Chapter 12

"Josef." Katherine greeted him with an urgent voice and a relieved smile when she saw him walk through the door twenty four hours later. "I'm so sorry, I know you weren't ready to come home, it's just…Mick, he's…" Katherine's voice was high pitched, fingers twirling strands of hair.

Josef reached out a hand to steady her. "Where is he?"

"Upstairs, he hasn't moved since I phoned you. Josef," Katherine grabbed for Josef's arm, halting him as started to walk away, "look I know he's been a prize bastard lately, but go easy on him, alright? He's in a bad way."

"Well I'll just have to kick his ass gently for him then, won't I?" Josef patted Katherine's hand on his arm and gave a quick raise of an eyebrow before turning away and ascending the stairs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Mick." Josef crouched down on the floor in front of where Mick sat, still slumped on the floor of Josef's office, back against the wall behind Josef's desk and knees drawn up to his chest. Mick's head rested in his hands and Josef repeated his name again, a little firmer this time, and tapped the side of his face.

"Josef." Mick managed to raise his head slowly and stared at Josef for a moment, wide eyed and unblinking, "You came home."

"Yes Louis," Josef chuckled to himself and then gave Mick a flippant smile, "I came home."

"Why?"

"Because I love you, you bloody idiot. You take me for granted and drive me to the point of insanity and I still love you." Josef wanted to grab Mick by the shoulders and scream the words in his face. Instead he looked at Mick and then shrugged his shoulders. "Katherine rang me and told me to come home and here I am."

Mick seemed to be trying to process Josef's response for a moment and then the threat of fresh tears were welling in his eyes as he pleaded, "Josef, what am I going to do?"

"Well you could try getting up off the floor for a start." Josef stood up then and folded his arms across his chest, legs spread in a challenging stance. "Come on, up. Now."

Mick hesitated for a moment, looking up at Josef as if he were waiting for him to instruct him on exactly how to stand up, before getting to his feet.

"You can go downstairs and fetch me a glass of blood; I've got work to do. And then pour a double for yourself and take a goddamn shower, you look like crap."

Josef took a seat behind his desk and watched as Mick made his way, still dazed and shaken, towards the door.

Mick hesitated when he reached the doorway and then turned back to Josef, expression nervous and movements halting.

"Josef I-" Mick stopped in his tracks when he saw the unmistakable look that passed over Josef's face.

"If you say one more word to me Mick, if you so much as breathe in my direction I will get up and I will walk out that door again."

Mick swallowed nervously and quickly nodded his assent, before turning away and heading downstairs.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Where were you?" Mick broached the subject tentatively as they lay together in the freezer a few hours later.

"Paris, Lestat's." Josef's matter of fact reply ended the topic of conversation then and there.

Mick reached for Josef then, trailing his hand along Josef's chest and down his abdomen. Almost in spite of himself Josef found his body responding to Mick's touch, arching himself into Mick's fingers before the memories took over and he grabbed Mick's hand and roughly shoved it away with single command.

"Don't."

"Why not? I want to give you a proper welcome home." Mick looked at Josef helplessly, voice plaintive and eyes contrite.

"And why would you want to do that, Mick." Josef smiled at Mick with mock charm, "it's not like it's really going to mean anything, now is it?"

With that Josef rolled onto his side and shifted away from Mick, widening the gap between them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~``

"I went to the blood bank earlier," Mick approached Josef cautiously the following evening as Josef sat behind the desk in his office and pretended to look utterly fascinated with the computer screen in front of him. "I got us some AB negative."

"You hate AB negative." Josef replied and pointedly tapped a key on the computer's keyboard.

"I know, but you like it." Mick tried to force a smile and then walked around the desk and shifted Josef's chair around to face him before kneeling down in front of him and placing his hand on the zipper of his pants.

Josef looked down at Mick blankly for a moment and then made a grab for Mick's hand and asked simply, "What do you think you're doing?"

"What? I thought you might need a break from work."

"Yes, a blow job and a glass of blood." Josef rolled his eyes and then drew back his lips in a patronising smile, "That's all it's going to take to make everything better again."

"Josef, I just thought-"

Mick's words were cut off by the sound of chair leg scraping against wood as Josef turned the chair back towards the desk and then waved Mick off with a forced smile and a faux polite, "Mick, do you mind? I have work to do. Close the door on your way out."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

Mick met Katherine coming up the stairs on his way down, looking at her with the same helpless expression he had looked at Josef with the night before.

"Mick, just give him time." Katherine had been about to say, reaching out a hand towards Mick's arm. Her words were cut off the by the sudden sound of breaking glass and angry snarling coming from upstairs.

"Christ."

"Mick, wait, don't, leave it." Katherine called out after him, lunging for Mick's arm to try and stop him as he turned and fled back up the stairs.

