DAVID

Michael finds him under an overhanging cliff even though the sun isn't out– David doesn't want to even be in the moonlight. He certainly doesn't want to be at Star's.

After Michael, the animal was still howling in his veins, wrenching at his control. Michael's taste on his tongue was sweet and vibrant and David hated it, he hated it, and he felt as if he might drain Michael dry out of pure lack of control over his hunger. He won't forget Michael's blood for a long time, and he wants to wipe his mind clean.

He should have just fed. How long had it been?

He drained someone else, but there's still Michael in his mouth when Michael finds him. Michael is all over. His jacket around David's shoulders and the echoing scent of him from spending all day in Michael's bed and the taste of his blood on David's lips, and his dark curls and the line of his jaw and his bare chest smeared red, filling David's mind.

Michael's blood spilling out and staining his pillow.

David has shrugged off Michael's jacket now, leaving it beside him on the rocks.

Michael brightens when he finds David, as if he's been looking for a while. David tries not to feel anything, but something warm flutters in David anyway. He feels flushed with blood.

Michael looks at him for a moment; David can see the silhouette of him against the moonlit sea in the corner of his eye, not moving for a moment. David wonders what he looks like to Michael.

Pathetic.

In the middle of the night, a vampire's most vibrant hour, lurking under a cliff and staring into the waves, arms around his knees like a little boy. A lost boy.

Then Michael moves, with all the energy-bound gracelessness of a human, and joins him there on the rocks. He doesn't say anything to David, just sits there next to David and watches the sea with him in silence.

Michael's silence feels sorry, and tentative. David only knows this from studying Michael for far longer than he'd care to admit.

Finally, he looks at Michael. He cannot stand not looking at Michael– and Michael is not looking at the ocean, he is looking at David. He's sitting with his legs out and his hands clasped in his lap, his whole body turned towards David just slightly. He looks like a Greek god under the moonlight, with his hair unruly and the strong line of his jaw.

It's funny, David thinks, now he's the tired one with not enough blood.

And they have no one to blame but each other.

Michael has a new jacket, and it doesn't smell like him– above the newness of it, David can barely catch Michael's cologne at all.

"How'd you find me?" David asks finally.

"Just looking," Michael waves a hand around. "Thought you'd be out on the boardwalk."

They're not far from the boardwalk now– occasionally, the screams of people on the rollercoaster reach them on the breeze, but the sounds of the waves wash them away.

Michael blows out a breath, and David looks away, towards the ocean, away from the white bandage wrapped around Michael's throat.

"Are you going to tell me why you're upset about drinking my blood, or do I have to guess?" Michael leans back against the rock behind them, but doesn't take his eyes off David.

David drops his feet down and leans forward until Michael isn't in his peripheral vision at all. "I told you I didn't want to hurt you."

He can hear Michael swallow. "It's not lasting hurt. I'm going to be okay."

"Did it hurt or not?"

"Were you hurting or not?"

David hisses through his teeth. "I can handle a little pain, Michael."

"Drinking my blood didn't hurt me as much as not drinking it was hurting you." Michael sounds so certain.

David isn't sure; he can't remember much of the past twenty hours or so, except that Michael had cared for him kindly and then slashed himself open, bleeding all over the bed.

He turns his head and raises his eyebrows at Michael. "And?"

Michael throws up his hands. "So why are you mad about it?" He leans forward, bringing them close. His eyes are dark glass-bottle blue and his hair looks soft, and thick, and the ends of his curls almost brush David's shoulders.

There is a long silence.

David looks at him, and looks at him, and looks away. He shakes his head. "I don't know," he admits finally, which is the partial truth. "I told you I didn't want to hurt you, and… you didn't listen."

Michael shifts, rocks scraping softly against each other under his boots. "I didn't think you meant it."

David frowns. "Why would I be lying, Michael?"

There is another long silence.

Waiting, David studies Michael. His brows are drawn together, as if he is both angry and at a loss. For someone who speaks both little and with little thought, he seems to give his answer unusual consideration.

"Michael?" David presses. Michael tips his head at his name, but doesn't respond. David asks, "Why would I be lying?"

"You were acting– pretty fucking weird, David." He runs his fingers over his jaw in what David has learned is a habitual movement. "You didn't exactly seem yourself."

Embarrassingly, the first thing that comes to mind is whether David did anything humiliating while sleep and blood deprived, a combination he doesn't have much experience with. He can't quite remember how he felt, except that aside from his agonizing stomach, he'd felt pleasant– or at least, pleasantly absent.

