something to ponder.
hey hey hey look! Once again I have done my old trick of, not only writing fic when I don't have TIME to be writing fic, oh no, but also, not even working on the thing I should be working on. You officially have to do a special kind of course to actually be as rubbish as I am.
Title: So Soon Grow Cold
Fandom: Being Human
Summary: Back-story, current-story, Mitchell’s relationship with Herrick, Mitchell’s relationship with George and Annie, additional Josie, introspection, a few kisses and more than one war. Will Mitchell ever be free of Herrick? Is he even certain that he wants to be?
Rating: NC-17, for naughty words.
A/N: Love and thanks go to strangeumbrella, as per.
A few months after their meeting, while George was still flitting between hostels and living out of a rucksack, he asked Mitchell if he’d had many friends while he was still a full-blown, blood-drinking vampire.
"Hmm," Mitchell replied, pulling a face that was a bit pensive but mostly just very awkward. It was fairly soon after this that George decided not to ask Mitchell about his past, ever, unless it was a memory that was unlikely to make him make that face. "Not really. Not - friend friends. Just a lot of hangers-on."
George resisted asking exactly how Mitchell had become such a notable vampire that he’d accumulated hangers-on, mainly via the medium of taking a drink and not letting his mouth do any more talking. He already regretted bringing it up.
"So I suppose you’re my first friend in about ninety years," Mitchell added, smiling; but his eyes were cold and he looked like he was lying.
George changed the subject.
+
Once, in the late nineteen-thirties, Mitchell expressed to Herrick his shock that mankind could be so abominably stupid - so stupid, in fact, that the generation of young men he himself had been sent to hell and back with could grow up, get old and fat and forget, and send a whole new generation of young men to their muddy graves. He did so thusly: "That fucking idiotic bunch of cunts!"
Herrick was sat across the room, on the other bed; the two of them were, at this time, renting rooms in Marylebone, close to the Queen’s Hall. Herrick liked the music, listening with his eyes closed and a look of intense concentration on his face, and Mitchell liked the people. Or something of theirs, anyway. It was about a quarter past eleven, they had the curtains closed, and the second world war had just been announced over the wireless.
Smiling his inscrutable smile, Herrick withdrew a cigarette from the packet in his pocket, lit it, and inhaled. He licked the corner of his mouth. "How charming it is," he said, voice low, "That you still find their innate dull-mindedness surprising."
Mitchell sighed in a put-upon sort of a way. Looking back, years later, he would never really understand why he had stayed so long with Herrick, or indeed why Herrick had stayed so long with him. He could only imagine that it was, in himself, a terror at the newness of the world and all its wickedness, and in Herrick, something of a mid-life crisis: some vague attempt at stability. Even when they were at their most nomadic, shifting from place to place to place, the two of them stuck together, and it was a kind of monogamy. Something almost human.
"I’m not sure it’ll ever stop being surprising," Mitchell said. "How old are you, exactly?"
Herrick closed his eyes, still smiling, and he did not answer.
A little over ten minutes later, they were sat on the floor, side-by-side with their backs to the door and Mitchell holding his knees, as people rushed about outside, air raid sirens sounding overhead.
"It’s just a drill, I assume," Mitchell murmured.
"I must say, all this chaos and panic will be rather fun. I did so enjoy the last one."
"The last--?"
"War."
"Oh. My one."
They fell silent, but the sirens kept on, having no regard for poignancy. Mitchell ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that made him look nervous even when he wasn’t - one of those funny little throwbacks to all the constant fear and waiting that trench war is comprised of - and was slightly taken aback when Herrick stilled it with his own hand. Herrick had a tactile nature, but his occasional gentleness always seemed to come out of left field. They were still.
"Perhaps," said Herrick, "It might be for the best if we left London for a little while. Until this all blows over."
Over the next few years, millions upon millions of people went to their deaths, and Mitchell and Herrick added to the toll in their own quiet way, not caring - but they had a minute’s silence for the Queen’s Hall when a single incendiary bomb ripped it to shreds. Even vampires have to attach meaning to something. So they were loyal to places, and they were loyal to each other, and that was enough, for a while.
+
Sometimes, things get so bad that George literally has to have a little wrestle with himself in order to adhere to his 'no questions asked' rule. Like when occasionally there are war films on the telly, and Mitchell will be halfway through the door on his way out of the room and he’ll just say, in a voice like it doesn’t matter, "Jesus, that’s totally unrealistic."
Annie takes the piss, watching George stuff his hands into his mouth or hurl his face into a cushion: "If you want to know so badly," she says, "Why don’t you just ask him? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind…"
And George always hesitates, debating over whether or not to tell her that that isn’t the point, not really - that the point is, he’s terrified of hearing something which will make Mitchell’s past seem real. He can deal with all of it, with the killing and the vampirism and even with Lauren, so long as it doesn’t feel too much like it actually happened. So long as he doesn’t know how the weather was the first time Mitchell killed somebody, or the things it made him feel, or what the look on Lauren’s face was like when he ripped through her neck with his teeth.
Maybe George is a coward, but if he is, then he can’t help it. And without details, these things are nothing but words. Without details, Mitchell is not a murderer after all.
+
Mitchell’s first kill was a German soldier, whom he bit against a chorus of Herrick’s cheerleading encouragement. By this point, his hunger had become so intense that it genuinely rivalled the pain of dying (something which he, like all vampires, is able to acutely recall), and he needed basically no convincing. "You’re just doing your bit for the war effort," said Herrick.
