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When Anders was a child his father told him that he had weak lungs, harsh and poetic in a way that only he could manage. When the seasons began their slow gradient into autumn and Mike started to pull sweaters from the tops of linen closets, Anders would start to cough. It was constant and painful and sometimes Ty’s eyes would water for him when he sat doubled over on his own ribcage, his little fingers resting at his spine.
Every year he would cave to the sterilised white halls of the local hospital and allow himself to be examined, for the icy edge of a stethoscope to dig into his skin as he did his best to follow instructions and breathe in, breathe out. He took his pills from a plastic yellow container, though they only worked half the time and they choked off his appetite worse than his airway. It would only be a few months more until spring came, and he would finally breathe again.
As an adult he realised that is wasn’t weak lungs, but chronic paediatric bronchitis probably brought on by undiagnosed asthma and compounded with seasonal allergies. And still he thinks of them as fragile, weak, and unprotected. He hasn’t been sick in years, but sometimes Anders wakes at night to the memory of drowning. He wakes to numb certainty, knowing that this is how he will die, that one day his lungs will simply stop taking in air and the last thing he’ll see will be the black beat of his pulse out of the corner of his eye.
Sometimes he’s sure they’re scarred. He’s heard about that happening after particularly violent bouts of pneumonia. He’s read about how scar tissue builds up in paper thin layers, making it harder and harder to gasp for air. Like now, he thinks, as he sits up against a distant white corridor in the shitty south Auckland local next to a mostly empty prenatal ward. His shoulder blades dig into the plaster.
He has a hand flat against the tile, the other clutching his chest, and now Anders thinks that his father was right after all. He struggles to breathe as he closes his eyes to the nausea inducing fluorescents and the tunnelling black at his irises because this just isn’t working.
“Oh, mate. You alright there?”
Even with a dying vessel Bragi appreciates beauty and perhaps Anders does as well. The man looks hand sculpted of ivory and clay and Anders would laugh if it weren’t for the pressure in his chest.
“Hey.” He’s kneeling in front of him, eyes wide, reaching out for his shoulder.
“Scar tissue,” is all Anders thinks to say.
“I think you’re having a panic attack.” His hands are cold through the sleeves of Anders’ shirt and he begins to shake his head, sucking air into deflated lungs. “Fuck,” he whispers, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll get a doctor. Try and breathe. Relax or whatever.”
“Michele,” he gasps. If he’s going to die then he wants that bitch to call time, he wants her fucking name on the paper work. “Michele Brock.”
“Got it,” he says, before running off down the hall. Anders watches him go and wonders how long it takes to suffocate. Too long, he decides, as his chest collapses in and he tries to exhale. He thinks of Axl, his brother dying in a hospital bed two floors below, taking them all with him. Olaf will slowly wilt away and Ty will get hit by a bus on one of his midnight runs and Mike will inevitably fall from scaffolding six stories high, but Anders is sure he has it the worst.
A woman with blue scrubs and matching eyes turns the corner with the porter just behind, rushing to Anders’ side. “Do you have asthma?” She asks, quick and efficient with her fingers at Anders’ throat. He shakes his head no and she nods, counting to the rabbit beat of his heart before saying, “Panic attack. I know you asked for doctor Brock but she’s otherwise occupied. Is she your GP?”
He nods and she smiles, just barely. “I need you to talk. It’ll help calm you down. Is that a yes or no?”
“Yes,” he gasps before repeating, “Scar tissue.”
“In your lungs?” She asks, tugging a stethoscope off the clip in her pocket and leaning towards his heart. “Do you have fibrosis?”
“Don’t know.”
“Oh sweetie, you’d know.” She listens for a moment, before moving back. “It’s just a panic attack, I can assure you. There’s nothing wrong with your lungs. Tell me your name.”
“Anders,” he whispers.
“Anders what.”
“Johnson.” It’s painful to say, and he rolls his eyes up towards the ceiling, catching sight of the porter standing back against the wall, waiting with bitten lips like there is anything a cleaner can do to help a dying man. Anders thinks he does well enough just being in his line of vision, giving him something to look at that isn’t the plaster walls, something divine to the edges of his oxygen deprived brain.
The doctor catches him staring and motions for him to move. “Talk to him,” she says.
The porter frowns, looking slightly flustered. “Why me?”
“You’re chatty, I’ve heard you. Talk to him.”
“Chatty?” He snaps, melodic and laced with indignation. “Jesus, fine. So my name’s Mitchell. I’m from Ireland, not England, they’re different places. It’s not even in the United Kingdom anymore, but that usually takes me too long to explain. Not that it’s difficult, though I admit Northern Ireland does no one any favours.”
“Dublin,” Anders supplies for him.
“Good guess,” he says with a smile that doesn’t quite stretch far enough. It wasn’t a guess, but Anders doesn’t tell him that.
“So your name is Anders Johnson,” Mitchell continues. “Why’re you here?”
“My brother,” he manages.
“He’s a patient?”
“He’s dying.” It takes everything he has to get it out and when he breathes in again his chest expands and his lungs burn.
Mitchell frowns, turning to the doctor. “What’s his name?” She asks.
“Axl.”
“I’ll go see what I can find. You’re okay here with him?”
Mitchell’s eyes widen in panic. “Wait - no. Not really- "
“You’re doing great.” She pats him on the shoulder and Mitchell watches her go, slightly dismayed.
“Sorry,” he says finally, turning to Anders. “You’ve got the worst man in the world for this, mate. I’m sure your brother will be fine though.”
Anders tries to breathe through his nose and ends up coughing instead, shaking his head as Mitchell reaches for his shoulder again. It’s not one brother he’s risking, it’s all of them, and that thought leaves bruises at his throat.
“In and out,” Mitchell says, moving closer and demonstrating with his own even breath. “Nose then mouth. Honestly I’m shocked you haven’t passed out yet.”
Anders glares at him and Mitchell smiles, more genuine this time, with a hint of crooked bottom teeth. “You’ll be alright, you heard the doctor, just keep breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
“You’re making that up,” Anders manages, his voice ragged.
“No I’m not, I’ve seen it in films loads of times. That’s what they tell people, right? At least I’m not handing you a paper bag.”