"Who did I seem like?" He tries to keep his voice low, even.

Michael won't look at him. Michael is a terrible liar, David has learned, with the most painfully obvious tells. "You were just– different, that's all."

David just waits. And watches. Michael is a guilty liar, and he will fix his own lies pretty quickly. David only ever loses the waiting game to Star.

After longer than David expected, Michael caves. "You just cared about me a bit."

Oh no. David raises his eyebrows at Michael and tips his head as if he is only curious and not panicked, his mind tumbling, grasping at hazy memories. "Oh? Did I say something to you, Michael?"

Michael shifts again. If David was perhaps… part of Michael's life, he would have to teach Michael to be less obvious. "It's not a big deal," Michael promises unconvincingly. "Definitely not a big deal."

It is to me. Hell, Michael. Anything to do with you is a big fucking deal to me. But David just lets him finish, and tries to douse the spark of impatience flaring in his chest.

"Look, the point is, you were acting like you cared about me, and I figured if you were sober, you wouldn't mind drinking my blood."

David lets that settle for a moment, and then repeats, "Sober?"

"Well-slept. Not hungry." Michael waves his hand with an impatient shrug. "Shit, whatever. You were acting drunk."

"Michael…" David sing-songs. "Are you keeping secrets?"

"You asked me to sleep with you."

There is the longest silence yet.

Michael does not look at David. David cannot look away from Michael, but he cannot read him either. He had asked Michael what? Fuck. Godfuckingdammit.

What?

"Among other things," Michael finally mumbles.

David pounces on it. "What other things?"

"What, you want me to list them?" Michael asks sarcastically.

David says yes because he is a masochist. And he desperately wishes he hadn't, by the end of it. Do you worry about me, Michael? The terrified, the afraid he felt before returns in full. Tie me up accompanied with a wink. Are you sure you don't want me?

I'm so afraid of you.

"What did you mean by that?" Michael flicks the collar of his new jacket. David doesn't like it; it covers Michael's jawline. "I'm not very frightening, am I?"

David shrugs. "Who knows what I meant?" David does. David knows exactly what he meant.

"So what did you do?" David asks, after yet another long silence.

Michael looks at him, his face flushed and horrified. "I didn't rape you, if that's what your asking." He looks so young and hurt. "I wouldn't–"

"No, Michael. Did you say nothing to me at all?" David cannot imagine Michael simply taking these comments in stride, without either kind lies to shut David up or threats to shut David up. If only out of morbid curiosity, David finds he wants to know which one. He smirks. "Even after I asked you to sleep with me?"

Michael looks away from him.

The pair of them, David thinks with flat amusement. They can't look at each other for more than five seconds without stopping. Michael is always lying, and David is always overdosing on Michael.

"I said… things." Michael says. "I said– I told you– I told you 'maybe when you get better.'"

Huh, David says, only his throat doesn't work, and Michael sits there in the longest silence they've had yet, biting his lip very hard. It's the kind of pause Michael has when he's about to blurt out something else.

And Michael bursts out with, "I told you I wished you wanted it for real."

There is more silence.

God, there is so much silence.

David wants to scream into it. He wants to move. He wants to lose himself in Michael right here under the dark cliff in the middle of the night.

But he just stares. He can't move.

What–

What did Michael–

His mouth isn't working.

Michael?

But Michael loves Star– and Michael never– and–

Michael gets up abruptly, stones clattering loudly as they skitter, and he's up, his movements panicky and directionless. He stumbles to the shoreline and he stands there.

His curls in the wind, his hands in his pockets.

David wants him.

"Michael," David says. He can say Michael's name. Hell knows he can say Michael's name. Louder, "Michael."

He follows, just as panicked, even though Michael isn't moving.

Michael's shoulders are rigid, his jaw clenched. He looks… afraid.

He doesn't try to stay away from Michael; he steps close enough to feel Michael's warmth.

"Why do you think I wanted you then?" he whispers, breathless and fast, but he's too impatient to wait for Michael to answer. His voice trembles, urgent. "Because I didn't have the energy to pretend anymore."

And before Michael can even take a breath–

David kisses him.

He kisses Michael fast and soft, a quick brush of lips, and another, and another. Michael's lips are so soft, his skin so warm beneath David's hands when he brings them to Michael's face.

For a moment, Michael is still– and then he is pressing back, his lips parting to catch David's mouth, his kisses breathy, and gentle, a whisper, a question– and then harder. David is falling apart. There is nothing– not killing or drinking or speeding on his bike that holds a candle to this feeling.

