Ficcing!
So I wrote this during the past week. Just a little Michael angst, because normal people are not just cool with turning into lycan-vampire hybrids, learning they will live forever, and having to eat blood. Kudos to anyone who gets the meaning of the title.

Title: Should’ve Moved to Dallas
Fandom: Underworld
Setting: Sometime shortly after 2
Pairing: Selene/Michael.
I own nothing. I just write for fun.


He awoke to absolute darkness and tangled, sweaty sheets. For several long moments, Michael Corvin lay as still as possible, taking several slow, deliberate, deep breaths. It was just a dream. A nightmare. And he was now back in reality, lying on his tiny bed in his sparsely furnished apartment in his run down apartment building. Never had his meager I-have-med-school-loans-I-still-have-to-pay-back living arrangement seemed so wonderful, so freeing.

He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to chase away the last lingering images of vampires and werewolves, death and destruction. He almost laughed as he thought of the absurdity of it all. The last time he’d dreamed about monsters lurking in dark corners, he’d been seven and convinced that the creature in the lake was going to eat him at sleep-away camp. Although he’d long since outgrown believing in the things that go bump in the night, his parents still felt a little guilty for making him go to camp in the first place.

Maybe he should tell his parents about the dream when he called home. They’d get a good laugh over it – and might finally move past the whole camp thing - and he could probably play it up a bit, talking about turning into a werewolf-like creature and running around the Hungarian countryside with a beautiful vampire. He smiled slightly - that dream wasn’t all nightmare. Parts of it had been amazing….

On second thought, perhaps he should leave the part about the vampire out; there were some topics of conversation that were not parent appropriate. But either way, it sure beat telling them about the real horrors he dealt with – patients dying or gang warfare during his commute.

Maybe it was time to just break down, get a roommate, and get into a nicer neighborhood. People didn’t get shot in the subway on the more affluent end of town and surely there was someone he worked with that he could stand to be in the same room with. Besides, he really only ever went home to sleep during those short breaks between thirty-six hour shifts. A roommate was a definite possibility.

What time was it, anyway? Still groggy, Michael rolled over, reaching for the battered old alarm clock left over from his college dorm days. Moving hurt - aching muscles screamed against use while bruises he didn’t realize he had protested the motion. Damn, what had he done at work yesterday? He couldn’t remember. It all seemed hazy, like it happened a different lifetime ago.

Clearly, he was working too hard.

And where was that alarm clock? He still hadn’t found it. Michael fumbled in the dark - sleepily wondering where his cardboard box bedside table had gone - and promptly fell out of bed. His aching body protested louder and he cursed, rubbing his arm where a whole new set of bruises was bound to appear.

Instantly, the bedroom door slammed open and a light blazed on, accompanied by a metallic clicking sound. Reality – real reality – followed hard on its heels. He moved his hand to shield his eyes. “Damn.”

Gone were the blissful hallucinations of his dingy little apartment and long shifts at his internship. Gone was the irrational hope that maybe – just maybe – he’d wake up and find the last few weeks of his life had all been a dream. Wincing, he pushed himself off the floor. “Selene…”

She was already stepping past him, moving towards the window. “What happened?” No ‘Are you okay, Michael’ - just a short, militaristic request for information.

He rubbed his hands over his face. “Nothing.”

She crossed the small room and pushed open the heavy drapes at the window to check outside for some invisible attacker. Finding no one, she shut the drapes again, returning a nasty looking handgun to the holster at her thing. She turned back to face him. “You look terrible.”

“I’m fine.” No, not fine. ‘Physically unharmed for the moment’ maybe. ‘No one has tried to kill me yet today,’ sure. But not fine. He sat on the edge of the bed, frustration building.

Selene seemed to minutely shrug before starting towards the doorway and the front room of the tiny suite they’d rented.

“Did you ever hate what you’d become in those first few months?” He quickly bit out. Seeing her steps falter, he hurriedly continued, “Before it became normal to drink blood and take lives?”

She came to a complete stop, but didn’t turn around. “No.”

Of course not. She’d told him at the beginning that she never looked back. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared at her back. Maybe this life was easier if you had nothing left to live for. Maybe the shock of everything she’d lost had been so great that by the time any sort of reality had set in, she’d embraced what she was. He knew it was certainly easier for him to deal with the fact that he was a, well, some sort of half-lycan-half-vampire when his primary focus was running away from the people who wanted to kill him. There certainly hadn’t been any shortage of them. While there had been moments when he’d been left with his thoughts, it wasn’t until recently that he’d had a chance to really reflect.