Anders starts to feel something shift, the noose at his throat loosens its hold a fraction of an inch and he reaches for Mitchell’s wrist, his fingers tight against his skin. “Why New Zealand?” He’s on the knife’s edge of functioning and he needs to hear him speak, to concentrate on anything but staying alive.
“Uh - it’s far from England? And it has surprisingly easy visa requirements. And I could use a bit of warm weather, after a lifetime of rain.”
“We have rain,” he tells him. Heavy rain that falls and falls like the storms of Genesis and overhang that sits low over the city, but then he thinks of England and imagines how bright Auckland must seem to someone like Mitchell.
“Proper rain,” Mitchell agrees. “But you also have clear skies, cloudless skies, where’s it’s all blue each way you look. We don’t get that, you know. There’s always something. Hey,” he says gently, shifting closer. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
“I’m going to strangle you,” he says, a wheezing sigh of words.
“Not until you get your breathing under control, you won’t. I’m not confident you could stand right now.” A strand of hair falls into his eyes and when he smiles Anders thinks he wouldn’t mind kissing him, falling into bed with Bragi at his lips, watching those beautiful eyes flutter closed. “Have you been to Britain?”
Anders glances up, almost missing the question to the sound of his pulse in his ears. “No,” he says.
“Why not?”
Anders raises his eyebrows as he exhales. “Shit weather,” he says and Mitchell laughs.
“Yeah alright. Good for a trip though, isn’t it.”
“Rather have Hawaii.”
Mitchell moves, edging closer to sit by his side, their thighs touching as he leans back against the wall. “Not interested in our big cathedrals?”
“Beaches,” he says. “I like beaches.”
“Sounds like you live in the right country.”
“I know.” His voice is almost steady now. “There’s a reason I don’t leave.”
“Mr. Johnson.” Blue Eyes is back with a chart in her hand and a stiff, professional smile. “Good,” she says. “Your breathing is much better. I’m happy to report that your brother is stable, he’s been responding to Dr. Brock’s treatment and there’s no reason to believe that he won’t be up and about in a few day’s time.”
Anders exhales relief and he feels a familiar pressure seizing up in his lungs. His attempt is cut off by a coughing fit. Mitchell’s hand rests between his shoulder blades and he murmurs something into his ear that Anders can’t quite make out.
“Feel free to remain here as long as you’d like,” she continues once he manages to catch his breath. “Or we could move you to a room. Your brother’s is rather full at the moment and from what I understand they’re still missing two more Johnsons, yourself included.”
Anders rolls his eyes and Mitchell whispers, “In through your nose,” at his side. “Sounds like an army you’ve got waiting on you.”
“Worse than,” Anders continues. “I’ll just stay here a while.”
The doctor nods and turns to Mitchell. “I’m working on the second floor, so you know where to find me.” They listen to the click of her footsteps as she leaves and Anders uses them as a metronome to breathe by, expecting Mitchell to follow her.
“Well, my shift was up twenty minutes ago. So I guess I’ll stay as well.”
Anders turns to look at him. “Go home,” he says. “I’m fine.”
“‘Fine’ is relative. But I don’t mind. Not much at home. Your life is a lot more interesting by the sound of it. How about you tell me about your brother?”
“Plural.” His breath is coming easier now and his vision begins to clear.
“Brothers,” Mitchell amends with his beautiful curved lips.
“They’re dicks.”
Mitchell laughs, throwing his head back against the drywall and hitting it with a crack that echoes through the hallway. As he clutches at the roots of his hair, groaning in pain, Anders scoffs. “You fucking idiot.”
“I think I just killed half my brain cells.”
“Be careful then, I doubt you have many more left to spare.”
Mitchell smiles at him, still pressing a hand to his tender head and says, “That’s the longest sentence you’ve managed so far.”
“Anders.” Ty sounds tired, torn between disappointment and guilt as he turns the corner, looking slightly paler than normal. “You alright?”
“Fine,” he answers but his heart begins to stutter again at the thought of his brother catching on to the fact that he had a panic attack like a fucking child, like a boy with weak lungs. He would never live it down and Mitchell turns to look at him like he can hear every fluttering beat.
“You mind giving me a ride?” Ty shuffles his feet and Anders nods, pushing himself up, gritting his teeth as his vision goes. Mitchell hovers as his shoulder, as if he expects him to fall.
“Thanks,” he says as Ty turns around, hoping that it passes for a whisper.
Mitchell’s hand lingers for a moment at his shoulder. “Don’t mention it.”
—
Bragi falls in love over apple martinis and palm oil hand soap and two weeks later Anders spends the night at Ty’s dusky flat, kicking his shoes up onto the couch just to watch him frown.
“I thought you liked Helen,” Ty says with a sigh. He looks pale and washed out in the low light of his flat and Anders still remembers how he used to turn Achilles gold in the summer, how beautifully he would tan.
“Yeah, she’s great. Fantastic in bed, gorgeous rack.” He picks at the label on his bottle, peeling it back with wet fingers.
“But,” Ty begins for him.
“But you know how some days you just crave some chocolate? Like you haven’t had it in months and then one morning you need a fucking Cadbury or you’ll go on a rampage.” Anders works best in food metaphors and Ty tends not to mind. “And then you eat chocolate non-stop for about three days and the craving is gone, over and done with, and you can get back to chips and lager.”
“I still don’t know where you’re going with this.”
“I’ve had a craving,” Anders says with a shrug. His beer has gone warm but he drinks it anyway.
“For what, college students? Blondes?”
“Darker,” he says. Bragi threatens him with a sleepless night should he indulge and Anders tilts his head back, staring up at the ceiling. “Dark and Irish.”
“Christ,” Ty says, but Anders can hear that he’s smiling. “It sounds to me like you should stick with what you know is good.”
“Or,” Anders says, sitting up. “I should go pull from a bar and fuck someone who isn’t Helen over the weekend. You know, I’ve seen her naked so often I’m starting to learn where her fucking freckles are. I am not the kind of man who should take notice of freckles, regardless of how close they are to a beautiful woman’s arse.”
“You know, sometimes I really don’t like you.”
“But you love me,” Anders reminds him. Ty doesn’t respond and he doesn’t need him to.
