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Grandpa’s house is an absolute wreck. Sam is for sure going to be grounded forever for this, even if it was for a good cause. The property damage alone—entire parts of the house, ripped apart and wood shredded, doors destroyed, the plumping up in the bathroom wrecked , and it was probably clogged with garlic cloves, too. That’s not even getting into the trail of dead vampire corpses; at least the one upstairs had the decency to melt, like he was submerged in acid and not holy water.
The one downstairs exploded.
Sam doesn’t know how he’s going to explain this, but he breathes a sigh of relief when he comes down the stairs and finds David dead, impaled on Grandpa’s taxidermy materials ( fuck yeah!), and Michael standing before the corpse of the dead vampire. Sam skids to a stop just behind him. David doesn’t explode or melt or anything—he’s just dead. Like a normal person.
That’s going to be even harder to cover up, but that is a problem for tomorrow Sam.
For now, a brief flare of victory flashes through him— we did it, Mike!— but the moment he touches his brother's shoulders, he knows something is wrong.
“Michael?” he asks. He takes a further step forward, standing beside his brother, trying to actually look at him. Michael is hunched over, as if trying to shrink himself, minimize his height.
Michael shrugs away from him and he keeps his head lowered, refusing to look at Sam or even glance upwards, hair falling in his face like a curtain.
“Don’t look at me,” Mike whispers in a harsh voice that wasn’t characteristic to him. He glares down at the ground and refuses to look at Sam in the eyes.
Sam’s always been stubborn. He reaches forward with both hands and grabs Michael by his face, tilting it up to him, forcing him to look up at him.
He regrets it, immediately gasping as he looks upon him. Michael sure looks like a vampire now, eyebrow ridges thickened, eyes a demonic shade of orange, just like all the other vampires that attacked tonight. His mouth is half parted, so Sam can see just enough of his sharp teeth that had grown in his mouth.
Michael looks like himself, but his features have changed just enough to feel removed from humanity. Sam tries to find his familiar, beloved brother in this new face, and doesn’t let Michael go.
“It didn’t work,” Sam states the obvious. He tries not to give into the feeling just saying gives rise to, a heaviness in his chest, familiar to despair, defeat. It more than just didn’t work. Things got worse.
“Sammy,” Michael says. It’s a plea. He’s shaking. He doesn’t quite raise his eyes to Sam, keeping his head lowered while his eyes peer upward, ashamed. “Sammy, I’m sorry.” Michael sounds wretched. And Sam gets it, he does. If David isn’t the head vampire, then who is?
If killing the head vampire doesn’t work, then how will Michael turn back human? It feels monumentally cruel and unfair, all for nothing.
“You need to get away from me,” Michael growls, backing up, stepping backwards into the shadows. His eyes match the demonic shade of red the room is bathed in.
“Are you...” Sam can’t finish the question but thankfully, Michael knows what he means, shaking his head.
“No. Not yet. But I can feel it,” he glances at David’s corpse. He looks smaller in death, like a teenage boy, like someone Michael’s age. “It’s going to be soon,” he says.
Behind him, Sam can hear footsteps coming down the stairs—the Frog brothers, or maybe Star and Laddie. He can hear a car pull up. Everyone was coming. Mom is coming. He can’t let her see this.
He really can’t let the Frog Brothers see his brother like this.
Sam clenches his jaw, summoning up all his courage. He’s not going to be afraid of his brother, no matter how sharp his teeth are. He’s not going to abandon him. There has to be a way. They just need more time.
He grabs Michael by the wrist. He knows Michael can pull away easily but he needs Michael to follow his lead.
“Sam, stop,” Michael says, eyes still not daring to meet his eyes. “You gotta… you can’t be near me, it’s too dangerous.”
Sam swallows. Dangerous. Because his brother might want to eat him. That kind of dangerous.
He shakes his head. “We’re leaving,” he tells Michael. “You gotta trust me.”
Sam drags Michael to the back patio exit. Michael doesn’t fight him, letting Sam take him into the night, away from everyone else.
^^^
They end up spending the night in David’s cave hotel, which for now, has a couple of vacancies.
Sam half expects Star and Laddie to show up in the middle of the night and he can’t explain how much he doesn’t want that to happen, or why.
They don’t, though, which Sam doesn’t know why, but it makes him breathe a sigh of relief. He watches his brother sleep on a four poster bed, covered in gauzy sheets—what he images are Star’s sheets—and tries not to feel weird about this.
He doesn’t dislike either of them. He just needs to keep Michael’s attention focused on him and not some girl. Eyes on the prize. Michael can chase pretty girls again when he’s human (as if that isn’t what got his brother in this situation to begin with).
He doesn’t sleep well; too anxious, too restless, too achey, and then later, too hungry, hasn’t eaten anything all day. Sam finally decides it’s been long enough around mid-afternoon.
“Mike, Mike,” he shakes him awake by the shoulder. “I know you sleep like the dead now, but I need you awake. C’mon, Michael.”
Michael gradually stirs, making a hmm noise as he gets up. “Yeah, Sam?”
“I have a plan!” Sam says. “We find the real head vampire and kill him. Then you’re a-okay. See? Simple. Simpatico.”
Michael eyes him up and down, his face still slack from sleep, making it hard to get a good read on him or his mood beyond grumpy. Which is his mood every day of late.
“Sam,” Michael starts, speaking slowly, like he’s trying to remember how to do it. “You call that simple? If it wasn’t David, how are you going to find the head vampire?”
Sam sighs. “Don’t be so defeatist. We’re gonna go up and down the coast, and you can use your vampire super senses to sniff out other vampires and find the big one. Whoever made David a vampire can’t be that far from here.”
“Well, that would be easier if David weren’t dead,” Michael says, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose, as if he’s hungover.
Sam sees red for a moment, trying not to clench his fist, or shout. “Whose fault is that? You’re the one that killed him. Sorry none of us thought to interrogate dangerous vampires trying to murder us before that!”
He throws up his hands in a dramatic gesture and takes a step back, walking around the treacherous cave. Only a vampire could live here, because all this junk piled up everywhere was a goddamn hazard.
Michael doesn’t back down. “So you want us, just the two of us, a couple of kids, to walk into a dangerous situation daily, while trying not to turn into a vampire, and kill a big and powerful and probably old vampire together? Is that your plan, Sammy?”
This isn’t going how he wanted it to go. “Now you’re just being an asshole,” Sam says. “You’re not even trying. You’re just going to give up? Just like that? I didn’t think you were a quitter, Michael.”
His brother flinches, lowering his gaze to the ground, which makes Sam feel like shit; he wants to apologize immediately.
“I’m not being an asshole,” Michael says softly, reaching for his sunglasses. They’re in a goddamn cave. Why does he need sunglasses? “I’m being realistic.”
Sam shakes his head. “You’re not a quitter,” he says, mirroring back Michael’s tone. “I’m sorry I said that. I just...I need you to try, Michael.” .
“I don’t think I can do this, Sammy,” Michael confesses. “You saw my face change...I’m changing.” His eyes dart around the room, paranoid. “I’m not who I used to be anymore.”
“What does that even mean?” Sam asks, trying not to roll his eyes. “That’s a little dramatic, buddy, don’t you think?”
“Sam...”
“What? Spit it out.”
“I want to kill ,” he says and looks right at Sam. “And I don’t know how much longer I can hold back.”
Sam very carefully sidesteps the surge of fear and dread and alarm that fills him with. He’ll worry about that later. “Don’t,” Sam hisses. “Don’t act like this is impossible. How long has Star held out?”
“I don’t know,” Michael says, not looking at Sam, throat working heavily. “That’s different.”
Sam doesn’t know how it’s different, but fine. If reason and logic won’t work on his brother, he’ll try something else.
He approaches the bed and plops down next to his brother. Before Michael can react, push him away, wriggle out of his grip, Sam reaches over and places his hand on Michael’s chest, where he can hear his still-beating human heart.
“You’re going to do it for me,” he tells him, jutting out his chin, channeling all his stubbornness. “Okay?”
It’s not like Michael to listen to him. He’s just a stupid little kid, and Michael is almost eighteen. But Michael swallows, lowering his head in shame or contrition, leaning his body towards Sam, and nods.
“Alright,” he breathes. “Alright.”
“Okay,” Sam nods. “Let’s get out of here. I’m hungry, I haven’t eaten anything all day.”
“Yeah,” Michael says, his voice raspy, a sardonic smile twitching at his lips. “Me too.”
They leave Santa Clara when the sun fully sets, in a stolen car Michael procured, with some stolen money he dug from David’s stash in the caves, heading out into the night.
Sam thinks about calling his mom before he goes, but he shakes that thought off. He’ll talk to her later, once he and Michael are safe for good.
^^^
As it turns out, finding vampires is goddamn difficult.
They go up the coast first, reasoning that it makes more sense for vampires to be hiding out in less sunny areas. San Francisco is a little day trip, then Redding, then Mt. Shasta, then Eureka. They get all the way to the border of Oregon before Michael just gives up and asks to turn the car around.
“Michael, no!” Sam protests.
“I don’t think there’s any vampires here, Sam,” he tells him. Michael’s voice is tired. Perpetually tired. Every day he looks a little more exhausted, and they’re running out of cash. “Or at least… I don’t think I have any spider senses for that.”
“So what, it’s over?”
“I didn’t say that,” Michael says. But Sam thinks, then what? It feels like Sam isn’t fighting Michael’s vampire instincts, but Michael’s sense of ennui instead. “I just said, maybe we should stick near the beaches.”
“Is that what your vampire spidey senses are telling you?” Sam asks. He sounds more than a little bratty and he hates it.
“Yeah, actually, that’s right,” Michael says.
“Why?”
“Because,” Michael starts out, a mean smile on his lips. “That’s where all the pre—people are.”
It takes a minute for Sam to get it. “Ooooh.”
A beat.
“So Portland?”
“No,” Michael says, and turns them around.
^^^
In San Francisco, Michael ditches him for the first time.
It takes Sam a little bit to notice. They’re at the pier, which is different from the pier in Santa Clara—here, the pier lines up all the way to the end of a dock, but there’s no sand, or beach, just endless water, a sea of blue. Any other day, it’d be nice. It takes Sam too long to realize his brother has left his side and then longer still to realize he wasn’t just lost in the crowd, but not coming back, no matter how frantically Sam searches and calls out his name.
Eventually, Sam returns to the hotel, and Michael isn’t there either. He grabs the stakes he’s been carrying around lately—for running into vampires, for killing vampires, of which, it’s zero they’ve found—and curls up by the door, as if waiting for a vampire to burst in.
If that vampire is Michael, Sam isn’t sure what he’d do.
Somewhere, around five in the morning, Michael stumbles in, dead tired, like a zombie. His hair was a mess, sticking up in places, and his color looked even more pale and wane. He drags his feet, and doesn’t even look at Sam, barely acknowledges him. Nothing like the responsible older brother he’s been for most of Sam’s life.
“Michael, where have you been?” Sam hates how he sounds. Like a worried old woman. Like Mom. He’s too young to be Mom.
Michael doesn’t say anything. He lays a wad of cash on the little desk table each hotel room provides. “I think we’re good for the next few days,” he says. His voice is raw, his throat sounds like when he gets sick, low and throaty, like he shouldn’t talk.
Sam blinks. He was falling asleep sitting by the door, waiting for Michael, and he’s not fully awake yet. It takes a few minutes to realize he’s looking at yes, a wad of cash . It’s a lot of bills. He doesn’t count them but the wad is thick.
He has the terrifying image in his head of Michael vamping out and ripping some poor sucker’s throat out, before stealing all their money.
“Holy shit, Michael,” he says, “what—”
“Don’t,” Michael says. He has sprawled out on the bed, face first, pushing his face into the pillow. Despite that, Sam can hear him clearly. “Don’t ask me where I got that.”
“Did you kill someone, Michael?” His throat hurts. There’s a lump in it.
“No,” Michael says. “I’m still me. Now don’t ask.”
Sam doesn’t ask.
Before he falls asleep, he thinks he hears Michael crying, his shoulders shaking on the bed.
Sam abandons the bed he’s sleeping in and goes to wrap himself around Michael, spooning him from behind. It’s awkward to be the big spoon, since he’s so much smaller, but Michael doesn’t mind. His shoulders don’t stop shaking and he reaches from behind to grab Sam's arm, pulling it around himself. They fall asleep together like that.
Sam still doesn’t ask.
^^^
Michael only lasts a few more days.
He walks out their hotel door with a, “be right back, getting some ice,” and then just doesn’t come back. Sam waits until dawn before he realizes Michael has truly ditched him for good here. He leaves the hotel then, walking up and down the halls, trying to find him, imagining him dead in the vending machine room or something like that, felled by some mysterious vampire killer.
He’s not dead, of course—he’s not there at all. He checks with the front desk and confirms that Michael left hours ago and hasn’t returned.
So much for Sam’s plan.
Sam doesn’t know what to do with his brother missing. He doesn’t know if Michael meant to leave him, or if something took him. He needs to find him, track him down, but he knows even less about vampires than Michael does and he doesn’t even have a driver’s license to get around. Mike had all the money on him when he left, and the last thing Sam wants to do is go back to Santa Clara, tail tucked between his legs, and tell everyone, Sorry, Mike’s gone, guys.
He’s not ready to declare defeat yet.
Mike comes back the next night, just a little before sunrise. That should make Sam happy; he was packing up, getting ready to go, trying to figure out how to get from here to a bus station, when the hotel door cracks open, creaking slowly and softly.
Michael walks in and—
Sam knows something is very wrong. Once again, Michael is not looking at him, staring down at the ground, hair in his eyes, avoiding his gaze. The air smells different. Like blood.
“Mike?” He breathes.
Mike glances at him. His eyes are that orange-red inhuman color of vampires, the same color as David’s, the same color as Paul’s. He knows that doesn’t mean anything—half vampires can look like that—and yet, Sam can’t shake that this is different.
“Michael, did you...” He trails off. He can’t ask the question. He doesn’t want to know the answer. He suddenly misses Nanook very much. He wants nothing more than to wrap his arm around his dog, who would never ever betray him.
Michael advances on him and Sam isn’t smart enough to back away, doesn’t want to run away from his brother, and a little voice in the back of his head screams, you’re not supposed to run from predators, they’ll chase you.