"I don’t want to talk to you, you creepy, murdering bastard," said Mitchell, but it sounded less convincing than the other fifty million times he’d already said it, or else had said some variation on the theme.
It didn’t feel like a good thing. It felt wrong, unnatural: Mitchell was angry and bitter and by no means a happy little vampire, yet.
But feeding was like a lot of things slotting into place; Mitchell sank to his knees, shaking, as he experienced, for the first time, the vampiric equivalent of coming up. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before, his whole life - or, more correctly, like nothing he’d ever felt while he was alive.
"Oh my God," he murmured, eyes squeezed tight shut. A pair of arms wormed around his shoulders. Somebody pressed their face into his neck and inhaled.
"Yes," said Herrick’s voice. "The rush. There’s nothing quite like the first time, is there?"
Mitchell was inclined to say that he didn’t know, having not experienced a second or a third time, but he didn’t want to fight Herrick anymore, didn’t want to shout at him or rail against him or be angry. Because he wasn’t angry, not anymore. He was beatific. Everything was wonderful. How could he have been so ungrateful, so rude, when Herrick had given him this incredible gift?
"I’m sorry," he said. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry."
Herrick stayed wrapped around him until his breathing evened out again, and then he took Mitchell hunting. Properly, this time. They peeled away from the group of vampires Herrick had been with and when they did not return to them, neither of them questioned the fact. It seemed natural. It seemed right. They were alone.
+
Annie has to admit that it could really have been so much worse. Of course, she obviously had to live with a lot of boring, ordinary people before George and Mitchell moved in, people who - as opposed to just not doing their share of the house work, which, okay, can get quite annoying, but - people who had no idea she existed, which got really old really fast. But after Tully left, it occurred to Annie that things could have been worse even than that: that there are lots of other supernatural beings who could easily have chosen to rent the Totterdown property she happened to be haunting. Lots of supernatural beings who were bad, or cruel, or, well, had far worse taste in films.
Sometimes, though she’d never tell them, Mitchell and George make her feel bitter about the life that was taken away from her: when she sees them laughing on their way to work, Mitchell clutching a handful of biscuits and shouting, "Bye, Annie, see you at six," she resents the vague grip on normality that they can maintain. And, no, neither of them are likely to ever manage a terribly normal relationship, and she knows Mitchell will never be able to marry, having been legally dead for a fairly long time, or have children (which isn’t even mentioning the immortal thing), but - still. Day-to-day, their lives are almost human.
But the rest of the time, that other 99%, she can’t find it in her heart to resent them anything, even though she knows she has a right to; she just loves them. She loves coming in from the kitchen and seeing George asleep on the couch with his glasses askew, or Mitchell sitting on George to prove some kind of a point, or them curled up together with the telly on, patting the spare seat and telling her to come and sit down. It feels like being given her life back. And, fine, maybe it isn’t the kind of life she would have had if she hadn’t died - but maybe, in some ways, it’s better.
One morning, Annie asked Mitchell if he was happy: she still has no idea why she said it, she just did. "Are you happy, Mitchell?" she said, studying him over the cup of tea she was holding, and he looked fairly taken aback.
"Why shouldn’t I be?" he replied, just the right side of defensive.
"That’s not an answer," she noted. "And because - you’ve been to a lot of places, haven’t you? Travelled around. I just wonder sometimes if you don’t get…bored. Of us."
"How could I be bored?" he asked, smiling and incredulous. "I’m home."
She believes him still.
+
What separated Josie from all the other pretty girls - the ones Mitchell had smiled at and charmed and changed, or just fed from and left to die - was something indescribable, but he felt it the moment he met her. She was a bored and unfulfilled dance teacher at the time, somebody for whom all the promises of excitement and adventure made to her as a child had never quite come true, and they were roughly the same age, except not really, of course. An orange mini-dress, a swathe of dark hair, a funny kind of preternatural charm which he would later come to regard as being entirely and idiosyncratically hers. She reminded him of somebody, but not anybody specific, which might have been painful: he just felt like he already knew her, and liked that.
Mitchell glanced over her shoulder as they got chatting, looking at Herrick all the while, who was watching him from the far wall. Their eyes met every time the crowd parted enough for them to see each other, although people occupied every inch of the dance floor between them, busy doing the watusi or the twist or whatever was in vogue now and, God, keeping up was really getting to be a hideous bore. They’d been pining for the twenties recently, anyway, he and Herrick - like old men missing their youth.
Josie looked around, and spotted him. "Oh dear," she said. "I’m not barking up the wrong tree, am I?"
"Don’t worry about him," said Mitchell. "Do you want to go on somewhere?"
An hour later, they were in a café about five minutes from Waterloo Station, and Mitchell had entirely surrendered the idea of doing his ‘ancient machinery of the world’ chat-up line: he could already imagine exactly how hard she would laugh if he tried it. Instead, for reasons he couldn’t explain, he was speaking in a low, serious voice, not looking at her, and saying, "What would you do if somebody said something like - if I said…if I were to say that vampires are real, and…?"
He didn’t go back to the club that night to look for Herrick, didn’t even try to collect his things from the hotel room they’d been renting. He wasn’t looking over Josie’s shoulder at anybody anymore.