—
Anders slides his arm along the bar, standing with a cocked hip in front of a girl with bright bedroom eyes but something about the way she smiles reminds him of Mike, like she can see straight through him and only barely hides it behind dark red lipstick. He briefly considers leaving, telling her that he has a friend to see home, but decides he can manage regardless as long as he can fuck her from behind.
He turns to the sound of a glass breaking and the bar goes silent for the amount of time it takes to register the dark spill of beer creeping along the floor. The bartender sighs and reach for a towel before everyone’s attention shifts back onto their crowded conversations and overpriced mixed drinks. But Anders watches for just a moment longer and sees a dark haired man stumbling out the door. Anders considers himself a businessman but he can’t deny Bragi’s surrogate eye for beauty and he would recognise him anywhere, even by silhouette.
“Actually,” he says, downing the rest of his drink. “That was a friend of mine. I’m going to go check on him.”
She shrugs, not looking terribly interested either way, and orders another glass of house white. As he heads towards the door, Anders thinks he’s probably done them both a favour.
He looks around, seeing nothing but a midnight bus crawling by so he follows the sidewalk until it turns into a deserted side street dotted with closed shops and a local co-op. Mitchell sits against the glass windows of a realtor office, his chin tucked into his chest, gasping like a runner.
“Go away,” he says, his voice low as Anders walks with his hands in his pockets. “Right now, you need to leave.”
He ignores him, adjusting his suit and sitting down at his side. “You don’t remember me.” Anders doesn’t mind, he likely wouldn’t remember Mitchell either if he hadn’t been certain that his face would be the last one he ever saw.
He threads his fingers into his hair, tugging at his roots. “No, I don’t. Now leave.”
“In through your nose,” Anders tells him. “Out through your mouth. That’s what they say in films, anyway.”
Mitchell appears to listen, inhaling slowly and allowing his chest to collapse as they sit side by side, watching the empty shop windows across from them. Anders listens to Mitchell breathe and wonders what he’s doing in such a dead end job in a shit part of town. He’s young and he’s beautiful and Anders considers offering to set him up with a modelling agency. Auckland is not Los Angeles, he wouldn’t be earning contracts on his knees.
“How’s your brother?”
Anders forces himself not to turn, not to watch the beautiful curve of his lips. “Still alive,” he says. “Still a dick.” Mitchell is silent then, so he asks the obvious question and hopes that he’ll tell the truth. “Are you an addict?”
Anders is no stranger to stimulants, but he’s always considered blow little more than an occasional weekend hobby. It never stuck with him, never ate at him, but he’s seen the kids who don’t quite make it. They fold in on themselves like spiders, too run down to unwind their spindled legs. He knows this look, the look of someone fighting to convince their body that they can live without the chemical compounds of heroin, that they can be normal and happy and alive if only they can last.
He looks at Mitchell and wishes that he didn’t already know that for each battle won, every addict eventually loses the war. “Something like that,” Mitchell says, finally.
“Is it alcohol?” He asks, remembering the shattered glass and stunned silence.
“No.”
“Then how about a beer? In a park, with just me. No people.” He wants to kiss him, to pry his mouth open and breathe into his lungs and taste whatever it is he keeps hidden beneath his tongue. He wants him in his bed, all thoughts of chemical absolution forgotten in favour of Anders’ finger tips. He wants God’s name in his throat, wants prayers and pleas.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Mitchell whispers. “I’m just - I think I should go home.”
“Yeah, alright. Make it quick then, before you start missing busses. They come farther and farther apart, you know.” He stands, brushing himself off as Mitchell watches with glassy eyes.
“Good luck.” He says it with a hint of finality and Anders knows a goodbye when he hears one.
“You too, Mitchell.” Anders isn’t sure what makes his shoulders set into stone, what keeps his gaze down, his fingers twitching at his sides but whatever it is, he hopes he fights it, and he hopes he wins.
—
His back hits the wall and Anders’ vision stutters and stalls. He can’t hear anything but a distant ringing in his ears as he pushes himself up, out of the pile of scrap wood that is burnished red at his feet.
“What the fuck, Axl?” He murmurs, his hand to his neck. His legs give out to locked knees and when he opens his eyes to Olaf’s hand at his cheek he knows that this time he really is dying. It’s quicker than suffocating, if not cleaner, and he spares a moment to be thankful.
He thinks he hears Ty’s voice, repeating his name like a prayer, telling him to open his eyes. He tries to listen, but then again he always does.
When he wakes it’s to a funeral procession of faces above his own, mouths full of stumbling explanations, each trying not to say the obvious. He doesn’t want to live through blood loss only to suffocate to death in the sterilised white halls of a clinic so he waves them off and tries to stand. He doesn't remember closing his eyes, but he wakes up at home.
His flat is dark, lit by nothing but his fish tank which splays fluorescent shadows on the wall. His clothes stick to his skin and his neck is sore from the angle he'd been laying at and he thinks he ought to shower, to get up and move to his bedroom. His stomach turns at the thought of standing so instead he sleeps and hopes that when he wakes again the sun will have risen.
—
Gaia leaves the day that Anders finally drags himself to the hospital, spurred on by Mike’s insistence that he keep his appointment with Michele. Bragi is revolting against him, rattling his bars at the thought of her plane passing above them as they walk. He ignores it, like he ignores the throbbing headache that has persisted for days, like he’s ignored Axl’s radio silence and Dawn’s concerned glances.
“Sit on the exam table,” Michele says, staring down at her clipboard.
“You know very well there’s nothing wrong with me, why do I have to sit on your stupid fucking table?” He hates hospitals. He wills himself to breathe.
“Anders,” she sighs. “You lost a solid few pints of blood.”
“And then I walked here, didn’t I?”
She cocks a hip, glaring down at him and Anders wonders how he ever found her beautiful. “Any pain?”
“No.” He stands with his arms crossed.
“Headaches?” She sees his hesitation and pushes him backwards until his knees hit the table. “Fucking sit down or I’ll have them keep you overnight.”
“I’m fine,” he snaps, his voice raising with Bragi’s outraged gasps.
“Anders, you’d better sit down or I’m going to call in someone to make you.”
“Fuck this,” he snaps, shoving past her and heading towards the door. He keeps his hands in his pockets, his chin to his chest, until he all but runs headfirst into someone walking in the opposite direction. Cold hands grab his shoulders, steadying him.
