Chapter Text
David’s first death was unremarkable.
So much so that he barely recalls the details; but he knows he was alone. Not abandoned, per say, Max had certainly been keeping an eye on him, but only in the vaguest possible sense. It left a wound that has yet to close.
After that, he never lets another die like that. Dwayne, Marko, Paul – David is there for every minute with them. He leads them into their first kill, and coaxes them into their feeding. No one suffers alone.
But his second death is another story.
He supposes, as he sinks onto the wooden stake, that it was going to take more than just preventing several lonely deaths to save him from a gruesome fate. Everything was always “go go go” with David and his boys. There was shockingly little time to consider morals, or ethics, or the fact that one day he might meet someone who isn’t actually lonely like they are and does not wish to join them in their eternal damnation.
Michael just seemed different. This was David’s fatal error, he thinks as the stake pierces his lungs that do not really work: you cannot charm everyone into wanting to spend their afterlife with you, no matter how hard you try.
Except in these last moments, there is regret sliding across Michael’s face, and before David can fully slide into the hell he’s no doubt created for himself he reaches out for that other young man who he thought would join him. If he couldn’t be there for his boys’ second deaths, he could at least honor them by taking their killers down.
When even this fails, David submerges fully into the darkness. There is nothing left, and no one left, and he cries out into the void and then –
“Fuck,” David rolls over, spits out a giant glob made mostly of blood, very little saliva, and opens his eyes against the darkness.
It’s nighttime. He’s…Alive hasn’t been the proper word for it in an age. He’s here, opening his eyes again despite it all, staring up at the wooden ceiling. Every part of him aches.
When he sits up, a very human feeling similar to that of a monstrous headache rings in his godforsaken skull. The space appears to be a shed, full of ancient and new equipment only someone invested in hacking limbs off of various species might own. There’s more stuffed parts of animal bodies on the surfaces than he’s ever seen in his very long life.
“What …” he says, not managing more while he finally adjusts to the darkness.
There, seated in the corner with wide eyes and a wooden stake in hand, is one of those … Frog brothers. He’s not sure which one. They’re shaking as they stand up and inch toward the door.
“Stay where you are, bloodsucker. I’ve gotta get Michael,” they say, and then they throw the door open and run.
David wants to ask a million more questions, but with his throat as dry as it is, body exhausted, he can’t bring himself to. In the quiet he rubs a hand along his jawline, feels where his fangs are poking out of his gums with his tongue – still a vampire, then. He can’t feel the others like he’s supposed to; not in the same way, at least, there is a weird hum where he once felt life bursting within. The connections to Max, to Star, to Michael, these are all gone.
He is surprised at Max’s absence, less so at Star’s or Michael’s. Had those kids actually managed the impossible?
Before David can truly put the pieces together – the sluggish cycle of the thoughts unusual for him – the door flies open again. Michael. He doesn’t even need to see the other young man to know it’s him, can smell that scent he’d caught hold of the first night on the pier, of cheap shampoo and a desperate humanity.
“David?” Michael asks warily, as if in this ruined state the vampire poses any real threat.
“Michael,” he cracks out between bone dry lips.
Michael slowly lets the door close behind him. David glances down at himself, noting the blood caked into his bare skin and the fact that he only has on a pair of shorts he’s sure came from Michael.
When Michael flips on a single lightbulb, David squints against it. The other sits down in the chair the Frog was in, lips pulled tight and eyes narrowed. He crosses his arms over his jacketed chest.
“Well, at least one of us gets the benefits of a shirt,” David says.
“You– David, right now? You literally…”
“Died?” he replies, noting how that causes Michael to frown a little as if in pain.
“Well, yes.”
“I seem to be alive now, Michael. Funny, the impermanence of one’s state.”
For a moment, Michael just glares at him, but underneath David can tell there is actual relief present. It makes him feel valued.
“You’re alive because I didn’t set you on fire,” Michael says.
“Is that it?”
Michael looks away at that. Whatever he’s not willing to precisely acknowledge, it fills David with no small amount of absurd glee. Their connection may be severed but he still senses what won’t be said.
