallon of adrenaline.
“No.” Michael kept his eyes on David. “Just you… Just you.”
Dwayne stepped closer. “That’s not how it works.”
Fuck it.
Michael turned toward all three of them, spreading his arms. “Fine. I’ll take all of you! You think I give a shit? Let’s go!!”
Marko grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.”
He moved. So did Dwayne. Paul shifted his weight, and Michael raised his fists.
“Boys.”
Everything stopped.
Michael almost didn’t understand what had happened. David hadn’t shouted or threatened them. He’d said one word, and Paul immediately backed off. Dwayne stopped advancing. Even Marko, who had looked approximately half a second away from launching himself at Michael, abandoned it.
Just like that.
Michael kept his fists raised for another second, his gaze moving from Marko to Dwayne to Paul before slowly returning to David.
What the fuck?
“There’s no need for fighting.”
Michael nearly laughed. There was no need for fighting? David had just tried to find out whether Michael could fucking fly by sending him toward a cliff, Michael had punched him in the face, his three friends had immediately surrounded Michael, and somehow David was standing there behaving as though he were the reasonable person in this situation.
Then David came closer.
Michael remained tense as David stopped directly in front of him. There was still the faintest smear of blood at the corner of David’s mouth.
“How would you like to see our home?”
Michael stared.
He should say no. He should get on his motorcycle, go home, lock the door behind him and seriously reconsider every decision he’d made since walking toward David’s stage.
David smiled, and then his hand rose.
Michael saw it coming. He could have moved.
He didn’t.
David’s fingers settled gently against his face, nothing like the ride or the cliff, warm fingertips resting against Michael’s cheek with almost absurd tenderness after everything that had just happened. David’s thumb moved once over his skin, and Michael’s fists lowered.
His heart was still beating too quickly.
For a completely different reason now.
“How far are you willing to go, Michael?”
Michael looked at him. The sensible answer was home. The sensible answer was nowhere with you ever again.
Instead, with David’s hand still against his face and the dagger David had given him brushing lightly against his neck, Michael heard himself answer, “To the end.”
David’s smile widened. He gestured toward the open doorway.
“Atta boy.”
Michael looked into the darkness beyond it, then at David, then at the three boys who had been ready to kick his ass approximately thirty seconds earlier and had stopped because David said one word. Star was watching all of them.
There were roughly a thousand reasons Michael should turn around.
He stepped through the doorway.
The doorway led downward.
Of course it did.
Michael followed David through a narrow passage with Star behind him and the other three boys somewhere farther ahead, their voices bouncing strangely off the walls. He could hear Dwayne laughing, Marko yelling something back at him and Paul occasionally cutting through both. David didn’t explain where they were going, and Michael had already figured out that asking would probably get him an answer like you’ll see, so he wasn’t giving David the satisfaction.
Then the passage opened.
“Holy shit.”
The cave was enormous. Firelight flickered over stone and old furniture, fabric and candles and the accumulated wreckage of what looked like years of people dragging whatever caught their attention down here. Instruments sat among records and speakers, clothes were thrown over chairs, and nothing seemed to belong with anything else except somehow all of it did.
Dwayne swept past him. “Home.”
“This is your home?”
“Our home,” Marko corrected.
Something about the distinction caught Michael’s attention, and he looked toward David. David had already shrugged out of his short leather jacket and tossed it over something Michael suspected was not technically a chair. The pale tank underneath exposed more of his arms and sides, and for just a second, as he turned through the firelight, something shimmered along his ribs.
Michael blinked.
Gone.
David caught him looking. “What?”
“Nothing.”
David smiled, and Michael hated how satisfying it was to finally give that answer back.
Star had made herself comfortable nearby, and Michael watched how naturally she fit among them. She wasn’t hanging around the edges like somebody who had been invited into the boys’ space. She knew where everything was. Marko tossed something at her without warning and she caught it without looking; Dwayne stole it approximately ten seconds later and got kicked for his trouble.
Michael still didn’t know exactly what she was to David.
David drifted back toward him. “You hungry?”
“Is this another test?”
“Everything’s a test with you now?”
“You tried to drive me off a cliff.”
“We wanted to see if you could fly.”
Michael flexed his sore hand. David glanced at it, and his grin returned.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
David leaned closer. “I was thinking it.”
