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kat_lair***
Title: Delayed Reaction
Author:kat_lair
Fandom: The Lost Boys (1987)
Pairing: Michael Emerson/Sam Emerson
Warnings: Underage
Tags: Implied/Referenced Underage, Sibling Incest, But It's Only Feelings And Vaguely Referenced, Nothing Graphic Happens
Rating: T
Word count: 1,698
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary:
“It’s over,” Michael says, and, in the moment, he believes it. It’s over and everything will return to normal.
He’s wrong.
Author notes: Spooktober 2023, Day 30/31. Prompt/theme: vampires. Yes, it's no longer October, but by god I will finish this series before 2023 is over so suck it up.
Delayed Reaction on AO3
“It’s over,” Michael says, and, in the moment, he believes it. It’s over and everything will return to normal.
He’s wrong. Nothing stays the same.
Star lasts for three weeks. She and Laddie get a room with Widow Johnson and for three weeks Star and Michael play at a young, carefree couple, the kind that you see in the movies. They go for drives and eat ice-cream and find places to make out and more than that. It’s good. It’s good but it’s not… It’s not…
“It’s not working, Michael,” she says, suitcase in one hand, Laddie’s hand in the other. “I just… There’s got to be more. You feel it too, don’t you?”
And Michael, who feels only vague regret, and maybe relief, nods. He’s not surprised. If anything, he’s glad, for her and Laddie, hopes they find the more they’re seeking, the more they deserve.
“I’m sorry,” Star says, hugging him fiercely. “Thank you.”
“Don’t.” He means both the apology and the thanks. She owes him nothing.
Not a month after Star has left, grandpa makes a short speech about seizing the day and moves his taxidermy hobby and his meagre belongings to Widow Johnson’s house, leaving his own (and the car) for Lucy and the boys. Not that she’s home much these days.
Max’s sudden disappearance, as the Santa Carla community frames it, has left a power vacuum in the local business district. To no one’s surprise, Lucy steps up to fill it. She starts as an acting manager but that becomes permanent quickly as the video store – in absence Max or any next of kin – transfers to a kind of cooperative ownership that results in increase in profits and employee satisfaction. As a result, Lucy spends increasingly long days at work and in establishing a thriving professional and personal life in Santa Carla.
With Star gone, mom gone, and grandpa gone, there is only him and Sam, rattling around an empty house after school, eating junk, watching trash on TV (which they now have thanks to mom’s new position) and doing the bare minimum of homework. It’s great, comfortingly familiar, to have his brother right there, with him.
Michael loves it.
It takes him months to realise why he loves it so much, that perhaps not all of the changes reverted with Max’s death. It's true that he’s no longer a vampire, or on his way of becoming one. He can’t fly, he doesn’t shy away from the sun, and, most importantly, he doesn’t look at people and feel a thirst rise in him like a tide, red and all-consuming, doesn’t look at his brother and want…
Except. Except he does.
Michael looks at his brother, at the dusting of freckles over his face, at the smooth skin of his arms, still skinny with youth but starting to gain the same kind of definition as Michael’s. He looks at Sam’s bright grin and the way his nose scrunches up, the lean twist of his body, hanging off the sofa or behind the wheel of the car and he…
And he wants.
He sits in his room, late at night, and digs the heels of his hands into his eye-sockets, supernova of pain and pressure keeping him put. In the bath, next door, Sam is singing along to the radio. Michael bites at his lip until he draws blood, until the truth of what he is and what he must do sits on his tongue, tasting like a bad penny.
His fingers shake on the straps of his duffel bag.
Michael doesn’t know which is worst; that this is something that David and the others did, a perversion they’d forced on him, some lingering aftereffect of the almost-tragedy of his almost-death. Or that it’s something that’s always been in him, simply lying dormant until now, until David told him to let go and Michael did, exhilaration and relief overriding fear as he let himself fall through the fog, let himself fall from grace he didn’t even know he had until it was lost.
It doesn’t matter either way. The end result is the same.
“You’re leaving.” It’s an accusation, not a question. Sam’s watching him from the porch, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
Michael knows that if he just disappears, they will never stop looking for him. So, he’s talked to mom, a story about college and working and seeing the world, and maybe some of that is even true, enough at least that she only cries a little, more resigned than surprised. He’s talked to grandpa, who’d given him a taxidermy lizard no longer than the length of his palm, a real demonstration of skill, and told him to send a postcard from New York. Michael hadn’t been planning to go there but he will now, just for the card.