They left the city that night, travelling to stay with some friends of hers who lived in Brighton and wouldn’t judge - neither of them had so much as a change of clothes with them, and she had to be at work on Monday morning, theoretically, but Mitchell was needling her to leave her job by the time they were on the train. "I ought to at least work notice," she said, "I feel ever so guilty," but her eyes were twinkling and she giggled when he kissed her. In the end, she put her apologies in a letter laced with little white lies - "How could I explain? Should I start with ‘vampires are real’, or…?" - and posted it on Saturday afternoon.
Mitchell had found it difficult to justify his insistence that they needed to get away, fast, but she hadn’t seemed really to mind. Josie had been waiting years, she said, for some kind of adventure to come along; now that one had chatted her up in a club, after all this time, she couldn’t exactly throw it out of bed for eating biscuits. So to speak. Mitchell didn’t say that it was nice to be travelling with somebody whose chief interest wasn’t 'murder', although it was, and he doubly didn’t say how nice it was for his own utmost motivation not to be murder, although that was true as well.
On Sunday morning, they walked along the pier and he bought her a stick of candyfloss. It was almost like a real date. He asked how long she thought they’d be allowed to stay in Marjorie and Pete’s spare room, to which she replied that Marjorie said they’d been wanting to do something with it for a while, and if the two of them were able to start paying a bit of rent, well, probably indefinitely. Mitchell kissed her on the cheek and then on the lips, very gently.
He tried to imagine describing this to Herrick, making him understand. He lived in terror that one day he would turn around and Herrick would be there, saying, for God’s sake, Mitchell, if you like her so much, change her. You can fucking keep her, if she’s housebroken. It was easily the first time in years, the first time since he was human that he’d met a woman he hadn’t wanted to turn; something about her calm certainties, her gentle touch, he couldn’t say, but he liked the idea of - of being able to see her grow older. And what Herrick would say if he tried to explain that, he didn’t want to know.
In bed one night, curled up together, she laid a hand against his cheek and traced the line of his jaw. "How funny," she said, "to think you’ll always look just exactly the same. Just like you do now."
They could have stayed in Brighton, but Mitchell didn’t want to be in one place too long. They went to Liverpool. Odd jobs, hotel rooms; it was almost like his life with Herrick, except that it was different in every way that mattered. They passed through London on the way and Josie packed a bag of clothes.
Lying on their backs on the floor one afternoon with their feet resting on the wall, Mitchell watched her trace invisible words against the wallpaper with her stockinged feet. "I don’t think I ever want to get married," she said. "I’m not sure I’d like to settle down."
"Mm," said Mitchell.
"Do you ever think about the future?" she asked him.
And Mitchell said, "No."
+
George could never put it into words, but he found it so immediately strange and eventually pleasant, the way that Mitchell seemed to love, in him, all the things he hated in himself. All his faux pas, his awkwardness, his clumsiness, his incredible ability to find absolutely the worst possible thing to say in every single situation and, without fail, say it - all these things, Mitchell seemed not only not to dislike, but to actively find endearing.
At first, George supposed that it must be just the change of it. That spending a hundred years wandering around being effortlessly cool and getting lots of sex without even having to try had made Mitchell weary to it; but George, who had never spent so much as a day being effortlessly cool, found this situation difficult to imagine. After a while, he abandoned this theory in favour of entertaining the notion that perhaps Mitchell had been like him before the bite - there was no way he would allow himself to ask, of course, but sometimes he attempted to picture a young Mitchell, even his childhood. But the idea of a bumbling, soft-voiced version of his friend, in some past life, was so odd that he soon discarded it entirely. Even if it were true, he would never know. And why should he want to?
One morning, when Mitchell had rescued him at the last moment from yet another awkward encounter with a colleague, George realised that, of course, it was none of these things: Mitchell loved George’s flaws simply because he loved George. Because that is what it means to be friends.
Sometimes, George thinks that Mitchell knows more about being human than any so-called real human he has ever met.
+
It was almost happiness. Almost.
He and Josie had been gallivanting about for a month and a half when the red-haired woman cornered him; Mitchell was on his way back from the shops at the time, sneaking bonbons from a paper bag in his pocket and trying to ignore the way his hands were shaking. The time he spent with Josie was his longest away from other vampires in maybe half a century, and his first real attempt at being human, going straight. He still fed occasionally, but never in front of her, and the more time they spent together the fewer and farther between these occasions got - but he couldn’t face the alternative, having her see what he really was. He was terrified she’d run a mile; perhaps, secretly, he was even more terrified that she wouldn’t. Because she should.
"Are you Mitchell?" the redhead demanded, in a tone of voice that could only be described as ‘confrontational’. As introductions went, it was a fairly unnerving one, he had to say.
"I’m sorry," he replied, "Who are - who are you?"
"Are you Mitchell?"
"Yes! I am. I’m Mitchell. What’s this ab--"
She gave him a good hard shove: his back hit the wall, and he began scanning the street, checking that it was still deserted, just in case he had to get the teeth out. Unfortunately, he realised, she’d already beaten him to it.
Mitchell almost physically jumped when he noticed, her black eyes glittering malevolently at him, but a part of him had been expecting this all along. "Herrick’s looking for you," she hissed, running a fingernail down his neck. "Don’t think I won’t tell him where to find you."
Unfortunately, within seconds of hearing it, Mitchell realised he had felt not only a sense of terror, which he knew was the correct reaction - he couldn’t see Herrick and Josie taking to each other awfully well - but also a hideous, shameful spike of excitement. In his own way, he knew, he had missed him. And Mitchell’s own way was the only way he had of doing anything.