“Go to bed, Sammy,” Michael says when he’s close enough, in Sam’s space. His voice is a growl, low and rumbling, like an animal. He reaches out, to cup Sam’s face in his hands. They’re warm. And a little sticky.
“We’ll talk later,” Michael says, and lets him go to burrow under the blankets.
He falls asleep under the covers, hidden under them entirely. The lump under the blankets isn’t breathing.
Sam thinks he should be glad to have his brother back, but as soon as Mike passes out for the day, Sam locks himself in the bathroom and cries.
^^^
“What the fuck, Michael? What happened to our plan?”
This is the next morning. No, it’s evening. The sun is down. Fuck. Sam is losing it too, getting lost in the sea of day and night, day and night, not sure which is which anymore.
“Your plan,” Michael says, sunglasses covering his face. He doesn’t know why. It’s fucking night.
“You agreed!”
Michael sighs, the very picture of teenage ennui, now and forever. God, the thought makes Sam sick and angry in ways that don’t make any sense—it’s like nausea in his guts, like he may throw up, but he also wants to scream and he also wants to cry and punch something. Sam didn’t think he could feel these emotions at once.
“Sammy,” he says. Michael chuckles. It sounds sinister. “We haven’t found any vampires. We aren’t going to find a head vampire. It’s not going to happen.”
That is the last straw. Sam looks for something, anything, to grab on to tightly. He finds the stake from the stash they’ve been carrying around, freshly carved, never used. He wraps his hand around it and Michael is suddenly standing in front of him instead of lying the bed, lightning quick.
Sam gasps and drops the stake.
“It’s okay, Sammy,” Michael tells him. “You should leave. You have to get away from me.”
“Well, I’m not,” Sam protests.
“Sam, it’s too late for me,” Michael says. He is looming over him now, but despite being a full vampire now, he still looks the same. Maybe that’s the problem. “You can’t change me back. You have to go back home.”
“Fuck that,” Sam spits.
“Sam,” Michael says, saying his name very slowly. “It’s over. It’s over for me. I’ll take you home, even.”
“Oh, that’s really big of you, Mike, you’re so generous.”
Sam is shaking. It’s not from fear. Or even sadness. Whatever made him cry last night has evaporated, dissipated away. Now, there was something hot and ugly inside him, threatening to burst out of his skin, his own personal vampire living inside him.
“Sam,” Michael exhales softly. “Tell me you’re not miserable like this.”
Sam doesn’t have an answer.
“School is starting soon. You deserve to go back, Sam… you shouldn’t live a whole life on the lam with me. You’d be happier—“
“Don’t,” Sam says. He’s rummaging through their luggage, pulling shit out, as he intends to stay. When he can’t seem to grab on to any of his shit, he clenches his shaking hands into fists. He wants to punch a wall. “Don’t act like you know what’s good for me.”
“I do know what’s good for you,” Michael insists, “and if I didn’t, I know it’s not hanging out with a goddamn vampire—”
“You’re my brother ,” Sam insists. Sam grabs the stake off the ground he dropped, and stabs his brother in the chest.
Michael’s eyes go wide in shock, like he really didn’t expect that, but he doesn’t fight him. He dramatically clutches at the stake in his chest and pulls it out, slumping back against the wall, sliding and slipping down to the ground.
“Sam,” he croaks, face twisted in pain. He outstretches one hand out to him.
“I’m sorry,” Sam says, but he doesn’t sound very sorry at all.
“It’s okay,” Michael concedes. “It’s okay. I’m glad you did it.”
The sight of Michael bleeding on the ground is more than a little disturbing, but Sam tries not to think about it, it’ll heal. He knows it’ll heal.
“Dummy,” he says, kneeling down and going into Michael’s pockets. Mike stares at him with a glazed over expression, eyes glassy and monstrous. “I missed your heart on purpose. I can’t believe you think I’d really stake you. You hurt my feelings, Michael.”
He finds Mike’s pocket knife, flicking it open. He cuts Michael’s shirt off him, until he can see his bare chest, mostly hairless, bleeding left of center.
“Sam...” Michael warns, but even now, Sam can see the confusion in his eyes.
Sam steels himself, holding the pocket knife tight in his hand until his knuckles turn white. Then he drags the blade down his palm until he bleeds.
“Sam!” Michael hisses between his teeth. His mouth hangs up. His teeth are poking into his bottom lip like this. It makes him look stupid, honestly. Sam is feeling mean today.
“Sam, what?” Michael asks, still dazed, still out of it, still bleeding from a chest wound. It strikes Sam that Mike is letting him do this. Letting him cut him up. That he would maybe even let him kill him. That’s a lot to grapple with and Sam tucks that information away for another time, to pull out, when he’s angry or jealous.
Before Michael can stop him, Sam presses his bleeding palm to his bleeding brother’s chest, hard and firm, wanting their blood to mingle.
“What the fuck?” Michael asks, brow furrowed, voice ragged.
“There, blood bound,” Sam says, with all the confidence of a fourteen year old boy. “Now I’m a half vampire too. Now we’re both in this together.”
Michael stares, dumbstruck, blinking rapidly—then he bursts into laughter.
“Stop laughing at me!” Sam shouts, punching him in the shoulder with his good hand. Michael keeps laughing; it’s a horrible choking sound, with the undercurrent of an animal growl.
“You’re supposed to drink it, dummy,” Michael says with fond exasperation. “It’s not a blood pact.”
Sam wants to argue, no, no, this will totally work, but instead—
“Well, fine, then, if you insist.”
He screws up his courage, swallows down his common sense, and gets on his knees in front of Michael, until Sam is only slightly below eye level with him. His brother’s eyes bulge wide as he seems to realize what Sam is doing. This is the moment where Michael could stop him. Sam will always wonder why he didn’t.
He places his mouth over the stake wound he’s made, over his brother’s chest, and sucks.
Hot copper flavored blood flows into his mouth. Sam steadies himself on Michael’s body, placing his hands on his shoulders, grabbing on tight for purchase. Michael’s skin is cold, but his blood is hot and it doesn’t taste sweet or good, but Sam wants to keep drinking anyway, keep taking Michael’s blood in him, like if he drinks enough, he can just burrow inside him and stay with him forever. Sam can feel it running down his chin, sticking to his skin, to his tongue, to the backs of his teeth, sticky and warm and cloying all the way down his throat. He can feel Michael swallow above him, a sharp little gasp, his legs shift around him.
Somewhere, Sam hears a loud beating drum. It’s his heart. His eyes roll in the back of his head, and he finds himself getting floaty and weightless, drifting off, drunk on his brother’s blood. He should stop, he has to stop, but he keeps drinking. Sam moans, low and lurid, shocked by how much he’s enjoying it. The warmth of the blood fuels the arousal in his belly, cock hardening.
That’s a new reaction.
“Fuck, Sammy, fuck,” Michael cries out and then spell is broken. He pushes Sam off with too much strength and Sam lands flat on his ass in front of him, stinging with sudden pain, and blood all over his chin.
“Holy shit,” Sam says, trying to wipe his chin. He just smears blood all over his palm and the back of his hand. That’s even worse. “Fuck.” He keeps licking his mouth. He feels like a dog with peanut butter. Doesn’t matter how much he licks or dry swallows, he can still feel Michael’s blood, coating the back of his throat, like paint on an old car.
“Sam, why? Why? You weren’t supposed to do that.”
Michael is crying and Sam wants to grab him and tuck him into bed. He oddly feels like the older brother now, not the younger.
“You have to help me,” Sam says instead, around a mouth full of sticky bloody teeth. Aside from the grossness, and the current half-chub in his pants he doesn’t want to examine, he doesn’t feel any different. “You gotta find the right vampire to kill or I’m toast.”
He thinks this might be the meanest thing he’s ever done. Someone should have stopped him. Michael should have.
He needs to wash his mouth out. Clean himself up. Blood is drying in the very fine hairs of his arm. He lays there on the ground, wondering why sucking on Michael’s chest blissed him out so much.
Michael doesn’t actually acknowledge him. Instead, he buries his face in his hands and makes a low whining noise, like a dog. Something like guilt pings at Sam and he stands up.
“C'mon Mike, let’s get some rest,” Sam says, reaching for his hands and hauling him up. “The sun is going to rise soon.”
^^^
“So who did you kill?” Sam asks.
They’re in bed together, Michael’s arms wrapped around him, Sam tucked into the dip of his armpit and chest—like how Michael used to let him sleep with him when they were kids. Sam was an imaginative child, always scared that there was a monster under his bed or in his closet, and Michael always indulged him.
Michael stiffens up against him when he asks that. Outside, the sun is starting to rise, curtains drawn tight. Sam doesn’t feel any different but he does feel sleepy. It’s odd, watching the sun from this angle.
He doesn’t want to know about Michael’s first kill, but Sam feels like he needs to. He hopes it was someone special to make his brother betray him like that.
“Sam,” Michael says softly. “Go back to sleep.”
“I want to know,” he huffs. “I want to know what made you turn against me.”
“I didn’t turn against you,” Michael protests.
Sam squirms away, maneuvers himself around in the bed and sits himself half on top of Michael. He lays his hands flat on his chest and has one leg hooked around his thigh. He forces Michael to meet his eyes, wide and dark and— scared? Why would Michael be scared of him?
“You did,” Sam accuses, “you went back on what we agreed.” He presses down on his chest with his palm, holding him still, keeping him from leaving or turning away. “But it’s okay, I just want to know. I’ll forgive you if you tell me.”
“Fuck, Sammy,” Michael hisses in a low whisper. He looks away from Sam, pressing his face into the pillow as hard as he can.
Sam grabs his chin with one hand and pulls his face back to him. He doesn’t say anything but he digs his fingers in, blunt nails into Michael’s skin. He wants Michael to know he’s serious.
Michael blinks back tears and lets out a low exhale.
“I think I was looking for someone to kill,” he confesses.
“I knew it,” Sam whispers, feeling vindicated and sick all at once.
“Do you want to hear the story or not?” Michael snaps.
Sam glares at him but quiets down, waiting for the next part.
“I was thinking of leaving you here; calling the cops once I’m a few towns away, telling them there’s a runaway in the hotel.”
“You’re such an asshole!” Sam can’t help himself.
“Yeah, I know,” Michael says. “I wasn’t thinking so clear though...too hungry.” A beat. Michael’s eyes fixate one Sam’s, brown on blue. “You’ll get it soon.”
Sam ignores the pit of dread in his stomach. He doesn’t regret what he did, he tells himself.
“I was walking along the road, hitchhiking, when some guy offered me a ride. And I swear to god, when I looked at him, I didn’t want to kill him. I was just going to let him drive me around...but I think some part of me wanted to kill him.”
“So you...ate him?” Sam asks, trying not to sound judgmental. He feels a little judgmental maybe; mostly hurt.
“He pulled a knife on me,” Michael says. “Drove me to an abandoned bus stop and threatened me. Don’t ask me what he threatened me with..”
Sam really wants to ask but what comes out is a relieved laugh. “So it was self defense!” Somehow that’s a little easier to swallow, than thinking of his brother, looking for poor unsuspecting strangers to eat.
Michael sighs and shakes his head. “Maybe. I think he just gave me an excuse to do what I already wanted to do...it’s not like it makes me any less a vampire.”
Sam sighs but feeling satisfied, and a little heavy in his belly, like he drank too much warm milk, he rolls over and curls back into Michael.
“I should have taken his car and kept going anyway...I don’t know why I came back...” he trails off. Sam tries not to have his feelings hurt.
“Thanks for coming back, buddy,” he whispers.
Michael makes a noise that can only be described as a whimper. He leans in, tilting his head down and presses his nose against his head, buries it in his hair and inhales deeply. Sam’s insides go all warm and flip floppy for reasons he doesn’t entirely get; it’s not as if Michael has never been touchy. That’s been their whole lives.
“You know,” Michael says. “I don’t want to kill you anymore.”
“That’s real nice of you, Mike,” Sam says, dry as hell.
“No, I don’t mean it like that,” Michael says, pulling back and away, head down on the pillow, staring up at the cracked ceiling above them. “You don’t smell like...prey anymore.”
Oh.
They both laugh. It feels nice. Despite the subject matter.
^^^
Things change after that. And they stay the same.
They keep looking for vampires, and not finding any. They travel inwards of California, deeper into the state, despite Michael’s beach and seaside theory, just for a change of pace. Head out towards Tahoe, which is nice this time of year. If Sam could rouse himself out of bed to enjoy it during the day.
Sam is starting to wonder if all the vampires were in Santa Clara, and what they really need to do is go home, like there’s something they missed there. But he doesn’t mention that—bringing Michael home like this seems like a recipe for disaster.
It’s hard though; the first day after drinking Michael’s blood, it takes every ounce of energy to get himself out of bed, almost as if he’s fighting through a fog, or molasses.
Sam’s limbs are heavy during the day. That’s the first change he notices. It’s hard to wake himself up, to go anywhere. The energy he had for this plan, the buzzing anticipation, all sort of melts away once the sun rises. All he wants to do is stay in bed. He sleeps curled up next to his brother, like it’s the warmest most safest place to be and Michael keeps curling up protectively around him every night. They keep ignoring the second bed in the room. Eventually, Sam is just going to request a king upon arrival to every hotel.
No wonder Michael was so tired all the time before he gave in, energy constantly depleted.
Michael kills people now. That’s the big change.
“Stay away, Sammy, okay, don’t come near me,” he says when he comes back to the motel. It’s a habit now, a routine; Michael leaves daily to go find someone to drain, then comes back, remorseful, in theory. Sam thinks if he really felt guilty, he’d stop. But he doesn’t. He wants to kill; he just doesn’t want to tell Sam that.
It’s really cutting down on their vampire hunting plan.
Sam wants to be mad at him. He really does. He hates the way Michael stumbles in like a drunk man who went on a bender, always half hidden in shadow, turning away from Sam. Ashamed.
He hates how he makes Sam a prisoner in the hotel; Sam is always waiting up, stir crazy, cabin fever, nothing else to do but watch MTV on the spritzy motel tv, mindless music videos in the middle of the night that are starting to get dull.
He wants to be mad and yell at his brother but Michael always smells like blood when he comes back, hot and sticking to him. The smell of blood makes Sam feel a little dizzy. It makes him forget what he was going to say.