“That’s worse.”
Michael should have felt uncomfortable here. Instead, time slipped, and that was the weirdest part. There was no grand ceremony to being welcomed into their space. Dwayne and Marko bickered. Paul stretched out somewhere nearby, quiet but never disconnected from what the others were doing. Star moved between them easily. Music was always playing from somewhere, and occasionally one of the boys would sing badly enough that David would yell at him to stop murdering the song.
David himself was rarely still. He sprawled over furniture, stole food, shoved Marko when Marko stole it back, leaned bodily against Paul until Paul finally pushed him off. He touched all of them constantly, Michael realized, a hand over Dwayne’s shoulder as he passed, fingers briefly catching Marko’s hair, his knee knocking against Paul, and they touched him back.
Michael didn’t know why he kept noticing that.
Eventually, something changed. The noise quieted, and when Michael looked up, Star was holding a cup.
“What is that?”
David’s eyes met his. “Something special.”
“That answer inspires absolutely no confidence.”
Dwayne laughed.
Michael watched Paul take the cup. Something sharp flashed between his fingers, and a moment later blood welled from his palm.
Michael sat forward. “What the fuck?”
Paul let it drip into the cup. Then Dwayne took it and added more blood, followed by Marko.
Michael looked from one to another. “What are you doing?”
Nobody answered immediately.
The cup reached David.
Michael expected him to take it.
David didn’t.
Marko held it toward him for another second.
“No.”
That was all David said, and Marko withdrew it immediately.
Michael frowned. The difference was impossible not to notice. “You’re not doing it?”
David looked at him. “No.”
“Why?”
David glanced down at the cup. “Mine’s different.”
Michael waited, but David didn’t continue.
“Different how?”
“Very.”
“That doesn’t answer anything.”
“It answers exactly what you asked.”
“No, it-”
Star snorted.
Michael looked at her. “Don’t encourage him.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re laughing.”
Michael looked back at the cup. Three boys had put their blood into it. David hadn’t. Star hadn’t either, but somehow Michael understood that those absences meant different things. He couldn’t have explained how.
David stepped closer, and the playfulness faded from his expression.
“Michael.”
Michael looked at him.
“If you don’t want it, don’t drink it.”
There was no strange weight beneath the words. No music. No pressure.
Just David.
Michael looked down into the cup. “This going to kill me?”
“No.”
Immediate. Certain.
Michael looked up again, and David held his gaze. Michael believed him, possibly because he had already established that he was making terrible decisions tonight, or possibly because despite everything, the cliff included, something in him believed that David did not want him dead.
Michael took the cup and drank.
The taste was metallic enough to make his stomach turn. “Jesus Christ.”
Dwayne laughed. “That bad?”
“You fucking try it.”
Dwayne’s expression suggested that was somehow the funniest thing Michael had said all night.
Michael looked at him suspiciously. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, fuck all of you.”
David laughed.
Michael waited for something to happen.
Nothing did.
He looked down at himself, then at David. “That’s it?”
“For now.”
Michael pointed at him. “See, that’s the kind of ominous bullshit I’m talking about.”
David only smiled.
They didn’t stay in the cave.
Michael wasn’t sure how much time had passed before they were moving again, only that eventually David announced they were going somewhere and everyone else apparently understood where without asking.
Michael did not.
Naturally.
Star came with them, and that mattered to Michael more than he expected. She had been with them all night, on the back of David’s bike, in their home, part of their constant bickering and easy familiarity. When the boys moved, she moved with them.
They walked this time, and Michael heard the bridge before he properly saw it. Metal, wind, the distant vibration of something enormous moving somewhere along the tracks. Then the structure emerged from the darkness.
Michael stopped. “Oh, absolutely fucking not.”
Marko laughed.
David kept walking.
Michael looked up at the bridge and then down at the fog swallowing everything beneath it. “The hell are we doing?”
Marko turned around, walking backward with a grin. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I wasn’t until you said that.”
“You’re one of us now.”
Something about the words made Michael’s stomach tighten, but before he could ask what the hell that meant, Dwayne was climbing under the tracks.
Michael stared. “What are you doing?”
Marko followed, and the two of them climbed beneath the bridge until they were hanging from the structure over the fog.