"Josef, what the hell are you-"

Mick suddenly found himself spun around and shoved face down onto the desk in Josef's office amidst twisted piles of shredded paper and broken ornaments. Josef gripped the back of Mick's neck with his hand and pressed his face hard into the laminate top of the desk beneath him, as he bent his head to Mick's ear and growled.

"I was prepared to give up everything for you. Everything Mick. Everything," he repeated, his breath fanning hot against the side of Mick's face. "Just for you."

"Josef…"

"You want me to punish you for your sins Mick?" Josef ignored Mick's attempted reply and reached his freehand around Mick and hurriedly fumbled with the buttons and zipper on his pants before lowering them around Mick's knees and then repeating the same action with his own.

"Josef, don't, please." Mick's reply was a terrified whisper as Josef pressed himself in-between the cheeks of Mick's arse.

"Oh don't worry lover," Josef lowered his head and pressed his lips against Mick's ear once again, "I'm not going to, because that's exactly what you want." Josef paused for emphasis and then added with a dark hiss, "And you tell me exactly why I should give you anything right now?"

Josef squeezed his hand on the back of Mick's neck and pressed Mick's face a little harder into the top of the desk, before releasing him and stepping back to survey the destruction in the room.

"Gee, I seem to have a made a bit of a mess in here," he quipped with flippant sarcasm, before instructing Mick with matter of fact ice, "Clean it up for me."

This time it was Josef that Katherine met on the stairs, his eyes ice blue and menacing, fangs descended. She stared at him for a moment and then pressed herself back against the railing of the stairs and held her breath as Josef swept past and headed straight for the cabinet in the lounge room and poured himself a stiff shot of scotch mixed with a chaser of blood.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They both fell into an awkward routine of approach and retreat after that, with Mick doing most of the approaching and Josef thwarting his efforts with cold indifference at every turn.

The atmosphere in the house felt like an electrified knife to Katherine and for the most part she tried to stay out of the way, hoping that with enough time and space things would eventually return to some semblance of normality.

Nevertheless when Josef came home one evening and announced they should have a funeral service for Beth, before proceeding to gleefully tip a container full of cigarette ash he'd collected from one of the local bars over Mick's head, Katherine knew she had to say something.

"Bloody grow up the pair of you." She had snarled to Josef in his office upstairs and for once even Josef had to admit that he had gone too far. Not that he apologised to Mick, rather it was Katherine who received the apology for having to have witnessed such appalling behaviour on Josef's part.

Three weeks later an overly excited Mick pulled Katherine into the bedroom he shared with Josef upstairs and sat her down on their bed.

"Look what I got for Josef." He whispered and presented Katherine with a small leather bound book, a smile on his face like a child at Christmas time that has just unwrapped a particularly shiny new toy, "It's Miriam's prayer book, from when she was christened. I contacted Father Patrick and asked him if he could find anything from Josef's mortal life still in the Church archives."

"Mick," Katherine smiled and brushed a strand of hair from Mick's forehead, "it's a lovely, thoughtful gift."

If Josef agreed with Katherine he certainly didn't show it. Staring at Mick as if he had just grown a second head, he accepted the book with a noncomittal shrug and the same cold indifference he had used to respond to Mick for the past several weeks.

"Thanks." He muttered and then haphazardly dropped the book on the coffee table in the lounge and walked away.

At that point Mick sat down on the couch and admitted defeat.

"Fifty one years and I blew it." He told Katherine when she came downstairs to find him frozen in position and staring into space looking completely dejected.

"So what are you going to do about it?"

Katherine's reply had the barest hint of a challenge to it and Mick responded with a half hearted shrug and a sorrowful, "What else is there to do? Go upstairs and pack."

"Well at least you're consistent, Mick St John." Katherine told Mick then, "I mean it's not like you at all to actually have to face anything that's too hard for you to deal with."

With that she stood up and headed off to find Josef.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~```

"A word please Josef." Katherine strode through the door of Josef's office upstairs without waiting to be invited. As usual Josef was seated behind his desk pretending to be particularly involved in a pile of documents spread out in front of him.

"Not now Katherine." Josef muttered a distracted reply, "I don't have the time, I'm busy."

"Well make time." Katherine pulled the armchair in the corner of the room over to the desk and sat down in front of Josef, holding his gaze pointedly with her own. "You look me straight in the eye Josef Kostan and you tell me you're not still in love with Mick."

Josef drew in a breath and opened his mouth to protest otherwise and then averted his eyes for a moment before turning back to Katherine with a reluctant sigh of admittance and responding instead with. "You know I am."

"Right, just as I thought." Katherine gave a firm nod and then stabbed a pointed finger in Josef's direction. "Don't you think it's time you took at least a modicum of responsibility for your own actions in all of this?"

"What's the supposed to mean, exactly." Josef sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, eyes flashing to a defensive challenge.