Sam is starting to feel a little...left of center. A little cracked. Something about neon city lights at night and the freeway driving and dark hotel rooms and the smell of blood, make him feel a little delirious, a little dizzy.
They get a new routine.
Sam watches Michael go out to feed. Sam waits in the hotel like a good boy. They don’t run out of money because Michael takes the money off corpses, his own single man Bonnie and Clyde team that Sam’s not part of. Sam’s a stupid little kid. He doesn’t get invited.
Sam thinks that’s the worst part; he can feel Michael pulling away from him. He can feel Michael putting walls between them; doesn’t matter that Sam’s a half vampire too. Sam is sweet, innocent and good, and Michael is a murderer; those two things don’t go together.
He is so scared he’s going to lose Michael for real, in more ways than Michael just becoming a vampire. Scared to wake up and Michael disappeared, gone, again, never to return again.
Maybe that’s why he refuses to sleep without him.
^^^
While Michael sleeps during the day, Sam manages to rouse himself up before him and calls Mom.
The phone rings three times before someone picks up and Sam is excited to hear her voice again, even though this is absolutely a stupid decision, even though he knows that makes him like a little kid. “Mom!” He shouts, once someone picks up. “Mom, how are you?”
“Your mother is crying in her room every day but that’s to be expected, when her only two sons disappear.”
Grandpa’s low key sardonic voice rings out over the phone line. It’s almost flat, completely toneless but there’s an edge there that makes Sam swallow hard. He feels slapped, and caught with his hand in the cookie jar, all at once.
“Grandpa,” he says, wincing. They left Grandpa’s house in a state . Everything was wrecked. The plumbing, gone. Sam had forgotten about that; it just seemed urgent to get them both out of there. “Grandpa, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you all—”
“Are you one of them?”
Sam’s stomach drops, the way it feels like on a rollercoaster ride—high crawl up, sharp turn down. He thinks he may be nauseous. “What?”
“Are you one of them?” Grandpa’s voice is so plain spoken and calm. The calmer he is, the more freaked out Sam feels. He can’t speak, struggling to find words, opening and closing his mouth like a fish. The question catches him so off guard, he forgets what words are.
“Don’t lie to me, kid, I can hear the wheels rolling in your head.”
“I’m not,” Sam says, the authority in Grandpa’s voice driving the words out of him, unwittingly confessing. At least it was the truth, technically. “How did you—”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I sure?” Sam asks, startled, thrown completely off. He feels sweat running down the back of his neck. His stomach is queasy. “Of course I’m sure! I would know!”
Grandpa chuckles, like he’s telling a joke but Sam’s not in on it. “What about Michael?”
“What about Michael?” Sam asks, throwing the question back in Grandpa’s face, playing dumb.
“Is he one of them?”
Lie. Lie to him. Don’t tell him the truth. I can’t let him know. Sam knows all of this but he takes too long answering, because Grandpa sighs over the phone. For a minute, he’s quiet. He can hear a soft clunk of something, and some rustling in the distance. Sam almost thinks he’s hung up.
Then—
“Where are you? We’ll come get you. Your mother wants you home.”
The relief is immense. Sam lets out a breath, long and slow. He’s so happy, he thinks he may cry, imagining living back with Mom and keeping Michael in a basement or something, letting him out to eat seagulls. It’s not ideal! But they’ll go from there.
“I’m in—” Sam starts.
“You have to get away from Michael,” Grandpa warns him. There’s an urgency in his voice that wasn’t there before. Grandpa is usually so unflappable. “He’s asleep right now, isn’t he? Can you leave? Get somewhere safe?”
Sam blinks. Confused. “What? I am safe.”
“Sam, he’s one of them isn’t he? Don’t make me say it.”
“Yeaaaah,” Sam confirms, feeling like a traitor. “Why?”
“Sam,” his grandpa is talking slowly, low in his voice. “You have to get away from him.”
“Why?” He says, a little too loud. He doesn’t need to scream at a phone, he doesn’t want to wake Michael up but the thought of leaving Michael behind is making his eyes burn. “He’s okay! He’s still my brother! He’s not—”
He’s not a monster, Sam’s brain cuts him off before he can say that, and he hates that he doesn’t know if that’s true. Michael never lets him watch him kill.
He doesn’t have a defense. Sam has put his head in the sand. He doesn’t know who Michael is killing or where he’s getting the money. He wants to say Michael isn’t human anymore, but he’s still the same, but he doesn’t know that for sure.
“We’re working on it,” he goes with, voice meek. He can feel himself shrinking into the chair. The line is quiet for a moment.
“You can’t change him back, you know. That’s not how this works,” his grandpa finally says. “I love Michael, but if he loves you, he’ll let you come back.”
Sam pushes the flat of his tongue against his teeth and thinks about drinking Michael’s blood. “Are you saying Michael can’t come home?” He asks. His voice is choked. Small. He feels small. He feels like a stupid little kid. Maybe that’s all he is.
“Sam,” Grandpa ignores his question and that’s as good as an answer. “Where are you?”
Sam can’t. He can’t. He can’t do this to his brother.
“I’m staying with Mike,” he spits out.
“Sam!” Grandpa says, truly alarmed now.
“Goodbye Grandpa,” he says and slams the phone down.
Sam stares down at his hands, at the phone, sitting at the hotel desk, like it’s a live wire, sharp and dangerous. His stomach is in knots. He thinks he may actually be sick. He doesn’t feel better at all.
On the bed, Michael sleeps.
He doesn’t tell Michael about this conversation.
^^^
Things change after that. And they stay the same.
Sam bites the inside of his cheek, gnaws on it, tugs at the skin until he tears it and it bleeds into his mouth. It tastes good, Sam decides, tonguing the injury. Not like Michael’s blood, that got him all worked up, but they share blood, don’t they? It’s the same. Should taste the same.
“Sam,” Michael rasps. He’s supposed to be driving, keep your eyes on the road, Mike , but he doesn’t stop Mike from looking over at him. Lately, he wants Michael to stare at him more, keep his eyes trained and raked over him.
“What?” Sam teases.
Sam feels different: both stronger and weaker all at once. His heart is always pounding painfully hard in his chest, like it’s struggling to stay alive. He’s so exhausted during the day. He’s trying hard not to think about what Grandpa said, bite down on the words that want to spill out.
Right now, they’re driving along highway one, and the ocean isn’t quite as pretty at night, at least, not from this angle. Sam wishes the car Michael stole had a top down, a convertible. It’d be nice to feel the wind in his hair, to feel a little bit alive, instead of living on borrowed time.
They’re stopping in St. Luis Obispo today. It’s not a big city, known for wines, but not Napa either.
Sam tugs at his other cheek. He grinds the fleshy bit down between his teeth. He wants to take dental floss and run them through his gums until they bleed.
“You gotta stop,” Michael warns. “Why are you doing that?”
Sam swallows. The blood down his throat is thick. Warm. For a moment, he shivers. He’s not cold.
“What?” He asks. “I’m not doing anything.” He sticks his tongue out at Michael, childish. It’s coated in blood, bright red against pink.
“Sam!” Michael hisses.
“What?” He says, and okay, Sam is feeling a little mean.
Can you blame him? He spends day and night in hotels. He can’t remember the last time he did anything actually fun.
^^^
At a diner, Sam stares down at his burger. He orders it rare and Michael raised his eyebrows. Sam flips him off.
Michael is eating a spaghetti dish. It makes Sam miss mom something fierce.
The waitress is an older lady with short cropped hair and a nice smell. She calls Sam sugar and asks him if he’d like a milkshake; it makes Sam feel like a stupid little kid— I’m fourteen going on fifteen, not twelve! —but he orders a chocolate shake and spitefully refused to share.
“How are you even eating?” Sam asks, once she brings them their food. “I thought you were the undead.”
Michael shrugs. “Food is fine,” he says, taking a bite of his pasta. Tomato sauce smears on the corner of his lips. Sam wants to lick it off. “David and the others ate takeout.”
Looking away, he slips on his sunglasses, which makes him look like a bigger douche than he actually is, sunglasses indoor at night.
“Cory Hart called, Mike, he’s sueing you for copyright infringement.”
Michael flips him off.
“Eat,” Michael says, pointing at his food. “That cost a lot of money.”
“Yeah, yeah I know,” Sam says, ungrateful. If they were still at home, Michael wouldn’t be able to guilt him like this, but it's starting to hit Sam he may not go home again. Not for a long time.
A wave of longing, sharp and powerful, hits him hard in the chest; he misses Mom, Nanook, his dog, his own bed, even strange Santa Clara, murder capital of the world.
“I’m not hungry,” Sam says, sullen. He sucks on his milkshake, slurping loudly.
“For fuck’s sake, Sam,” Michael sighs. He pushes his fingers against his brow, as if Sam’s giving him a headache. “I can’t believe you’re stuck at fourteen for the rest of my life.”
Sam kicks Michael under the table, hard enough to make his brother wince. Sam’s heart sings in savage delight at the sight.
“Fuck you, buddy!” He hisses. “I won’t be!”
People are staring and Michael hushes him. Which is fine. They both sit in silence while they eat for the rest of the time. Sam tries not to think about what Michael said. About Sam being fourteen. Like it’s forever. Like he’s not going back.
This is the end line. No head vampire will fix it.
Neither of them say this.
^^^
When they get to the hotel, Sam tries to distract himself from the impending doom hanging over his head, but it’s getting hard and harder. Behind the chocolate shake, he can still taste his own cheek blood, even if the wound healed already, lingering on his taste buds, swiping the flat of his tongue over it.
“Do you really think I’m doomed?” Sam asks.
“What?” Michael asks as they walk in the hotel, closing the door behind him. Sam doesn’t know why. He’s just going to leave again.
“You said I’d be fourteen forever,” he points out. “You don’t think I can beat this.”
It’s an accusation.
“I was just joking, Sam,” Michael says. “You know I didn’t mean it.”
“I don’t know actually,” Sam says, hands on his hips.
“Well, now you do,” Michael says, sounding for one moment, just like Grandpa. Then, before Sam can say anything, he says, “I’m heading out, don’t wait up.”
Sam rushes over to block the door, leaning against it with his shoulders. “Take me with you,” he demands.
Michael shakes his head. “Can’t, Sam, you know the drill.”
“Please, I’m so bored!” Sam pleads. “There’s only so much MTV I can watch. I’m climbing the walls here.”
“I’ll bring you back a comic book,” Michael says, pursing his lips. “Look, you don’t want to go. You won’t like what I do.” Michael anxiously rubs the back of his neck, looking down, not meeting his eyes, ashamed of himself. Sam thinks good, you should be, but he doesn’t want to further push Michael away.
“You don’t have to be coy,” Sam says, narrowing his eyes. “I know what you’re doing...I can smell it on you.”
Michael eyes him with suspicion, sunglasses lowered to peer over them at him, like he needs that barrier between them. His eyes are still their warm, familiar brown ones and for some reason, that seems important to Sam.
“Sam—”
“You don’t have to do anything...you can just leave me at a movie theater or arcade or something and come back. It’s not that late.”
Michael eyes him steadily for a long moment, and Sam is almost sure he’s going to agree. Michael leans in close, stepping into his space and something happens inside Sam that he doesn’t entirely understand, like all his insides light up just being near Michael, like instinct or desire; he wonders if this is a vampire thing, if Michael’s blood inside him perks him up and comes alive the closer he is to the source.
Michael presses in and kisses the top of his forehead; he’s a full head taller than Sam and so much broader. He looks like a man, and Sam still looks like a little kid (and if they don’t fix this, he’s always going to look like a little kid next to his manly brother).
Sam makes a noise like a whine in his throat and presses even closer, tucking his head under Michael’s chin. He can feel Michael move in and nudge the top of his head, his hair, with his nose, breathing him in.
Then he firmly but surely pushes Sam aside, like he’s nothing. “Sorry, Sam. You don’t want the temptation.”
He leaves before Sam can do anything.
Sam is shaking. He curls his hand in a fist. Sam is...angry?
His hands are both fists, and he keeps opening and closing them. He shouldn’t be so mad. Why is he mad?
His jaw aches.His teeth ache. For a moment, Sam can’t breath. Like something white hot and bright explodes behind his eyes, his head screaming. He ends up on the floor, curling his arms around himself, shaking and trying not to cry.
The sudden snap of pain stops, but he still feels...wrong and sick, like someone took him apart and put him back together the wrong way. Gingerly, Sam picks himself off the floor, feeling like he’s going to throw up, the room shaking and swaying around him. He grabs on to the bed spread as he makes his way to the tiny hotel room bathroom, cramped as a coffin. He wonders if this is what it’s like to feel drunk.
He wishes he could get drunk. That’s what teenagers are supposed to do, right? Get drunk. He’s never been drunk and he wonders if he ever will.
In the bathroom, Sam leaves the lights off; they hurt his eyes, make his head hurt more. But he thinks he may need them anyway, because he can barely see his own reflection.
He’s transparent, like Michael was at the start of this. Can see the beige tile behind him. Even his clothes are transparent, which Sam honestly isn’t sure how that works—if he took them off, would they turn solid?
As pale and faded away he is, he can see the source of the ache in his gums; two sharp teeth, hanging down from his jaw, wicked looking. His eyes burn orange-gold. He wonders if that’s why his head hurts.
Oh.
Is this supposed to happen? He can’t be a full vampire yet. The only blood he’s tasted is his own. Sam leans in, placing his hand against the mirror. The mirror is solid. He’s solid. He’s not a transparent, see-through thing, as much as he looks like it.
But he doesn’t know what he is; he doesn’t look like a teenager anymore. Sam’s eyes are wide in the mirror; he looks like a very startled monster, or maybe like a cat, if given human form. One of those pale fluffy cats with big orange eyes.
Sam tentatively presses the tip of his tongue to the tip of his fang, then pulls it away, just as quickly, wincing. It hurts. He cut himself. More hot, coppery blood flows down his throat again and it’s almost—nice? He wants more of it.
God, he must be desperate.
He looks at his own terrible reflection and—
Without thinking, Sam smashes his hand against the mirror, knuckles forward, curled into a fist. It doesn’t shatter entirely, like in the movies, when the action hero dramatically and very seriously punches the mirror—but shards break off with a loud noise, and stick in his hand. He pulls his fist away slowly, carefully, bits and pieces of the mirror in his knuckles, along his fingers, in the webbing between them.