Michael’s heart lurched. “Guys?”
Dwayne looked toward the others. “Brothers!”
Paul answered immediately. “Brothers!”
Marko laughed. Star grinned. Michael looked at David and found him watching Michael.
Then a train whistle split the night.
Michael jumped as the tracks beneath his feet began to vibrate and a distant light appeared. “Oh, fuck.”
The rumble grew.
“There is a fucking train coming!”
Nobody moved.
“Guys!”
Marko looked down.
Then let go.
Michael’s stomach dropped. “NO!”
Marko vanished into the fog, his scream following him down, not terrified, but joyous.
Michael stared into the place where he’d disappeared. “What the fuck?!”
Dwayne laughed.
Then he let go too.
“DWAYNE!”
Gone.
Michael turned wildly. Paul was already climbing beneath the tracks, and so was David.
“No. No, what the fuck are you doing?”
Star moved toward the edge, and Michael caught her wrist.
She stopped.
Actually stopped.
She turned back, and Michael stared at her. “Don’t.”
Star’s expression softened. Then she carefully pulled her wrist from his hand.
“It’s okay.”
“How is this okay?”
She smiled and climbed down beside David.
Michael could hear the train now, not somewhere in the distance but coming. The bridge trembled beneath his feet as Paul hung over the void with David beside him and Star on David’s other side, three silhouettes suspended above nothing.
Michael’s lungs tightened.
David looked up. “Trust me.”
Michael laughed breathlessly. “You have got to stop saying that!”
David smiled. “All you have to do is let go.”
Paul did.
Michael lunged forward instinctively. “Paul!”
Gone.
Another joyous scream disappeared into the fog.
The train whistle shrieked closer, and Michael looked toward the light before snapping his attention back to David. “David, the train!”
David didn’t look at it.
He looked only at Michael.
“Michael Emerson.”
Something about hearing his whole name made Michael go still.
“The world isn’t weighing you down anymore.”
David smiled at him, not the wicked smile from the cliff, but something softer. Almost proud.
Then he let go.
“DAVID!”
David vanished.
Michael scrambled to the edge, but there was nothing beneath him except fog.
Then Star looked up.
For one second they stared at each other, and Michael shook his head. “Star.”
She smiled. There was something beautiful about her expression. Not frightened. Not trapped.
Free.
“Come with us.”
Then Star let go.
Michael watched her disappear, and suddenly he was alone.
The bridge shook beneath him.
Michael looked toward the approaching train. “Oh, fuck.”
There was no time to think anymore. He climbed, hands closing around cold metal as he lowered himself beneath the tracks, his legs dangling over the fog. Immediately every instinct in his body screamed that this had been a terrible idea. The void pulled beneath him, his fingers tightened, and below him voices rose through the fog.
“Michael!”
Marko.
“Michael!”
Dwayne.
Then Paul.
Star joined them until his name became a chant.
Michael’s hands were sweating. He adjusted his grip and immediately realized that had been a mistake when his palm slipped half an inch. He gasped, clamped down harder and felt the bridge begin to shake violently beneath the approaching train. His arms burned. The whistle screamed.
I’m going to die.
Again.
Jesus fucking Christ, again.
He had already seen his own death once tonight, the cliff, the ocean, his mother’s face appearing in his mind before he’d even stopped moving. Now there was a train above him and nothing below.
He could climb up.
No.
He couldn’t.
The train was too close.
“Michael!”
Their voices came from below. Impossible. He couldn’t see them, couldn’t see anything.
“Michael!”
The train whistle became deafening.
Michael braced himself.
And suddenly
Silence.
Not quiet.
Silence.
The world disappeared. No train. No wind. No chanting. No bridge groaning beneath his hands.
Michael opened his eyes.
Fog moved beneath him, and his own breath sounded enormous.
Then David spoke.
“Let go, Michael.”
Michael froze.
The voice didn’t come from below. It didn’t come from anywhere. It was simply there, around him, behind him, inside the fog, against his skin. Michael’s heart slowed. That should have frightened him. Instead, the panic began draining away. Not disappearing.
Changing.
David was down there. Paul, Dwayne, Marko, Star. All of them had let go.
All of them were waiting.
Michael looked at his hands and thought of David beneath the boardwalk.
How far are you willing to go?
