Title: Dust to Dust
Fandom: Lost Boys
Pairing: David/Michael
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,056
Notes/Warnings: Unbeta'd. All comments, nitpicks & crit weclome
Disclaimer: Not mine. No profit, no foul.
Summary: The house is wrecked but they're all alive and the bad guys have been defeated. It's a fairytale ending. Isn't it?
Written for
smallfandomfest 08: Michael & or / David, What do we do now?
There's so much mess, so much destruction, that it takes Michael a long time to realise that David's body isn't among the wreckage.
Nobody else, not even those freaky Frog brothers, seems to think much of it. They're all too busy celebrating. The house is wrecked but they're all alive and the bad guys have been defeated. It's a fairytale ending.
So why doesn't Michael feel as joyful as the rest of them clearly do? Why isn't he thrilled to be released from his bonds, to be back to normal?
Why is he so concerned about what happened to David?
Sam shrugs and punches his arm. 'He probably disintegrated. Vamps do that, you know,' he says, with the wise air of an experienced sage. 'Poof! Just... poof, and they're nothing but dust. Don't worry about it, Michael. He's gone, that's what matters. He's gone.'
And so is Sam, over whooping and hollering with those appalling Frogs, acting like he saved the world.
And that's unfair, Michael knows it is. They saved the family, and that's just as good. Saved them all from Max, from the vampires, from David. David is gone. His body impaled, his face so still, so incandescently beautiful, in repose. In death.
Gone. Disintegrated. Forgotten.
Michael slams his fist against the wall, ignoring the worried looks from Sam, his mother, Star. They don't understand, but that's okay. He's got used to it. The Frogs give him a look that's pure contempt and Grandpa... well, Grandpa gives him a look that he can't read. Or maybe doesn't want to.
Grandpa understands loss, but Michael's not ready to admit that's what happened to him. He was saved. He had the things that matter returned to him, not taken away. This is about his family, and Star. About being blessed, miraculously, with what he wanted.
Isn't it?
He stamps that question under the boot of his will and forces his hands to uncurl and relax. Of course it is. This is what he held on for, this is what he fought for.
Star spots him skulking by the door and rushes into his arms. Her smile is wide and inviting, her eyes bright. Her skin is warm to his touch. She leans into his chest. 'Michael,' she says, and there is a depth of contentment in that word that he's not sure he's ever heard before, from anyone.
When David said his name, it always sounded like a challenge.
He bends his head and surrenders to Star's kiss. There's no need to be afraid of David any more, no need to worry about him. No need to think about him at all. David is gone. Disintegrated. Dust.
Michael's stomach rolls and he pushes Star away from him just in time. Reddish-tinged vomit hits the floor in a steaming splatter. Michael heaves until it feels like there are no fluids left in his body then straightens, wiping his mouth. Embarrassment rocks him, but there's no scorn in any of the faces that turn to him. He did a good thing, here. He saved them. He was one of the good guys.
You can tell the good guys, because they're the ones still standing. The others are gone. Disintegrated. Dust.
Star puts her hand back on his arm but he shakes her off. Her skin feels clammy and unpleasant after the dry coolness of David's hands. He can still feel where they gripped, those hands, on his upper arms -- trying to force him onto those spines of horn. Trying to kill him. Such strength in those hands, in that body. He'd known, when he'd called David out to fight, that he couldn't win. It wasn't possible. David was too old, too smart, too strong. There could be only one outcome, and that was Michael's death. Death, true death, at David's hands. It was right. Fitting.
There's no dust underneath the place where David fell. Michael checks, very carefully, but the floor and surfaces nearby are undisturbed. A rainfall pattern of blood marks the spot, but that's all. No body. No marks. No dust.
His mother attacks it with a mop and for a second it's on his mind to object, but he doesn't. He just stands back and gets out of the way.
It won't be long before there's no sign that anything happened here. That anything happened at all. Grandpa's as good at household maintenance and repairs as his mother is at cleaning, and between them they'll erase all trace of incursion, of infiltration. Of vampire.
Michael runs a finger over his skin (warm) and the edges of his teeth (blunt). He can see his eyes reflected in Star's, and there's no freakish paleness to them. They're the same ordinary blue that they always were. He's human again. Normal. The threat, the thing that was going to irrevocably change what was left of his life -- change everything -- is gone.
(Disintegrated. Dust.)
It's over. They won. He won. He has his family, his life. He has Star.
He watches Sam singing and doing a goofy dance as he wipes bloody gunge from the kitchen tiles. His mother is also watching, nodding in time and beaming as she swipes her mop in ever-widening circles over the floor. Even Grandpa is smiling.
Nausea roils through his stomach again, while something that feels like claustrophobia claws viciously at his chest. 'I need some air,' he says to nobody in particular, and slips outside.
The night is cool, and some of the tension eases as the breeze swirls around his body. He leans against the side of the house and scans the surrounding area -- his vision no longer has that preturnatural sharpness in the dark, but he's pretty sure that there's no-one out there. No-one watching. Waiting. Wanting.
Kill the head vampire, and the others return to normal.
Return to normal. Become humans again. Ordinary humans.
An ordinary human body couldn't have survived the violence that had been done to David's. It just isn't possible. There's simply no way he could have lived.
So what, exactly, is Michael looking for out here?
He stomps that question under his boot too -- literally this time, grinding his heel into the ground. Into the dust.
Michael tugs the collar of his jacket up around his neck, and starts walking.