“You fucking incompetent excuse for a- ” Michele is running after him, spitting venom like only a goddess can.
“I thought I heard yelling,” Mitchell says curiously in his airy Irish lilt. He sounds far more like the porter than the addict today and Anders tries not to look at him, even as his hands linger heavy on his skin.
“You heard this fucking moron refuse to follow simple instructions.”
He pulls away, turning to face her. “What exactly are you going to do, huh? Stick a stethoscope to my chest and tell me everything sounds normal, be sure to drink loads of water and eat some fucking spinach?”
“You owe me,” she says through gritted teeth, her eyes flicking to where Mitchell stands, watching with his arms crossed.
“I owe you fuck all. You were saving your own fucking skin just as much as you were saving mine. Though God knows I would’ve loved to see you lot explain away my dead fucking body.”
“Alright, alright,” Mitchell says, stepping between them. “Care to move this to an examination room?”
“I’m going home,” he snaps but Mitchell gets to him first.
“Anders, come on.” Mitchell remembers his name and with Bragi screaming eleventh century folk songs in his ears it’s enough to make him falter, his shoes scuffed against the tile floor. “Please,” he says. Anders wants him begging from the floor, but he savours the sound anyway.
“Fine. I’ll give you ten minutes.”
“To be clear,” Michele snaps, leading him back to the cold sterilised store cupboard of a room. “I’m doing this for Mike, not for you.” Mitchell closes the door behind him and leans back against it just as she says, “We need privacy, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind, actually. He stays.”
Mitchell’s lips quirk up a fraction of an inch, barely enough to see, but Anders never stops looking. “Fine, whatever. Let’s get this over with.”
She takes his blood pressure and pricks his finger, giving a clinical commentary of what he already knows. “Too low, too anaemic. It should pass, but you said it yourself, more spinach. For the headaches,” she pauses, typing onto a wall mounted screen. “I’ll give you a prescription and you can fill it downstairs. It’s for the week, take as needed.”
“Great. Are we done here?”
“Go,” she says. “Both of you.”
Mitchell follows him down the hall, a step or so behind, and when he finally reaches the elevator doors he says, “Still up for that beer?”
“It’s noon,” Anders reminds him and Mitchell smiles like a saint.
“But I get off at six.”
—
Mitchell grumbles about the lack of Guinness on tap, adding that it doesn’t travel well anyway, and even if they had proper beer it would likely be shit.
“You don’t seem to fear stereotypes,” Anders says with a smile and Mitchell drums his fingers against his bottle like he can’t think of anything else to say.
He wonders what it is that keeps him so on edge, if it’s heroin or cocaine, or maybe something less illicit but more dangerous. Oxycodone with fentanyl patches, stuck on from a sports injury that morphed into full blown addiction. He knows the statistics, two out of four before the age of twenty. He remembers being nineteen and eyeing the girls strung out across the Ikea furniture of their flat and thinking that he would be the exception.
“Listen,” he says, staring resolutely over Mitchell’s shoulder, finding a girl with auburn hair and beautiful breasts. “I don’t have the world’s most standard checklist of morals, you don’t have to pretend.” It’s not his usual avenue of conversation, but his problems provide Anders with a healthy distraction from his own and so he takes the chance.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mitchell says, his jaw clenched.
“Okay, okay. Work with me here. I don’t want to go all group therapy on you, but the whole addict thing is not usually a one man sort of show. It might help to talk about it.” He punctuates every sentence with a sip of wine and thinks that Mitchell looks barely twenty-three.
“Listen, I’m not- “ he runs a hand through his hair, looking away, and Anders thinks of using Bragi, of making him tell. “I’m a lot more interested in why you were at the hospital again.”
“That’s because I’m an interesting person,” he agrees, wishing for a moment that he could tell the truth. “My brother’s a builder and he’s redoing his flat. We all got drunk and there was a bit of an accident and the good doctor stepped in and patched me up before it could become anything more than that. They insisted I get a check up though.”
“You seem to really hate hospitals.”
“Who doesn’t hate hospitals, mate?”
Mitchell shrugs. “I’ve never minded them.”
Anders rules out prescription drugs from his mental check list of vices. “Well I’d hope not. You do work in one. If you’re job hunting, by the way, I’d be happy to lend a hand.”
“I’m alright, thanks,” he says with an idle smile. “I kind of like it there. People are nicer in New Zealand, you know. I get on pretty well with everyone.”
“You didn’t get on with people in England?” He’s digging beneath his own feet and Mitchell smiles like he won’t get any further, just tread topsoil until his arms ache.
“Explain this whole trade agreement that’s all over the telly,” Mitchell says, glancing up at the television playing TVNZ on mute with black blocked subtitles.
“Young people,” he says with a sigh. “Won’t pick up a fucking paper.”
Mitchell lies like a priest at Sunday School and Anders is happy to let him.
—
He dreams of Mitchell for the better part of two weeks, and not in the chaste, love-struck way that Dawn infers from his distant gaze but instead he dreams of him on his back, staring up at the ceiling with those long lashes fluttering open and his mouth gasping Anders’ name. He dreams of him in the shower, three parts body hair and one part muscle and frankly mornings are beginning to get a little uncomfortable.
It’s happened to him before. First it was a boy two years his senior who took physics classes in university and wore his hair unfashionably long. But he had truck stop lips and startling eyes and Anders was more than a little taken. He would watch him in the halls, note the name scribbled across his coffee cup, and spend his marketing classes imagining what he would look like on his knees.
When Anders finally fucked him it was rather lacklustre but it did the trick. He was followed by an exchange student turned waitress with curled blonde hair who played hard to get. Anders thought about her as well, day and night, imagined how she must taste with all that chewing gum she swallows.
Mitchell is one in a long line of momentary obsessions and Anders always gets what he wants.
—
He thinks of asking Michele for a favour, of bringing condoms to the hospital in lieu of flowers, because they’re both practical people and frankly he imagines she’d rather have good sex than dying plants. But in the end he decides against asking her altogether. Instead he wears a hoodie and jeans and grabs the first nurse he can find, whispering Bragi’s poetry into her ears until she walks with a dazed expression towards reception and returns with Mitchell’s schedule.