"And where do I find him?" he asked, eyes averted. He was acutely aware of the sensation that he was in some way betraying Josie: Mitchell told himself that he was only doing this for the best, for the best, for the best, but it didn’t feel exactly true.
The woman smiled. She pressed her lips to the edge of his ear, and murmured, "Herrick knew you’d ask. He knew. He told us - the Saint George Hotel."
She released him.
Josie had fallen asleep by the time Mitchell got back to the room, and for the briefest of moments, whilst throwing things into the bag he’d only recently acquired, he thought about leaving a note: but he knew he owed her more than that. She looked at him with love and familiarity in her eyes when he shook her awake, and he couldn’t deny that it was very definitely time to move on.
He just said, "I’m sorry, Josie."
For a moment, she blinked at him, confused, and then her expression softened - they’d discussed this before. If he had to leave, it would be for a very good reason; he didn’t want to, but he might have to. The apology was a kind of code. They’d talked about this (they’d talked about lots of things): both of them hated goodbyes.
She nodded. She kissed him. Under his breath, as if it wouldn’t be breaking their agreement to whisper, he said, "Stay in the room a day or so, in case they’re watching. Be careful."
Then he left. It would be another forty years before he saw her again.
Mitchell caught the train to London and the Underground to Marylebone in a haze, passing their old rooms from decades, almost a lifetime ago, as he walked the short distance to the St George. He tried to concentrate on all the reasons why this wasn’t an admission of defeat, each step like a beat in the rhythm of Josie’s heart, which was still beating solely because he had had the strength to leave - but Mitchell had never been awfully good at deceiving himself, and he knew that underneath everything he was oddly touched by the shameless sentimentality of the choice.
Not that they’d been here for years, of course, and never to this hotel, exactly - but he and Herrick been to the site where it stood, many a time. Back when the little patch of grubby London soil was still home to the Queen’s Hall.
A pale, dark-haired gentleman was sat at the head desk, writing something down; Mitchell realised about this time that he hadn’t entirely thought his great plan through. "Er, excuse me," he said. The man looked up, and suddenly his face broke into a grin.
"You must be Mitchell," he said, eyes flashing black for the briefest of moments.
"Jesus fucking Christ," said Mitchell, quite fairly.
"Oh, Mr. Herrick will be pleased. You want the second floor, room forty-three. Go right on up."
Feeling rather unnerved, Mitchell turned around and did so, wrenching the door open and taking the stairs two at a time, then slowing down, arguably to the extent that he was barely moving at all, and finally remembering the approximate speed at which normal people walk. When he’d found room forty-three, Mitchell allowed himself a moment outside the door just to take a deep breath. You can still leave, he told himself. This is probably your last chance, but it’s still a possibility. You can just go.
But he already knew that he wouldn’t.
He knocked twice, and Herrick’s voice said, "It’s open," so Mitchell pushed.
Inside the room, the curtains were drawn and the beds were made; everything was so painfully neat and tidy that it looked like nobody was living there. Damn, thought Mitchell. He’d always had a suspicion that he might be the messy one, but now he knew for sure. Herrick’s back was to him - he was in an armchair, reading, and he made no move to get up.
"Well, I like what you’ve done with the place."
There was a pause and then, in one swift movement, Herrick was on his feet, still facing away. He rested the book on a nearby desk with a gentle thunk. "Close the door, Mitchell," he said.
Mitchell did so; when he turned back around, Herrick was facing him with a surprisingly blank expression on his face, except that it wasn’t really surprising, of course, because Herrick was nothing if not entirely and eternally composed. He took a step forwards. "I must say, a postcard would have been nice."
"Yeah, I probably should have written. You know, I could have given you all my news, told you what the weather was like, and then maybe you could have explained your tame bellboy downstairs, and the fact that you seem to be running this place like your own mini-empire, not to mention - and it’s just a little point - the way I’m almost certain I was followed all the way here by at least three different--"
Herrick held up a hand - the first movement either of them had made for a while; Mitchell almost started - and raised his eyebrows. "Oh please, Mitchell, you know me. When I get bored, I…enterprise."
In that moment, Mitchell knew, in a way that was nothing like vanity and everything like just plain certainty, that all of this was about him. That Herrick had had no option but to find and change and recruit entire legions of people, to build up his own little domain and pretty much take over an entire fucking building just to fill the space that Mitchell occupied. It was a terrifying, horrible realisation.
Oh God, thought Mitchell. What a terrible thing I must have done to deserve your love.
"I’m sorry," he blurted out, surprised to realise that he meant it, and Herrick was crossing the room even as he was saying it. He gripped the back of Mitchell’s neck, tight enough to bruise, and it felt like a branding iron must feel; then he pressed a hard kiss to Mitchell’s mouth. Herrick had kissed him before, but only a handful of times. It was the kind of thing he did just after he looked at Mitchell like for all the world he didn’t know whether he wanted to, yes, kiss him, or stake him right through the heart. He wondered absent-mindedly if Herrick had ever been capable of a love that was not destructive or desperate, or if he had the slightest inkling of what Mitchell had really been apologising for.
Herrick stepped backwards and for a few seconds they stayed like that, looking at each other; the only sound in the room was the sound of their breathing and a clock ticking on the table by the bed.
"You’ve been away a long time," murmured Herrick, in that delicate and most dangerous voice that meant, let this be the end of it. "But you’re back where you belong, now. Welcome home, Mitchell."