He'd even thought about talking to the Frog brothers, to ask them to look after Sam, but in the end, he’d lost his nerve. They will do that anyway, but more than that, he’s afraid that they’ll know… Something. Probably not the exact shape of it but enough that they’ll be overjoyed to see the back of him, regardless.
As they should. As Sam would be, if he knew. Michael may be fucked up, but he’s not so fucked up as to tell him.
“Yeah,” Michael says. “Gotta see the world, man. Santa Carla is only one small corner of it.” He hadn’t been trying to sneak away without talking to Sam too, but he had left that until the very last. He’d only gone outside to put his bag in the car – not grandpa’s pride and joy, but an old beat-up Buick he’d part changed his bike for and used most of his savings to cover the rest – with full intention to go find Sam after, but his brother must have heard him leave the house and followed.
Sam stares at him, eyes dark. He’s angry, maybe hurt, but beyond that Michael can’t get a read on him. He blames the fact that Sam’s in the shade, while he himself is squinting against the morning sun, but knows it’s more than that.
“Okay,” Sam finally says, after a long silence.
Michael is honestly taken aback. He’d expected an argument, not this thin-lipped, tight-jawed stillness, so different from Sam’s usual frenetic energy.
“Okay?” he asks, unable to help the incredulity in his tone.
Sam nods. “On one condition.”
Michael eyes him warily for a bit. “What is it?”
“You call,” Sam says. “Once a week. Sunday night. And you tell me exactly where you are. And I mean like ‘room, house number, street, town, county, state, country’ exactly. None of this ‘somewhere in Oregon, dude’ bullshit.”
That is… Very specific. Mom had told him to call as well, of course, but this is much more… precise.
“Alright,” Michael says. “I can do that.” He’s not stupid, he knows why Sam wants the information. But to refuse would both bring about the fight he’s been dreading and cause Sam to dig deeper into not just why Michael is leaving, but why he doesn’t want to be found. It’s easier to give in. He can always lie if he needs to. He’s better at that now.
“And if you can’t call on a Sunday for whatever reason, you call as soon as possible the following week,” Sam continues, sounding like a lawyer laying down the conditions of a parole.
“You’ll be at school,” Michael points out. “Mom will be at work.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Ever heard of an answering machine? Leave a message. Because if I don’t hear from you by the time the next Sunday night rolls around…” He trails off meaningfully.
“Mom’s going to kill you, and then me, if you hare off to find me,” Michael says, but he can’t stop the smile that’s forcing its way to his face. Despite everything, despite all the reasons he’s leaving, all the very excellent reasons he needs to stay the fuck away from Sam, he can’t help the way something inside him tightens, hot and gratified and relieved, at knowing that Sam isn’t as willing to let him go as he’d first seemed.
“True,” Sam says, and there’s a grin lifting the corner of his mouth now, some of the seriousness sliding away. “So don’t let it come to that, okay?”
Michael nods. Sam narrows his eyes at him and steps down from the porch, hand extended. “Promise?”
“Promise,” Michael says, and reaches out to shake on it.
Sam’s grip is strong. It shouldn’t surprise Michael, but it does. And yet, not as much as when Sam uses it to pull him into a hug. Michael’s been scrupulous about not touching his brother since he realised how much he wants to. But he doesn’t have it in him to hold back now, not when this is the last time he’ll be able to for who knows how long.
Sam is still shorter than Michael, but not by as much as he was when they’d moved to Santa Carla, his chin digging into Michael’s shoulder as they hug. His hold is tight, clinging, and Michael lets himself sink into it, lets himself press his face into the sleep-warm skin of Sam’s neck until he can smell sweat and chocolate milk, and underneath it all, the red, wet rush of…
Michael pushes Sam off, remembering to gentle his movements at the last second, turning his panicked wrench into something casual. Brotherly.
“Best get going.” His voice is shot and his heartbeat… It has slowed down.
Right down. Like a predator’s.
He backs away toward the car, Sam watching him the whole way. Careful. But not afraid. Not like before.
Michael gets in, turns the key, forces himself to face his brother through the open window. “Be good,” he says. “I’ll call.”
Sam lifts a hand in return. “See you, brother,” he says, golden in the sunlight, so bright it hurts to look.
Michael drives away, the words echoing in his mind, the realisation that Sam is letting him run away for now, not forever, settling into his bones, burning like a brand over his heart.
