No one in particular

At first, Michael thinks it's another dream. 

The darkness of the room is velvet around him, the sleep still heavy in his body and eyes. The bedsheets under Michael's cheek are a bit stiff, smelling distantly like plain detergent that the motel uses. The line between waking and not is fuzzy, and even as sensations of the real world filter in, he feels liable to slip back into unconsciousness. 

In sleep, there are normally bodies tucked next to him, the room only having two beds. Michael's dreams are usually his own, all of his own mind. Nonsense fueled by stress or boredom, or whatever made the brain tick. Sometimes though, even in sleep, the dead moved. Rolling closer to him, brushing the skin of an arm or hand against his without knowing, and his mind would feel it. Their dreams were like a distant voice from another room, and if he were conscious, he'd only have to step forward to hear them all clearly. 

Michael rises back to the world of the waking to a soft, lilting voice filling the silence of the dark room. He thinks that too may be the last moment of a dream he is not having. 

But there are no bodies beside him now. 

Michael languidly shifts on the bed, arm pulling out from under a pillow to curl against his chest, and legs stretching out to feel the lower part of the mattress. He's kicked the blankets off halfway, as he usually does. He’s wearing a loose tee and sweatpants under the covers. Comfortable and warm.

He's alone on the bed. The space beside him where Marko had been, and at the foot of the bed where Thorn had been sleeping, is empty. Michael blinks his eyes open, and even in the darkness, can see across the room. That bed is also empty - Paul and Dwayne gone as well. 

There is a small line of light from under the door to the bathroom. The hiss and dribble of the running shower comes into focus as a backdrop to a quiet, singing voice.

Realization shocks through him, and Michael’s eyes widen, sleep dissipated. It’s. 

It’s David. 

Even through the wood of the closed door, under the running water and the hum of the bathroom fan, Michael can hear him. His low voice, murmuring out the words. 

Michael can’t place the tune. It’s not the hard rock or screaming metal that he’s used to Paul and Marko blaring out, or the older, meandering songs and beats that Dwayne likes, and not a bopping pop earworm that they all get annoyed about. Hell, for a moment, as he listens, Michael realizes it’s not even in English. 

“Tá ceann buí óir ar an dúlamán gaelach. Tá dhá chluais mhaol ar an dúlamán maorach.”

David’s voice curls around the words in unfamiliar patterns. Long, weaving vowels and harsh breathy stops that never quite leave his throat. The pattern of the lyrics to a very different time signature that Michael cannot help but lie still and listen intently to. 

”Bróga breaca dubha ar an dúlamán gaelach. Tá bearéad agus triús ar an dúlamán maorach.

Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach. Dúlamán na farraige, b'fhearr a bhí in Éirinn.”

…Russian? No, Michael had heard enough of that on TV to know at least the sound of it. Certainly not French, and it definitely wasn’t Spanish.

Continuing to listen brings him no closer to an answer, but Michael finds himself relaxing on the bed again. Eyes on the door. Just letting the words and David’s voice pass over him. Some phrases are more clear than others, David repeating them a few times, while others he barely mumbles, maybe forgetting the words, or losing his train of thought. Michael can’t help but pay attention to it all. 

”Cha bhfaigheann tú mo 'níon, arsa an dúlamán gaelach. Bheul, fuadóidh mé liom í, arsa an dúlamán maorach

Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach. Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach. Dúlamán na farraige, b'fhearr a bhí in Éirinn.”

Eventually David trails off, the words turn into humming and the water patters harder against the tub basin. Rinsing off. The water shuts off, and Michael hears the rustling of a towel. A huff of breath. 

Michael, in a fit of sudden self-consciousness, ducks his head back down. Hiding half his face in the pillow. The door swings open and the motel room is bathed in light as David steps out of the bathroom. 

As quickly as it had come, the light shuts off. It might not have been the sun, but vampires didn’t prefer bright lights and the afterimage hazes in Michael’s eyes for a moment. In the wake of the all-consuming focus, Michael feels the silence like a blanket over his ears. 

David moves to the other bed, and Michael watches him. He is bare, save for the damp towel around his hips, and when that is removed, Michael’s gaze flickers away. Until David pulls up from rummaging in the bags stowed on the floor. Until there is…at least one layer over pale, naked skin. It’s not that Michael had never seen David undressed before - living how they were, between stripping off bloody clothing and the lack of room and the mental closeness, there simply wasn’t space for that sort of modesty - but it wasn’t often that David took off so many layers all at once. 

He watches David slip on the dark pants, an undershirt, a tee shirt. He leans back to sit on the bed, to put on socks. 

“What was that song?” Michael asks. 

David startles. Goes still, rather like a deer in the headlights. His head jerks up, blue eyes flashing just a hint of yellow in the dark. 

It is only when he’s spoken that Michael realizes that this is the first time in nearly two weeks that he's spoken directly to David. 

The fight had been bad. Bad by their own standards, at that. Maybe it had been the fact that they’d not been able to stay in one place for more than a couple of days, constantly moving. Maybe it had been the hunger that seemed to chase them, especially Michael being a fledgling, like a hellhound at their heels. Maybe it had just been a full moon - who knows. But one moment, David had made a comment, Michael had answered, David had countered again, and they were off to the races. 

At least this one hadn’t come to blows. 

Well. Michael wasn’t going to take it back. That would be stupid anyway. He waits. 

David’s mouth twitches, caught between words, or maybe emotions. Not anger, but not comfortable condescension. Michael’s question hangs in the air like the steam from the bathroom. At first, it seems like David is going to continue his side of the silent treatment. 