He looks back down at himself then, at the dried blood, the shitty shorts, the bareness of his own body on the awkwardly cobbled-together “bed” made of sheets and some cushions he’s sitting on. They’d kept him alive despite everything. For whatever reason.
“What of…” he can’t finish the sentence.
Despite his general refusal to acknowledge having any humanity left outwardly, David still feels. Maybe too much. And it hurts to ask this, especially when he looks back up to see Michael’s face has caved somehow more inward. Those greenish-gray eyes are looking at the other end of the cramped shed.
David looks as well then, and sees two large crates lying side by side.
“We’re trying,” Michael says. “Or at least I am.”
Without another word, David shoves himself up onto unsteady legs. He feels as ungraceful as a newborn foal, bare feet stumbling over each other as he makes his way across the crowded floor to the crates. Using the sides as crutches, he peers inside to see what remains of each of his boys.
Marko and Dwayne are at least together and mostly in one piece. Paul is more skeletal than flesh in his crate, more an object than anything. It feels like being stabbed with a million wooden stakes to see what his own foolishness has wrought. Maybe he was wrong to trust Michael, maybe there is little else to be said on the matter.
“I’ve been trapping animals. Rats, mostly,” Michael says. He doesn’t need say what for.
David reaches out to touch Dwayne’s face and caresses his chin. The statue-esque state of his boys is enough to render him speechless. Instead, it is easier to rip his skin open on his forearm with a quick scratch from his nails. Michael makes a noise in the back of his throat but does not move.
Letting his blood pour into the waiting mouths of his fledglings – no matter what Max may have once said – fills him with a satisfaction that keeps him upright. There is no noticeable change, but David can wait.
When the wound closes, he pulls his arm back from over the edge. The shed is silent.
“This is not it,” he says, more in warning than anything else when he turns his head to look at Michael. “It is going to require a bit more time, Michael.”
“We have that.”
“Do I?”
Michael nods slowly, curls bouncing in a manner that is far too distracting for David’s taste. “The Frogs promised to keep their hands off of you unless told otherwise. With Max out of the picture –”
David’s knees give out.
He slides down the side of the crate, hands clasped on the edges of it, landing in a puddle on the floor. Michael’s hands grip his shoulders suddenly, oddly supportive despite his clear misgivings. The feeling warms something in David’s cold heart.
“You–Max,” he says.
“Dead,” says Michael, warm hands dropping away.
The sigh that leaves him is more like a whimper. He slams his head against the wooden crate in an attempt to ground himself, only giving himself temporary splinters in the process.
Max’s death was always an inevitability. One way or another, the facade of a simple civilian who only worked his own stores in the graveyard shift would be broken in more ways than one. But David always knew with some certainty that losing Max would involve losing himself in the process, and he knew now that it nearly had.
“Why go through the effort of saving me, Michael?” he asks.
A rotten plank somewhere in the shed creaks loudly in the silence that it takes for Michael to formulate an answer. David has his eyes shut against the world, head pressed against the crates that hold the only family he’s ever known, and he doesn’t want to see the other man’s face in this moment.
“I–because you’re…”
“I’m what, Michael?”
He knows it’s cruel. Crueler still, that he refuses to turn to look at that picturesque face with those dopey sea-colored eyes that David fell harder and faster into than he’d ever admit.
“I couldn’t.”
David wrenches his nails out of the makeshift coffins, dropping his arms to turn himself slowly to really look at Michael in the shit lighting – which makes no difference. He can see everything clearly. He can see the flush on Michael’s now-human cheeks, and the way that such a look brings a brightness to those eyes that really could make a heart palpitate if one still had a functioning organ.
“I’m going to need to hunt,” he says.
The other purses his lips and nods.
“I will not leave them alone with the… Frogs,” he says. Another nod. “You will watch them for me.”
“Yes,” Michael says. If it were not for the fact that David contained no further energy to expend on anything other than his own survival, he might believe he’d accidentally commanded the other boy to agree so wholeheartedly.
