Chapter Text
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
- T. S. Eliot
Mitchell groans into Annie's mouth and it's a weird sensation, knowing he wants something, but not feeling it, physically, inside him. He misses the inescapability of true lust. He would do anything for a spike of passion to punch his breastbone now, for his head and his body to work together again instead of constantly wearing each other down.
Annie tilts her head and their lips soften together. Mitchell closes his eyes and feels Josie's body against his, rocks up into her and drinks in a sensuous dance behind his eyelids.
Annie's teeth brush a line across his bottom lip. Mitchell squirms and curls his fingers into her sweater. Squeezes his eyes shut. He wants, tries, to pour all of his stagnant blood into this moment and this kiss but no amount of effort or bargaining moves anything inside him. For all eternity, every cell in his body stands still and watchful and carved into rock.
He rolls his hips against a shadow and a hope. It flits across his mind that Herrick loiters just upstairs, lurking there on the other side of thin floorboards and a rug. Heat stirs behind Mitchell's eyes and twists his gut and he whimpers. Annie takes this as encouragement, pushes her tongue between his lips and trails a hand down his sternum. Her fingers crawl up under the hem of his shirt like a wisp of tepid fog, and nothing. He holds his breath and clenches all the muscles in his abdomen, and nothing.
The floor above and the walls around them creak, just a subtle whisper, but it cracks against Mitchell's ears and makes him gasp. In his head he hears Herrick's voice, take her, take her, and his spine throbs white with arousal until Annie's tongue traces his teeth and brings him back to himself and his eyelids burst open. He yanks his head back and struggles under her, panting. Annie catches his face in her hands and everything about her is soft and understanding. They look at each other and Mitchell regains some balance.
Annie's eyes widen bright and she offers a real smile, enveloping him with unmistakable forgiveness. His jaw tightens. That forgiveness lies open at his fingertips, there for him to covet and take and keep and hoard. He pulls her forehead down to his, holds her chest flush with his own, shares the space between them as if it were breath. He swallows a bark of frustration. For fuck's sake, Annie's here to give him mercy and devotion and her and he just tears himself apart trying to commit to it.
Mitchell is so tired of forcing his heart to feel things.
May the earth give him a chance and he can have this perfect, sweet thing with Annie, he just needs time; time, which has never been against him until now.
For the past few days, Mitchell has been proud of maintaining some civility with Nina. But as the full moon approaches and the police visits become more frequent and Herrick's presence claws at Mitchell's skull, he's finding it harder and harder to ignore her cold demeanor and occasional snide remark.
It all comes to a head one very sunny morning before Nina's left for work, yet before George has returned from the same. It's not anything harsh or insulting. She starts by asking why Mitchell hasn't gotten a job, which is easy enough to answer (besides the fact he's volatile, he's also surly and impersonal and dresses like a hitchhiker), but goes on to accuse him of lazing about and taking advantage of her income.
"You barely even go out anymore. Why is that?" she asks as her frustration peaks.
"Because I'm scared, okay? You happy?" Mitchell bursts. To his deep embarrassment, his voice leaps several octaves, but his throat constricts and holds it there. "I'm scared to go out at night, where I might find someone and--" he chokes and swallows and she starts to speak again but he cuts her off. "I'm scared, Nina." He throws his hands in the air. "Congratulations, I'm the coward you always wanted me to be."
"What are you scared of?"
His eyes skid over her shoulder to the vista, a beach now littered with clippings of blood and gore. She follows his gaze, and when she turns back to him, she takes a few steps away, putting more space between them.
"I'm scared of dying," he whispers.
Nina's voice is laced with a strange pity when she answers, "you're a hundred and twenty years old."
He rolls his eyes. "I'm scared of-I don't know. Losing people." He looks back in her eyes as something dawns on him. "Of you taking them all away. I need George and I need Annie. You know I do, you know they make me better, so why--"
"They can only do so much."
Mitchell chuckles in that snake--like way he's perfected and patented. "You've got it all figured out, haven't you?" He licks his lips and smirks. "I'm a monster and a nightmare and a leech. I live in the shadows and bum off my werewolf mate and lure innocent little girls to my bed and--"
"Quit trying so hard," Nina interrupts. "No one believes this cocky act in the stupid leather jacket, you just want attention. You just want us to feel sorry for you and take care of you. Why don't you grow up and be honest with us for once?"