"Yes," said Mitchell. "I am."
Title: So Soon Grow Cold
Fandom: Being Human
Summary: Back-story, current-story, Mitchell’s relationship with Herrick, Mitchell’s relationship with George and Annie, additional Josie, introspection, a few kisses and more than one war. Will Mitchell ever be free of Herrick? Is he even certain that he wants to be?
Rating: NC-17, for naughty words.
A/N: Love and thanks go to strangeumbrella, as per.
A few months after their meeting, while George was still flitting between hostels and living out of a rucksack, he asked Mitchell if he’d had many friends while he was still a full-blown, blood-drinking vampire.
"Hmm," Mitchell replied, pulling a face that was a bit pensive but mostly just very awkward. It was fairly soon after this that George decided not to ask Mitchell about his past, ever, unless it was a memory that was unlikely to make him make that face. "Not really. Not - friend friends. Just a lot of hangers-on."
George resisted asking exactly how Mitchell had become such a notable vampire that he’d accumulated hangers-on, mainly via the medium of taking a drink and not letting his mouth do any more talking. He already regretted bringing it up.
"So I suppose you’re my first friend in about ninety years," Mitchell added, smiling; but his eyes were cold and he looked like he was lying.
George changed the subject.
+
Once, in the late nineteen-thirties, Mitchell expressed to Herrick his shock that mankind could be so abominably stupid - so stupid, in fact, that the generation of young men he himself had been sent to hell and back with could grow up, get old and fat and forget, and send a whole new generation of young men to their muddy graves. He did so thusly: "That fucking idiotic bunch of cunts!"
Herrick was sat across the room, on the other bed; the two of them were, at this time, renting rooms in Marylebone, close to the Queen’s Hall. Herrick liked the music, listening with his eyes closed and a look of intense concentration on his face, and Mitchell liked the people. Or something of theirs, anyway. It was about a quarter past eleven, they had the curtains closed, and the second world war had just been announced over the wireless.
Smiling his inscrutable smile, Herrick withdrew a cigarette from the packet in his pocket, lit it, and inhaled. He licked the corner of his mouth. "How charming it is," he said, voice low, "That you still find their innate dull-mindedness surprising."
Mitchell sighed in a put-upon sort of a way. Looking back, years later, he would never really understand why he had stayed so long with Herrick, or indeed why Herrick had stayed so long with him. He could only imagine that it was, in himself, a terror at the newness of the world and all its wickedness, and in Herrick, something of a mid-life crisis: some vague attempt at stability. Even when they were at their most nomadic, shifting from place to place to place, the two of them stuck together, and it was a kind of monogamy. Something almost human.
"I’m not sure it’ll ever stop being surprising," Mitchell said. "How old are you, exactly?"
Herrick closed his eyes, still smiling, and he did not answer.
A little over ten minutes later, they were sat on the floor, side-by-side with their backs to the door and Mitchell holding his knees, as people rushed about outside, air raid sirens sounding overhead.
"It’s just a drill, I assume," Mitchell murmured.
"I must say, all this chaos and panic will be rather fun. I did so enjoy the last one."
"The last--?"
"War."
"Oh. My one."
They fell silent, but the sirens kept on, having no regard for poignancy. Mitchell ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that made him look nervous even when he wasn’t - one of those funny little throwbacks to all the constant fear and waiting that trench war is comprised of - and was slightly taken aback when Herrick stilled it with his own hand. Herrick had a tactile nature, but his occasional gentleness always seemed to come out of left field. They were still.
"Perhaps," said Herrick, "It might be for the best if we left London for a little while. Until this all blows over."
Over the next few years, millions upon millions of people went to their deaths, and Mitchell and Herrick added to the toll in their own quiet way, not caring - but they had a minute’s silence for the Queen’s Hall when a single incendiary bomb ripped it to shreds. Even vampires have to attach meaning to something. So they were loyal to places, and they were loyal to each other, and that was enough, for a while.
+
Sometimes, things get so bad that George literally has to have a little wrestle with himself in order to adhere to his 'no questions asked' rule. Like when occasionally there are war films on the telly, and Mitchell will be halfway through the door on his way out of the room and he’ll just say, in a voice like it doesn’t matter, "Jesus, that’s totally unrealistic."
Annie takes the piss, watching George stuff his hands into his mouth or hurl his face into a cushion: "If you want to know so badly," she says, "Why don’t you just ask him? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind…"
And George always hesitates, debating over whether or not to tell her that that isn’t the point, not really - that the point is, he’s terrified of hearing something which will make Mitchell’s past seem real. He can deal with all of it, with the killing and the vampirism and even with Lauren, so long as it doesn’t feel too much like it actually happened. So long as he doesn’t know how the weather was the first time Mitchell killed somebody, or the things it made him feel, or what the look on Lauren’s face was like when he ripped through her neck with his teeth.
Maybe George is a coward, but if he is, then he can’t help it. And without details, these things are nothing but words. Without details, Mitchell is not a murderer after all.
+
Mitchell’s first kill was a German soldier, whom he bit against a chorus of Herrick’s cheerleading encouragement. By this point, his hunger had become so intense that it genuinely rivalled the pain of dying (something which he, like all vampires, is able to acutely recall), and he needed basically no convincing. "You’re just doing your bit for the war effort," said Herrick.