***
Title: Delayed Reaction
Author:
kat_lair Fandom: The Lost Boys (1987)
Pairing: Michael Emerson/Sam Emerson
Warnings: Underage
Tags: Implied/Referenced Underage, Sibling Incest, But It's Only Feelings And Vaguely Referenced, Nothing Graphic Happens
Rating: T
Word count: 1,698
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary:
“It’s over,” Michael says, and, in the moment, he believes it. It’s over and everything will return to normal.
He’s wrong.
Author notes: Spooktober 2023, Day 30/31. Prompt/theme: vampires. Yes, it's no longer October, but by god I will finish this series before 2023 is over so suck it up.
Delayed Reaction on AO3
“It’s over,” Michael says, and, in the moment, he believes it. It’s over and everything will return to normal.
He’s wrong. Nothing stays the same.
Star lasts for three weeks. She and Laddie get a room with Widow Johnson and for three weeks Star and Michael play at a young, carefree couple, the kind that you see in the movies. They go for drives and eat ice-cream and find places to make out and more than that. It’s good. It’s good but it’s not… It’s not…
“It’s not working, Michael,” she says, suitcase in one hand, Laddie’s hand in the other. “I just… There’s got to be more. You feel it too, don’t you?”
And Michael, who feels only vague regret, and maybe relief, nods. He’s not surprised. If anything, he’s glad, for her and Laddie, hopes they find the more they’re seeking, the more they deserve.
“I’m sorry,” Star says, hugging him fiercely. “Thank you.”
“Don’t.” He means both the apology and the thanks. She owes him nothing.
Not a month after Star has left, grandpa makes a short speech about seizing the day and moves his taxidermy hobby and his meagre belongings to Widow Johnson’s house, leaving his own (and the car) for Lucy and the boys. Not that she’s home much these days.
Max’s sudden disappearance, as the Santa Carla community frames it, has left a power vacuum in the local business district. To no one’s surprise, Lucy steps up to fill it. She starts as an acting manager but that becomes permanent quickly as the video store – in absence Max or any next of kin – transfers to a kind of cooperative ownership that results in increase in profits and employee satisfaction. As a result, Lucy spends increasingly long days at work and in establishing a thriving professional and personal life in Santa Carla.
With Star gone, mom gone, and grandpa gone, there is only him and Sam, rattling around an empty house after school, eating junk, watching trash on TV (which they now have thanks to mom’s new position) and doing the bare minimum of homework. It’s great, comfortingly familiar, to have his brother right there, with him.
Michael loves it.
It takes him months to realise why he loves it so much, that perhaps not all of the changes reverted with Max’s death. It's true that he’s no longer a vampire, or on his way of becoming one. He can’t fly, he doesn’t shy away from the sun, and, most importantly, he doesn’t look at people and feel a thirst rise in him like a tide, red and all-consuming, doesn’t look at his brother and want…
Except. Except he does.
Michael looks at his brother, at the dusting of freckles over his face, at the smooth skin of his arms, still skinny with youth but starting to gain the same kind of definition as Michael’s. He looks at Sam’s bright grin and the way his nose scrunches up, the lean twist of his body, hanging off the sofa or behind the wheel of the car and he…
And he wants.
He sits in his room, late at night, and digs the heels of his hands into his eye-sockets, supernova of pain and pressure keeping him put. In the bath, next door, Sam is singing along to the radio. Michael bites at his lip until he draws blood, until the truth of what he is and what he must do sits on his tongue, tasting like a bad penny.
His fingers shake on the straps of his duffel bag.
Michael doesn’t know which is worst; that this is something that David and the others did, a perversion they’d forced on him, some lingering aftereffect of the almost-tragedy of his almost-death. Or that it’s something that’s always been in him, simply lying dormant until now, until David told him to let go and Michael did, exhilaration and relief overriding fear as he let himself fall through the fog, let himself fall from grace he didn’t even know he had until it was lost.
It doesn’t matter either way. The end result is the same.
“You’re leaving.” It’s an accusation, not a question. Sam’s watching him from the porch, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
Michael knows that if he just disappears, they will never stop looking for him. So, he’s talked to mom, a story about college and working and seeing the world, and maybe some of that is even true, enough at least that she only cries a little, more resigned than surprised. He’s talked to grandpa, who’d given him a taxidermy lizard no longer than the length of his palm, a real demonstration of skill, and told him to send a postcard from New York. Michael hadn’t been planning to go there but he will now, just for the card.