Sam gasps, sucking in sharp heaving breaths. It hurts. He didn’t expect it to hurt, but being a half vampire doesn’t make you immune to pain, he’s realizing.
Of course it hurts, you stupid idiot! There’s glass in your goddamn knuckles! You’re not a superhero!
Very carefully, he sits back down on the toilet and wraps toilet paper around his other hand. It’s harder than it looks, using only one hand, but once he has it down, he plucks out the pieces of glass stuck inside him and deposits them into the trash bin. As soon as he removes them, the wounds on his hand close up, leaving only some blood stains behind.
Sam isn’t like this. He’s not a violent guy. He’s not a macho guy, by any stretch of the imagination. He knows this. He’s small and skinny and has soft fluffy hair and his face is still chubby in places and his body is just reedy and thin. He wears bright loud colors and holds his head high when other guys make fun of him. He’s never dated a girl in his life and he doesn’t want to (and is starting to think he never will want to). He’s not cool or tough like Michael and he’s never ridden a motorcycle. He doesn’t just angrily punch mirrors to prove a point.
Something is changing. Sam feels more aggressive lately. Angry. He needs to get out of this hotel room, of this car, of this cramped closed space.
Taking a deep breath, he brings his knuckles to his fingers and laps up the leftover blood, shuddering to himself, until he licks himself completely clean.
When Michael comes back, Sam is in bed, blankets drawn around him, covering him and hiding from view. He isn’t asleep but Michael doesn’t seem to notice or care. Michael smells like fresh blood and Sam clutches the blankets tighter around himself to keep himself from leaping at Michael and demanding a taste.
He doesn’t know what time it is, but Michael comes to bed, sliding in behind him, and wraps an arm around him. Like magic, Sam falls asleep almost immediately the moment his brother touches him, the sun rising, going slack.
^^^
Sam keeps sleeping during the day and it’s starting to be a problem. They’re not getting anywhere like this.
In Fresno, Michael passes out hard, conking out, burrowing himself in the motel closet. Sam almost expects Mike to grab on to the closet hangers with his gnarly feet and just hang upside down to sleep. Like a bat.
He’s too heavy, though, and he ends up awkwardly bunched up on the floor, back to the closet wall, and legs and torso bent almost in half. It can’t be comfortable, Sam thinks.
Wait.
Sam makes sure any trace of sunlight can’t get in the room. This motel has no curtains, just shades, blinders, and they’re locked tight. Only a tiny stream of light gets past, and it’s not enough to reach the bed.
Michael will be under a blanket anyway.
Sam isn’t sure this is going to work but he picks Michael up by the armpits; he’s...still as heavy as he imagined he would be, his brother 180 pounds of muscle, next to Sam’s skinny limbs, but he’s not hard to lift. It doesn’t cost him very much strength. Carefully, he eases Michael across the floor, dragging him to the bed and then pulls him up on it. Sam climbs on top of the bed and tugs Michael up. It’s not the most gracious of movements, but it works.
He thought that would wake him, being jostled around but Michael continues to sleep. Goddamn vampires.
He arranges Michael on the bed until he’s lying face up, and folds his arms across his chest, like cheesy vampires in a coffin. Still not waking. It’s getting funny now.
He could do a lot to Michael like this. Like a car crash, or a sucker punch, the memory of—Mark? Marko? Marcus?—flashes into his head, the inhuman screams of a dying vampire, the mop of curly hair and total shock in his eyes. The sharp teeth. David’s claws on his ankle, trying to drag him to the depths.
Sam shakes the memory loose but he shivers; he wants Mom to hug him, and tell him things are going to be okay, the way she did after Dad left—even if it wasn’t true, he wants to hear it.
Michael didn’t tell him things would be okay—Michael told him dad was a bastard and he was better off without him—but he hugged him too. Sam just wants to be touched.
He perches on top of Mike, climbing on his chest, and he still doesn’t wake up.
Sam lays one hand over Michael’s chest, where his heart should beat, but doesn’t anymore. Slides that hand up to his neck and wraps his hand around it. He’s small, he’s no threat to Michael, he can’t actually choke him like this, or do anything to really hurt him, especially with no pulse in his throat. But the sight of his pale hand on Michael’s throat, thumb over where the pulse should beat, makes him shiver. His guts clench up, like he may be sick.
He moves his hand further along his body and cups his cheek; Michael’s face, the slope of his jaw, fits perfectly in his. Sam leans down and presses a kiss to the tip of his forehead. He lets his mouth linger there, waiting for Michael to wake up.
He doesn’t.
Sam watches him sleep. Sam doesn’t know for how long; he’s fascinated by his brother’s body, both familiar and new, sleeping and dead.
Eventually he crawls by his side and tucks himself in next to him. Being awake during the day is like walking through molasses. His body is sluggish, head heavy, mouth stuffed full of cotton. He doesn’t even mean to pass out but he does, mouth open on Michael’s shoulder.
^^^
Sam dreams of ripping Michael's throat out with his blunt human teeth. His blood tastes like warm cherry pie. His gums ache.
^^^
Sam wakes up. It’s pitch black out and he’s alone in the hotel room. Shit. Fuck you, Mike.
Sometimes, he really thinks Mike is going to leave him. Go off and find Star and be a cool vampire somewhere away from his annoying tag along little brother. Leave Sam behind to cope and deal with this himself.
He’s thinking about that, as he tears out the hotel room, only a bit of pocket change in hand, and no real destination in mind. He’s in short sleeves but the crisp mid September air doesn’t bother him. It feels refreshing, nice, alive on his skin.
Sam walks for a long while, but he’s not tired. It’s nice to be out, even if the smells are a little overwhelming, and the noises a little too loud—traffic skating by him, cars honking, and the human smell of piss and shit faintly in the distance. Sam has lost track of what city they’re in but there’s an ocean near by, Sam can smell the salt in the air.
He ends up in an arcade in the mall, playing Street Fighter and Double Dragon with some kid—taller than him, with floppy brown hair that hangs in his eyes, and freckles across the bridge of his nose. Maybe this kid is older than him, but not by much; he doesn’t look as small as Sam, but also not as grown as Michael, still has a softness around his face that makes Sam think he’s only a year or two older. Sam keeps losing the game because he keeps getting distracted by his bare throat, and the thud-thud pound of his heart. The way it beats fast and hard, filled with adrenaline at a little fighting game.
“Where are you from?” The guy asks in the middle of the game, trying to throw him off.
“Phoenix,” Sam says. Santa Clara wasn’t really home, not really, and nothing else seemed like a right answer
“Wow, what’s that like?”
“Too hot," Sam gripes, but it never bothered him while he was living there. Maybe it would now.
Sam is trying not to think about Michael. About what he’s doing.
About how good the guy smells.
Well. He smells like mall food court food, plastic cheese and fried corn dogs, sweaty and warm, but under that, Sam can smell something else, salty sweet. Sam knows what blood tastes like, and it’s not sweet but he can’t help but imagine it that way, wondering what blood not his own would taste like on his tongue.
This guy is kind of cute, Sam thinks, tonguing the roof of his mouth, the backs of his teeth, where fangs would sprout out; it hasn’t happened voluntarily yet. He doesn’t know how to make that happen. He’s really cute, Sam lets himself think, trying not to fantasize about kisses.
He’s not supposed to think these things about other guys, but it feels pointless to shove that emotion down now, with a life on the run. Why shouldn’t he let himself think guys are cute? Why not?
“I gotta get going,” the kid says after he wins this round, bouncing away from Sam. He pats Sam on the back as he heads out the arcade, into the bright lights of the mall food court. His hand is unexpectedly warm against Sam’s back and he almost leans into it. “You were a good match! You’ll get better the more you practice, buddy.”
Buddy makes Sam’s insides flare up. It’s just a word but he’s hot all the sudden, cheeks flushing. Sam misses Michael very much. He’s probably still out there somewhere. He hopes he’s panicking over Sam leaving.
“Hey, don’t you wanna play a few more? I think I have enough for a few more rounds,” Sam tries to lure the kid into hanging around more, rummaging in his pockets for more money.
The guy shakes his head. “This place is closing soon. I gotta get home. It’s a school night, I can’t stay out this late.”
Oh. School. Sam had forgotten. He’s supposed to start high school this year. Sam entering freshman year, Michael entering his senior year, the only time the two of them would be together at the same school. Michael was going to drive him on the motorcycle, even. How cool would that have been?
“Why, you can?”
“Yeah, I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Sam answers, mostly honest. “I’m free all night.”
“For real?” The kid is gawking at him like Sam did something special. Something cool.
It hits Sam in the gut that he is a cool kid now—no school and no mom and no dad and no rules, except keep going and going and going. He’s a drifter, a runaway loner, no ties. It makes him feel oddly giddy.
“Yeah, I can stay out as late as I want.”
“No, you can’t,” Michael says, placing his hands on Sam’s shoulders behind him. Sam lets out a completely unmanly shriek and leaps up in the air.
“What the hell—“
Behind him, Michael says, “thanks for finding my little brother, kid, I’ll take it from here.”
Michael steers Sam out of the arcade before Sam even gets to say goodbye. He doesn’t even get a look back. The thought fills him with a strange sadness, like he’ll never see this kid again and it’s all Michael’s fault.
“What the fuck, Mike—”
“Car. Now,” Michael says. He smells like blood. Fresh blood. It clings to him, follows Michael around. Sam doesn’t know how he even functions, with that smell constantly hanging around him.
Mike doesn’t let go of him until they’re by the stolen car Mike’s been driving around in. As soon as Mike lets go of him, Sam spins around and shoves Mike straight into another car. The force of it makes Mike dent it. Holy shit.
“What the hell, Mike? I was having fun! Why did you have to ruin it?” His hands are shaking. He wants to shove his brother around some more, break his nose and watch the blood pour from his face.
Michael is eyeing him warily. “Goddammit, Sam, you’re smarter than this,” he says softly. There is a low growl in his voice and it doesn’t scare Sam at all. He wants to fight. He hopes Michael hurts him. He wants to hurt him back.
“Smarter than what? Than you?”
Michael flinches like Sam swung directly at him. Good. Sam’s blood is bubbling. His head is pounding, jaw aching and he can feel something pulsing and throbbing under his skin, threatening to burst out. He steps closer then, getting into Michael’s space; he’s never been able to intimidate anyone but Michael steps back as if he could.
“Smarter than who, Mikey? I can control myself, obviously, that kid was fine, we were talking about school, just because you lost it and ate someone doesn’t mean—”
Michael shoves him against their car until the wind gets knocked out of Sam, gasping. It hurts. The metal digs into his back. It’s not comfortable. Michael is holding him against the hood, pressing his body down against the cold steel, hands on his shoulders, face so close to his, nose to nose. The smell of blood Sam’s nostrils.
“You’re dangerous, Sam,” Michael growls in his face. His eyes flash dangerously. Sam likes it. He compulsively licks his teeth. “Do I have to remind you of that? You could hurt someone. You’re a goddamn ticking time bomb.”
It occurs to Sam they're having this argument in a public parking lot. That Sam is maybe shouting a little too loud. That Michael is a little too close. That people are going to notice. The knowledge should stop Sam from having this fight.
It doesn’t. Sam doesn’t back down.
“Get off ,” Sam snarls, his voice dropping to a timber that Sam didn’t think he’d use until he’s older, and shoves Michael away. Michael stumbles back and Sam, for a minute, marvels at his own strength, before clamping down on his jaw and charging at Mike.
Mike gawks at him. Sam takes in his surprised expression, right before Sam makes contact. Sam is shorter than him, and he pushes Michael down to the ground by going low, lowering his head like a goat and head butting Mike in the chest, while his arms go around him and he tackles him to the ground. Mike goes down hard, groaning in pain as he hits the asphalt.
Sam lands on top of him, his body just twinging in pain. Before Michael can react, he sits on him, legs around his waist, and grabs Michael by the throat, using both hands. They used to do this all the time—roll around together, wrestle each other, for fun. They used to do this all the time but never had Sam managed to get the upper hand like this.
Sam’s never been posed to wring Michael’s neck. His stomach flutters.
“You’re always leaving me alone! Why do you get to go out and do stuff? Because you’re older? Three years ain’t much, asshole!”
In a dark flash, Sam hits the pavement. He lets out an oof , wind knocked out of him, the momentary pain disorienting him and letting Michael gain the upper hand. He pins him to the ground with his full body, splayed on top of him, chest to chest, Michael’s face right up against his. He can smell his breath and all Sam wants to do is lick into his mouth. He whimpers.
“What do you think I’m doing? Every time I go out? You think I’m having a good time?” Michael’s face has gone all vampire, fangs and red-orange eyes. That should scare Sam, maybe. It doesn’t. It makes the pulse jump in his throat but not with fear. “You think this is fun for me? Running all the time? Killing people for food and money? You think this is what I wanted to do with my life?”
Sam struggles underneath but Michael’s weight is like iron on top of him. He’s too much. He’s too strong. He ineffectually kicks at him with his legs, trying to push him with his hands but Sam can barely move his arms.
“You could take me with you,” Sam argues back. “I never asked you to take care of me.”
“I’m not going to kill someone in front of you, Sam,” Michael says, eyes blazing, serious.
“Why not?” Sam spits out, before he realizes what he’s saying, the implications.
Michael doesn’t answer but he flinches away from him, just enough that Sam could finish pushing him off, if he tries.
Michael is staring at him like he’s never seen him before. Like Sam is something new entirely.
Sam shoves his shoulder. “I’m asking why not ?”
Michael has no answer.
“Everything okay here?”
A rent-a-cop approaches them, shining a flashlight at them. Fuck.
Michael immediately rolls away and off Sam, landing beside him. Everything happens very quickly. Michael puts a hand in the back of Sam’s neck, urging his head down, away from the cop’s prying eyes. With his other hand, he raises his arm and blocks the flash of light in his face.
Sam realizes his fangs have popped out. He clamps his mouth shut. He does what Michael wants him to do, staring down at the pavement, avoiding the mall cop, taking a shuddering, deep breath.
“Yeah, this is my little brother,” Michael says, swallowing thickly. His voice sounds like fifty miles of bad road. “We’re just wrestling.”
