#vampires are funky and also can you fucking imagine getting attacked by an aquatic vampire while skinnydipping with someone

[themarginalthinker]

Just Breathe

(Michael might be a vampire now, but that doesn't mean his body has quite caught up yet. David takes him to a place to get a feel for it.

Headcanons: vampires can technically breath, but it takes a bit for the body to recognize it doesn't have to, and David helps Michael adjust. tw: deep water, lightless water, drowning technically but they're immortal and fine.)

Vampires are not human. This, Michael knows.

But sometimes the extent of how much 'not human' and what that exactly means, still surprises him.

"It used to be an old quarry," David explains. "So the water should be still enough for you."

The both of them, really, but Michael and his stupid little bane especially. (Fitting, he sometimes thinks. David with his extra aversion to sunlight, and Michael with his extra aversion to running water. What a pair.)

The quarry in question lies before them, the lake that's been made from it a mirror disk of silver and black in the night. It stretches on quite far, having been purposefully flooded years and years ago when the company decided to stop carving stone. As they pick their way down the slight slope to it, they pass massive chunks of rock - marble, Michael was told - laying around beside the water. Time has weathered them, plants an green moss and fungal lichens having reclaimed a lot of it, though the rectangular stonework is still visible.

They come to the waterside, a level, sandy, dirt bank that leads down into the unknown. David starts stripping, Michael following him after a moment. He still cannot help but flick eyes about, to the shoreline, listening deeper into the woods. Just to be sure.

"If there's anyone around, they won't get an eyefull of much before we're below," David says, having heard Michael's concern through the bond.

Michael smirks a little. "More than you," he says.

David throws a boot at him and it nails him pretty good in the head.

"Jerkwad," Michael says, smarting, but still smiling.

"Dipshit. Finish up," David replies, waiting.

He does, folding his clothing neatly and setting it beside David's. Michael pads over to David, closer to the water's edge. Naked as the day he was born.

Believe it or not, this wasn't the first time he'd been skinnydipping with anyone - even outside of the boys. But it certainly wasn't with this specific purpose. The humor of the banter drains a little from Michael as the ground under him goes damp and cool.

David's hands are at his arms. He's quiet when he speaks, pressing against Michael's mind knowing he needs it.

"So, I know we talked about it before, but it's worth saying again. You're not gonna like it, but we gotta do it."

Michael, ironically, takes a breath.

"Yeah. I know. You...said this was better than what Max did?"

David scoffs, humorlessly. "Oh yeah. Hand around the throat, crushed trachea and everything. Surprised the motherfucker didn't use a garrot."

God, damn. Michael had only met the man twice in his life, and he still shivers remembering him.

He and his ghoulish 'teaching' methods weren't why they were here tonight though. No, why the two vampires were standing by the lakeside of a flooded quarry in the middle of the night, was a tad more pleasant. Ish.

David was going to teach Michael how to stop breathing.

Apparently, even after becoming a vampire, the body...didn't just stop. Even after having descending into the void, a place with no time or memory or concept of real being, when you pulled back into your body again, life still wormed its way into the cracks. Vampire's hearts beat, though so, so slowly. And they breathed. Especially new ones.

Which could become a problem if they couldn't purposefully stop it when need came time.

Michael had tried doing it before, but failed.

"No, no, you're not not breathing, you're just holding your breath," Paul had said when they'd attempted it a few times before.

"I don't understand what the difference is?" Michael had asked.

"It's not- like, it's not just not breathing, it's like...you don't want to breath."

Made little sense, and had been even less useful in getting him there, so David was taking the approach he did with the rest of them. Gentler, he'd said, than how Max had taught him.

So, to the bottom of a lakebed they went.

David stepped first, wading in, and then, the water glinting in the moonlight at his pale skin, and then, glancing back, dipped under.

Michael took another breath. Fuck. Against the point, here.

He took to the water, baring his teeth against the cold of it, even in summer. The 'floor' of the lake here was gritty, the same sand, but quickly moving to mud, soft and his feet sinking in. Soon the water passed his knees, his hips, his chest. He kept feeling along the bottom, waiting for the dropoff that he knew was there.

He didn't get there on his own.

Michael's yelp is rather pitiful in the quiet night air when two cold, clammy arms wrap around his waist from below, and yank him under.

Michael flails for a moment, knowing, knowing it's just David, but still not expecting it. He kicks out, elbowing the vampire back, who gives him a little space.

Hands move around him, and Michael reaches out for them with his own. They grab each other, and having gotten his bearings, Michael lets David pull him. Down.

Down, down into the inky blackness. Even during the day, light wouldn't filter too deep here. When above, there's always some kind of light for them to see by. The moon, the stars, firelight or streetlights from the town, always a bit of skyglow their sensitive eyes could pick up on.

Here, there is nothing. A wall of blackness swamping the senses. Water dulling sound into odd vibrations Michael swore he could feel against his skin as they went, constant sensation of currents and movement. Lake plants, rocks.

Unknown Things in the blackness.

Michael could feel it in the back of his head as they reached the bottom. The wet, loamy settled material at the lakebed sunk between his feet as he slipped, and 'fell' backwards at David's pushing. Their bond practically hummed between them, the only form of communication open to them now. Calm. Settle. Everything's fine.

Yes...Michael knew that on an intellectual level. But as the moments ticked by, as David's hands on his arms didn't leave, as Michael kicked to keep himself from floating back upwards, he.

He couldn't help but feel it. The need to open his mouth and take in air.

Michael knows it's not necessary. It's an old reflex, that was still useful to have of course to talk and smell and look human and all those things. But it didn't want. To turn off.

He makes a sharp jerk, and David's suddenly wrapped around him. He's heavy against Michael, even in the water. Shoving back when Michael shoves up, spinning them back around to square one when it seems like Michael will wiggle free.

Air, fuck, Michael could feel the panic he didn't want building in the back of his head, quickly starting to build to the front, he needed air, he would figure something else out, he had to get away-!

A knee connected with Michael's sternum, and the impact rocked through him. A cloud of bubbles erupted from his chest, popping as they went.

Cold, cold water flooded in.

Like ice and lead at the same time. Michael feels it fill him up, a shaking convulsion at a time, grit sliding past his teeth, a weight settling into his chest. Heavy. Full. Cold, and sinking, and. Calmer. Too heavy to push against at the moment.

And just like that, Michael knows stillness.

No breathing.

A heartbeat so slow it was more like the swaying of the water around them.

There are hands at his shoulders. A ringing apology in the bond for the roughness, but he understands now. Before, when he'd been human, summer at the pool or riverside meant that getting water up your nose, breathing it in, meant burning, rough hacking. A pain as the body tried to expel the offending contaminant. A person can drown in a couple tablespoons of water, after all.

Michael was not drowned, now. He moves his arms, slowly, his legs. Pushing off the bottom, but he doesn't rise. No buoyancy to carry him up, save for his own power.

Like without air, he's part of the water, surrounded inside and out.

Suspended.

David's hands shift, to his face. Michael does the same. Across the bond, so strong now here, in the black utter silence it's almost visible, almost audible, their thoughts to each other, a question is asked.

Michael agrees.

Might as well explore some while they were here.