He wished he could go back to the running. Primitive reactions like fight or flight were far simpler to handle.

“Anything else?” Selene’s terse voice interrupted his thoughts.

“No,” he said softly. Watching her start towards the door again, he sighed and fell back on the bed. Would he ever find this existence normal? And what would that make him if he did? Part of him rebelled against the idea of full acceptance, whispering that in civilized culture things like him certainly weren’t human. The other part reminded him that he didn’t see Selene as a monster, but a person.

She’d been shorter with him than she usually was.

The thought hit him suddenly and he pushed himself up onto his elbows. Selene wasn’t exactly an open book, but she did have the ability to use words with more than one syllable and was more likely to choose them when talking with him than with anyone else. And why was she sitting up in the other room?

Climbing off the bed, he made his way across the cold floor to the door. Selene had left it cracked when she’d left and, peering through the tiny sliver, he could see her sitting on a dilapidated chair, one foot on a scarred wood table, while staring at the wall. As he pushed the door open, she jumped, immediately grabbing up yet another gun from the table and pretending to be engrossed in polishing it. “You need sleep.”

“I’ve been having some difficulty with that lately,” he replied, easing onto the torn sofa across from her. “Can we talk?”

She didn’t look up from her weapon, but paused in her polishing performance long enough to wave a hand at him.

“I’m sorry.”

She faltered, then continued her work. “You’ve done nothing.”

Nothing but brood, feel sorry for himself, and try to pick a fight with her. She didn’t exactly have the greatest life at the moment, either. She really didn’t need him acting as if he was silently blaming her for everything that went wrong. Michael leaned back on the sofa and stared at the large crack running through the plaster ceiling. “I haven’t been easy to live with since we’ve holed up here.”

Selene turned the gun over and became very interested in the handle.

“Adjusting is…difficult,” he continued. Still getting no response, he sighed and put his left foot on the table.

Selene stopped polishing long enough to glance at it, then quickly continued her work. Well, at least she was listening to him.

“How do you do it?” He asked suddenly.

In a single smooth motion, she dropped the cloth in her hand to her lap, picked up the magazine from the table, and snapped it into place. “Do what?”

“Accept and move forward?” He motioned towards the outer door. “Everything fell apart around you, and you take it all in stride.”

“Strong purpose.” Selene returned her weapon to the table and chose another one.

He frowned. “But you don’t kill Lycans anymore.” At least, she didn’t kill them unless they were coming after her. Or him.

She picked up her cloth again and began on her new gun. “Purposes change.”

The meaning hit him and he let her words hang in the air for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

He didn’t know what else to say and settled on silently watching her. He still didn’t know enough about weapons to recognize one gun from the next other than by their size – the big one, the small one, and so on – but found the activity oddly comforting.

“Primum non nocere?” Selene asked, her voice taking on a conversational tone.

He shot her a quizzical look.

“Your oath. It…complicates matters?” She elaborated, still apparently concentrating on her current weapon.

“Sometimes,” he admitted. It felt good to say it out loud, to talk with her about it. So often, it felt like there was an elephant in the room and neither of them was willing to acknowledge it. Addressing it lifted a weight from his shoulders.

“And your nightmares?” Selene continued.

He frowned. “How…?”

“You talk in your sleep.” She looked up from the gun. “And thrash.”

“Selene, I’m…”

“Sorry,” she interrupted. Something vaguely resembling a smile tugged at the side of her mouth. “I know.” Returning to her polishing, she remarked, “You need sleep.”

He did; his eyelids were finally feeling heavy and some of the internal demons had quieted. Sleep might be more peaceful now. He looked over at her. “Thank you. For…understanding.”

The tiny smile appeared momentarily before she began to vigorously rub at a non-existent spot. “Go sleep.”

Pulling himself to his feet, Michael started back towards the bedroom. He glanced back at Selene, who had stopped polishing and was watching him. Their eyes met and she quickly returned to her work. “Selene?”

“Yes?”

He moved back to the center of the room, then reached out and laid a hand on hers, interrupting her progress. When she shot a sharp look up at him, he turned his hand over, palm up. The glare weakened, and a second later he felt her slide her hand into his.