“This true?” The rent-a-cop steps closer to Sam, light shining bright, and Sam willfully and submissively lowers his head, not looking up at him. He keeps tonguing his fangs, fascinated by how they fit in his mouth, even now, at the worst possible time. Sam tries to will them back in, taking deep breaths.
“Sam, answer the officer,” Michael says. His fingers rub at the skin on the back of his neck, sending goosebumps down Sam’s spine.
Sam’s eyes flicker up. The bright light hurts him, and he squints, narrowing his eyes. He hopes he looks normal. Human.
“Yeah he’s my brother,” Sam mutters. “He’s just being a dick.”
To prove a point, he punches Michael in the shoulder, fist against his leather jacket.
The officer’s gaze is pitiless, staring at both of them with suspicion. He shines a light right in Sam’s eyes, and Sam looks away, the lights too bright, hurting his eyes. He can’t help the low growl in his throat.
“Are you high, son?”
“My brother doesn’t do drugs,” Michael says a little too quickly, defensive. His hand slides down Sam’s back, palm flat, a firm but grounding reminder.
“I wanna hear it from him,” the officer says.
“I’m not high,” Sam huffs.
“Let me see your eyes,” he demands. That friendly tone is gone, all business.
Sam’s heart is pounding all the way in his throat. He can feel teeth dig into his tongue, sharper eye teeth than they should be. Can he pass off his vampire eyes as contacts?
Can they kill this guy? Kill a cop?
Michael’s hand rubs his back and that, more than anything, makes Sam feel like everything will be okay.
Sam looks up, wincing at the bright flashlight in his eyes. The officer only stares for a few seconds before nodding. “Looks good,” he says.
Sam’s eyes must have gone back to normal. He’s a little disappointed.
“What about you, son?” He turns his attention back to Michael.
“I’m clean and sober,” he says.
“Then you won’t mind submitting to a field sobriety test, will you?”
“Leave him alone,” Sam starts to say but Michael hushes him, patting his back.
“It’s fine, officer, I don’t mind,” he says, getting up.
Sam watches the interaction with baited breath. Michael’s balance is perfect as he performs the test, but Sam can see the tension in his body, spine ramrod stiff, jaw clenched tight from the strain of holding back. Michael’s hands keep curling into a fist, in and out. Sam knows what Michael wants. Sam wants it too.
Sam wants to see him tear out his throat.
It’s an idle thought; rattling at the back of his head. The way that it pops into his mind, that casually, scares him the most.
He watches Michael touch his finger to nose, then count backwards from 100 and waits for him to attack.
He never does.
“Alright, boys,” the officer says at last, tone jovial but face warning. “Looks like you’re clean, but don’t go wrestling in public. Save that for home.”
“Yes sir,” Michael says, deferential. Before Sam can retort back, Michael grabs Sam by the wrist and drags him back to the car.
The ride back to the motel is deathly silent. The roads all around them are loud, cars passing by them with thundering swoops. The music on the radio breaks up a bit, leaving Robert Smith to only intermittently croon on the radio about love.
Sam’s voice is lodged in his throat. He can smell blood on Michael still—faded now, less fresh. Probably not as tasty. He shudders.
Michael notices, turning to face him, taking his eyes off the road for a minute. “You okay?” He doesn’t seem to be mad anymore.
Maybe that’s why Sam confesses.
“I wanted you to kill him,” Sam says flatly. He doesn’t look at Michael, preferring to stare out the window, watch the world go by. The moment he says it, and it no longer lives as a dark little urge in his brain, he knows it’s wrong.
Michael says nothing. Then he pulls over by the side of the road.
“Michael?” Sam asks as Mike shuts off the engine.
Sam isn’t sure what to expect when Michael leans over the console. He doesn’t know what he’s doing when he places his large hands on his face. He thinks he’s going for a hug.
Michael kisses him instead. It surprises Sam enough that he opens his mouth and gasps, but he doesn’t push him away, like he should. Michael’s mouth tastes of blood, human blood, a little rank but still fresh enough. Still warm on his tongue. Sam hates how much he likes it. Sam hates how much he pushes forward into the kiss and licks into his mouth, chasing for more.
When Michael pulls away, Sam pants like he ran a mile. He clings on to Michael’s shoulders, almost wants to pull him back in, kiss him harder, bite down. He almost asks what the fuck are you doing but Sam really doesn’t care. They’re at the edge of the world and he’s trying not to lose his mind.
“You like that, Sammy?” Michael asks. His voice is a low, rasping whisper. He’s staring at him with deep intense eyes, like Sam is everything. He shivers. He wants so much more. He wants that look, all the time.
Sam licks his lips. He nods. “Yeah,” he says. “That was my first kiss.”
Michael’s eyes go wide. For a moment, all Michael does is look at him.
Then he immediately sits himself back in the driver’s seat and absolutely avoids Sam’s gaze.
“I’m gonna be sick,” he rasps.
Sam can’t help it. He laughs.
Or maybe he’s crying, just a little.
^^^
Sam doesn’t know what day it is. He doesn’t know where they are today. He wakes up in the middle of the day, next to a sleeping Michael. Out cold out like a light, like the dead thing he is.
He doesn’t know what day he is, and he doesn’t care. He’s hungry. Sam thinks this is hunger, he thinks his guts gnawing and aching and his bones screaming at him and his blood humming to him must be what hunger is, for vampires, and he’s not a vampire yet but it’s really damn close.
The clock reads 4:37 pm. That’s too early for sleeping vampires but Sam doesn’t care.
He pulls the blankets off Mike. He stares at Mike for a long while. Asleep, he looks..pleasant. Soft of face, without a constant scowl. Young. Like the high school senior he should be.
They should be in school right now. Sam was looking forward to high school. He couldn’t wait to be grown.
Something ugly flares in Sam's chest at that thought, snarled on the inside, staring at his beautiful vampire brother. Stuck at seventeen, with just the right body for eternity, the right hair. He’s always gonna stay this way.
Sam strokes his hand over Michael’s hair, lightly tugging at his curls. They’re soft, not coarse at all like he expected. He runs a hand down Michael’s cheek, then chin. The faintest of stubble is growing there. Michael still shaves. Hair grows back, so that’s something at least. David chose to wear that terrible mullet, it’s not something he was stuck with.
Sam wonders if he’ll grow any facial hair, ever.
Michael died at just the right age, forever fucking young. Sam’s not dead yet but he may as well be.
“Wake up,” he hisses. No response. “Wake up, Michael.”
Michael lies asleep.
Sam slaps him across the face. His palm smacks loudly against his skin.
Still no response. Like the dead.
Sam sighs. He should stop. He’s better than this. He’s not a sucker. He’s not a slave to vampire instinct. He’s still human, goddamnit. Right?
He’s better than this, he tells himself, as he positions himself on top of Michael, straddling him, hands splayed out on his chest, moving up his body. I’m better than this, he thinks, as he leans down and bites Michael on the neck.
Michael wakes up immediately. Sam can feel it, his body stiffening up under him, instead of slack with afternoon sleep.
“Sam!” He growls, voice like worn down sandpaper. His arms wrap around Sam, like he’s going to pull him off but Sam doesn’t let him. He locks his legs around him and grabs on to his hair, pulling his head back hard, straining Michael’s scalp. Sam bites down like he means it. Like a real vampire.
It’s not like the movies. It’s not like anything he’s seen Michael do. He doesn’t know how to make fangs grow in his mouth on command so he bites and grinds down on skin with blunt teeth, grinding down until skin and muscle tear at last and blood finally spills into his mouth.
The moment he tastes Michael’s blood—for real, as some half vampire thing, and not as Sam Emerson—he feels that left of center feeling, that off-kilter sensation, go completely haywire
Sam moans when it hits him, the hot burst of blood, coating his tongue and his teeth and his throat. He fights to keep it all in his mouth, running down his face and chin ( you’re wasting it! ). Sam doesn’t know how to do this, how to feed like Michael does. His brother’s hips thrust up against him, causing an electric shock of sensation within Sam that has him moaning further, returning it in kind, grunting and grinding down. It’s then Sam realizes he’s hard in his pj pants, cock stiffening up. He thinks he’s been hard since the moment he tasted Michael’s blood.
Michael fights and struggles against him, trying to push him off, and hump against him as well, fighting and fucking at the same time. Sam grabs his wrists in both hands and shoves them down on the bed, his claw-like nails digging into the skin, drawing more blood. Michael lets out a noise like an aborted shout.
Sam should stop. He has to stop, but he doesn’t care that Michael is struggling, that he wants him off. His brother’s blood is thick and viscous and makes him all warm and floaty, thick headed and dizzy with it.
He grinds down instead, rutting down on Michael, until he’s shamelessly humping his brother. Each bit of friction on his cock surges through him like white hot pressure-pleasure. Whatever part of his brain that should tell him this is wrong has shut down entirely, seized by an animal urge to consume and devour.
Sam shifts on top of him, moving closer so his cock is flush against Michael’s, even through his pajamas and Mike’s boxers. That brief moment allows Michael to slip out of his grasp, ripping his hands away from Sam’s grip. The world tilts on its axis as Sam is both shoved away, then shoved off the bed, hitting the ground with a graceless thump. Before he gets a chance to recover, Michael lands on top of him, lightning fast. They scuffle, Sam kicking for his shins and snarling, Michael snarling back, the two of them like animals. Sam’s not really thinking; his vision is red and his mouth full of blood and all he can think is that he wants more.
Michael grabs him by the throat then, two hands squeezing and squeezing and Sam’s not undead yet; he actually needs to breathe, and he doesn’t know if Michael forgot that or if he just doesn’t care.
“Mike,” he croaks. His brain, already foggy, short circuits entirely, vision turning spotty.
Michael lets go, pulling away like he’d been burned. Sam coughs and coughs, blinking, eyes spotty, but staring up at his brother. The bite on his throat has healed already. Sam wants to bite down again, leave an actual mark. He keeps staring, at the blood stains, the curve of his neck, the slope of his jaw.
Sam has never wanted anything this much, this hard; it’s alien and terrifying.
Michael is saying something to him. The words are distant and far away; he can barely hear anything over the thud of his own heart, the blood rushing through him, and Michael’s blood fueling him
Sam cuts through the fog in his head and he snaps back to attention, meeting his eyes.
“What are you doing?” Michael asks.
Sam’s gums burn and ache but the pain of his fangs descending is minimal. For the first time since this started, he’s glad for them. He grins at Michael and takes a sick satisfaction in watching his brother bristle at the sight of him.
Sam’s not really grinning. He’s not happy. It’s more of a baring of teeth.
“I’m hungry,” he whines. To his ears, he sounds like a little kid, whining and desperate, and that’s just wrong, because he doesn’t feel like a kid, covered in Michael’s blood, fangs out. He’s so close to hollowing himself out and filling himself back up with blood.
His brother laughs and Michael’s laugh is mean. Sam hates it a little. He’s been getting meaner since he found Star on the beach and David fed him his blood and he hates David now and he hates his blood in Michael’s veins and he even hates Star a little, for dragging him into this. He hates everything except Michael and he hates Michael, just a little, too.
Michael places his bare foot on his chest, heavy and holding him down. His eyes are blazing red. His parted mouth shows his teeth. He looks like a monster.
Sam knows he must look the same.
“Sam—”
Sam decides he is not doing this. He shoves Michael, pushing his leg off him, and Michael loses his balance, stumbling back. Sam moves faster than he thought he ever could and immediately body slams his brother into the bed. He lays on top of Michael, pressing them both tightly together, both of them huffing for breath, both of them painfully hard. Sam’s mouth drips blood on Michael’s chin.
“What the fuck are you doing, Sammy?”
“I’m tired,” Sam hisses. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, but he can’t stop touching Michael now, angry as he is, running his hands through his hair. His cock nudges against his thigh and Michael jolts. “Everything hurts and I’m tired all the time and you smell like fresh blood all the time and I can’t keep doing this.”
Michael reaches up and grabs him hard by the back of his neck. His claws dig into the sensitive, soft skin there as he tugs Sam closer for a kiss.
The moment their lips clash together, Sam tastes hot fresh blood, flowing into his eager mouth, filling him up. He moans; this isn’t one of Michael’s victims, leftover blood from an earlier kill. It’s Michael’s blood.
Oh. Oh. Sam knows what he’s doing—cutting himself open for him, bleeding into him, pressing the flat of his tongue against Sam’s teeth. Sam moans when Michael pulls away, whining like a dog. Like he’s desperate.
“Is that good?” Michael asks. “Is that better, buddy? I’m really sorry, Sam,” Michael says, petting the back of his neck, down his spine, then up his hair; his hands on Sam feel really good, comforting and shivering.
“More,” Sam growls and kisses him back, surging into him. This time, he bites first, catching Michael’s bottom lip on his fangs and letting the flesh and skin tear between his teeth.
As he bites his lip open, Michael reaches into Sam’s pajamas, faster than Sam can think or react to. The moment Michael grabs Sam’s cock, wrapping his fingers around it, thumb on the head of his slit, Sam comes with a throaty gasp and a series of animal-like whines, stomach clenching with his orgasm, groin throbbing as pleasure and hunger both shoot through him.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Sam pulls away, not thinking, looking down on himself. His brother’s hand is streaked with thick white fluid and blood, and the sight of it is almost enough to get him hard again. “Oh, fuck. Oh my god. Fuck.”
“Sam,” Michael whispers, throaty. “Look at you. You’re so fucking cute,” he says, almost too low for Sam to hear, more to himself. Warmth fills his chest and belly. Michael is petting his hair with his other, not jizz covered hand.
“Holy fuck, holy shit, Michael, look at that,” Sam says, babbling, staring down at them both where Michael still holds his now softening cock in his hand. The sight of it seems impossible. Amazing. Not something Sam ever thought could happen. All his rage is gone, replaced with wonder and lust.
“Yeah, Sammy,” Michael says, still stroking his back, making Sam all warm. “You did that.”
Sam is still staring down at Michael’s hand, dried blood under his nails and in the cracks and crevices of his skin, and his own drying come on it. It’s the most amazing thing Sam’s ever experienced and his cock twitches again, slowly filling back up for more.
He glances back at Michael’s cock, tenting his boxers, still covered. It’s not fair, Sam thinks, that Michael didn’t get to come either, but more than that—he just wants to see it. The curve of it, the smooth flared head, the wiry hair at the base.