Mitchell growls and starts to pace, clutching his head between his hands. "Don't you think I'm pissed off enough without your help? How's that for honest? I make myself so angry--Jesus Christ--it feels like my guts are on fire, like I'm going to burn from the inside out. At night I feel so scared my bones shake, and I can't sleep and I can't breath." Nina begins shaking her head. Mitchell plows on, "everything, my whole body, it's just pain and hunger and fear and humiliation. I feel like I'm going mad!"
"You don't, you can't feel anything!" She's at the opposite end of the room now, but her words sting as if she clawed them into his skin with her bare hands. "You lying demon! Your body doesn't even work! Stop playing the pity card to get them on your side!"
Mitchell blinks hard and his lips tremble. It takes him several painful--no, they must be numb--seconds to form words. "Fuck you! How should you know what I can and can't feel?! Keep your fucking hairy nose out of my fucking business!"
"Mitchell!"
He jerks back as if Annie's voice lashed him across the face. He's not sure if she appeared from nowhere or came through the door.
"Stop it!" Annie cries, shocked and disappointed. "Both of you, a bit, lay off each other--but most of all you, you great prat!" She wags an accusing finger at Mitchell as her voice grows shrill.
Nina has the decency not to jeer, and though she offers no apology, she leaves the room with polite haste.
Annie doesn't spend too long scolding him; at least, not nearly as long as he deserves. Nina's a pregnant woman for Christ's sake, and his best friend's lover, but every time he talks to her a fresh wave of rage rinses off all that common sense.
When Annie finishes her brief lecture, Mitchell takes her hands and asks, "how much of that did you hear?"
Annie looks at him curiously. "She called you a demon and you called her a bitch. More or less." Mitchell snorts. "Why?" Annie goes on, "did I miss something important? Any secrets you're trying to hide?"
He bites his lip and looks up, but she's grinning and holding back laughter. It was just a joke.
"For the record," Annie adds, "I don't think you're a demon. You couldn't be less like a demon. You saved me. Pretty sure demons don't go around saving things. The opposite, really."
Mitchell grins and gives her a quick kiss. "Well, I'm no angel."
"Oh, I'm not saying you haven't done some bad things. But we all have. People make mistakes. Normal people. Humans."
Mitchell tries to swallow, but everything inside him has dried out. He takes a deep breath. "Oh, God, I love you," he says roughly. He pulls her against him and holds her tight and tries to breath in something about her he can store in his memory forever.
For the rest of the day, Mitchell feels dizzy and empty and gnawed-out. In the shower that evening, he forgets to wash his hair and has a good wank instead, until he can hardly keep himself standing. Annie's face quickly dissolves into others: Carl, Lauren, Josie, Arthur. Mitchell starts to slide out of control and in his mind he sees Lucy brandishing a stake and Daisy caked in blood and Peter pulling his hair and men holding him down and he remembers Herrick is only one floor up and he comes, sudden and blinding, with a hoarse sob.
Rivulets of lukewarm water follow the lines between his muscles and veins, outline his hipbones with faint brushstrokes, slither around the back of his neck, trace his cheekbones, run to the floor in a tiny stream from the bow of his top lip. He pants and eases into a wall and the tile is the same temperature as his forehead. He wishes Nina wasn't right about so many things.
Ghost Trains
Choir Memorial for Deceased Member
Bruno's Bereavement: Dog Still Pines for Owner
Headlines ranging from gruesome to sympathetic reach across the vista in a new, appropriately macabre display for their household. Mitchell reads and re-reads them all, word by word, letter by letter, until the ink all seeps together and has no other meaning but guilt. He reaches a shaky finger to trace under Carriage of Carnage and his lip curls subconsciously.
"Your kind have such morbid hobbies."
Mitchell gasps and yanks his hand back as though the headline burned him. He spins to face the speaker. "Jesus," he breathes. His eyes dart between the clipping and McNair's gaze. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Scare you a bit, did I, nosferatu?"
Mitchell fights back a tic in his jaw and narrows his eyes.
"Are you people always so skittish?"
