Summary: Mitchell flip-flops.

Warnings: Dubious consent and non-graphic sexual situations.

Author's Note: Sorry about the long wait. Most of the waits will be slightly longer from now on. I had more detailed notes up until the start of series 1, plus now that I'm on summer break I actually get to spend time with my husband. But writing is still happening, just at a slower pace!


Part Nine

Why Isn't He Getting Better?

There's no apologizing for what he did to Bernie. And Mitchell and George and Annie all know very well that the boy still died, so what did he save, really? Even his conscience aches.

"We are monsters, Mitchell."

One of us is.

He growls and chucks the last empty bottle at the wall. He makes the decision to go back while he's drunk, but he sticks by it after sobering up.


Seth is no threat and never was. Especially with Mitchell around and collecting attention, Seth is just one more person who gives it to him.

Lauren still attracts some attention of her own, though, and understandably so, considering she's novel and young and cute and easy.

One afternoon Herrick sits at the far end of the table in a back room, discussing a mark with James. Mitchell slouches in a rickety seat, his calves propped on the table corner while he idly carves music-notes into the wood surface, waiting for his cue. Before Herrick can inquire after hospital access, Lauren bursts through the door. Seth is on her heels, his sneer visible all the way across the room.

She approaches Herrick, purring a greeting and a smile, and doesn't stop until she's almost on top of his lap. Mitchell's ears don't seem to be working but he can practically feel them steam. Seth's eyes linger below Lauren's waist and he runs a fingernail down the small of her back.

Mitchell blinks and realizes he's biting down painfully on his tongue. He cracks his jaw and pulls a lip between his teeth and kicks his feet off the table. He scowls something red and hot between the three of them.

Lauren slaps Seth's hand away and leans her thigh against Herrick's. She bends over and whispers something low in his ear. He murmurs something back. His knuckles around her wrist are white, but she doesn't protest.

Mitchell swallows hard and returns his intense gaze to the scribbled table top. He dots a note with the butt of his cigarette and blocks everything else out until Seth and James follow Lauren swaying from the room.

Slowly, Mitchell raises his glare just enough to see Herrick watching him. He clenches his jaw to stop it from shaking, stands, and makes his way around the corner of the table. He's hyper-aware of his limbs. Something about his usual swagger feels stiff and stringy and impossible.

Herrick drawls something like hot syrup and Mitchell wants to know why Lauren? and thinks she'd be so much better off a nobody, someone Herrick forgets, or asks to fetch him more wine before sending her away. All he says out loud is "Why Lauren?" and Herrick says "I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do," Mitchell shakes his head and slides onto the edge of the table. His feet tangle underneath Herrick's chair. "She's so young. She's not-she doesn't know any better."

Herrick briefly inspects Mitchell from head to toe, his expression unreadable.

"The way you know better?"

Mitchell's eyes snap up. He searches Herrick's face-the tiny wrinkles of a smirk and his twitching lashes and the tip of his tongue poking between his teeth.

A fissure in Mitchell's moral center suddenly shifts and locks into place and grinds all the air out of his lungs. He licks his lips and takes a deep breath, holding Herrick's gaze and hoping to hide how hard he shakes. He hooks an ankle around Herrick's and leans close, bracing himself on a thigh.

Mitchell's voice drops an octave and he can feel it like gravel in his throat. "You know I know better."

He hums appreciatively. "Mitchell, from that look in your eyes, I'd think you were jealous."

Mitchell works the curl of his lip into a smile. He notices how Herrick's eyes continually flick down to his mouth. "Maybe," he doesn't trust his voice above a whisper. "Maybe I don't like to share."

"Mitchell, the only other ones I want are my victims. I imagine it's the same for you."

"I don't want any victims," he protests.

"Precisely."


His muscles shake with the effort when he tries to tear away, but fingers twist into his hair, sting his scalp, and hold him still. Mitchell squeezes his eyes shut but that doesn't hide anything. A pitiful noise bubbles in his throat, trapped there. He digs his fingers desperately into sweat-stained cotton.