Then, he licks his teeth, a flash of pearly tooth in the soothing gesture before tucking back behind thin lips. He leans forward to resume slipping on the socks and reaches for his boots. His eyes are no longer meeting Michael’s. 

“Wasn’t anything, Michael.” 

Michael frowns, scowling a little. “David, I heard you. I was just curious.” 

David sneers as he laces up a boot. “You listen to everyone while they’re in the bathroom? Boy, I’m starting to wonder just who I let into my pack.” 

The growl that erupts from Michael’s throat is rough with sleep and lack of practice making such a noise. He keeps his mouth closed around his teeth, though. No need to add fuel to David’s fire. 

“Fine. Whatever, asshole. I just asked a question, not like anyone needs to actually convey fucking information around here.” 

Michael kicks off the blankets all the way, shoving them harshly aside as he moves to sit up and start dressing. He’d go for a shower himself but that would take time, and he doesn’t feel like dealing with trying not to trigger his bane while irritation already simmers in his stomach. He’s halfway off the bed, preparing himself for another long night of either driving or trying to keep himself busy while going nowhere, when David actually speaks again. 

“...It was Gaeilge.” 

Michael pauses. He looks at David. 

He’s got the remaining boot in his hands, but he’s not putting it on. His pale fingers are toying with the laces, running them between the digits. His face is…unreadable. 

“What?” Michael asks reflexively at the unknown word.  

It’s David’s turn to scowl now. “You’d probably just call it ‘Irish’ these days.” 

“That’s a country,” Michael says incredulously. 

David’s teeth click as his jaw flexes.

“Ah, forgive me, then. Didn’t realize I was wrong, thank you for correcting me after a hundred years of stupidity for not knowing what I was even talking about.”

David snarls and stops playing with the boot, jamming it onto his foot. His words are clipped in a way that betrays real anger under the surface of his sarcastic wording.

David was hurt. 

Much like the realization that it had been him singing in the beginning, the notion that anything Michael could say to him would…sting him, find its way under some unseen crack in that black shell is. Almost ludicrous. 

But then, why else would Michael suddenly feel like he’d shoved his foot all the way down his own throat. 

“It sounded nice.” 

David’s back is to him, having stood up and rounded the bed to look through the other bags. Maybe just to give his hands something to do. Michael thinks he won’t respond this time, and maybe he’d have every right to. 

But David sighs. He raises a hand to his face, and even without seeing it Michael can imagine the way the vampire rubs his knuckles across the bridge of his nose. 

“It’s just an old nonsense song. Got it stuck in my head.” 

Michael nods a little, even if David can’t see it. “You said it was Irish?” 

“Mm. Learned it from my mother, while she was washing clothes.” 

His mother. Michael has to take a moment to even digest the words at all, let alone what they mean. It’s not often anyone in the pack ever talks about their human lives - Marko being the most common, followed by Paul, but even then, it was usually only funny anecdotes or purely relevant information with little detail or context. Their human lives didn’t…matter anymore. Hazy with the memories of human senses, human emotions, human understanding of the world. For people like David, they were a lifetime away, and a mere extant point in time in the forever of their futures. 

But David apparently remembers his mother, and a song she used to sing. 

“What’s it about?” 

“...Seaweed.” 

Michael blinks, and feels a small, surprised smile steal onto his face. “It’s about- what?” 

David snorts, but turns to face Michael again. His face is much more open. Amused, even. 

“You heard me. I told you, it was nonsense.” 

“Why would the Irish write a song about seaweed?” 

David just lazily throws his hands in the air, leaning back against the wall. “Why does anyone do anything? Are you going to get dressed, or are you going to ask for an entire small country’s musical history?” 

Michael’s hands are indeed still holding a pair of pants that he’d been in the process of taking out of his travel bags when David had responded to his question, and had simply forgotten them. He considers the jeans, the light denim, his thumb on the fold of the knee where the material had almost worn through. There’s a rusty brown patch there. A red stain not yet faded. 

“It beats talking about anything else,” Michael says.

The amusement fades a little from David’s face. The sudden break of their two weeks of ignoring each other's existence and the reason why warring with each other. 

Maybe David would have said something else, maybe Michael would have fallen back into trying not to speak again, but before either thing could happen, the door to the motel room swings inwards. The handle bangs loudly off the wall, vibrating with the force. 

“Oh good, Sleeping Beauty joins the land of the mostly living! Y’all are fuckin’ slow, it’s been past sunset for like, hours-” 

Paul bursts into the room in a whirl of blond hair and gangly limbs that he somehow had enough control over to not smack into anything. He’s at David’s side in a second, a body full of energy with nowhere to direct it but out. 

“It’s barely past nine,” David drawls, taking the bodily hit with barely a blink. 

“Yeah, and Dwayne told me to tell you that if you don’t haul ass and meet us at the gas station by the overpass he’s going to strap you both to his handlebars and keep you there ‘till we get to Cheyenne.” 

Even as he’s speaking, Paul is moving away, reaching down and picking up bags and preparing to leave. He looks over to Michael. 

“Nice hair.” 

“Thanks, I just woke up.” 

Paul doesn’t continue the banter. Just shrugs at David, clearly communicating something as their eyes meet, and then slips back out the door. 

David doesn’t look back at Michael, rather crouching to pick up his own pack and straighten his coat from the minor rufflement. Michael sets himself about actually dressing. 

“If you want, you can clean up before we go,” David says as he’s walking to the door. 

“Yeah?”