"Are you people always so nosy?" Mitchell counters.
McNair chuckles and turns to face him, easing his injured leg to the floor. "We take care of our own."
"Maybe we're not so different," Mitchell says, raising an eyebrow. They grin humorlessly at each other for a moment. Behind Mitchell, the kitchen door swings open and he whirls to face George, whose smile falls as he notices the tension in the room.
"Anyone--what's--is everything … alright in here?" George stammers.
McNair tips his head courteously. "Right as rain."
George stares at him, then slowly turns to face Mitchell, whose hair hangs across his eyes in tangles. "Grand," he mutters through his teeth.
George's mouth hangs open for a moment. He obviously noticed the contradiction in their tones, despite agreeing out loud. To Mitchell's relief, all he says is, "...Great. Would you … anyone like a drink, then? There's tea, or cider in the fridge."
"That's very kind of you, thanks," McNair says. Mitchell doesn't turn to face him, but McNair's voice runs like hot, cloying sap through his ears. "Sorry, though, I was just heading outside for some fresh air. Little stuffy in here, innit? And dark. I think some sunlight would do me some good."
Mitchell swallows a groan and runs a hand through his curls.
After McNair has hobbled out through the foyer, George clears his throat. "I think I'm gonna have a beer."
"Yeah, bring me one too," Mitchell sighs.
They each go through half a bottle of Magners and partake in mundane, companionable small talk about George's job, the tourist season, and their shitty radio signal before they run out of casual banter.
Mitchell takes a swig and wipes his lips, glove catching for a second there on stubble. Uncomfortable with looking in George's eyes, he opts to address his left shoulder when he says softly, "where are you going to change?"
Mitchell's eyes follow George's shoulder as it lifts in a shrug. "I'll just take Tom out to those woods up north, I think. We can stay a couple miles apart and nothing will happen."
"What about Nina?"
George hesitates. Mitchell grips his beer tighter. "She'll be safe," George allows.
"Well--she'll just be in the basement, right?"
George inhales sharply. "Yes! Yeah, yeah, she'll--Nina will use the basement. Here," he articulates carefully.
Mitchell frowns and finally glances up into George's face and finds it pinched and awkward. He chews his lip distractedly. Mitchell's stomach does a flip and his eyes drift over the collage of news clippings over George's elbow.
The front door opens and closes with a squeal and a crash.
Mitchell flinches violently. The bottle slips from his grip and ricochets off the arm of a chair and shatters across the floor. Beer puddles at the edge of the rug and seeps between the wooden boards. A brief, tense silence passes before George asks, "What's got you so jumpy?"
Mitchell stares at the spill and takes a shaky breath. Nina enters the room and he glowers at her from beneath his brow. He holds her gaze while he answers George.
"There's four too many werewolves in this house."
Fuck if Mitchell wants to be anywhere near that house at a full moon, no matter how strong the basement lock holds. But he's still pretending to be a good friend so he feels obligated to double-check the state of George, if he's there, or the woman carrying his child. He knocks on the basement door and, with great effort, offers her any help he can give. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't respond.
In fact, the whole house remains dark and eerie and abandoned. Yeah it's eerie, it's haunted, Mitchell thinks, and snorts out loud.
He tops off a beer from the fridge, his fourth of the evening.
Not long after, Mitchell finds himself skulking in the shadows of a pub down the street, rocking back and forth on a wobbly chair and knocking back several more pints. Having long lost count, he stands up, takes a moment to recover from vertigo and approaches the bar. A youngish woman with a pixie cut and untreated nails is perched on a stool there. Mitchell's head lolls to the side and his eyes drift from her lashes to her jaw to her neck to her exposed shoulder and down her shirt.
"Isn't it late for you to be out alone, darling?" he slurs.
Her lips move, but all he hears is a quickening pulse under her skin, and he shakes his head vigorously to clear his mind.
"You have a what?" he croaks.
"A fiancé," she says firmly and tries to pull her elbow out of his grip. When did his hand get there?
He smirks. "What is it they say? Three's company?" His tongue pokes between his teeth as he watches her mouth. She looks half-way between sniggering and being sick.
An angry voice starts barking over Mitchell's shoulder and strong hands spin him around to face a lean, clean-shaven thirty-something snarling and cursing at him.