"Look at you," Herrick breathes, squeezing his hair and his head tighter between both hands. "You're as beautiful and shameless as ever."

The tears jump from Mitchell's eyelashes at that, because he can feel his guts roiling from a humiliation Herrick won't even let him have.

Mitchell twitches with half-hearted pleasure and half-hearted struggle. This is the best solution. Best for Mitchell to preoccupy him. Somehow in this excruciating way, he can protect Lauren and his friends and humans and everything else if he just keeps himself in between Herrick and his prey.

Plus, it's only fair; Herrick gives Mitchell a second chance, Mitchell gives Herrick the hell-hound routine. He asked for this and more importantly he deserves this, for relapsing with Lauren, for hurting Bernie, for leaving Herrick to begin with, all those decades ago.

Mitchell clutches at the hands wrapped in his hair and whines. At that last, desperate protest, Herrick finishes with a gasp. He offers a breathy compliment and knees Mitchell to the side while he straightens himself.

Herrick drags Mitchell out of the office to face a dozen gawking vampires. The inner circle, Mitchell decides after studying their faces, and the edges of his vision burn with rage. Everything Herrick does is always so carefully purposeful.

Herrick's fly is still down. Mitchell wouldn't have noticed if Herrick hadn't grabbed the back of his head and shoved him to his knees to create some great mocking display. Like he really had to spell out what they'd been doing behind that closed door for the last fifteen minutes.

Mitchell sprawls on the concrete under the weight of anger and guilt and embarrassment. He swipes furiously at his mouth and eyes and the tear-tracks on his cheeks. Over his own pitiful wheezing and retching, he barely hears a voice sneer from the small crowd, "Now John Mitchell is really back."


"You know, Annie might not have a werewolf's sense of smell, but it's almost a full moon and I know what you're doing. I just can't figure out why you're with him, it's that filthy-"

"I wouldn't expect you to understand."

They look at each other for a long time. Mitchell's face is crumpled and pale and all sunken eyes and bared teeth.

"Is that why you went back, after all? Because you can't get your head out of his-"

"Fuck you, George. Just stop." He can't keep his eyes open and his voice rubs so raw.

George hesitates. "Does he force you?"

"No," Mitchell answers too fast.

"We can leave. We can run off and find somewhere else, just the three of us, away from all the vampires."

"They'll find us," Mitchell sighs and buries his face in his hands. "We can't, they'll find us, it doesn't matter. They always find us."


Later, after Lauren and Owen and the feeding room all of Mitchell's beliefs and hopes come crashing down in a curtain of flame. Mitchell is a creature that can only breath steady in black and white, but he broke that balance and now they are spilling together. He knows the muddied grey world forming at his feet can't hold him. But after all that, cracking and popping amidst the fires of failure is the one choice he made that was right; to trust George and Annie with his past and his secrets and his love, and that's just enough light to see by. That's who he can go home to, even though he can't begin to thank them properly.

He tries, which is good, and he can't, which is bad. Trying might keep him in the grey and pull him apart but he's surviving there on tea and tears so he'll hang onto that house as long as he can.

Annie's door and its solidness and the way it belongs to her warms Mitchell from the outside in. It isn't the first time he thinks about death, but it is the first time he thinks about death without his head spinning or choking on fear.


George knew terror when he held Becca while she bled in his arms and his throat clenched with desperation and he begged for someone to put her back together.

George knew emptiness and grief when Bernie, that small and helpless body, was broken and flung to the concrete by a speeding car.

For a brief moment, George knows relief-sad relief, but relief all the same-when it finally sinks in that Annie has finality, an answer, a resolution.

George knows nothing at all when Mitchell gets stabbed. He forgets every good and bad lesson he ever learned in life. Everything about his body and mind ceases to function. He isn't afraid or sad or surprised. When his mind shifts back into gear, he remembers things; Annie needs to go. Mitchell needs an ambulance.