His own answer came back to him.
To the end.
Michael inhaled.
Then opened his fingers.
For one horrifying instant gravity took him. His stomach shot upward, the bridge vanished and fog swallowed him.
Michael waited for impact.
It never came.
Michael opened his eyes.
He was floating.
His body hung weightless in the fog, arms suspended slightly away from his sides. He wasn’t falling. He wasn’t holding anything. There was nothing beneath him.
And he wasn’t falling.
“What the fuck?”
Laughter burst through the fog as Marko shot past him.
Michael yelled.
Dwayne appeared on the other side, upside down for no apparent reason, while Paul drifted into view considerably more gracefully.
Then Star emerged through the fog.
She was flying.
Michael stared at her. “Oh my God.”
Star held out her hand, and Michael took it. She pulled,and Michael moved.
“Holy shit.”
Star laughed, and then another hand caught his. Michael knew who it was before he turned. David, blond hair whipped around his face as the fog thinned around them, and Michael could see the smile already forming.
David raised an eyebrow. “Told you.”
The cliff.
Michael’s mouth fell open. “You motherfucker.”
David laughed. “You can fly.”
“I punched you over that!”
“I remember.”
“I almost died!”
“But you didn’t.”
Michael swung at him.
It was considerably less effective while floating.
David caught his wrist, laughing, and Michael couldn’t stop himself from laughing too. Then the others surged upward around them, Paul, Dwayne, Marko, Star, and David’s hand tightened around Michael’s.
Together, they flew.
By the time the initial terror wore down into something dangerously close to exhilaration, Michael still didn’t understand how he was doing it. Every time he thought too hard about the fact that there was absolutely nothing beneath his feet, his stomach dropped and his body started doing something stupid, but apparently thinking less was the trick. Relax, lean, want to go somewhere, and somehow his body followed.
Dwayne had taken this as an invitation to make everything worse.
He came barreling past Michael hard enough for the displaced air to buffet him sideways, laughing as Michael swore and fought to right himself. Marko shot after him, Paul following at a much more leisurely pace, while Star floated nearby with her hair streaming around her face. She looked different up here. Lighter somehow. Not physically, although, Jesus Christ, they were all physically lighter at the moment, but freer in a way Michael couldn’t quite put into words.
David was watching him again.
Michael caught him doing it and immediately pointed. “No.”
David’s eyebrows rose. “No what?”
“Whatever you’re about to say.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Bullshit.”
David smiled, and Michael’s stomach did the stupid little flip it had apparently decided was going to be a recurring problem around him, but he elected to ignore it. Or, at least try to.
“Okay.” Michael spread his arms, nearly rolled sideways because apparently that mattered, corrected himself with a muttered curse and tried again. “Can somebody please tell me what the hell is happening?”
Dwayne swooped back toward them. “You’re flying.”
“Thank you, Dwayne.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I wasn’t thanking you.”
“You said thank you.”
Michael looked at Paul. “Does he ever stop?”
“No.”
“Hey.”
Michael laughed despite himself, but the question remained. He looked around at all of them, the boys suspended in the night like gravity had simply forgotten they existed, Star as comfortable in the air as she had been on the back of David’s motorcycle, David looking entirely too pleased with himself and suddenly remembered the cup.
His smile faded. “Wait.”
David noticed immediately. “What?”
“Theblood.”
Nobody needed him to clarify.
Michael looked toward Dwayne, then Marko, then Paul. He remembered each of them opening his palm, remembered the blood dripping into the cup, remembered drinking it because apparently meeting David had temporarily destroyed whatever survival instinct Michael had once possessed.
“You gave me your blood, I drank it, and now I’m flying.” Michael looked down at himself and immediately regretted it because the ground was still much too far away. “So either I hit my head when I almost went over that cliff and I’ve been unconscious ever since, or there is something seriously fucked up happening here.”
Marko grinned. “Definitely fucked up.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
Michael looked at David. “So what exactly are you?”
The boys exchanged glances.
That was never fucking good.
Michael groaned. “Oh, come on. I drank the blood. I jumped off the bridge. I think I’ve earned one straight answer tonight.”
It was Star who finally gave it to him.
“They’re vampires.”
