Michael Griffo - Unafraid

They were laughing so hard they didn’t hear the knock at the door and only became aware of David’s presence when he cleared his throat. “Forgive me for interrupting playtime.”

His words hurtled toward the boys like a rush of cold wind. Instinctively, their bodies separated; an intruder was present and they were on guard, prepared to defend themselves. Ronan felt Michael’s heart race as if it were beating in his own chest, and he placed a hand on Michael’s knee to prevent him from getting off the bed. No need to give David a reason to get violent. Ronan prevented Michael from attacking David, but not from speaking.

“It’s impossible for you to enter our home without an invitation!” Michael barked.

David howled. He threw his head back and his laughter engulfed the room. He cherished moments like these, when his opponents proved themselves to be nothing more than fools. “Oh Michael, I thought you were smarter than that,” David chided. “Haven’t you yet discovered that conventional rules have no meaning here at Archangel Academy?”

Feeling like a jerk, Michael felt the temperature of his blood rise. David was right. Everything he knew about vampires was turning out to be antiquated folklore; the truth of the species was much different than the legends. Plus, Double A had its own set of complex rules and regulations, all of which defied logic. Fine, Michael thought, score one for the redheaded beast.

“What do you want, David?” Ronan asked.

Even though he knew Ronan had addressed him informally on purpose, the muscles in David’s cheeks still flinched. He decided to ignore the breach in decorum and answer the question as directly as it was asked. “The new term is about to begin, so Michael will need to move his car from its current location,” David said. “It makes a colorful lawn ornament, but it’s impinging the growth of the grass.

And our landscapers work so hard to keep the grounds pristine.”

“How do you know the car is mine?” Michael demanded.

Sneering at the boy, David felt his body stiffen and his fury swell. If Michael were alone, he would use all his preternatural strength, all the strength endowed to him by Zachariel, to attack, destroy, and kill the disgusting creature who dared to defy him. He would rip the flesh off his bones with his own fangs and spit out the pieces of rancid meat as he watched Michael’s dirty, hybrid blood pour from his ravaged body and flood the room. He would cry victoriously as he rammed a stake through Michael’s heart. He would smile as Michael’s body burst into flames. He would accept the ash that would spray over him as glory from his god. But Michael wasn’t alone; Ronan was beside him, and David understood all too well the power of love. It wouldn’t be wise to attack the boy with his lover present.

David might be growing impatient, but he wasn’t impulsive.

He also wasn’t going to give Michael the answer that he wanted to hear: that he knew the car was his because Michael’s father had told him so. “There’s a big, black bow on the roof of the car, and you’ve recently celebrated a birthday,” David said. “Whose else could it be?”

Before Michael could respond with another antagonistic remark, Ronan intervened. “Just tell us where we should move it to.”

David’s grin became genuine. It was heartwarming to hear even the most disobedient student speak words of compliance. “The parking lot outside the headmaster’s office,” David instructed.

Pressing into Michael’s knee with a bit more pressure, Ronan replied, “That won’t be a problem.”

The boys watched David’s grin morph back into a smirk, and they knew he felt as if he had won this little confrontation even before his words confirmed it. “I didn’t think there would be.”

Standing in the doorway, David turned to offer one last piece of instruction. “And remember, students are only allowed to drive on the weekends and only into Eden.”

Although he turned his back on them to leave the room, it didn’t signal the end of their conversation. Michael was determined to have the last word. “I didn’t think rules had any meaning here at Double A?”

When David turned back to face them, Ronan could see the man’s body vibrate, and he could tell David was fighting the urge to transform into his true, vampiric self. He knew that David wanted his fangs to descend and his eyes to blacken in order to show Michael that he wasn’t dealing with a mere adult but an ancient being who possessed extraordinary power, power that was begging to be released.

But David surprised them both and displayed immense restraint. He simply gripped the side of the door with his hand, but so tightly that Ronan was afraid the door would snap in two.

“As your headmaster, Michael, the only rules that have any meaning here are mine,” David said, his voice as firm as concrete. “If you’d like to remain a student of this institution, I implore you to remember that.”

David left as quietly as he had appeared, the door barely making a sound as it closed behind him. It took less than a second for the quiet to be disrupted.

“Are we supposed to just forget what he tried to do?!” Michael screamed, jumping off the bed. “Are we supposed to forget that he’s our enemy and act like he’s nothing more than our headmaster just because school’s about to start up again?!”

Ronan watched Michael pace the room like Michael had watched him do so many times before, but this time there was a change. Michael wasn’t moving from one end of the room to another as a result of frustration; he was moving with purpose. His strides weren’t occupying time because his mind had lost control of its body; they were helping him formulate a plan. The realization made Ronan both proud and scared. He didn’t want Michael to scurry away from confrontation, but he didn’t want him to run headlong into it either. It was time to offer some insight. “As difficult as it might be to accept,” Ronan began, “as long as we’re at Double A, David is our headmaster.”

“He’s a piece of sh ...”

“Who deserves our respect!” Ronan shouted over Michael’s more derogatory description.

Finally, Michael stopped in his tracks and stared at Ronan as if he had never seen him before. “Are you serious?”

Ronan knelt on the bed and reached out his hand to Michael, but Michael wouldn’t budge. When he realized his boyfriend wasn’t going to reconsider, Ronan let his arm fall limply at his side. “Our race agreed a long time ago to coexist peacefully with David’s kind,” Ronan explained. “Regardless of their actions we will not provoke a war.”

Michael knew the jargon, he knew the peace-comes-first philosophy of The Well and he agreed with it, but The Well didn’t have to live near David. The Well didn’t have to see his smug, ugly face every day and bow to him like he was some righteous ruler. It was outrageous to be expected to sit by quietly and not do anything. “So we just let them destroy us?!”

“Of course not! We defend ourselves when necessary!” Ronan said, his voice rising to match Michael’s volume. “But we do not instigate violence, Michael. It’s not who we are! We’re about bloody peace for God’s sake!”

There was nothing peaceful about how Ronan looked. Kneeling on the bed, his back was rigid, his fists were clenched, and one arm was raised high over his head. The only movement, in fact, came from his chest that heaved from the exertion of his declaration. Despite his words about upholding an ideology of peace, Michael thought he looked like some fanatical warrior hell-bent on leading an army into a deadly skirmish. His unbridled passion was unexpectedly comical. “Should I call the troops to war, general?”