"I don’t want to talk to you, you creepy, murdering bastard," said Mitchell, but it sounded less convincing than the other fifty million times he’d already said it, or else had said some variation on the theme.
It didn’t feel like a good thing. It felt wrong, unnatural: Mitchell was angry and bitter and by no means a happy little vampire, yet.
But feeding was like a lot of things slotting into place; Mitchell sank to his knees, shaking, as he experienced, for the first time, the vampiric equivalent of coming up. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before, his whole life - or, more correctly, like nothing he’d ever felt while he was alive.
"Oh my God," he murmured, eyes squeezed tight shut. A pair of arms wormed around his shoulders. Somebody pressed their face into his neck and inhaled.
"Yes," said Herrick’s voice. "The rush. There’s nothing quite like the first time, is there?"
Mitchell was inclined to say that he didn’t know, having not experienced a second or a third time, but he didn’t want to fight Herrick anymore, didn’t want to shout at him or rail against him or be angry. Because he wasn’t angry, not anymore. He was beatific. Everything was wonderful. How could he have been so ungrateful, so rude, when Herrick had given him this incredible gift?
"I’m sorry," he said. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry."
Herrick stayed wrapped around him until his breathing evened out again, and then he took Mitchell hunting. Properly, this time. They peeled away from the group of vampires Herrick had been with and when they did not return to them, neither of them questioned the fact. It seemed natural. It seemed right. They were alone.
+
Annie has to admit that it could really have been so much worse. Of course, she obviously had to live with a lot of boring, ordinary people before George and Mitchell moved in, people who - as opposed to just not doing their share of the house work, which, okay, can get quite annoying, but - people who had no idea she existed, which got really old really fast. But after Tully left, it occurred to Annie that things could have been worse even than that: that there are lots of other supernatural beings who could easily have chosen to rent the Totterdown property she happened to be haunting. Lots of supernatural beings who were bad, or cruel, or, well, had far worse taste in films.
Sometimes, though she’d never tell them, Mitchell and George make her feel bitter about the life that was taken away from her: when she sees them laughing on their way to work, Mitchell clutching a handful of biscuits and shouting, "Bye, Annie, see you at six," she resents the vague grip on normality that they can maintain. And, no, neither of them are likely to ever manage a terribly normal relationship, and she knows Mitchell will never be able to marry, having been legally dead for a fairly long time, or have children (which isn’t even mentioning the immortal thing), but - still. Day-to-day, their lives are almost human.
But the rest of the time, that other 99%, she can’t find it in her heart to resent them anything, even though she knows she has a right to; she just loves them. She loves coming in from the kitchen and seeing George asleep on the couch with his glasses askew, or Mitchell sitting on George to prove some kind of a point, or them curled up together with the telly on, patting the spare seat and telling her to come and sit down. It feels like being given her life back. And, fine, maybe it isn’t the kind of life she would have had if she hadn’t died - but maybe, in some ways, it’s better.
One morning, Annie asked Mitchell if he was happy: she still has no idea why she said it, she just did. "Are you happy, Mitchell?" she said, studying him over the cup of tea she was holding, and he looked fairly taken aback.
"Why shouldn’t I be?" he replied, just the right side of defensive.
"That’s not an answer," she noted. "And because - you’ve been to a lot of places, haven’t you? Travelled around. I just wonder sometimes if you don’t get…bored. Of us."
"How could I be bored?" he asked, smiling and incredulous. "I’m home."
She believes him still.
+
What separated Josie from all the other pretty girls - the ones Mitchell had smiled at and charmed and changed, or just fed from and left to die - was something indescribable, but he felt it the moment he met her. She was a bored and unfulfilled dance teacher at the time, somebody for whom all the promises of excitement and adventure made to her as a child had never quite come true, and they were roughly the same age, except not really, of course. An orange mini-dress, a swathe of dark hair, a funny kind of preternatural charm which he would later come to regard as being entirely and idiosyncratically hers. She reminded him of somebody, but not anybody specific, which might have been painful: he just felt like he already knew her, and liked that.
Mitchell glanced over her shoulder as they got chatting, looking at Herrick all the while, who was watching him from the far wall. Their eyes met every time the crowd parted enough for them to see each other, although people occupied every inch of the dance floor between them, busy doing the watusi or the twist or whatever was in vogue now and, God, keeping up was really getting to be a hideous bore. They’d been pining for the twenties recently, anyway, he and Herrick - like old men missing their youth.
Josie looked around, and spotted him. "Oh dear," she said. "I’m not barking up the wrong tree, am I?"
"Don’t worry about him," said Mitchell. "Do you want to go on somewhere?"
An hour later, they were in a café about five minutes from Waterloo Station, and Mitchell had entirely surrendered the idea of doing his ‘ancient machinery of the world’ chat-up line: he could already imagine exactly how hard she would laugh if he tried it. Instead, for reasons he couldn’t explain, he was speaking in a low, serious voice, not looking at her, and saying, "What would you do if somebody said something like - if I said…if I were to say that vampires are real, and…?"
He didn’t go back to the club that night to look for Herrick, didn’t even try to collect his things from the hotel room they’d been renting. He wasn’t looking over Josie’s shoulder at anybody anymore.