Mitchell, the best friend he's ever known, struggles and sobs around a mouthful of blood, and only then does George stop and look into fearful eyes and feel something; a cold snap of abject horror in his knees. He wraps his hands around the wound and the stake protruding obscenely from his friend's chest. He holds his breath so he doesn't choke or vomit or scream or all three. Though he has no idea what he's saying through violent static in his ears, he tries to speak. Hopefully his words are soothing. Hopefully his hand running through Mitchell's curls is comforting even though he doesn't have much comfort to give.

God but Mitchell looks so small and helpless and frightened and wrong, because Mitchell is the opposite of all those things and everything would make more sense if their places were switched. George would probably feel much safer if their places were switched.


Mitchell checks out of the hospital too early. His body is not repaired, his mind less so, but at this point all a human doctor can do is worry and ask too many questions. It figures that it would be safer for Mitchell to wait it out in pain and sickness at home than under the care of hospital staff. Things they don't tell you when you become a vampire.

Beside him, George is solid and warm and half-carries him over their front steps, up the stairs, into Mitchell's room. The image of Annie hovering uselessly at their side melts what's left of his heart.

They settle him on the shabby, unmade bed which occupies most of his small room. They ask if he is comfortable and all he can do is lie because it's as close as he's going to get.

Most of the hours he spends awake, Annie stands sentry with a mug of tea or coffee and talks about the neighbor's springer spaniel or the middle-aged couple with the electric car who moved in opposite or the latest football scores, even though she can never keep his favorite teams straight.

Finally, just once, he wakes up to a dimly lit room and no ghost standing guard. It must be evening, but one lamp casts a reddish glow in the corner above his right eye. George is slouched in the rickety chair there, his feet propped next to Mitchell's elbow, engrossed in a crossword.

When George finally looks up he starts to see Mitchell awake and drops his feet onto the floor. His arm spasms awkwardly, as if he wants to reach out to Mitchell but doesn't know where he's allowed to touch.

Mitchell reaches for him and inhales sharply.

"Are you okay?" George whispers, taking his hand firmly. He eases onto the edge of the bed so Mitchell won't have to twist to face him.

Mitchell's breath hitches again. He squeezes his eyes shut and feels tears drip down his temples into his ears. George is panicking over him, his hand twitching over Mitchell's wound before wiping his tears away and curling behind one ear. Mitchell gasps for another moment, relishing in the feeling of his friend's warm fingers, before opening his eyes to face him.

George looks desperate and utterly bewildered. "What's wrong? You're safe now. It's alright. You're alright."

"I'm not though," Mitchell says, and his voice crawls out from the dark, broken and final. "I'm not, I'm only here because-" He chokes on a sob and shuts his eyes again while tears leave damp puddles on his pillow. His chest spasms and his wound clenches painfully.

George's hands flutter and his words are a string of comforting lies.

"Stop!" Mitchell says, his voice high and sharp. He twines his fingers into the front of George's shirt. "It's not okay, nothing is okay, it's Josie, it was Josie, and I don't-I can't-" he breaks off, his face twisted in pain, unable to speak anymore through an onslaught of tears of which George never imagined him capable.

Baffled, George pulls Mitchell to his chest and rocks him gently. Mitchell weeps into his shoulder and the pressure in his chest is agonizing and perfect.

George asks who Josie was and Mitchell bites down on his jumper and digs his fingernails into his shoulder blades and probably leaves marks behind but George doesn't press the issue.


xXx

Author's Note: 1) Jesus Christ, what is point of view?! 2) You tell me, is Mitchell too much of a crybaby? Because I think I toe the line. But I feel justified at the same time-he's a lost, self-centered, fairly immature guy so I can see him in-character balling his eyes out behind the scenes.

Once again, my deepest apologies for slow updating DX