David nods himself this time, before he picks himself up off the floor most ungracefully and glances around.
“Here,” Michael says, moving to where a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a tank top sit on a dusty work table.
He takes the clothing without comment and dresses quickly. The night beyond calls to him in a voice he has not heard since he was the only one. For the moment, the dark knows only he is available to call.
When David shuffles to the door, he turns back to see Michael watching.
“I’ll return, Michael.”
There’s no other option for him after all.
Cool, early autumn evening air screams past as David tears through the air like a hurricane. Summer is already descending into fall. Santa Carla does not handle the change in seasons well, slipping into a fog-riddled mess that does nothing for the tourist populations.
Luckily, the boardwalk is still very occupied. Humans cling onto the concept of their prolonged summer as best they can, every year letting the season expand in the name of sales and profit. A fact that used to be a core part of The Lost Boys, since they were permanent resident artists who could play the beach for as long as they liked.
David is unforgiving this evening, an unfortunate reality for the residents and tourists who may have thought the terror was finally over. He tears through the throat of a man and then that of the man’s frightened wife below the piers, rage a driving force. Drinking his fill is easy enough when he’s motivated by such deep loss.
Self-control is not an easy skill learned, especially when David wants to smash himself and every human he spies from above against the cliff face at the Bluff, or into the open sea. He cleans up the bodies begrudgingly, a task made more convenient when others were around to help. The idea of a solitary vampire has never held any appeal to him, he never understood Max’s ability to compartmentalize the very human and vampiric desire for others.
Eventually, he lodges himself in a tree on the very cliff edge he wants to vault off. Smoking a cigarette, bemoaning his lack of company, miserable and tired and aching in so many ways. Michael did this for him, kept him alive against everyone else’s wishes, let him not be burned to a crisp. He despises this. He is simultaneously hopelessly intrigued and fascinated by Michael, a connection he cannot sever.
What would Michael say to that? Star’s human again, they have each other. Her absence is noted but David is sure she is around, even if Michael plays so willingly at servitude for him, likely born from guilt.
Two entire stolen cigarette packs later, David peels himself off the tree and reenters the atmosphere. The sun will rise soon enough, no need to get caught out in it even if setting himself on fire sounds optimal right about now. When he finally makes it back to the Emerson’s, the house is quiet.
Michael’s asleep on the chair in the now-dark shed when David pushes in silently through the door. He only glances at the other boy on his way back to the crates, where he repeats his bloodletting ritual.
“David?” Michael’s voice echoes through the dark room while David pretends he can see any flicker of difference in the faces before him.
“Go back to sleep, Michael,” he says.
He briefly wonders how much sleep Michael’s gotten in the…however long it’s been. If he stayed awake, waiting for David to return. He pushes the thought aside quickly, knowing that’s a dangerous game to be playing.
“Are they…”
David shakes his head, wound on his arm already closed, looking back at Michael then. The brunette is still slumped on the chair in a facsimile of sleep.
“It will be a while yet.”
Admittedly, it could be a very long while. How long the vampires are welcome to spend in the rotted old shed on the edge of Lucy Emerson’s property is yet to be determined, and David doesn’t want to overstay his welcome. He’s certain she knows, certain Michael may have strong-armed her into this after everything with Max…well, after whatever happened with Max happened.
“Right,” Michael cocks an eyebrow as if he could even begin to sense what David was thinking, but sighs and shuts his eyes again.
David turns his attention back to the crates. He wants to stand here beside them for the rest of time, maybe, or at least until he has his boys back and in one piece.
The blood’s likely only done so much for them. It’ll be much harder with the remains of Paul – there may very well be no hope there. David might have failed him and that thought is more a curse than even his own forsaken eternal life.
Sitting down against the crates, he briefly wonders about the shed’s structural integrity and what cracks may let in unwanted light. So far he’s been very fortunate, the vacant space where he was previously laid is clearly free of any risk of burning to death. But his luck shouldn’t hold out, not now. Surely not much longer.