He looked at her, then at the boys, searching their faces for the first crack of laughter. Dwayne was smiling, but Dwayne seemed to smile at nearly everything, so that told him absolutely nothing. Marko looked delighted by Michael’s confusion. Paul simply watched him.
David didn’t look amused at all.
Michael laughed once.
Nobody joined him.
His laughter died. “No.”
Dwayne’s grin widened.
“No,” Michael repeated, because apparently saying it twice might make reality reconsider. “You’re not.”
Paul’s face changed.
Michael jerked backward so quickly that he nearly flipped himself over. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
Fangs.
He stared at Paul until Marko laughed and showed him his. Dwayne followed with entirely too much enthusiasm, clearly enjoying himself now, and Michael suddenly found himself surrounded by three sets of teeth that very effectively answered the question of what had been in that cup.
“Oh my God.” Michael dragged both hands over his face. “Vampires. You’re fucking vampires.”
“That’s what she said,” Dwayne pointed out.
“I thought she was fucking with me!”
Star laughed at that, and Michael looked at her. “Wait. They’re vampires?”
She caught the emphasis immediately. “I’m not completely turned.”
Michael stared at her.
Star hesitated for only a moment before showing him the points of her own fangs. They were unmistakable now that Michael knew what he was looking for, but there was something about her that was still different from the boys.
“I’m half,” she explained. “I drank the blood, but I haven’t completed the change.”
“Like me.”
Star nodded. “Like you.”
That should probably have been the moment Michael panicked.
Maybe the panic center of his brain had simply burned itself out for the evening. There had been the cliff, the blood, the bridge, the falling, the flying, and now the revelation that vampires were not only real but Michael was apparently halfway to becoming one. There was only so much existential horror a person could experience in one night before the brain started throwing up its hands and going, Fine. Sure. Vampires. Whatever.
Michael breathed out slowly. “So Paul, Dwayne and Marko are vampires. You’re half. I’m…” He grimaced. “Apparently half.”
“For now,” Star said carefully.
Michael’s eyes snapped toward her. “For now?”
“We can come back to that.”
“Oh, we’re absolutely coming back to that.”
He turned toward David.
And stopped.
Because there was still a problem.
Michael looked at him for several seconds, letting everything he had learned rearrange itself around the blond asshole floating comfortably in front of him. Vampire explained the blood. Vampire explained the flying. Vampire explained why David had been so spectacularly unconcerned about jumping off a bridge. It probably explained the teeth Michael had occasionally thought looked just a little too sharp and maybe even some of the other little things he’d noticed without knowing he’d noticed them.
It did not explain David.
Michael’s eyes narrowed.
David recognized that look. “What?”
“No.”
David’s mouth twitched. “No?”
“I’m not done with you.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“Exactly. You’re hoping I won’t notice.”
David’s expression became carefully innocent.
Michael pointed at him. “That. That shit right there.”
“What shit?”
“Whatever else you’ve got going on.”
Dwayne made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh being strangled before it escaped. Michael glanced toward him, and Dwayne immediately looked away.
“Oh, fuck you. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Michael turned back to David. Now that he knew what three ordinary, Jesus, ordinary vampires, what the fuck had his life become, looked like, all the discrepancies seemed more obvious. He remembered the first night he’d seen David under the stage lights, when something along his exposed sides had caught the light in flashes of blue and green and violet. Michael had assumed glitter. Of course he’d assumed glitter. David was singing shirtless enough to make the distinction between clothing and accessories largely academic. Body glitter had been a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Except Paul didn’t shimmer.
Neither did Dwayne or Marko.
And then there were David’s ears. Michael’s gaze flicked toward them without meaning to, and David noticed instantly, tipping his head just enough that his hair fell closer around one side.
There.
That was interesting.
“Your ears.”
David’s expression went flat. “What about them?”
“They’re pointy.”
Marko snorted.
David shot him a look.
Michael’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, so we’re touchy about the ears.”
“We’re not touchy about anything.”
“You just tried to hide one.”
“I moved my head.”
“You moved your head because I looked at your ear.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“I am currently floating thirty feet above the ground after drinking vampire blood. My standards for what counts as imagining things have changed dramatically.”
Star laughed hard enough that she drifted sideways.
David looked betrayed. “You’re supposed to be helping.”
“I am helping.”
“Who?”
“Michael, apparently.”