He has the night shift, getting off at half two in the morning, and so Anders dresses in a suit that he knows fits him just right, his hair styled and cufflinks in place, and arrives armed with beer and takeout well after most of Auckland has closed down for the night. “Can I tempt you with curry?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Mitchell says, a hand to his chest, stepping back into the limelight of the hospital doors. “You fucking scared me.”
“Yeah, I bet I’m terrifying. Now come on, you said you lived nearby.”
“You want to come to my flat?” Mitchell asks, eyebrows drawn close.
“Well I don’t know about you, mate, but I’d rather not eat in the car park.”
“Look.” Mitchell digs around in his pockets until he finds a pack of cigarettes, dented and cheap. “If you’re like, you know, coming onto me, I just - I’m not really. I’m flattered, but - ”
“You should be,” Anders says. “But it doesn’t have to be anything more than dinner.”
“Fine.” Mitchell strikes him as a man with good intentions and a well paved road to hell. “Just dinner.”
—
Mitchell’s flat is derelict. Anders had forgotten that places like this still exist in Auckland, where mould lines window panes like pockmarks and dry wall cracks in spider web patterns towards the ceilings. But Mitchell seems blind to ruin, like he’s seen too much ash in his lifetime to notice the dust.
“Nice place,” he comments idly. He feels Bragi sitting at the back of his throat, dying to speak, but Anders pushes him away.
Mitchell shrugs and sits back against the edge of a worn sofa with paisley patterns and cigarette burns freckled along the upholstery. “I have to warn you, I’m not a fan of spinach.”
“Not a bit in any of this, mate. I don’t eat Indian for greens.”
Mitchell smiles then, a flicker of candle light. “My kind of man.”
They pass the night with full stomachs, balancing on the edge of sober with warm beers popped open on the coffee table. They have hypothetical arguments about film review boards and the New Zealand wine industry and just when Mitchell’s eyes begin to brighten with a bit of gilded enthusiasm, Anders gets ready to leave.
“I had a good time,” he says and he watches as Mitchell hides his disappointment behind his two shoulder shrugs.
“Yeah,” Mitchell agrees. “Not so bad.”
Anders does use a hint of Bragi in order to get Mitchell’s number, just a breath or two and nothing more. But he thinks he must want to see him again, more than he lets on anyway, because he’s reaching for his phone before the words even escape his teeth.
“I’ll call you,” he promises, a kiss to the rough skin of his cheek and Anders wants him white laced and soft and pushed back against the sheets. Mitchell pulls away from him and Anders grins.
He’ll give himself a month to get him into bed; a month of take out dinners and wide listening eyes and sympathetic hidden depth. In thirty days he’ll fuck him so slowly that Mitchell will be begging him to move, to go faster, to do anything at all. And then, when he’s well and truly desperate, Anders will smile against the ridge of his lips and he will make him wait.
—
Mitchell doesn’t talk about himself. There aren’t any references slipped into his sentences, no anecdotes or memories. He has an addict’s tongue, quick and vague and a fucking liar to boot. Anders should be relieved with the silence between his syllables but instead he’s more than just a little curious so he sits with his back straight and smiles over Lebanese food and puts his own lies to good use.
“I have a call with a prospective client based in London,” he says. “Any advice for dealing with the Brits?”
“Not British,” Mitchell reminds him with a shrug of his shoulders. “And I don’t know shit about business.”
“Never worked in an office?” Anders asks.
“Nope.” He takes a sip of whatever watered down lager he ordered and purses his lips like it’s his secret to keep. “You know, that doctor you saw the other week, I think she has a vendetta against me.” He falls back to his defence of the status quo and Anders lets him.
“Yeah, she’s a right bitch. Good luck with that.”
“How do you know her?” He looks genuinely interested and Anders wonders if he fakes it well or if he’s just curious too.
“We have a history,” he answers. “Oh right and she’s living with my brother. Forgot that bit.”
“A history?” He asks, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, in which I came to my senses and decidedly did not fuck her.”
Mitchell cocks his head to the side, a question in his lidded eyes. “Oh, so you’re not - ” he waves his hand rather incoherently.
“Gay? No, I just have good taste.”
He flushes tulip pink as he takes another sip from his bottle. “Do you have to make everything awkward?” Mitchell asks, looking away.
Anders allows his tongue to linger at the edge of his glass, staring up at him. “Nothing’s awkward unless you convince yourself it is, Mitch.”
“God,” he says, rolling his head back towards the ceiling. “You’re the worst.”
“And yet you still answer my calls.”
Mitchell shrugs but keeps his eyes heaven bent. “I make terrible decisions.”
Anders has no doubt about it. He’s sure Mitchell has made every left turn he could, that he’s stood at more crossroads than even hell could provide and picked the wrong way each and every time. So he smiles and takes it as a compliment.
—
“You know,” Mitchell tells him in the dark, eerie glow of the hospital car park. “If you’re looking to get laid there are far easier ways to do it than driving me home at night.”
Anders presses his fingers against the hard notch of his sternum and pushes him back towards pillared concrete. “Oh I know that, and don’t think I’m not getting any while I’m wooing you.” Mitchell turns to the side to avoid the close brush of Anders’ lips and he's close enough to see a dusting of freckles beneath the olive shade of his cheeks. “But you will be worth the work it takes to get you into my bed.”
“It’s not going to happen, Anders,” he says, but his voice is strained. He entwines their fingers for just a moment, a haphazard lock of joints, before he pulls away.
“I’m going to remind you of this while we’re fucking in the shower a few months from now.”
“You’re delusional,” Mitchell says.
“Ambitious,” Anders corrects him. He has his sights set high and Mitchell is a mountain fucking summit, a beautiful boy to add to his notched headboard. He ignores Bragi’s snow storm sighs and gets in the car.
—
Anders is used to living without much of a budget. He can talk himself in and out of work, when time requires it, and though he occasionally dreams of more he is relatively content with his minor luxuries. “God damn it, Mitchell, no. Put that down.”
“What?” He asks, holding up the bottle to inspect the label. “It’s fine. It’s cheap.”
“What are you, a nineteen year-old on a bursary? Put it away. You’re banned from choosing alcohol.” Anders adjusts his grip on the basket and steps towards the back where they keep proper liquor in aged bottles.