He pulls David closer with a shaky breath, fists in David's shirt collar, and he tips his head, and his mouth is so warm, and his kisses are so fierce. This is burning inside out from the feeling inside his chest, and David will gladly burn.

David can't do anything but clutch him back and hope– fuck how he hopes– that Michael can understand how he feels. How much he feels.

He can feel Michael's human heart pounding against his own chest, can feel the slide of Michael's hands as they slip into his hair and press against the small of his back.

Michael pulls away from the kiss with a gentleness that doesn't match the kiss, his breath shaky and warm. He keeps his forehead pressed to David's as if he can't be bothered to move. David hopes he never does.

Through long immortal years, David learned to sail through time with grace, but now he wants to pull it all to a screeching halt and stay here, right here, with Michael's wonder-wide eyes gazing into his own.

"Michael," he manages to whisper. And then he laughs, bright and spontaneous. It bubbles out of him from the fountain of euphoria in his chest, right where he was so afraid the wanting fire would burn him down.

Michael's face melts into a smile, all eagerness and aching sincerity. "God," he murmurs, "God, David."

He says David's name as if David, too, is a god, and David must kiss him again. He could not bear to not kiss him again. Michael doesn't give any protest, and the incoming tide sweeps around their shoes as time drips away.

Michael kisses down the corner of David's mouth. "That was a little bit…" He bites his lip, staring at David's lips. He's gone from searing want, arms locking around David and mouth pressed to David's with bare minimum breaks for air, to uncertainty, suddenly, in a blink. "Out of nowhere, isn't it?"

So uncertain. Unsteady and wrong, as if he's certain something is wrong but he can't put his finger on it. Michael's hand finds David's, but it doesn't counteract the drop of David's stomach as Michael steps away.

He looks as if he's been glamored or enthralled, and the spell has broken. David wouldn't enthrall Michael; it wouldn't be real.

David pulls his hand from Michael's and throws it around Michael's shoulders– it feels better that way; they're closer. He can sense Michael's heartbeat, skipping. "Nowhere, huh? Why do you say that?"

Michael huffs out a laugh, almost frustrated. The roar of the boardwalk rushes to meet them as they wander away from David's sad little cove and onto the open beach, making Michael raise his voice. "You didn't exactly seem interested before tonight." His voice teeters the edge of casual. He nudges David's shoulder with his own. "What changed?"

They must look like friends, just two reckless teenagers, shoving each other playfully, teasing. Some of the quiet, contained intimacy of the moment is drowned out by everybody else.

They crossed the line… and now they're going back, toeing the line and eyeing the other side again– at least, David thinks Michael might be.

"You." Someone dashes across the beach, waving a branch on fire they must have taken from a bonfire, and Michael's eyes follow it. David's eyes follow Michael. "You wanted it."

Michael frowns, slipping his hands back into his pockets. Maybe his hands are cold (although Michael is always so warm to David), or maybe he just wants to put his arm between them, making David's arm around his shoulders awkward.

David drops it with what he thinks is considerable casual grace, clapping Michael on the shoulder until they're not touching at all, simply walking side by side on a crowded beach.

"So," Michael's shoulders are tense again. "You're into me because I'm into you. And if that guy was into you–" He points to the idiot with the burning branch, who's accidentally caught fire and drops and rolls as they watch.

"No, Michael," David interrupts, grinning at Michael. "He's playing with fire. I couldn't be with someone like that. I'm a vampire."

"David." Michael doesn't seem amused. "I'm serious. Do you care about me or do you not?"

"And does love exist? And is the soulmate bond a real thing? And how much is a good smoke in Cali?" David doesn't know why it's so hard to just reassure Michael. He already said he's cared the whole time. Or, he implied it. "Yes. And no, and I don't know."

Micahel's jaw works, his eyes dark. Michael seems to have figured out that David sidesteps, sometimes very obviously, giving answers he doesn't want to give… but he's clearly come to the wrong conclusion as to which answer David is trying not to give.

I love you.

He's trying to give it. He's trying to say it. But he isn't saying it.

"So you get people to– and then– why? For fun?" Michael demands, dark and angry. "Just find someone who wants– you know. For the night. Or do you get off on someone caring about– I don't get it."

David just lets this happen. And then, because he doesn't know what to say, he smiles. "Do you want to try saying that again?"

Michael makes an angry sound in his throat–

And he kisses David.

It is not a nice kiss, or a gentle kiss like the ones they exchanged at the edge of the water. It's hard and angry, and open mouthed and burning. It's furious. Michael's nails bite into David's arms– he left Michael's jacket on the rocks– and their teeth clack.