“Thank you,” Michael said.
“You’re welcome.”
David muttered something Michael didn’t catch. Then Michael remembered the other thing, and his amusement faded.
“The singing.”
That changed David.
It wasn’t dramatic. If Michael hadn’t spent an unreasonable amount of the last two nights watching David’s face, he might not have seen it. But he had, and he did.
David became still.
Michael thought back to the stage, the crowd disappearing around him until there had seemed to be nothing in the world except David looking at him. Then the motorcycles, David’s voice dropping into that rough, growling register that somehow seemed to blend with the engine vibrating between Michael’s legs until speed had felt less like a choice than a need. And the bridge. Michael hanging over the void with the train screaming toward him, terrified enough that his fingers had hurt from gripping the metal.
Then David’s voice had come from everywhere.
Let go, Michael.
And the terror had receded.
Michael stared at him. “That’s not vampire shit.”
David said nothing.
Michael looked toward Paul. Paul’s silence told him enough.
“Yeah. Thought so.”
David sighed.
Michael drifted closer. “So what are you?”
“I’m a vampire.”
“No shit. We’ve established that.”
David’s mouth twitched.
“But there’s something else.”
Another silence settled between them. Michael waited, for once not filling it. David looked briefly toward Paul, Dwayne and Marko, and there was something in the glance Michael didn’t understand. The boys weren’t laughing anymore. They weren’t worried exactly, but they were attentive in a way they hadn’t been a minute earlier. Star knew too, of course she did, she clearly part of the group.
Finally David looked back at him. “Part siren.”
Michael blinked. “A what?”
“Siren.”
Michael knew the word. That wasn’t the problem. His brain simply wasn’t prepared to attach it to the blond vampire in front of him.
“As in…” Michael gestured vaguely toward the ocean. “Siren?”
David’s expression suggested Michael was already dangerously close to saying something offensive. “Yes.”
Michael stared at him, then at his ears, briefly down at his sides, and back at his face.
“Huh.”
David’s eyes narrowed. “What does huh mean?”
“I’m processing.”
“Process quieter.”
That made Michael smile. “So that’s what the shiny stuff is.”
David’s expression tightened again, and Michael noticed immediately.
“Those are scales?”
David hesitated, then nodded.
Michael thought of the flashes he’d seen beneath the stage lights and suddenly felt incredibly stupid. “I thought you were wearing body glitter.”
There was one perfect beat of silence, then Dwayne exploded. He folded around himself in midair, laughing so hard that he began losing altitude. Marko immediately joined him, and even Paul turned his face away, shoulders shaking. David looked like he was reconsidering the merits of having a family.
“It looked like glitter!” Michael protested.
That objection only made it worse. Star was laughing now too.
Michael pointed accusingly at David’s torso. “You were onstage! There were lights! What the hell was I supposed to think?”
“Not body glitter.”
“Well, I didn’t have vampire-siren hybrid on my list!”
David folded his arms.
Michael looked at him for another moment.
Then something clicked.
“Wait.”
David’s eyes closed briefly.
“The voice.”
“Yes.”
“The thing that happens when you sing.”
“Yes.”
“The motorcycle.”
David opened his eyes.
Michael knew immediately. “That was you.”
“Partly.”
“What does partly mean?”
David didn’t answer quickly enough.
“David.”
“I can influence people.”
There was no teasing in his voice now, and Michael’s smile disappeared.
“How?”
David looked uncomfortable with the question in a way Michael hadn’t seen before. Not embarrassed. Not frightened. Something more complicated.
“I can make things louder.”
“What things?”
“Things you’re already feeling. Wanting. Fear sometimes. Desire. Excitement.” David paused. “I can push.”
Michael’s mind went immediately to the stage. “You pushed me.”
“Yes.”
Again, the answer came without an excuse.
Michael swallowed. “How much?”
“Not as much as I could have.”
“That isn’t exactly comforting.”
“I know.”
Michael hadn’t expected that either.
David looked at him steadily. “The first night, when you came toward me, I used it. Then I stopped.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see what you’d do.”
Michael frowned.
“Without it.”
Oh.
David’s mouth curved just slightly. “You kept coming.”
Michael felt heat crawl up his neck. “Fuck you.”
David’s smile grew wider.