"You spoil a child; don't be surprised when they start acting like a brat."

"I haven't-"

"Oh come on Josef," Katherine pre-empted Josef's indignant reply, "Yes you have. When has Mick ever really had to face up to or deal with anything truly difficult on his own? You've always taken care of everything for him. I'm surprised he can even blow his own nose or tie his own shoe laces without running to you for assistance," she finished with a brisk snort of laughter.

Josef looked at Katherine defiantly for a moment and then let out another reluctant sigh and nodded his agreement.

"So what exactly do you suggest I do about it then? Oh wise little fledgling of mine." Josef looked at Katherine across the desk with an overly charming smile.

"Simple" Katherine replied matter of fact. "Apart from that lovely demonstration you so generously gave me, I don't know what kinks the two of you have in the privacy of your own room, but outside of that might I suggest you stop playing daddy."

Katherine stood up then and walked out of the room, leaving Josef to sit and ponder his own litany of shortcomings when it came to Mick, alone.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Josef came downstairs an hour later to find Mick waiting for him, hovering nervously by the front door, a hastily packed bag slung over his shoulder.

"I'm just going to take a few things with me for now; I'll find a hotel for tonight, come back and collect some more of my stuff tomorrow." Mick stammered out a hurried explanation, keeping his eyes leveled straight at the ground in front of him. "I just wanted to say goodbye."

"Why? Are you going somewhere?" Josef arched an eyebrow and grinned at Mick.

"No, well yes, I mean…"

"Mick." Josef took a step forward, looking at Mick sadly for a moment when he saw Mick flinch away. "Put the bag down, I don't want you to go."

"Well then what do you want Josef?" Mick threw down the bag over his shoulder and then threw his hands in the air.

"You." Josef replied simply and took another step forward, reaching out to draw his arms around Mick's neck and then pulling him into an embrace. "And to go back in time and pretend that the last couple of months never happened."

"I don't think we can." Mick replied sadly and pressed his forehead against Josef's.

"I know." Josef's voice was barely above a whisper as he caressed the side of Mick's face with the back of his hand, pausing to trace a finger of Mick's lips. "And so here we are."

"Yeah. Here we are." Mick managed a small laugh and then took a step back and held Josef at arms length. "How about we do something even better and just start this whole relationship over again."

Mick extended his hand to Josef then and smiled, "Hi I'm Mick St John."

"Hi I'm….going to…oh Christ Mick I've missed you."

"Likewise" Mick managed to half mutter before Josef pulled him back into his embrace and covered his mouth with his own. "Where are we going?' he asked in-between snarling kisses and a clashing of fangs, as Josef half manoeuvred half dragged Mick into the kitchen.

'Kitchen, table, need lubricant." Josef hurriedly blurted out and then laughed and rolled his eyes when Mick asked if they were going to fuck. "No Mick," Josef quipped as he broke the embrace for a moment and looked at Mick with one eyebrow cocked, "I thought we might play canasta, it's easier to shuffle the deck if you pre-lube the cards beforehand."

"You're a snarky bastard sometimes Josef, you know that don't you." Mick laughed as they stumbled into the kitchen together, Josef's lips covering his face and throat with hot wet kisses, their hands fumbling urgently with the various fastenings on each others material accoutrements.

"So I've been told."

Josef quickly helped Mick out of his layers of clothes and then shed his own just as rapidly. Grabbing a bottle of oil from the bench behind him he pushed Mick back onto the table in front of them and hooked Mick's legs over his shoulders.

"Oh Christ Josef, fuck." Mick gritted his teeth and snarled under his breath as Josef slicked his cock with oil and then drove the full length of himself into Mick's passage.

Their language of communication then became a series of deep growls and repeated groans of pleasure, Josef withdrawing and then thrusting back into Mick repeatedly, getting faster and harder with every stroke. Mick clung to Josef's neck and dug his fingers into the flesh of Josef's shoulders, his body tingling with electricity and cock twitching each time Josef's own cock hit against Mick's prostate.

At the rate they were both going Josef knew neither one of them was going to last long. He reached his hand down between their bodies and took hold of Mick's erection, stroking the length of him in time to his increasingly frantic thrusts into Mick's arse, pulling Mick over the edge of no return with him as they both fell into their respective orgasms and sank their fangs sharply into each others flesh.

Before Mick had a chance to catch his breath and recover from the first round, Josef was already pulling Mick down onto the kitchen floor and placing Mick on his hands and knees then positioning himself behind him. Driving himself into Mick once again, they both lost themselves in an extended hum of pleasure as Josef repeated the same hard motion of thrust and withdraw and worked his hand over the length of Mick's cock.

"Josef, wait." Mick managed a breathless laugh when they had both come for a second time; their vocalisations reduced to incoherent whimpers and snarls of delight as each bit into the other and rode out the climax that ripped through them.