David shuts his eyes, squeezing his arms into his chest and remembers that before he put clothes on there’d already been dried blood all over him. The freshly drying blood crinkles against the tank top and almost seems to combine with the former, something that normally would drive him up a wall. The boys always made fun of him for being a neat-freak.
Now he’s more than content with sitting in his crud, falling asleep while he welcomes the incoming sunlight that will surely penetrate the decrepit structure and fry him into the chip he’s meant to be.
When David wakes unexpectedly for the second time in two nights, he is awash with dismay.
He can feel the wooden planks still behind him, and blinks awake to see that no one else is in the shed, yet the lightbulb is on. Or… no.
Instead of Michael, or one of the Frogs, Sam is watching him. Curiously. Eyes wide when David catches his stare, to which David smirks with a hint of teeth and Sam shrinks back in fear. He drops the smirk soon after, rolling his eyes and scooting so his legs are no longer sprawled in front of him.
“Surprised you didn’t choose to take me out when my guard was down,” David says. “And don’t argue that you’re no killer, Sam.”
He leaves the unspoken half of that sentence in the air between them, the evidence in the crates he’s pressed up against. Sam uncurls only a little at that, still watching him with fear in those brown eyes that rival Michael’s. Realistically, David would’ve welcomed being staked by Sam Emerson over anything in this very moment.
“I’m on Michael’s side,” Sam says quietly.
“Of course.”
The much younger boy goes silent then. It’s probably not easy talking to someone who’s brief interactions with you up until that point have been attempted murder, David figures, and he’s not about to pretend as though that wasn’t him. As if he has changed in any way since that night, since all the nights before.
He chooses to stand then, floating just off the ground, more himself than he was the night prior but still a little woozy. When he turns to pour blood once more to the bodies in the crates, he hears Sam’s chair squeak, can sense the other coming to stand.
“Michael doesn’t want me to ask,” Sam starts. “But I need to know. Did you know about Max’s… plans?”
Not “did you know about Max”. Puzzle pieces have been connected. Perhaps it was something Max said. David heaves a sigh, digging another long tear into his arm, barely registering the pain.
“Not in the exact sense,” he says. “Max wants-wanted more from us than we could give. He wanted control, and I imagine this was his best-laid plan ever to get it.”
“So you took care of Michael,” says Sam, the accusation hot in his voice.
David watches the wound heal, then turns to look at the younger boy slowly, shifting his weight a bit as his aching body protests the move. He doesn’t shy away from the glare Sam points at him.
“Max and I never saw eye to eye on the proper way to do things. This you must know, Sam. Michael being with us was not part of a larger conspiracy,” he says. He wants to say that Michael was destined to be his, that he could sense it, taste it, feel it from the moment he first saw the brunette stalking down the boardwalk after Star, but Sam doesn’t need to hear that.
“And how do you expect me to believe that?”
“I’m sure Max said something before you managed to rid the earth of him. But if you need more evidence, I suppose you can always look at the fact that Michael was willing to join you. Had Max been the one truly in charge, that would not have played out the way you wished.”
David steps away from the crates, watching Sam cautiously. The younger boy seems to take this into consideration, face twisting in thought while David draws nearer. When he’s not less than six feet away, Sam twists into the chair more and shakes his head.
“Don’t come any closer,” he says through his human teeth, “I might believe you but you–”
“I, what, Sam?” David asks with a growl. He stops despite himself, hands clasped behind his back.
“You haven’t said you won’t hurt any of us again.”
At this, David laughs. It’s born from somewhere deep and desperate. Promises are nothing.
Before either of them can move; David for the exit where the night waits, Sam probably further into the wooden chair, the door swings open. Michael crashes in, face pulled tight, eyes moving over the room, calculating, taking it all in.
“Sam?” Michael says, moving toward his brother, which only hurts a little in some far off part of David’s chest that he chooses to ignore.
“Mike, he’s still going to kill us, why couldn’t you stake him properly damnit!” Sam shouts, wrestling away from Michael’s wandering hands.