“You have no right to judge my taste if you’re actually buying sambuca.” Mitchell walks with his arms crossed over a ratty leather jacket, fingerless gloves like armour at his wrists. He plays the part of twenty-something tramp chic down to the last thread and it makes Anders want to grab him by the hair and shove him face first into a mattress, pulling those jeans from his thighs in the time it takes to undo his own belt.
“This is a seventy dollar bottle.” He points out, trying to focus on anything but the way Mitchell licks at his lips, the barest hint of tongue against his teeth.
“You’re doing it again,” Mitchell says at his shoulder.
“Doing what?”
“The thing where I feel like you might be undressing me in your head.”
“Oh I’m doing more than undressing you,” Anders assures him. “But don’t worry, I’ll get you properly drunk again before I try anything.”
Mitchell sighs in resignation. It feels more like a victory than it really should.
—
He still dreams of Mitchell but sometimes they end abruptly, like when he’s half asleep and jolts awake to the phantom sensation of falling. He is unbuttoning his shirt, sliding his tongue along Mitchell’s collarbones, listening to his little touch starved sighs as he grates his hips against Anders’ thigh. He’s about to step back, to tell him to take his clothes off, to do it slowly, but he wakes with a gasp before he can even open his mouth.
Anders sits up, chest heaving like he’d run straight from a nightmare, his fingers numb with an adrenaline rush.
“What the fuck,” he whispers, more to his alarm bell heart than the darkness of the room. He lays back down, sweat soaked and shivering, and tries to remind himself that it wasn’t a bad dream.
—
Anders lets his head fall over the arm of the couch, staring at the empty bookshelf behind him. He is far less sober than he ought to be, all things considered. The room spins when he forces himself to sit up again. “I think I might stay here tonight,” he says with his stumbling, vodka soaked tongue.
He came on to Mitchell twice, only to be gently pushed away with a pin up smile. He had half a mind to try again, to lean across his lap and press his mouth to the jutting ridge of his collarbone but he is far too drunk for that now
“Not if you’re going to keep trying to get me out of my trousers,” Mitchell says.
“Your trousers could stay on,” Anders offers with a wave of his hand. “So long as the zipper’s undone.”
Mitchell groans. “You’re like a fucking wind up toy. Don’t you ever stop?”
“If you insist,” he says with a dramatic heave of his chest. “I’ll cease trying to undress you ’til morning.”
“Yeah,” he says, taking another drink. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”
Anders hums and turns to the television, watching the screen flicker and yawn. His eyes are drifting closed, Bragi is finally phasing out like static sound, and he is a breath away from sleep when Mitchell says, "Do you have any sisters?”
His eyes flutter open, licking at his dry lips as he tries to parse and process through the haze of alcohol. “Sisters? No. Just brothers.”
“How are they?”
“My brothers?”
“Yeah.” He slides his fingers down the neck of his bottle and Anders is momentarily distracted by the sight.
“They’re fine. I mean, probably. I haven’t spoken to them in a while.”
“Why not?” He’s looking down at his hands, a childish curve to his shoulders, as he bites gently on the edge of his lip.
“Do you have siblings?” Anders asks, thinking he already knows the answer.
“No. I was an only child.” He speaks so easily in past tense.
“Well, alright.” He sits up, rubbing at his eyes. “Some people are all twee and call their siblings their ‘best friends’ and spill all of their shitty secrets over the phone. We’re not like that, I guess. I’m not sure we even like each other, we certainly don’t like spending time together.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Mitchell says softly. “You love them.”
Anders grimaces. “Yeah, you moron, of course I do. I said we don’t like each other, but I didn’t say anything about love. Though depending on who you ask, they might disagree.” Axl hates him, he can feel it in the earthquake tremble of Bragi’s distant speech. But Mike has spent a lifetime burying bodies for him and he and Ty grew together like weeds from the ground so he imagines that two out of three isn’t all that bad.
“Look,” he says. “I really don’t like talking about them.”
“But I like hearing about them.” Mitchell turns to look at him and Bragi jolts awake at his gaze.
The television casts shadows in blue along the ridge of his jaw and Anders can’t deny him anything at all when he looks like this. “Mike’s the oldest. He’s had a hundred and one neuroses and a shittier childhood than the rest of us. Ty used to be sweet but he’s kind of bitter by circumstance. Axl’s the baby and he’s spoiled fucking rotten. And then there’s me.”
“You’re the second oldest?”
“Yep,” he sighs, kicking his feet out to rest against Mitchell’s thighs.
“Do you remember when your brothers were born?”
It’s not something he’s ever been asked before and for a moment he has to consider it. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I do. I remember Axl best, because I was older. But I remember Ty too.” He had been so excited, practically shaking where Mike held him in the hospital waiting room.
Mitchell doesn’t answer him, he doesn’t ask any more questions that rip at his chest to answer so finally Anders closes his eyes, settled back against the lumpy cushions and allows the distant chatter of the television to work its white magic in his ears.
His mind drifts to shades of opal grey and the memory of Axl’s infant hand clasped around his finger. Anders must be asleep, because he dreams of someone's hands in his hair, brushing it back, working through gel pieced curls. “What would they do if they lost you?” Mitchell’s voice whispers in his ear.
“They’d be fine.” He sounds as if he’s speaking under water, muffled and incomprehensible.
“No,” he says. “They’re your family. They wouldn’t be fine.”
Anders dreams of conch shells and tree trunk thrones and when he wakes he doesn’t remember a single thing.
—
He tries to kiss him over poured amber scotch but Mitchell keeps his lips pressed closed. “Worth a shot,” Anders says, waiving him off. “One day I’ll get you to open up.”
He won’t try again tonight. Instead he’ll laugh over Mitchell’s misfortune at being placed in Michele’s ward and he’ll ask hypothetical questions about complicated combinations of superpowers, always sure to throw in a god’s jurisdiction for good measure.
“But if you could convince about ninety seven percent of people to do anything you wanted, you wouldn’t take it?”
Mitchell shakes his head in a toss of curls. “Too much power, that. I wouldn’t trust myself.”
Anders shrugs, his shoulders tight and clicking. “S’alright. You’re already half way there with that face of yours.”
“You calling me pretty?” Mitchell asks, smiling around the rim of his glass.