David pulls away as quickly as he comes to his senses, which isn't very quickly at all. His mind feels muddled, on fire, whirling and hazy. And wanting. And furious, so furious at himself.

Why are the words so hard?

I love you.

He says, "You'll make me bleed." And then you'll be a vampire again.

Michael understands. Another contradiction, David knows. Be one of us– and then don't. I don't care and then careful with your teeth.

I love you. The words are so big inside of him.

He hasn't said them in decades, and before then he was young and stupid, really, actually, truly eighteen. He isn't that old, not really. Not enough to know how to say these words.

Michael is staring at David with a faintly sick look in his eyes, as if he can't imagine what he was thinking. As if he has taken a baseball bat to his bedroom and is now looking at the mess, angry at himself and empty enough of the previous anger to wonder why he did it.

"'Night, David."

David is surprised Michael turns instead of beating David to Hell. It reminds him of so many nights. He doesn't want those nights back, he wants this.

He wants what this was just half an hour ago, before Michael made a stupid assumption… and David encouraged it.

Again.

He said he cared about Michael before; why does Michael even– but it's not Michael's fault. David hasn't even stopped him.

And Michael isn't standing still by the shoreline anymore, he is walking away from David.

They're on a crowded beach, so David can't fly. He just runs.

Michael's sleeve is stiff and new, the jacket unworn.

"Stop."

Michael doesn't stop; he is walking quickly, going up the stairs that will take them up from the beach onto the street. He looks angry– angry and hurt. He doesn't look at David at all, and Michael is always staring.

David casts around for something to say. "I killed someone," he blurts.

Michael's jaw just tightens; he doesn't slow or turn, and he answers uncaringly and abruptly. "You did taste like blood."

They reach the street, and Michael weaves through the people, and David follows. It feels like he's suddenly been thrown back a month and he's Michael and Michael is Star.

"Stop following me," Michael mutters, and it shouldn't be audible over the people, but past midnight the crowds are beginning to thin, and David can hear what most can't.

Michael is clumsy at navigating the crowds and David has woven his way through people at night for longer than Michael has been alive. He catches Michael.

"Let me talk to you," he says. "Come on, Michael, stop. It's been a long fucking time."

"Fuck, David," Michael shouts at him, and grabs him by the wrist and yanks him down the street, fishing for something in his pocket until he manages to unlock into a nearby closed store.

David's whole body goes cold. He knows which fucking store this is. Vampires Everywhere! sits at the front in all of its blood-and-fire glory.

"You want to talk? Talk."

Dwayne and Paul and Marko scream and roar and ask him, in the flickering fire of the hotel before it all happened, why he's so interested in Michael anyway. Rows and rows of peaceful comic books, piles of them, filled with vampires getting staked and painted in holy water. Just like Marko, just like Paul, just like Dwayne.

"What?" Michael pushes. "What's been a fucking long time?"

David shakes his head. "I don't want to be here." His chest feels tight, something in it ricocheting around inside of his lungs, panicked, and under it, viciously furious.

Michael doesn't even seem to notice. "Stop avoiding the subject, goddammit–"

"I don't–" but his voice is shaking, and he stops trying.

He finds, in his jeans, and old lighter, and flicks it

Maybe Michael moves, maybe he doesn't; David isn't watching him.

The bonfire roars, and Paul's victim screams and Marko targets the neck, his victims silent, and Dwayne has morbid fun watching the man stumble and run before he strikes, and then they're all dead.

He can't be hear and not do anything.

He drops the lighter, and he leaves.

The bonfire roars.

There are no screams. The building's empty.

Michael makes it out of course– they were both close to the door– but he doesn't follow David; he's cursing and running to the Frog's house, shoving people out of the way.

In the end, David learns, the front display burns down, both the vampire comics and the wooden shelves nothing but ash, and the next display down, superman comics, are either wet or partially burned, but the building is fine.

He doesn't hear it from Star, because he doesn't want to know what she and Michael are saying about him, and he knows that both her incessant pressing or her silence would break him down.

He doesn't hear it from Michael; he doesn't go back to the tree or stay awake in the day, and Michael doesn't try to find him at night.

He hears it from snatches of conversation as people walk past the store or as he weaves his way through the boardwalk, picking out kills.

At least Michael has given him that; after their night, David's qualms about going back to the boardwalk to kill without the Lost Boys have faded just as much as the scent of Michael on Michael's jacket, cast on the rocks.