David steps a few further feet back with a shake of his head. He doesn’t want to spill more blood on the Emerson property, or for that matter, any Emerson blood. What he really wants right now is a lit cig and somewhere high up to dangle his life from.
“He’s not– Sam, it’s gonna be okay,” Michael says, turning to pin David with a look. “We’re safe.”
“How can you even begin to promise that after what they-he did?”
He looks into Michael’s ridiculous ocean eyes then, offering only a slight dip of his own chin in response. Everything a vampire stands for, at least in his experience, is revenge. For once he does not want it.
It would be all too easy to rip out their throats. To make them gasp and beg for mercy, before delivering the killing blow. But David can’t kill Michael, in the same way he has failed to make him his. He has fallen too deep into those gentle grey eyes and brown curls and rare soft smile.
“I just know,” Michael replies.
David nods more fully then, and stalks out the door, ignoring Sam’s gasp of fear when he brushes close to the boy. He is hyperfocused on the kill he must make in order to keep providing his boys with the potential for renewal. This is his sole mission, all he has left, and as he shoots into the night air to find unsuspecting individuals as he has for all the past decades of his life, he cannot shake off the grief over knowing nothing is going to return to what it was or might have been.
“We need to talk,” Michael stomps into the dark shed three nights later. David blinks his eyes open from where he’s hanging in the darkest corner. “And you really need a shower.”
Righting himself and landing on the ground, David takes a moment to assess the layers of thoroughly cracked and dried blood coating the tank top, pants, and sneakers he wears, as well as his own skin. He doesn’t care to tell Michael it’s not the nastiest he’s ever been or the longest he’s ever gone without a shower.
Five nights now, almost a week, of pouring blood into the crates, of hunting and drinking until he’s almost too full. Normally, David does not need to feed nearly as much as he has been, a fact that almost sickened him out of last night’s feeding. All this, only for small visible changes in Marko and Dwayne. Nothing notable in Paul’s remains.
“Fine,” he acquiesces. Michael beckons him back through the door and out into the yard.
Sam is standing at the back door to the house, frowning when Michael approaches but saying nothing.
“You’re welcome inside, David,” Michael says as he crosses the threshold.
“Thank you,” David says, bowing low to the annoyance of the brothers before following inside.
The house is still clearly in the clean-up process, yet it’s further along than he’d have imagined. There’s plywood stitched into the walls and the space where the stereo formerly was is still vaguely soot-colored, but it’s all clean.
Perhaps he was originally out far longer than he believed, he thinks, as he gazes at the kitchen and living space with all the various pieces that make up the Emersons. Machrame hangers with long plants, assorted furniture in the living room, bookshelves stacked full with books and trinkets and records. It’s everything David has never had, no matter how he tries to copy it in his lair, and he feels a pang of regret at the sight.
“Bathroom’s up the stairs on your left,” Michael says, drawing him from his wandering thoughts. “Everything’s already in there.”
“We’ve deep-cleaned it, you’ll be safe,” Sam sneers from where he’s standing by the door, arms crossed over his chest.
Were David to still have a functional heart, it would have stuttered at that. Paul. He doesn’t want to stand where his Paul was torn to shreds and reduced to nothing.
Michael is watching him softly when he looks at the brunette, motioning toward the stairs again without a word. David buries the despair tearing through him like he buries everything else and meanders up the steps slowly. Better to make them wait than give them what they wanted immediately.
He does not wait much at the top of the stairs, no matter how tempting the other doors here are. The Emersons are watching him like a live grenade. He slams the bathroom door behind him, takes note of the pile of clothing and towel atop the toilet, glares at the tub.
A site of sacrilege. And now, as he strips off his blood-caked layers, a site where he must become minorly acceptable looking all while trying not to tear down the very walls around him.
He rips open the shower curtain, teeth bared, eyes focused on the stains in the tub. Purely water-based stains, no fluids or blood that even his eye could see. Sam wasn’t lying, they’d deep cleaned the ever-loving shit out of this tub in the aftermath.