“Beautiful,” Anders corrects, threading a bit of Bragi along his tongue, hoping that Mitchell might actually believe it.
—
The more often they meet, the more time Bragi sits on edge like a perpetual rush of anxiety to the base of his spine. Tonight they’re in the business district to avoid the Friday crowds and the school kids writhing in their nightclubs. Mitchell is relaxed and chatty, glancing up at the television where a cricket match plays on mute, but Anders can’t stop moving.
It feels like a caffeine crash, like he can’t bring himself to even rest his hands against the table and just sit still. It’s like the come down from ecstasy and Anders knows exactly who is responsible.
He excuses himself to the toilets and stands before the back light glow of the mirror and says, “Stop this right now.” Bragi wants him home, wants him away from Mitchell and Anders suddenly hates him for it. He hates him for choosing Gaia when all Anders wants right now is nestled in the curve of Mitchell’s neck. “She’s gone,” he says. “Get over it.”
When he returns, Mitchell looks up at him with a little cock to his head, a slight frown eating at his perfect mouth and Anders ignores him, playing nonchalant and complaining about a nation wide obsession with sport as he glances at the television. The way he looks at him then, out of the corner of his eye, Anders thinks he would do anything at all to have him. He would take communion on his knees as long as it was at Mitchell’s feet.
“Go get us another round,” he says, passing a few bills over the tacky surface of the table. “Not that cheap shit though, I swear to God.” He rolls his eyes but gets up with minimal complaining.
Anders doesn’t try to kiss him before he leaves, he doesn’t run his hand down his inner thigh, doesn’t murmur innuendo in his ear. He keeps his distance and Bragi falls to a temporary ringing silence, but when they leave his chest aches in sudden, unsolicited warning.
—
“You need more friends than just me, mate,” Anders tells him over greasy chips and bloody marys. They’re both hung over from a Tuesday night spent getting wasted in a nearly empty town bar and he’s feeling it more than he really ought to be, considering his long and colourful track record. “I know you’re capable of it. That doctor called you chatty.”
Mitchell snorts into his straw. “You know me, Anders. Do I strike you as chatty?”
He wants to argue, to tell him he really doesn’t know anything at all. Mitchell lies by omission and keeps his tongue sewn to the roof of his mouth in constant fear of letting it slip and while Anders likes to think he’s better than most when it comes to reading between the lines, not even a god of poetry can work with invisible ink.
“If you put an effort in,” he says with a shrug. “You’re young. You should be making friends. Kiwis are relatively harmless, anyway. Easy bunch to start with.”
“I’m really not,” he says quietly.
“Not what?”
“Young.”
Anders smiles because he never considered himself young, not even when he was just a child, cradling Ty’s little shoulders in his arms. “Yeah, alright. Well you’re a good few decades from an old hermit, so stop acting like it.”
He sees guilt reflected in the red tinged corners of his eyes so Anders leans across the table to press his lips just below his ear, the soft patch of skin that makes his breath hitch. Mitchell allows him to linger for a moment longer than usual before finally pulling away, gently pushing him back into his seat.
“One day,” Anders assures him.
—
He waits for twenty five minutes. The weather has turned and his suit jacket is just short of comfortable in the slight Auckland bite of winter, but it’s enough to move his relatively low threshold of impatience a rung or two higher. He glances down at his watch, a glare of glass against hospital fluorescents, before rolling his shoulders back and heading for reception.
“Excuse me.” Bragi bleeds through his teeth. “I’m supposed to be meeting John Mitchell, I’m his ride home, but he’s a bit late. Could you check to see where he is?” She nods her puppet head and Anders watches her go, fingers drumming along the edge of the desk.
It takes her ten minutes and the clock hands crawl on the wall opposite him but eventually she returns with a paper smile and an answer of, “He wasn’t feeling well. Clocked off at three, actually. It’s odd that he didn’t phone you.”
“Isn’t it just,” he says. He leaves without another word and she doesn’t appear to notice. He finds Mitchell’s number as he walks, though he knows it will ring and ring and ring. “Son of a bitch.”
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Anders sees the red flags, the rules that carefully govern who will inevitably be more trouble than they're worth, and Mitchell is trouble. He can’t quite work out his worth, but his heart still races at the sight of him. So he calls it temporary colourblindness and starts the car.
—
He looks like he hasn’t slept for days, dark eyes rimmed with black, sallow skin and greasy hair. Anders hands him his plastic bag, shoving past him as Mitchell stares blearily down at its contents.
“Cigarettes, biscuits, and the entire Godfather series.”
“Why?” Mitchell asks, his voice hoarse as Anders sits on the springy cushions of his sofa, nudging an overflowing ashtray out of the way so he can kick his feet onto the table.
“Because if you’ve already spiralled down, you’ll need all three to recover. And if you haven’t spiralled yet, we’ll need all three to celebrate.” He thinks he sees a ghost of a smile, something minor and riddled with heartbreak and for just a moment Anders wants more from him than sex.
He wants long Sundays and bright eyes and his shitty pronunciation.
“Then I suppose we should celebrate.”
“Well,” Anders says, turning back to the television. “That’s why I’m here.”
—
They fall asleep on the sofa and Anders wakes with his legs curled to his chest, his cheek pillowed on the backs of his hands. The television is lit black after the DVD ran its course and Mitchell is slumped to the side, his neck left at an uncomfortable angle.
“Mitchell,” he murmurs, his voice rough and his eyes stinging. “Come on, Mitch, get up.” He jerks awake, his eyes wide, his chest utterly still. The texture of the sofa is printed against the skin of his cheek and for a moment he could pass for a teenager, uncertain in sleep.
“Go on,” he says, rubbing his wrists against his eyes. “Go get in your actual bed or you’ll regret it in the morning.”
“What time is it?”
Anders gestures at the cable box and Mitchell groans as he nudges him off the couch. “Go.”
“You’re staying here?”
“If I were five years younger I would happily take advantage and fuck you awake, but honestly I can’t be bothered right now.” He lays back down, his legs stretched out in front of him, and closes his eyes.
“You gonna sleep in that suit?”