It’s not the first time he’s thought of his brother’s cock. It might be the first time he didn’t try to chase that thought away with something else.
Sam licks his lips and makes a choice.
He slips down off the bed, shimmying his way down Michael’s body. It’s awkward, he feels awkward, ears burning hot, cock just hanging out ( how do people have sex without wanting to fly out of their own skin ?) but he moves down until he’s eye level with Michael’s boxers and before his higher brain functions start working again, he pulls out his cock.
“Sam,” Michael protests without protesting; he wraps his hand in Sam’s hair, and only just curls his fingers in. He doesn’t shove him away or say no, like he expects him too.
Michael’s cock is warm for a bloodsucker, hard and twitching eagerly in his hand. Sam doesn’t know what he’s doing—he doesn’t really know much about blowjobs, except all the vulgar stuff guys talk about in locker rooms at school—but he resolves not to think about it, just act. Can’t be that hard to put a cock in your mouth.
Sam opens wide and slips the head of Michael’s cock in his mouth, closing his lips around the head, warm and slick. He doesn’t know what to do, how to use his tongue, how to suck—but he likes the smell of him, being so close to such an intimate part of his brother. He likes the sound Michael makes, a long dragged outside desperate groan, deep in his throat. It’s that sound that drives Sam forward, it’s Michael’s fingers stroking his hair, the thought that he’s pleasing his big brother, that he can make him feel good, that he can push him around and tear into him and then suck him off all in equal measure. It’s unbearably good, makes that warm, light headed feeling come back, like he’s drunk. He tentatively sucks on the head, pressing the flat of his tongue against the slit, not sure if he should hold it there or lap around like a kitten.
It doesn’t seem to matter because Michael moans again for him, incredibly responsive, his stomach muscles going tight, taunt, a bitten off Sammy setting Sam’s skin on fire.
God, he’s hot. His brother is hot. Sam has always known this but it’s something he thought about in the abstract, or with some jealousy; I’ll never be this good looking, with his curly dark hair and his firm stomach and dark brown eyes. And he really will never be this good looking, but it doesn’t matter now because he can do this to Michael.
Michael’s hand tightens in his hair, pushing pressure down on him. It feels like Michael has finally stopped holding him at arm’s length and the thought makes Sam moan, like he’s getting off to this too, the warmth in his belly and chest and groin returning.
Michael grunts, hips snapping up in his mouth. His cock goes further past Sam’s lips, bumping against the back of his throat, and Sam chokes, too much for him, he can’t handle it, and then it doesn’t matter because Michael comes, shooting down his throat, filling his mouth with thick, warm fluid. Sam pulls off, choking, throat aching and he gets a face full come, Michael still shooting in thick ropes, hitting his cheek and chin and lips.
“Fuck,” Michael says; his voice is wrecked, rough. His hand is still grabbing Sam’s hair, fingers curled in. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
Sam blinks, disoriented. He rubs his eyes and stares at Michael—his face is full vampire, monstrous, fangs and eyes and eyebrow inhuman, and yet oddly flushed.
He looks down and stares at Michael’s softening cock, beads of come still on the head and coated with blood from Sam’s mouth.
Vampires Everywhere didn’t mention vampire sex.
“It’s okay,” Sam says. He feels different, in a way he can’t explain.
He always thought this would be gross. He knew sex is something he’s supposed to want and he does, he really does, in theory, but the thought of being naked with some girl he’s supposed to like seems awkward and weird, not sexy. The thought of being naked with a boy he likes feels sexier, like maybe that’s what he wants instead, but it was still a terrifying prospect.
The thought of touching Michael excites him.
Is this growing up? Does Sam like sex now? Is this a vampire thing?
A faded distant memory enters his head, of being thirteen and watching Michael step out of the shower, towel-less, casually cool as he walked around in their room and looked for his clothes. Michael acted like it wasn’t a big deal— brothers see each other naked all the time, you know what I look like, Sam— and he’s right, they’ve both been seeing each other naked. Michael used to even help give him baths until Sam got too old for them. But Sam stared too long with a lump growing in his throat and a throbbing pulse in his belly.
Sam sucks his fingers in his mouth, lapping up the strong, blissful taste of Michael's blood and the drying salty-bitter taste of his come; Sam sighs and lets go of his childish anxieties, relaxing into it. He’s not really a child anymore and he barely feels human anymore.
Michael shivers. “Jesus, Sammy,” he says, voice wet. “What have I done to you?”
^^^
Michael cleans up the blood off Sam afterwards, in the bathroom. It’s a cramped, minimal space, being a motel bathroom, but it works for the moment. Michael uses a motel towel and he gets it all ruined with pinkish red blood as he wipes the blood off Sam’s face. He makes Sam sit on the motel sink counter, and take off his shirt because he got blood all over it as well. Sam was not very careful or neat.
His nipples are hard. Sam knows because Michael keeps glancing down at them. He’s not as subtle as he thinks he is.
“Is that...is this...it?” Sam asks, chewing at his cheek again. He has a concern.
Well. He’s not sure how concerned he is—all his fears and worries and disgust and horror with vampires has been pushed to the back of his head, growing smaller and smaller each day. Sam, human Sam, had been MIchael’s anchor to humanity, and Sam thought maybe he could keep that up as a half-vampire, but he’s not sure he can. He’s not sure he wants to. The world has narrowed down. It’s just him and Michael now. Maybe that’s what he wanted all along.
“Is what it?” Michael asks.
“I drank your blood...” Sam says, lowering his eyes. He’s a little embarrassed about the whole thing now, biting Michael in his sleep, like Nosferatu in the movies. “A lot of it.” And he grew fangs and claws like a nosferatu too.
Michael chuckles. “You have to kill to be like me, Sam,” he says. The bitterness in his voice makes Sam swallow hard. “And you don’t want to be like me, right?”
“I’ve always wanted to be like you,” Sam confesses, adoring.
Michael stops cleaning him up, going still. He swallows hard, his throat working, adam’s apple bobbing.
Michael sets the towel down and cups his face in his hands. Sam leans in and thinks they may kiss again. He really wants to do that. He wants to feel close to Michael again. He wants that all the time.
“Don’t be stupid,” Michael says in his growling half whisper. “This isn’t kid stuff anymore.” He glances at the mirror behind him. “See? You’re still you.”
Sam turns around. In the mirror, only Sam is there, half transparent, barely even there. Michael isn’t there at all, like he doesn’t exist.
The hair on the back of his neck stands on end. Sam doesn’t like it.
He turns back around to find Michael tossing the blood stained towel on the ground and reaching for another one. Michael is still in his come stained boxers and it looks like they’re tenting up again. Sam wonders if this is just because they’re near each other, trapped in eternal perpetual teen horniness.
Sam reaches down to try to touch Michael’s cock again, but his brother bats his hand away.
“Sam,” he says, not looking at him, head bent. “No.”
“Why not?” He asks. He’s still light headed, cracked on the inside, left of center. Going stir crazy. He’s a little less out of his mind, not running on animal instinct, enough so that he can ground himself, on the bathroom sink he’s sitting on, gripping it with his hands. He can focus on the flickering hotel light and Michael’s careful, careful touches. “You...you want me, don’t you, Mikey?”
Whatever this is hangs in the air. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to talk about, even after all the vampire bullshit. It’s easy to let his brother kiss him, or to kiss him while he sleeps.
Michael’s eyes go wide and he takes a step back from Sam, shoulders hunched. Guilty.
Sam thinks he should pull his head out of the sand.
“I want you too,” Sam says.
Michael flinches like he slapped him. He shakes his head and pointedly doesn’t meet his eyes. “I think everything I’ve done to you is bad enough.”
Sam laughs. “I chose to drink your blood, remember?” He sneaks another glance at the mirror and his fading reflection. Soon, he thinks, it won’t even be there. “I was the dumbass.”
Another towel. There’s blood on his nails. On his face. Michael’s touch is soothing, the way a big brother’s should be. Sam closes his eyes and sighs softly, exhaling and leans into his brother until his head rests on his shoulders.
When he’s done with him, Michael wraps his arms around him and holds him tight, pressing his mouth into his ear.
“How about...” he starts, clearly searching for words. “We keep doing this, if it helps you not kill?”
“I don’t want to kill,” Sam says. He thinks he’s telling the truth. Sam doesn’t day dream about murder. Just blood. Michael’s blood. And being with Michael.
Michael runs his fingers through his hair, finger tips pushing into the scalp. It feels nice enough that Sam shudders. “I know, buddy. I know.”
^^^
Things change after that. And they stay the same.
It’s September and they should be in school but they’re in Bakersfield now, another shithole town in California, this one worse than the last.
In the motel, Sam sits between his brother’s legs on the bed, back to chest, leaning his head against his shoulder as they watch Dynasty. It’s nice, being cradled in Michael’s arms like that. They’re shirtless, because things are cleaner that way. When Michael gives him his bleeding wrist, Sam takes it immediately, opening his mouth to suck and latch on.
“You like that?” He asks Sam, husky-voiced.
Sam moans on his brother’s wrist, lapping up the blood, the taste of it both coppery-metallic and sweet like honey at the same time. It’s so much sensation; Sam just wants more . His brain is too far gone for words; each time they do this, Sam doesn’t feel any closer to humanity. Instead, he’s floaty and weightless and losing any sense of normalcy and self. The more they do this, the more it loses the urgency of that first night, that need to tear Michael apart, but that doesn’t make Sam feel any more human. Somehow, luxuriating in the indulgent taste of his brother’s blood, night after night, makes him feel more like a monster, even as he minds being a monster less.
“Yeah buddy, that’s okay, just take what you want,” Michael says. His voice makes Sam shiver. He whines, mouth still suckling on Michael’s wrist, and whines even louder as Michael’s hand slips down his chest, playing with the light hairs Sam’s belly, soft and wispy and blonde, then goes further down to pull his boxers down and grind his palm on his cock.
“Michael ,” Sam groans, not quite breaking away from his wrist, his words muffled. The sound of his voice sounds obscene to ears; Sam didn’t know he could sound like that, thick, heavy with lust.
“It’s okay,” Michael says. “You can hump my hand, it’s okay.”
Sam doesn’t need to because he comes right there, blood spilling down his chin again and onto his chest, spilling white come all over his brother’s hand.
“God, you’re so...” Michael trails off, and Sam whimpers. He wants to hear it. He likes it when Michael gets all dirty with him.
“I’m so what?” He manages to find enough coherency to ask.
“Eager, ” Michael says. “You get so fucking wet, always.” He wraps his arms around Sam’s chest and tugs him even closer into his lap, sitting on Michael’s thighs now, his legs sprawled around his legs, Michael’s cock erect in between them. He wonders if he could lean down and suck it like this, from this angle. The thought makes Sam shiver.
Michael then places his palms on Sam’s thighs, pushing them together until they blanket Michael’s cock.
“I’m gonna fuck your thighs, okay?” Michael tells him. Sam makes an inquisitive noise in his throat—he’s not sure how that works. Michael keeps touching his thighs, rubbing his hands on them, massaging them, and Sam doesn’t get the big deal—his thighs are small, comparatively, not much muscle on them, skinny and pale. He doesn’t think they’re anymore interesting than the rest of his body, though there’s not much to his body to begin with.
“My thighs?” Sam asks, but then Michael moves them both, first leaning Sam all the way back onto him (Sam loves this, the closer the better), then rolling them both over, on their sides, until they’re spooning. It takes a moment to get into just the right position for them, but eventually Michael slides his cock between his inner thighs, just under his ass, and starts to hump him then—slow, at first, just rocking together, Sam’s cock stirring from all the motion, then faster, harder, with wet slick noises as his dick slides between Sam’s thighs, Michael mouthing at his shoulder behind him with teeth.
“I, fuck,” Michael moans in his skin. “Your thighs look really good around my dick.”
“Jesus,” Sam groans. His hard-on is coming back, he can feel it, getting excited. Michael comes right after, sticky and wet all over Sam’s thighs, his come splattering on his sensitive skin.
“Holy fuck,” Sam says.
“I’m sorry,” Michael whispers into his skin, pressing a kiss into his shoulder.
“I’m not,” Sam says, rubbing his thighs together now, rubbing Michael’s come all over himself. He’s going to need a shower, but he likes being covered in Michael’s blood and come. It makes something ugly and possessive stir up inside him; like maybe he shouldn’t like it but it’s too late for that now.
Sam misses most of the plot of Dynasty, and to be honest, he doesn’t care anymore.
They fall into a routine like this; Michael goes out and feeds, then comes back and feeds Sam his blood. Pets his hair and strokes his cock. Lets Sam blow him, or blows his brother, or jacks him off. They don’t do anything with penetration, AIDs crisis going on outside their little world still hanging in the back of both their minds—but then again, maybe that doesn’t apply to vampires and their half human brothers.
They’re drifters at this point, and their vampire hunting plans have all been forgotten, more Bonnie and Clyde than fearless vampire killers. They look like an odd pair; people don’t believe they’re brothers. Sam got his mom’s looks and Michael has his father’s dark planes.
Lately, Sam is feeling...directionless. The longer they go on like this. It’s not just not going to school or lacking a place to stop and truly rest. It’s just this eternal half state of living, one foot alive and one foot already dead.
^^^
Michael blows him in the car, pulled off by the side of the road. It lasts for two minutes, because Sam’s a hair trigger when it comes to orgasm and he comes all over his brother’s mouth and chin.
“Sorry,” Sam says, except he’s not really sorry. Sam is weightless and out of control and losing his mind.
He hopes at one point, he stops coming so fast. He’d like to really like to enjoy Michael’s mouth for longer than a few minutes. Sam hopes he actually develops some stamina instead of being stuck with teenage premature ejaculation for the rest of his life.
“It’s fine,” Michael says, coming back up, grinning at him. He sucks his thumb into his mouth, licking off white and clear fluid. “I like it.”
Oh, the way Michael looks at him makes him shiver. He’s looked at Michael before, his eyes lingering on his body for longer than it should but he’s not sure Michael’s ever looked at him with anything but fondness or annoyance or both, up until now. Everyone’s going through some big changes.
“You’re...good at that,” Sam points out. He’s been avoiding thinking about that, but the more they fool around, the harder it is to avoid—he thought Michael was straight, all this time, and except no straight guy could be so good and eager at getting his mouth around his cock.