Forcing down a growl, David turns the shower on and steps in. The cold water burns his back with better pressure than he’d anticipated. Temperature hardly ever matters – it’s not as though a creature such as himself is looking for warmth. He stews in the gradually warming shower, eyeing the shampoo bottles. The same shampoo he’s always smelled on Michael.
Can he even bring himself to smell in any way like Michael? He decides yes, otherwise they’d still be able to accuse him of being unclean.
David rushes through the rituals of cleaning. When he emerges from the bathroom, fully dressed, hair gelled with the product he’d found on the sink, he practically flies straight down to the first floor. Before all of this, David might’ve been tempted to investigate the bedrooms, find out what decor Michael is partial to. Now he wants to escape, flee into the sky and maybe never return.
“Good, you’re clean,” Michael says, stepping out of the kitchen area as David makes his way across the floor.
He stops abruptly, watching the other carefully. They’ve been playing on thin ice this entire time. Standing in the tub he lost Paul to has nearly broken that ice into a million tiny pieces.
“Like I said before, we need to talk.” Michael sits down on the couch. David does not follow.
“I will vacate the premises whenever you want me to, Michael,” he says with a hefty amount of venom lacing every word.
“It’s not– I mean what happened with Max, and what happens next,” says Michael.
He looks downright miffed that David’s not willingly engaging with what he’s putting down. David smirks a little, but turns fully toward Michael then, stalking a little closer to the brunette with all the predatory intention he can muster.
“What do you propose happens next?” he asks.
Coming to a stop right in front of Michael, David resists the urge to grab that chin and pull it towards him. Michael is staring up at him defiantly. Evidently, beating him and his brethren once gave the guy an admirable bold streak.
“Sam says you weren’t going along with Max,” replies the human who refuses to cower. It’s what David liked about Michael from the moment he saw him.
“I wasn’t.”
“Then why?”
He looks directly into Michael’s eyes at that. It doesn’t really need to be said, not at this point, that much he’s sure, yet that expression still begs for a verbal answer.
“I’ve told you why, Michael. I told Sam the rest,” he says.
“That’s not–”
“Michael? Who’re you speaking–” Star.
The blood in David’s body freezes. He breaks his staring contest with Michael to see Star on the railing, her eyes wide, delicate mouth open. She is as beautiful as David remembers.
“Star,” Michael says, moving to stand and realizing he can’t get anywhere with David caging him in.
“I thought we agreed he wasn’t going to be invited inside, Michael,” she says. “What the hell?”
“This was hardly my idea,” David starts, and stops when Michael puts a hand on his chest as he comes to stand and pushes him back a few stumbling feet.
“I promise it won’t be repeated.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Star scoffs, rolling her eyes.
She starts to turn toward whichever room she’d originally come from – David was unfortunately far too distracted by Michael’s presence to have noticed her arrival. Disappointing, really, when he’s trying to kick down all he feels. Max’s many words about his lack of skill in compartmentalizing come flooding back.
“Star, wait,” Michael says.
“Let her go,” David interrupts before this gets any messier.
Star slams the door behind her, those meticulous braids becoming airborne the last thing David sees before she is gone. He turns to eye Michael again.
“Why keep her here, Michael?”
“She will leave when she’s ready. I’m not going to kick her out onto the streets again, David,” Michael says, face sour. “That’d be an asshole move.”
“As if you’re above such behavior,” he says.
It’s a stupid thing to say, he knows it, Michael knows it, even Sam who’s rustling around in the kitchen knows it. The man grabs David’s shirt by the collar with tight fists to pull him closer. That fire that attracted the vampire in the first place is burning in those green-grey eyes.
“I’m not a monster, David,” he snarls.
David grins with fangs bared, and Michael pushes him away before any further comment can be made. He only steps back a few feet, enough to allow Michael to pass him and march for the front door.
“Get out,” Michael says, voice stern. “I was stupid to think you’d be reasoned with.”
Smiling still, David floats out the door a few inches off the ground, waving a hand at Sam in farewell before he’s back on the porch and turning to look at Michael.
“Is that all?”
Michael glares at him. Message received, David makes his way back out to the shed, intent on more bloodletting in peace.