They left the city that night, travelling to stay with some friends of hers who lived in Brighton and wouldn’t judge - neither of them had so much as a change of clothes with them, and she had to be at work on Monday morning, theoretically, but Mitchell was needling her to leave her job by the time they were on the train. "I ought to at least work notice," she said, "I feel ever so guilty," but her eyes were twinkling and she giggled when he kissed her. In the end, she put her apologies in a letter laced with little white lies - "How could I explain? Should I start with ‘vampires are real’, or…?" - and posted it on Saturday afternoon.
Mitchell had found it difficult to justify his insistence that they needed to get away, fast, but she hadn’t seemed really to mind. Josie had been waiting years, she said, for some kind of adventure to come along; now that one had chatted her up in a club, after all this time, she couldn’t exactly throw it out of bed for eating biscuits. So to speak. Mitchell didn’t say that it was nice to be travelling with somebody whose chief interest wasn’t 'murder', although it was, and he doubly didn’t say how nice it was for his own utmost motivation not to be murder, although that was true as well.
On Sunday morning, they walked along the pier and he bought her a stick of candyfloss. It was almost like a real date. He asked how long she thought they’d be allowed to stay in Marjorie and Pete’s spare room, to which she replied that Marjorie said they’d been wanting to do something with it for a while, and if the two of them were able to start paying a bit of rent, well, probably indefinitely. Mitchell kissed her on the cheek and then on the lips, very gently.
He tried to imagine describing this to Herrick, making him understand. He lived in terror that one day he would turn around and Herrick would be there, saying, for God’s sake, Mitchell, if you like her so much, change her. You can fucking keep her, if she’s housebroken. It was easily the first time in years, the first time since he was human that he’d met a woman he hadn’t wanted to turn; something about her calm certainties, her gentle touch, he couldn’t say, but he liked the idea of - of being able to see her grow older. And what Herrick would say if he tried to explain that, he didn’t want to know.
In bed one night, curled up together, she laid a hand against his cheek and traced the line of his jaw. "How funny," she said, "to think you’ll always look just exactly the same. Just like you do now."
They could have stayed in Brighton, but Mitchell didn’t want to be in one place too long. They went to Liverpool. Odd jobs, hotel rooms; it was almost like his life with Herrick, except that it was different in every way that mattered. They passed through London on the way and Josie packed a bag of clothes.
Lying on their backs on the floor one afternoon with their feet resting on the wall, Mitchell watched her trace invisible words against the wallpaper with her stockinged feet. "I don’t think I ever want to get married," she said. "I’m not sure I’d like to settle down."
"Mm," said Mitchell.
"Do you ever think about the future?" she asked him.
And Mitchell said, "No."
+
George could never put it into words, but he found it so immediately strange and eventually pleasant, the way that Mitchell seemed to love, in him, all the things he hated in himself. All his faux pas, his awkwardness, his clumsiness, his incredible ability to find absolutely the worst possible thing to say in every single situation and, without fail, say it - all these things, Mitchell seemed not only not to dislike, but to actively find endearing.
At first, George supposed that it must be just the change of it. That spending a hundred years wandering around being effortlessly cool and getting lots of sex without even having to try had made Mitchell weary to it; but George, who had never spent so much as a day being effortlessly cool, found this situation difficult to imagine. After a while, he abandoned this theory in favour of entertaining the notion that perhaps Mitchell had been like him before the bite - there was no way he would allow himself to ask, of course, but sometimes he attempted to picture a young Mitchell, even his childhood. But the idea of a bumbling, soft-voiced version of his friend, in some past life, was so odd that he soon discarded it entirely. Even if it were true, he would never know. And why should he want to?
One morning, when Mitchell had rescued him at the last moment from yet another awkward encounter with a colleague, George realised that, of course, it was none of these things: Mitchell loved George’s flaws simply because he loved George. Because that is what it means to be friends.
Sometimes, George thinks that Mitchell knows more about being human than any so-called real human he has ever met.
+
It was almost happiness. Almost.
He and Josie had been gallivanting about for a month and a half when the red-haired woman cornered him; Mitchell was on his way back from the shops at the time, sneaking bonbons from a paper bag in his pocket and trying to ignore the way his hands were shaking. The time he spent with Josie was his longest away from other vampires in maybe half a century, and his first real attempt at being human, going straight. He still fed occasionally, but never in front of her, and the more time they spent together the fewer and farther between these occasions got - but he couldn’t face the alternative, having her see what he really was. He was terrified she’d run a mile; perhaps, secretly, he was even more terrified that she wouldn’t. Because she should.
"Are you Mitchell?" the redhead demanded, in a tone of voice that could only be described as ‘confrontational’. As introductions went, it was a fairly unnerving one, he had to say.
"I’m sorry," he replied, "Who are - who are you?"
"Are you Mitchell?"
"Yes! I am. I’m Mitchell. What’s this ab--"
She gave him a good hard shove: his back hit the wall, and he began scanning the street, checking that it was still deserted, just in case he had to get the teeth out. Unfortunately, he realised, she’d already beaten him to it.
Mitchell almost physically jumped when he noticed, her black eyes glittering malevolently at him, but a part of him had been expecting this all along. "Herrick’s looking for you," she hissed, running a fingernail down his neck. "Don’t think I won’t tell him where to find you."
Unfortunately, within seconds of hearing it, Mitchell realised he had felt not only a sense of terror, which he knew was the correct reaction - he couldn’t see Herrick and Josie taking to each other awfully well - but also a hideous, shameful spike of excitement. In his own way, he knew, he had missed him. And Mitchell’s own way was the only way he had of doing anything.