“Thanks, buddy,” Michael says, laughing. Deflecting.
“Do you...do you blow guys often?”
“Um,” Michael says, getting back in the driver’s seat, and then just sinking into the chair, instead of starting up the car, and oh no, this is something embarrassing, or shameful, or both. Or worse. “Yeah.” Michael says.
Sam blinks. He didn’t expect that answer. He didn’t expect him to admit it. He wants to ask did you blow David but he really can’t stand to hear that answer if it’s yes.
“Holy shit, since when?” Sam laughs, pulling his pants up. Sam is expecting to hear an answer like, since back in Phoenix, or earlier even, but Michael looks at the rearview window and does not meet his eyes. He runs his hands through his hair in a clearly nervous gesture.
“You remember San Francisco?”
That was about a month ago. “Of course I remember,” he says.
“The night I left...we were so short on cash, I just walked and walked until I found someone willing to pay for...stuff.”
Stuff. Sam lets that sink in. He wants to ask what stuff means but he’s afraid he already knows.
“Like. Sex?”
Michael nods, staying silent.
“Michael...are you telling me you’re a hooker?”
Michael winces. “Don’t say it like that.”
“What the fuck?”
And Michael lets out a long, exasperated sigh. He finally turns to glance at him, dangerously close to rolling his eyes at Sam. “Sammy,” Michael says. His voice is slow, like talking to someone in particularly stupid. “Where do you think I get so much money? To keep us afloat? To keep running?”
Fuck.
Sam’s eyes are wide as he stares at his brother and he stupidly feels a little like crying. A lot like crying. Like a little kid, like Michael is so much older and Sam is too stupid to understand how adults work.
“I thought you killed people and took their money,” Sam admits, his shoulders deflating, hunching over.
Michael hangs his head low. “I do kill people and take their money. I also sometimes blow them or let them fuck me.”
You haven’t even fucked me, Sam thinks, feeling a lump in his throat, trying to swallow it down. It’s mostly because Sam hasn’t wanted to yet.
“What’s the point?” Sam says, raising his voice. Something ugly is rising to the surface. “If you’re going to kill them anyway, why do you need to fuck them for money, you can just take the money.”
“Sam, are you actually telling me I should just kill people instead?”
“No!” Sam shouts, except that’s exactly what he’s saying and he didn’t realize he was advocating for murder over prostitution and he doesn’t know how he got here, or how he got this way. “I just can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”
He gets out of the car. He needs the fresh air.
“Sam,” Michael pleads, following him. Sam doesn’t want to hear it. Sam doesn’t want think about it. Sam can’t stand to picture Michael with anyone else. Anyone not him.
When did he turn into this person?
Sam huffs a breath and places his palms flat on the car hood, trying to calm down. He can feel his teeth sliding down and he doesn’t want Michael to see that, to know just what he’s turned into in the month and then some time they’ve been together.
“Are you actually mad about this? That’s not fair, Sammy.”
“You should have told me,” Sam whimpers. He’s crying. Fuck. “You should have told me.”
“Sam,” Michael says behind him, reaching out to grab his shoulder and—
Sam spins around and body slams Michael into the car. He grabs him by the throat, not squeezing, but holding him steady, before Michael can retaliate.
“Don’t do it anymore,” he tells him to.
“Sam,” Michael says, “it’s really easy money.” He then pushes Sam away—not meanly, but not gently either. Firm. Making it clear Sam can’t stop it. “I’m not going to stop because it makes you uncomfortable. So deal with it.” Sam wants to scream. He wants to tie Michael to the bed and never let him leave.
“I don’t want you touching anyone else but me,” Sam admits. His voice is wet with angry, bitter tears. “Do you get that? Just me.” The confession makes him feel dirtier than anything Michael has ever said or done, including murder.
“Sam,” Michael says, reaching out to wipe his tears from his face. “I get it. I don’t want anyone else touching you either.”
He gets it but he doesn’t make a single promise.
Sam gets back in the car but he doesn’t feel any better.
^^^
On the outskirts of LA, near Valencia, they don’t make it to a hotel. They spent too long arguing and there’s no time to make it anywhere else.
Michael pulls over into a rest stop, just before dawn.
“What are you doing, Mike?” Sam asks, more than a little bit nervous.
“Sleeping,” Michael says. He doesn’t elaborate.
“I swear to god, Michael, if you sleep in the dirt like some goddamn Dracula , I’ll never—“
“In the trunk space, Sammy,” Michael says, laughing a little. He leans over and presses a kiss on his cheek. Sam thinks this is him apologizing for the argument, without actually saying it. “There’s enough room for me. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?”
“Guess you’re sleeping in the car, buddy,” Michael adds, laughing.
“In these piece of shit seats?”
“You’ll manage,” Michael says, “you’ll be out like a light.”
He’s right. Sam grabs the windshield cover they use sometimes from the backseat and settles in. The moment the sun comes up, he’s out.
He wakes up again, confused, disoriented, sun high in the sky. He doesn’t know what time it is. He can go back to sleep pretty easily but instead, Sam gets out of the car, blinking away exhaustion, fighting the sleep-heaviness in his limbs. The sun doesn’t burn him but it hurts, a bit, to be under it, especially so warm and hot in LA County. Makes his head throb to be under it like this.
It’s the middle of nowhere but not completely isolated. There’s a gas station here, and restrooms. There’s a pay phone by the side of the road. Sam wants a shower but he supposes that’ll be for later.
The sun makes him feel weak and dizzy, so he steals Michael’s sunglasses off the dashboard and walks.
He doesn’t know where he’s going. His feet want to go home and it occurs to him he could hitch a ride and leave. Michael will wake up at sundown and he can be long gone.
And then what?
At the payphone, he decides to call home.
One ring.
Sam isn’t sure he wants to do this.
Two rings.
He’s getting anxious. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say.
Three rings and Sam goes to hang up when—
“Hello?” It’s his mom’s voice.
Sam doesn’t say anything. He can’t. He stays on the line, breathing, like one of those guys making creepy phone calls on Unsolved Mysteries. Oh god, he’s the creepy guy now isn’t he?
“Hello?” His mom asks again, this time more urgent. He can taste her nervousness over the phone line. He can imagine her, sitting at the kitchen table, head in her hands, pushing her fingers into her brow as if fighting off a headache.
Sam is going to hang up. This is a mistake.
But Mom pauses again. Then, in a small, tentative voice, she says, “Michael? Honey, is that you?”
“Hi, Mom,” Sam whispers.
“Sam!” Her voice breaks on his name, cracking, threatening to get higher and higher in pitch. “Sam, honey, where are you? Are you okay? Where is Michael?”
She's practically shouting on the line. She sounds the way she did when Sam got lost at a mall at four years old, and Sam barely remembers that incident, he doesn’t even remember being scared, wandering around by a fountain and staring at the pretty coins shimmering in the water. His mom sobbed and cradled him to her chest and Michael hugged him tight afterwards and told him he’s never seen mom that scared before.
“Sam!” She shouts again, when he takes too long to answer, and it’s then Sam realizes that no, she’s not shouting. She’s crying. Guilt sucker punches him in the stomach.
“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s a pitiful apology.
“Oh, honey, please just come home. Is Michael there?”
Michael is the responsible one, compared to him. She’s not wrong. Michael’s been taking good care of his hungry half vampire little brother. Mom just wouldn’t understand the way he goes about it.
“Michael is asleep,” he tells her blankly.
“At this hour?” She asks.
“That’s when vampires sleep,” he says.
Mom goes silent on the line, for such a long period he thinks the call dropped. He wonders where Nanook is, a sharp pang of longing hitting him hard in the chest. He misses his dog so bad, burying his face in his fur. If he comes home, what if Nanook hates him? He doesn’t think he can take that.
“Honey,” she starts.
“Mom, do you know?” He cuts to the point. “Did Grandpa tell you?”
Mom heaves a heavy sigh over the phone line. He can sense how tired she is. “Grandpa, and your little frog friends too. But Sam, they sound crazy .”
Sam laughs; he can’t help it, it just comes rolling out of him. Wow, what would Edgar and Alan say if they saw him now? Sucking on his brother’s cock and drinking his blood? Probably stake him on principle.
“Mom,” he starts, trailing off. “I just wanted to tell you...I miss you.”
“ Sam, ” his mom’s voice gets that heavy wet sound when she’s been crying and Sam’s eyes are burning too and the last thing he wants to do is cry for a life he can’t have anymore.
“Please, I don’t care,” his mom pleads. “I don’t care what you’ve done. Come home. You bring Michael home, okay?”
In the payphone booth, he can see his reflection in the glass, extremely faint, fading away. “I love you too, mom. Goodbye.” Sam hangs up before she can respond.
He doesn’t tell Michael about this conversation.
^^^
The night it happens, Michael thinks it’s an accident, or a mistake. Maybe.
Sam thinks he just got tired of waiting.
They’re at another boardwalk, this time in LA. Michael says he loves it here, and wants to stay a while before going to Phoenix. Sam gets it; it’s big and anonymous and easier to disappear and get lost in a crowd. No one cares about two teenage runaways in LA. No one asks questions.
He wants to ask, have we thought finding the head vampire, but even thinking it makes him feel stupid.
It’s October now. The boardwalk is a dizzying lightshow of roller coasters and swinging pirate ships and some spinning ride called a tidal wave. The place is decked out in black and orange, pumpkins and skulls, getting ready for the holiday. Sam wonders if Michael could show his monster face here, and no one would care.
“I’ll buy you a candy skull, little bro, you want one?” Michael says, wrapping an arm around him and leaning in to whisper in his ear.
Sam shudders. “Sure,” he says. Not that candy means much to him anymore, but he likes Michael buying him stuff.
He comes back with a candy apple decorated like a skull, which isn’t what Sam pictured but he shares the little monstrosity with his brother, teeth getting sticky with sweetness.
Later, on the outskirts of town, they find an abandoned hotel. Old fashioned architecture, three stories, red paint, long columns, like some bygone era. Sam thinks it would have been pretty, if it weren’t so run down and decaying. It’s in a part of town surrounded by 24 hour confidence stores, payday advance loan services, and empty strip malls, far away from the Hollywood glamour.
Mike wants to spend the night. They’re running low on cash. Sam feels a little guilty for that.
“You think this place has running water?” Sam asks. “Or electricity?”
“The lights are on,” Michael says. He points to the third floor. If Sam squints, he can see a faint glow. “I don’t know but someone is here.” His nostrils flare. “I smell blood. And I can hear some heartbeats. Maybe another vampire? Don’t you want me to find the head vampire, Sam?”
The way he says it, it sounds clearly like a joke, mocking him.
“You’re a goddamn bloodhound,” Sam says, rolling his eyes, “you know regular serial killers exist, right?” but he follows Mike’s lead.
It turns out it is a serial killer.
Or maybe not, he’s not sure, they don’t stop to ask questions. It could be just a guy who decided to kill someone today, kidnapping some poor fool off the street, tying him up to a chair, and slowly bleeding him to death.
On the third floor, they burst into the room with the light on without too much thinking or thought. Inside, they find a motel room that could have been nice in its heyday, with a four poster bed, but the room has been functionally dismantled, leaving behind only a bare dirty mattress and a whole shitload of dust. The light is on, for some reason, so this place still has working electricity but otherwise, it feels very unwelcoming and dead, like a tomb.
They find one guy tied to a chair, shirtless. His chest is covered in knife wounds, deep criss cross of cuts, some old, some new. Sam hates that his nostrils flare at the sight, his eyes lingering for too long on the red dripping.
He sees the man tied up and immediately thinks food.
There’s another man, pale skin and dark hair, dark beard, lying on bed, twiddling a bloodied knife in his hand, who clearly did not expect to be bothered. He snaps to attention when Sam and Michael enter. For a moment, they make eye contact—no, he makes eye contact with Michael, like two predators sizing each other up.
Sam thinks this should worry him—he’s still mostly human and he doesn’t think he could survive one well placed knife wound to the gut but he can’t really think with the smell of blood, so fresh and hot in the air, burning his insides, waking him up.
When the killer charges at Michael, Sam just watches him, too dizzied by the smell of blood to do anything useful.
He runs right at Michael, shoving him out into the hallway and—
Mike snaps his neck with a sickening crunch sound, starling Sam out of his bloodthirsty reverie.
It’s the first time he’s seen Michael kill anyone.
It looks so easy and oddly bloodless; treacherously, Sam thinks Michael wasted an easy meal.
Sam gasps nonetheless, taking a step back, hitting the wall. He does that because he doesn’t want the body falling near him but Michael notices it—he notices Sam putting distance between them, Sam’s eyes widening, Sam’s gasp, Sam pulling away and a shadow crosses over his face, shoulders hunching.
“Mikey, I—” Sam starts but Michael is running back inside the room. He’s untying the man. That’s probably a good thing. Michael did a good job. He saved a guy. Maybe Michael can be a friendly vampire, eating bad people and rescuing others.
Michael is talking to the guy, asking questions—who was that, are you okay, what happened, why are you here—important questions someone should ask in this situation, but Sam doesn’t really hear a word of it.
Sam stares at the victim—normal looking guy, taller and older than them both, dirty blonde hair hanging in his face. A college student, maybe? He’s shaking and trembling with terror, smells like it too. Bleeding. The beautiful cuts on his bare chest. The blood on his mouth from a busted lip.
He’s tied to a chair and Michael is on his knees, undoing the ropes around his ankles. The guy is just so relieved they’re here. So relieved. Michael manages to untie his ankles and he’s working on his wrists now. Only Sam notices his fingers linger on his pulse, for just a second longer than they need to.
Thump thump. Heart racing. Sam can hear it.
“I’ve been here three days,” he says, crying. “I thought I wouldn’t get out, thank god for you.”
“It’s okay,” Michael says, in a really odd voice. Like he’s trying to be soothing and Sam knows Michael can do that, but it just comes out kind of husky and low. It’s a sound that goes right to Sam’s cock, stirring it up.
Sam is feeling really left of center today.
“I guess we really did you a solid, huh?” Sam says, as the man finally stands up from the chair, wobbling and in pain. Sam is trying to be friendly, honestly, but he doesn’t think it’s working because Sam keeps staring at the bleeding man’s chest.