“Shut up.” Not the best response, but the only one Michael has. But he couldn’t leave it there, because there was another memory pressing forward now.
“The bridge.”
David’s smile tightend. Michael remembered the impossible silence beneath the tracks, the train bearing down on him and his hands aching from how tightly he’d been holding on. He remembered David’s voice coming from everywhere at once, wrapping around him through the fog, and the terror that had been consuming him suddenly loosening enough for him to think again.
“You did it then.”
“I took the edge off the fear.”
Michael studied him. “You could’ve made me let go.”
David didn’t answer immediately, and that hesitation was answer enough. “Yes. I could’ve pushed harder. I could’ve made holding on very difficult.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” David’s gaze stayed fixed on his. “I wanted you to choose.”
Michael looked down at his hands.
That part he remembered with perfect clarity. Whatever David had done to the fear, Michael had still been frightened. He had still known exactly what was beneath him and exactly what letting go meant. David’s voice hadn’t opened his fingers for him. Michael had taken one breath, thought of everyone waiting below, and done that himself.
To the end.
“Okay,” he said quietly.
David seemed to be waiting for something more, but another memory had already surfaced.
“Wait. After I punched you-”
“What about it?”
“The others.” Michael gestured toward Paul, Dwayne and Marko. “They were about to jump me. You said one word and all three of them stopped.”
Understanding crossed David’s face, followed almost immediately by amusement. “No.”
Michael frowned. “What do you mean, no? You said boys and three pissed off vampires who were actively surrounding me immediately backed off.”
“Because he told us to,” Paul said, as though this should have been obvious.
Dwayne nodded. “We knew what he meant.”
“Didn’t mean we were happy about it,” Marko added. “I still would’ve kicked your ass.”
“You’re welcome to try.”
Marko immediately brightened.
“Don’t,” David said.
Marko rolled his eyes but stayed exactly where he was. Michael stared at him, then at David.
David laughed. “No power, Michael.”
“So they just… listen to you?”
“When it’s important.”
“Sometimes when it’s not,” Paul added.
“Rarely when it’s not,” David corrected.
That earned him three different expressions of disagreement, and Michael found himself laughing. It shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did. David had just admitted that he could push at people’s wants, their fear, their desire, even make it difficult for someone to resist him if he chose to. Yet the most startling display of obedience Michael had seen from him all night hadn’t been supernatural at all. Paul, Dwayne and Marko had been furious because Michael had hit their brother. David hadn’t wanted them to hurt him, so when he called them off, they’d listened. There was something unexpectedly reassuring about that.
Michael let the thought settle for a moment before looking David over again, and now that he knew what he was seeing, the things that hadn’t made sense before seemed almost embarrassingly obvious. The strange shimmer Michael had mistaken for body glitter was actually scales. The ears David had very definitely tried to pretend weren’t pointier than everyone else’s were apparently a siren thing. And the voice that had been fucking with Michael’s head since the moment they’d met finally had an explanation.
David caught the inspection and narrowed his eyes. “What?”
Michael smiled. “Nothing. Just recalibrating.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It probably is.” Michael drifted a little closer, unable to resist another glance toward David’s ear. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around the fact that vampires are apparently the normal explanation for everyone else, and then there’s you.”
“Careful.”
“Oh, I’m being very careful.”
David clearly didn’t believe him, but Michael was still trying to reconcile the creature David had just described with the person in front of him. A vampire and something else stitched together, with scales hidden beneath his clothes and a voice capable of reaching into people and turning up whatever it found there.
He should have been more frightened than he was.
Instead, annoyingly, David was still David.
Still the asshole who had nearly sent him over a cliff and then grinned after getting punched for it. Still the boy who had touched Michael’s face so gently afterward that Michael had followed him straight into the dark. Still the person who could have forced Michael’s hands open beneath that bridge and had deliberately left the final choice to him. Michael wasn’t sure what that said about David yet. He was considerably more worried about what it said about him that finding out David was some bizarre vampire siren combination hadn’t made him any less attracted to him. Honestly, it might have made the problem worse.
David’s mouth slowly curved, as if he’d somehow managed to follow Michael’s train of thought anyway.
Michael immediately scowled. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yeah, well, don’t.”
David laughed, and Michael tried very hard not to notice how much he liked the sound.
He failed.