"And where do I find him?" he asked, eyes averted. He was acutely aware of the sensation that he was in some way betraying Josie: Mitchell told himself that he was only doing this for the best, for the best, for the best, but it didn’t feel exactly true.
The woman smiled. She pressed her lips to the edge of his ear, and murmured, "Herrick knew you’d ask. He knew. He told us - the Saint George Hotel."
She released him.
Josie had fallen asleep by the time Mitchell got back to the room, and for the briefest of moments, whilst throwing things into the bag he’d only recently acquired, he thought about leaving a note: but he knew he owed her more than that. She looked at him with love and familiarity in her eyes when he shook her awake, and he couldn’t deny that it was very definitely time to move on.
He just said, "I’m sorry, Josie."
For a moment, she blinked at him, confused, and then her expression softened - they’d discussed this before. If he had to leave, it would be for a very good reason; he didn’t want to, but he might have to. The apology was a kind of code. They’d talked about this (they’d talked about lots of things): both of them hated goodbyes.
She nodded. She kissed him. Under his breath, as if it wouldn’t be breaking their agreement to whisper, he said, "Stay in the room a day or so, in case they’re watching. Be careful."
Then he left. It would be another forty years before he saw her again.
Mitchell caught the train to London and the Underground to Marylebone in a haze, passing their old rooms from decades, almost a lifetime ago, as he walked the short distance to the St George. He tried to concentrate on all the reasons why this wasn’t an admission of defeat, each step like a beat in the rhythm of Josie’s heart, which was still beating solely because he had had the strength to leave - but Mitchell had never been awfully good at deceiving himself, and he knew that underneath everything he was oddly touched by the shameless sentimentality of the choice.
Not that they’d been here for years, of course, and never to this hotel, exactly - but he and Herrick been to the site where it stood, many a time. Back when the little patch of grubby London soil was still home to the Queen’s Hall.
A pale, dark-haired gentleman was sat at the head desk, writing something down; Mitchell realised about this time that he hadn’t entirely thought his great plan through. "Er, excuse me," he said. The man looked up, and suddenly his face broke into a grin.
"You must be Mitchell," he said, eyes flashing black for the briefest of moments.
"Jesus fucking Christ," said Mitchell, quite fairly.
"Oh, Mr. Herrick will be pleased. You want the second floor, room forty-three. Go right on up."
Feeling rather unnerved, Mitchell turned around and did so, wrenching the door open and taking the stairs two at a time, then slowing down, arguably to the extent that he was barely moving at all, and finally remembering the approximate speed at which normal people walk. When he’d found room forty-three, Mitchell allowed himself a moment outside the door just to take a deep breath. You can still leave, he told himself. This is probably your last chance, but it’s still a possibility. You can just go.
But he already knew that he wouldn’t.
He knocked twice, and Herrick’s voice said, "It’s open," so Mitchell pushed.
Inside the room, the curtains were drawn and the beds were made; everything was so painfully neat and tidy that it looked like nobody was living there. Damn, thought Mitchell. He’d always had a suspicion that he might be the messy one, but now he knew for sure. Herrick’s back was to him - he was in an armchair, reading, and he made no move to get up.
"Well, I like what you’ve done with the place."
There was a pause and then, in one swift movement, Herrick was on his feet, still facing away. He rested the book on a nearby desk with a gentle thunk. "Close the door, Mitchell," he said.
Mitchell did so; when he turned back around, Herrick was facing him with a surprisingly blank expression on his face, except that it wasn’t really surprising, of course, because Herrick was nothing if not entirely and eternally composed. He took a step forwards. "I must say, a postcard would have been nice."
"Yeah, I probably should have written. You know, I could have given you all my news, told you what the weather was like, and then maybe you could have explained your tame bellboy downstairs, and the fact that you seem to be running this place like your own mini-empire, not to mention - and it’s just a little point - the way I’m almost certain I was followed all the way here by at least three different--"
Herrick held up a hand - the first movement either of them had made for a while; Mitchell almost started - and raised his eyebrows. "Oh please, Mitchell, you know me. When I get bored, I…enterprise."
In that moment, Mitchell knew, in a way that was nothing like vanity and everything like just plain certainty, that all of this was about him. That Herrick had had no option but to find and change and recruit entire legions of people, to build up his own little domain and pretty much take over an entire fucking building just to fill the space that Mitchell occupied. It was a terrifying, horrible realisation.
Oh God, thought Mitchell. What a terrible thing I must have done to deserve your love.
"I’m sorry," he blurted out, surprised to realise that he meant it, and Herrick was crossing the room even as he was saying it. He gripped the back of Mitchell’s neck, tight enough to bruise, and it felt like a branding iron must feel; then he pressed a hard kiss to Mitchell’s mouth. Herrick had kissed him before, but only a handful of times. It was the kind of thing he did just after he looked at Mitchell like for all the world he didn’t know whether he wanted to, yes, kiss him, or stake him right through the heart. He wondered absent-mindedly if Herrick had ever been capable of a love that was not destructive or desperate, or if he had the slightest inkling of what Mitchell had really been apologising for.
Herrick stepped backwards and for a few seconds they stayed like that, looking at each other; the only sound in the room was the sound of their breathing and a clock ticking on the table by the bed.
"You’ve been away a long time," murmured Herrick, in that delicate and most dangerous voice that meant, let this be the end of it. "But you’re back where you belong, now. Welcome home, Mitchell."
"Yes," said Mitchell. "I am."