He licks his lips.
The man’s eyes flash, catching the motion and steps back, away from them both, his knees hitting the edge of the bed. “Um,” he says.
Sam can’t fault that. He can’t look away from his chest. There’s a fresh cut still dripping blood down under his right nipple and Sam can’t look away. He wants to put his mouth on it and suck.
“Is your friend okay?” he asks.
“He’s my brother,” Michael says. He turns around, just glancing, and then immediately stands up, getting off his knees, in one fluid graceful motion. Deliberately blocking the victim’s view of Sam. Blocking Sam’s view of him, forcing Sam to look at Michael instead.
What’s the guy’s name? Andy? Randy? Does it matter?
“Sam, your eyes.” Michael mouths at him.
That should concern Sam; he didn’t even realize he was going vampire.
He...doesn’t care, he realizes.
“Michael,” Sam says, voice flat. He takes a step forward.
Michael looks at him, eyebrows knitted in concern. His eyes look tired, wane.
“Hey guys?” The victim says, nervous and sweating. “We should get out of here...do any of you have change for a pay phone? We gotta call the cops.”
“Michael,” Sam says again, this time stronger. He can hear the guy’s blood just pounding away. He takes another step.
“Guys,” the victim says. He’s starting to inch away from them both, towards the door.
His brother continues to stare at Sam, his eyes half wet.
“Michael ,” Sam pleads, taking another step until he’s standing right before his brother, reaching out and grabbing his hands. He doesn’t say anything else.
Michael takes a deep breath he doesn’t need. He glances down at their hands, the way Sam’s fingers loosely wrap around his wrist, the way they join together. Michael squeezes one in his hand, the way he used when they were kids.
“Alright, Sammy,” he concedes, nodding at him; two soft silent tears stream down his cheeks. He wipes them away and meets his eyes, turning orange-red. “Alright.”
“What are you two doing—”
Michael cuts him off with a snarl. He moves faster than Sam can, swinging back around to grab the victim by the arm and tugs him away from the door, shoving him around. The man screams in shock and pain and he stumbles, falling over. Michael catches him before he hits the ground, picking him up like a doll, or a squirming puppy.
Sam watches with a mixture of horror and arousal, anticipation throbbing through him, his instincts waking up hungry.
Michael pushes the squirming man right against his body, one arm wrapped around him against his chest, smearing the blood there, pressing palm down on his injuries and making the human whimper in pain and terror. They’re lined up, almost the same size, Michael just about an inch taller. With his other hand, he grabs him by his floppy mop of blond hair and tugs his head back, revealing his pulsing jugular.
“Here, Sam,” Michael tells him, glancing up at him, face all twisted up in a strange combination of concern and hunger. “C’mon,” he says, “I’m done playing.”
Sam thinks this is the point where he should feel something like horror, despair, misery—the man in front of him is crying and yelling and Sam is giving in. He lost. He tried so hard to avoid this. Everything he and Michael did to avoid this, for nothing.
But mostly, he’s just eager.
And the man’s struggles make him smell sweeter.
Sam thinks about that, when he tears into the man’s throat, grabbing on to his shoulders. His skin gives easier than Michael’s under his fangs, soft flesh in his mouth tearing like paper. Blood fills him in a sudden hot burst; he thought Michael’s blood was warm when he fed off him but it’s nothing like this, pumping hot and alive through him and into him, warming him up. His entire body feels hot, like a fever hit him. He doesn’t taste like cherry pie or honey or anything sweet. He tastes sharp like copper and overpowering and it’s better than anything Sam has ever had.
He can hear the man whimpering and Michael lets go of the man’s hair to cover his mouth, keep the screams to a minimum. Sam can hear himself making low growling animal noises in the back of his throat but it doesn’t matter; it’s like he exists outside himself and he can’t stop himself from feeding and making a mess of the man’s throat and devouring him all up, wanting to be full of blood and life.
Michael reaches over and gently strokes his hair. He can feel his hand on the back of his neck and then on the back of his head, up and down, rubbing his fingers in circles. He thinks Michael says something but he can’t hear him over the heartbeat in his mouth.
It’s over soon. People die fast when you rip out their jugular. Sam pulls away and drops the corpse and so does Michael. It hits the ground with a hard thump. Blood drips from his chin on the ground. Sam laps up what’s left on his lips, already drying, sticky and sweet.
Blood is all over his face and clothes. He got so messy. He’s ruined his shirt for sure now.
Sam wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His skin is buzzing with excitement and electricity and he knows why it takes killing to make you a full vampire, because Sam just wants to do it again and again.
He’s almost afraid to meet Michael’s eyes, wondering if he’s going to be rejected, if Michael will look at him with horror, the same way Sam did—would Michael still love him now that he’s killed? Now that he’s not a kid anymore? Would anyone?
But Michael’s eyes are hot when they meet his eyes, dark and hooded. His mouth, less messy than Sam, is also lined with fresh blood—he must have fed as well, or at least, snuck a taste—and Sam doesn’t think when he rushes for him and grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, kissing him hard on the lips.
Michael groans, lets Sam slip his tongue in his mouth and lap at the blood for a moment, then he shoves him away.
Sam thinks he’s pushing him away but no, Michael comes closer instead, stepping forward and pushing Sam back until he’s on the bed. Sam falls backwards on the uncomfortable mattress and lifts himself up on his elbows, looking up at Michael. His legs spread instinctively, automatically for his brother, and Michael slides his body in between them. His brother is staring down at him like he’s something new and different, gaze dark and alien. He strokes a hand over Sam’s cheek and Sam preens and leans into it, smearing blood on Michael’s hand.
“Sammy,” Michael growls, leaning down closer, nose to nose, but he’s laughing, smiling with blood stained fangs. He nudges his nose against his, like wolves. Sam wraps his arms around him and holds him close, refuses to let go. “You don’t need me to bird feed you anymore.”
“I like it,” Sam says, arching up, rubbing his cock against his brother’s thigh, shamelessly and wickedly aroused. He’s been hard since he smelled blood. He digs his nails in the back of Michael’s neck, hard enough to draw blood. He’s so turned on he thinks the slightest touch would make him blow, more turned on than he’s ever been in his life—it’s not just a feeling in his gut or groin, it’s everywhere, in his skin, in his bones, burning inside him. “I like it, I like it, I liked it so much, I didn’t think it’d be this good,” he moans. He’s not talking about kissing the blood off Michael’s lips.
“I know, buddy,” Michael says and he’s kissing down his neck now, nipping with teeth, drawing blood and licking it off. “We can do it again.” It sends shivers all through Sam, it feels impossibly good. He wants Michael, all over him, all the time, wants his brother to never leave, wants Michael to be the soft gooey center of his world.
It gets better when Michael shoves one hand in his jeans and underwear and gives the head of his cock a stroke. Michael’s hand slides down easily, coated in blood and the clear fluid from Sam’s cock. “God, you’re as wet as a girl. You really like this.” He leans in to kiss him again and it’s slower this time, Michael trying to take his time—trying to really kiss him, like a guy does with a girl in movies, devouring and consuming.
“Fuck off,” Sam says but he doesn’t actually want him to fuck off. He lets Michael stroke his cock and rub fluid all over his cockhead, drawing sharp little ah ah ah gasps out of Sam’s throat.
“You want me to fuck off, Sam?” Michael asks, pressing his hips against his, cock straining against Sam’s body.
Sam reaches down and tugs Michael’s jeans off, inelegant in his gestures. He tears fabric, he’s sure of it, but he just wants to touch him and feel how much Michael wants him, even like this. Especially like this.
“You’re the only one I want,” Sam says, which is true and he knows that makes him twisted and wrong, the kind of wrong he thought he may outgrow eventually, and now he won’t ever—but covered in each other’s blood and high off a kill, it really doesn’t matter.
“Fuck,” Michael groans, shutting his eyes, his hand slowing down on Sam’s cock. That’s alright. Sam pulls his brother’s cock out of his clothes and watches the way it springs and curves upwards, wrapping a hand around it in fascination; he’s still getting used to giving handjobs, but Michael is pretty easy for any kind of touching down there, already shaking and mummering Sammy under his lips. In turn, Sam humps his fist, doesn’t care how lewd or depraved that makes him.
They rut themselves into a frenzied climax together, sharing blood into each other’s mouths, the corpse cooling beside them.
^^^
After, it feels like a relief.
Like Sam can finally stop pretending this was going to end any other way. The show is over folks, it’s curtain call, roll snare drum , time for the after party and Sam wants all the refreshments.
Sam leans back on the bed, naked, trying to get comfortable. It’s impossible. The bed is just an ugly mattress on a box spring, bare and stained with some gross shit, including the come and blood they provided.
They’ve ruined most of their clothes, either with blood stains or just plain ripped and tore them apart. They’re both covered in blood, absolutely streaked in it. Sam licked what he could off Michael’s mouth, and Michael did the same with him, but it didn’t matter. They got it everywhere. His own, Michael’s, the dead sucker Sam fed on.
The dead guys are starting to rot. He can smell it. Gross.
“I can’t believe you want to spend the night here,” Sam says. “Can’t we go somewhere else?”
In the adjoining bathroom, Sam can hear Michael fiddling with the tap. “Sammy, the sun is going to rise soon. We gotta stay here.” There’s a sound like plumbing groaning and Mike tapping on metal. “I don’t think we have running water.”
Sam groans, annoyed, slumping into the bed. “Never, ever decide to squat in an abandoned hotel. We’re never doing this again.”
“David lived in an abandoned hotel,” Michael says.
“I don’t give a shit,” Sam snarls, a vicious pull in his guts. The momentary flash of anger is intense enough his hands curl in and his nails morph into claws. “Don’t talk about David.”
Michael laughs. He pokes his head out of the bathroom. “Are you jealous of a dead vampire?”
“Shut up,” Sam says, burying his face in his hands.
Another laugh from Michael. It’s a warm sound. “You know,” Michael starts. “I don’t usually kill innocent people.”
Sam doesn’t know how to take this. He glances over at the corpse; they both tore holes in his neck. What is Mike getting on his case for? “Well excuse me, Mikey, it’s not like you told me that or anything about your hunting habits!”
Sam refuses to feel guilty. He refuses. It’s Michael’s fault, anyway. He brought him here. It’s his blood that did this.
“I’m just saying,” Michael chuckles, coming closer now. “It’s fine though. I didn’t mind.” He slinks in the bed next to Sam and it’s almost domestic. Like maybe they could find a nice place to make a vampire nest. Just the two of them.
“I’m usually after guys who pick me up for a blowjob, and most guys fucking a teenager aren’t innocent.”
Sam makes a face but he tries not to think of it, of Michael with other people. Other men.
Michael slips in closer, until their bare hips are aligned. “Don’t worry, Sam, there’s no window. We’ll be fine here for the night.”
He stares down into Sam’s face, long enough to make his skin buzz with excitement, already growing again. With one hand, Michael gently palms Sam’s cheek.
“What?” Sam asks.
“You’re gonna look like this forever,” Michael says, low, awed.
Sam knows. He’ll always look like this. Forever fourteen. Always blond haired with a little bit of baby fat still around his features.
It kinda sucks, just a bit. He’ll never be as good looking as Michael.
Looking up at his brother’s face makes Sam feel a little tender and soft, different from the monster that ripped out a man’s throat.
“You mad at me, Michael?” Sam asks, lowering his voice. “Do you hate that I’m like this?”
Michael blinks, confused. “Why would I be mad?”
Sam shrugs. He can’t shake this feeling. “I’m not a little kid anymore. I wasn’t strong enough to outlast this.” Then, in a small, childish voice, he says, “I liked what we did—killing that guy. I wanna do it again.”
Michael’s lips curl up in a half smile, warm and familiar. “Sam,” he starts, bringing his head closer until he kisses his forehead, dried blood making his mouth feel sticky. It probably leaves a mark, an outline of his lips on Sam’s forehead. Sam can’t help but lean into his brother’s touch, his brother’s hands. “I’m so fucking happy.”
“Really?” Sam ventures, a warm gladness infusing him.
“I’m happier than I’ve been in...months?” He says. “I really shouldn’t be,” Michael says, glancing down at his legs, at the edge of the bed. And beyond. “I’ve done horrible things. I’ve turned you into a monster.”
“Mike—” Sam starts, ready to protest.
The hands on his face grip him harder, possessive. Mike brings them closer until they are eye level. “I like it,” he says. His eyes are wild. “I want you, just like this.”
Sam shudders, but he nods. It’s nice to be wanted, and not just be the tag-along little brother. “Okay, Mikey.”
“You’ll always be my little brother?” Michael asks.
Sam doesn’t know why it’s a question; he didn’t realize Michael was feeling insecure, but he nods, tonguing his lips. “Always your little brother, Mike.”
“Good,” Michael says and kisses him until the sun rises.
^^^
“Hey,” Sam says, sliding in the passenger seat. He’s giddy, body vibrating with energy, putting his feet up on the passenger seat. Michael makes a clicking noise in his throat but Sam ignores him.
It’s been a few days. Sam has new clothes now and his own douchebag set of sunglasses at night. “Where to? Phoenix?” They were both getting tired of LA.
Michael runs his nails along the steering wheel. Tap tap tap. He can hear the scratch of Michael’s sharp nails on the leather.
“I think, Sam...that we should go back home. Find mom.” Michael glances at him, eyeing him intently, waiting for a reaction. “You think Mom wants to see us?”
Mom...
Sam was content to leave Mom and all other human connections behind in the dust of their lives, but Sam replays that last phone call in his mind. Mom, sobbing. Mom, begging them to come back. Mom, not caring what Michael was, as long as Sam brought him home.
“I don’t think Grandpa wants us back like this,” he says. He runs his tongue along his teeth, curling them around his canines until they’re fangs. He’s getting better at that. He waits for Michael to ask about the phone calls, but he doesn’t.
“Just mom. No one else.” The low raspy timber of Michael’s voice made Sam think about dark things, bloody things. “Don’t you think Mom would want us around? It’s hard to lose two kids.”
Oh, Sam thinks.
Oh, that’s what he wants.
Sam thinks he’d like that too, having Mom with them. He’d like that very much.
Sam grins, fangs glinting in the darkness. “Yeah. Let’s find mom. I'm sure she misses us.”