Mitchell licks his lips and says something crude and forgettable and before he knows it a cold, fresh wind washes over his face in the light of the full moon.
A brick wall collides with his back and knocks the wind out of his lungs. A hard body sandwiches him there, hands twisting viciously into his jacket. A low laugh rumbles in the back of Mitchell's throat. He closes his eyes and tears slip down his cheeks, stretched by a manic smile.
"What's so funny?!" the voice sounds livid. The man gives him a good shake. "You won't be laughing when I'm done with you, you twat!"
"When you're done with me!"
The hands shove harder against his chest, drag him a few feet across the wall. A doorframe digs into his shoulder blade. Mitchell gasps and squirms and lets out a long, wailing sound like a mockery of laughter. A knee connects hard with his groin and he doubles over at the base of the wall. He scrambles and fails to escape a kick to the stomach and he smiles until his face hurts and he sucks in just enough air to cackle painfully.
All Mitchell can see is white. He clutches his fingers into the gravel and glowers like a caged animal. His gums ache. Screams scrape across the background and leave a trail, a trail that would be easy to follow, but instead he holds his breath and fills his senses with every image and memory he has of Annie. He digs his heels in and strains his muscles against each other and pushes himself hard into the wall and catches his breath, still broken by short little sobs of laughter, still trying to erase the tear tracks.
Mitchell knows its smooth at the top if he can just scale this cliff without anyone seeing him. It will level out then and he can keep Annie in his arms and leave the jagged rocks behind.
Before Annie joins him, Mitchell has the whole steely vacuum of the cell to himself. The time that passes can't be measured and it's relative, anyway; relative to lonely inaction and reserves of patience and the effects or lack thereof of temperature over a century of experience.
He stares at the angle of the wall and the ceiling and gives up the act of breathing. He slumps on the bench in the corner, a corpse that will never rot, even in this prison. A parade of policemen stop to peek in his window and sweat and worry and take pictures and ask questions. When they speak to him, Mitchell doesn't answer, but he tilts his head and catches their gaze and doesn't move a muscle otherwise and they don't stay long after that.
He can't see any way to fix things or to win Annie back except one; he has to return to Herrick and bring him back, sacrifices be damned. No matter what it takes. Explanations can come after. Once he has those answers he can leave his fears behind and set things right again like all the times before.
Fleetingly, Mitchell wonders if vampires are more animal than human; if his bone-deep desire to survive despite all his wrongdoing stems from something base and instinctive and wild. It would be nice to blame the vampire, as if it were someone else, something sharing his body, after all these years.
He killed Herrick. It was exhilarating. He imagined he could almost taste blood between his teeth. He killed Herrick, and it felt good. And that's how he knows it is time to stop.
If there had been any misgivings, any hope before, it evaporates now with Herrick. The satisfaction seeping in his very bones answers all of his questions. The love Mitchell feels for that easy death is the stake in his own heart.
And still, despite all that, Mitchell is scared--so scared he can't swallow around the hive of fear in his throat. And that is why he has to go back to a person who is better than him; a person who was better than him all along. Mitchell knows that because he's scared, he needs help to finish this. It hurts, because needing help makes him need to do it more, which serves to frighten him more.
The cycle nauseates him.
He staggers out of the car and gazes across the long horizon, the lines between the world and the water and the light. By rights it should be too large for one life, this expanse of tension and conflict and compassion; this irreversible, intimate place in the world where every moment of a man's past and present can light up his nerves and inscribe a song on his skin.
Mitchell slides his hand up to his chest and curls his fingers around the shape of a wooden stake wrapped deep in a coat pocket. He presses it hard into himself, parallel to his torso, until each rung on his ribcage might etch a lifeline into the wood. He chokes out a sob, a wretched, humiliating sound that should only belong to powerless people or hungry beasts locked in cages or victims.
He thinks there's nothing in the world as pathetic as wanting to survive now, still, after everything, but he does, to the last inch. God, the beast in him just wants to kill more and feed more and fuck more and live more.
He hates himself. He hates so much it hurts him from his toes to the tip of his tongue. He knows George will hate him too, and thinks it's better, fairer, that way.