He'd even thought about talking to the Frog brothers, to ask them to look after Sam, but in the end, he’d lost his nerve. They will do that anyway, but more than that, he’s afraid that they’ll know… Something. Probably not the exact shape of it but enough that they’ll be overjoyed to see the back of him, regardless.
As they should. As Sam would be, if he knew. Michael may be fucked up, but he’s not so fucked up as to tell him.
“Yeah,” Michael says. “Gotta see the world, man. Santa Carla is only one small corner of it.” He hadn’t been trying to sneak away without talking to Sam too, but he had left that until the very last. He’d only gone outside to put his bag in the car – not grandpa’s pride and joy, but an old beat-up Buick he’d part changed his bike for and used most of his savings to cover the rest – with full intention to go find Sam after, but his brother must have heard him leave the house and followed.
Sam stares at him, eyes dark. He’s angry, maybe hurt, but beyond that Michael can’t get a read on him. He blames the fact that Sam’s in the shade, while he himself is squinting against the morning sun, but knows it’s more than that.
“Okay,” Sam finally says, after a long silence.
Michael is honestly taken aback. He’d expected an argument, not this thin-lipped, tight-jawed stillness, so different from Sam’s usual frenetic energy.
“Okay?” he asks, unable to help the incredulity in his tone.
Sam nods. “On one condition.”
Michael eyes him warily for a bit. “What is it?”
“You call,” Sam says. “Once a week. Sunday night. And you tell me exactly where you are. And I mean like ‘room, house number, street, town, county, state, country’ exactly. None of this ‘somewhere in Oregon, dude’ bullshit.”
That is… Very specific. Mom had told him to call as well, of course, but this is much more… precise.
“Alright,” Michael says. “I can do that.” He’s not stupid, he knows why Sam wants the information. But to refuse would both bring about the fight he’s been dreading and cause Sam to dig deeper into not just why Michael is leaving, but why he doesn’t want to be found. It’s easier to give in. He can always lie if he needs to. He’s better at that now.
“And if you can’t call on a Sunday for whatever reason, you call as soon as possible the following week,” Sam continues, sounding like a lawyer laying down the conditions of a parole.
“You’ll be at school,” Michael points out. “Mom will be at work.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Ever heard of an answering machine? Leave a message. Because if I don’t hear from you by the time the next Sunday night rolls around…” He trails off meaningfully.
“Mom’s going to kill you, and then me, if you hare off to find me,” Michael says, but he can’t stop the smile that’s forcing its way to his face. Despite everything, despite all the reasons he’s leaving, all the very excellent reasons he needs to stay the fuck away from Sam, he can’t help the way something inside him tightens, hot and gratified and relieved, at knowing that Sam isn’t as willing to let him go as he’d first seemed.
“True,” Sam says, and there’s a grin lifting the corner of his mouth now, some of the seriousness sliding away. “So don’t let it come to that, okay?”
Michael nods. Sam narrows his eyes at him and steps down from the porch, hand extended. “Promise?”
“Promise,” Michael says, and reaches out to shake on it.
Sam’s grip is strong. It shouldn’t surprise Michael, but it does. And yet, not as much as when Sam uses it to pull him into a hug. Michael’s been scrupulous about not touching his brother since he realised how much he wants to. But he doesn’t have it in him to hold back now, not when this is the last time he’ll be able to for who knows how long.
Sam is still shorter than Michael, but not by as much as he was when they’d moved to Santa Carla, his chin digging into Michael’s shoulder as they hug. His hold is tight, clinging, and Michael lets himself sink into it, lets himself press his face into the sleep-warm skin of Sam’s neck until he can smell sweat and chocolate milk, and underneath it all, the red, wet rush of…
Michael pushes Sam off, remembering to gentle his movements at the last second, turning his panicked wrench into something casual. Brotherly.
“Best get going.” His voice is shot and his heartbeat… It has slowed down.
Right down. Like a predator’s.
He backs away toward the car, Sam watching him the whole way. Careful. But not afraid. Not like before.
Michael gets in, turns the key, forces himself to face his brother through the open window. “Be good,” he says. “I’ll call.”
Sam lifts a hand in return. “See you, brother,” he says, golden in the sunlight, so bright it hurts to look.
Michael drives away, the words echoing in his mind, the realisation that Sam is letting him run away for now, not forever, settling into his bones, burning like a brand over his heart.
***