"What, you need a break?" Josef's hand had already begun working Mick's softening erection back to full hardness. "You are a Vampire Mick, remember."

"I know that Josef." Mick huffed and rolled his eyes and then rapidly shifted position with Josef and pushed him onto his back. "I was just going to say, it's my turn."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"So what happens now?"

Mick lay on the kitchen floor with Josef, drawn out and spent for the moment, an hour later, his hand trailing its way languidly back and forth across Josef's chest.

"I don't know." Josef shrugged and then reached over and brushed a few stray strands of hair away from Mick's face, "Work on things I guess, rebuild our relationship, together."

Mick fell silent for a moment, feeling the weight of those words and then nodded his agreement.

"Josef, what I did…I'm really…"

"No Mick, wait, before you say it there's something I need to say to you first." Josef pressed a finger to Mick's lips to silence him and then turned onto his side and raised himself up onto his shoulder. "What I did to you a few weeks ago, dumping cigarette ash on you like that..."

Mick drew in a sharp breath and flinched at the memory, then swallowed away the lump of tension that had risen in his throat and tried to brush the issue aside with a hastily muttered, "Doesn't matter, I probably deserved it."

"No Mick you didn't." Josef placed his hand under Mick's chin and turned his face towards his, "You might have deserved a lot of things, but you didn't deserve that. I'm sorry. We can still have some sort of memorial service for Beth though, if you'd like?" Josef asked then.

"I'll think about it." Mick replied after a moment's hesitation, "Eventually, yeah I guess, but right now I think there are probably more important things for us to worry about."

"Oh yeah, like what?" Josef smiled at Mick and caressed the tip of his finger over Mick's face.

"Us, you idiot." Mick laughed and rolled his eyes with mock exasperation and then looked at Josef in earnest. "I was thinking we should go away for a while, just the two of us, together."

"Sounds good," Josef pressed his lips against Mick's ear then and whispered to him. "But first of all how about we go upstairs and you let me fuck you some more."

"Great." Mick let out another brief laugh and quickly got to his feet. "I'll race you up there."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh Christ fuck." Mick's fingers dug into the mattress beneath him as Josef took him from behind the following evening. "Josef…we should…fuck!"

"Oh Christ fuck Josef we should fuck?" Josef repeated, laughing, and then bent forward and whispered into the back of Mick's neck, "What do you think we're doing."

Mick's fingers dug into the mattress again, this time in frustration. "No, I meant…we should go to…God, fuck!"

Mick's attempts at conversation reverted to a gritting of teeth and another snarling vocalisation of pleasure.

"Mick, how about you don't try and carry on a conversation when I'm doing this." Josef thrust forward, hard into Mick's passage, emphasising his point and then laughed once more and added with flippant salaciousness, "but do feel free to keep snarling out God and fuck like that."

Josef reached a hand under Mick's body then and took hold of Mick's cock, continuing to drive himself into Mick from behind as he worked his hand over the length of Mick's shaft and drew them both to their respective fangs piercing flesh conclusion.

"Ok, now tell me what you were going to say before." Josef rolled over to lie next to Mick when they were both spent.

"I was going to say we should go to Paris."

"Paris?" Josef raised himself up on one shoulder and regarded Mick, a questioning look on his face. "Why Paris?"

"Well, what better way to start over than to go back to the place where it all began." Mick shrugged and turned to Josef, mirroring the position of Josef's body.

"Hmm." Josef paused for a moment, thoughtful. "I like it. Paris it is then." He laughed and placed a quick kiss on Mick's lips, eliciting a smile of adoration and another, deeper, kiss from Mick in return.

"Josef?" Mick's expression fell serious, "We need to talk…"

"Uh oh," Josef arched an eyebrow and grinned, "that sounds ominous."

"Josef." Mick let out an indignant breath of frustration and gritted his teeth, prompting a hurried apology and a contrite expression on Josef's behalf.

"I'm sorry my beloved." Josef trailed a finger down the side of Mick's face and over his shoulder, "Please, continue."

"Look I just wanted to say," Mick stumbled over the words, nervous. "What you were prepared to do for me, giving up everything like that I mean. Josef I…I mean there's no way I can…I can't ever repay you for that."

"It doesn't matter." Josef tried to brush Mick's words aside, "I happen to think you're worth it."

"That's just the thing though Josef, I'm not." Mick held up his hand to stop Josef's formed protest. "I heard what Katherine said to you upstairs last night and she's right, if we've got any chance of working things out between us you have to stop propping me up every time I stumble and fall."

"My baby boy," Josef faux sniffed and pretended to wipe away tears of joy, "he's growing up."

"Oh ha ha Josef, very funny." Mick rolled his eyes and smirked indignantly for a moment, as Josef ducked out of the way of a preempted fist.

And then Mick laughed and reached out, drawing Josef into his embrace.