“I’ve slept in worse.” He doesn’t hear Mitchell moving so after a moment he opens his eyes to see him sitting on the arm of the sofa, his head in his hands. “Hey,” he says softly, forcing himself up and thinking that this is likely another red flag for him read as white. “Come on, you’ll feel better in the morning.”
The light of the television reflects blue off his damp cheeks, his eyes lined in shadow like charcoal. “I won’t,” he whispers, his voice breaking. Anders sits up, willing the haze of sleep to pass with each step he takes to Mitchell’s side.
“Well we still have one more Godfather, don’t we. Though the third is an actual abomination, but life experiences and all that.” Anders holds out his hands, waiting for Mitchell to take them before he pulls him to his feet.
Mitchell keeps hold for just a moment too long, before he reaches up to cup Anders’ cheek with cold fingers, leaning in, eyes focused on his lips. “God save me,” he whispers as a tear falls from red rimmed lashes. “I left to get away from people who cared about me.”
“Who says I care about you?” Anders asks, because Mitchell can’t be so certain of something he has barely worked out, but his smile shows his cracked ivory heart. “What if it doesn’t have anything to do with that?”
He can feel Mitchell’s breath against his skin, he can see him lean closer, drawn by more than Bragi’s puppet strings. “That’s the most dangerous part,” he says and Anders thinks he’s got it all wrong.
“Is this a sex thing? Because let me tell you I do not think sex addicts actually exist, and that’s coming from someone who may very well fit the profile of a sex addict.” Mitchell laughs but pulls away, stepping back, and Anders regrets saying anything at all.
“No, it’s just- they’re related, and I can’t do that to you.”
“Oh,” Anders says. “You’re HIV positive.”
“What?” Mitchell pauses, off guard, like it’s something he’s never once been asked. “No, I’m not.”
“You can tell me, honestly it’s not the eighties or whatever and you’re barely a kid, the meds will have you set for life.” He thinks that a trashed living room is not the best place to be having this conversation, especially not at half past three in the morning without a single light to see by, but then again maybe it’s as close to perfect as they’ll ever get.
“I’m really - no, Anders, that’s not it. I’m clean.”
“Yeah?” He cautiously moves forward and it feels more like hunting than it ought to when Mitchell takes another step back. “When was the last time you got tested?”
“You seriously don’t believe me?”
“No, I believe you.” Anders says. “Now I’m just checking for my own benefit.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you, Anders.”
“Then let me take you home,” he offers. He wants to see Mitchell leaning over his kitchen table, wants to watch him drink from his mugs, curl under his sheets and brush his teeth over the sink. He wants to see how he looks amongst the compilation of Anders’ life because he has a feeling he would fit like artwork along the walls of his flat. “New environment, no vices, you’ll wake to clean sheets and we can make a proper breakfast because unlike you I stock actual food in my fridge.”
“Anders,” he whispers and he leans up to kiss his closed lips. He knows well enough the many connotations of his name, the ins and outs of every falling vowel so he nods his head and gestures in the direction of his bedroom.
“Go,” he says. “Sleep. I’m fine on the couch.”
There are still tears on his cheeks but this time he listens and Anders doesn’t close his eyes again until he hears his bedroom door click shut. He doesn’t fall back asleep for hours, kept awake by Bragi repeating every word back to him, a broken record played in double time.
—
He realises his mistake a week later when Mitchell pulls away, when he begins to keep his distance on the sofa, passing him plates and making sure their fingers don’t touch. Anders showed his hand, he’s been kind to him, and Mitchell’s addict heart can’t handle the guilt.
But Anders is tired of Mitchell’s soft smiles and barely there touches. He’s tired of leaving with a chaste kiss good-bye, tired of the sight of his just washed flick of curls over the dinner table and the way he holds his cigarettes between pursed lips. His attention is fragmented at work and sleep is slow to come, so when Mitchell stands in the doorway with a stack of films to choose from Anders sets his jaw and says, "Why don’t we head to mine on Friday? I’ll cook.”
Mitchell raises an eyebrow. “You can cook?”
“I’ll get you straight from work once your shift is over.” Mitchell holds his gaze and for a moment he looks years older than he really is.
“Sure,” he says, finally. “Why not?”
—
Anders pulls him through the door and Mitchell glances around, humming low in his throat as he toes off his boots and kicks them into the entry way. “This is nice,” he says.
He doesn’t answer. Instead he threads their fingers together and tugs him towards the bedroom. “Come on,” he says gently and he watches for the change in Mitchell’s eyes, Bragi’s lure sinking into his irises and pulling him down the hall. They sit on the bed and Mitchell turns towards him, a knee propped up against the duvet, watching him expectantly. “If I ask you a question will you promise to be honest?”
Mitchell nods his head to time with Bragi’s metronome and Anders reaches over to run his thumb along the knife’s edge of his cheekbone. “Do you want to kiss me?”
“Yes,” he breathes, as his thumb slides down to rest against his lips.
“Do you want to touch me?” His other hand toys with the hem of Mitchell’s t-shirt, thin and fraying and just so easy to lift.
“Yes,” he answers in breathy awe.
“And do you want me to touch you?” Mitchell’s eyes follow his progress, watching as he unbuttons his own shirt, sliding it off his shoulders.
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to fuck you?” He asks, pushing him back against the mattress, watching his hair spill like ink along the pillow. Mitchell’s eyes are closed now, lips parted as he traces them with the very tip of his finger.
“Yes,” he answers.
He thinks of his weak lungs as he breathes Bragi in and whispers, “Then let me.”
It’s almost as if he can see Mitchell’s iron clad self-control melt into furnaced heat. His shoulders relax and his chest tightens and it looks as if he stops breathing altogether as his fingers start on Anders’ belt buckle and his lips brush the skin of his neck. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t whisper his name or murmur lifeless affection. Instead when Anders runs his fingers down his chest, he sighs, more resignation than anything else, and leans up to kiss him.
It was probably worth the wait, having Mitchell’s mouth on his, teasing and soft and light until he grabs Anders by the back of his neck and suddenly it becomes hungry. He cannot help the sound he makes when his teeth dig into his bottom lip. He tastes blood but he doesn’t mind because Mitchell takes in every drop.
He pushes him back, crawling on top of him, and Anders opens his eyes with a complaint ready on his tongue but instead he whispers Mitchell’s name because he is hovering over him, his palms flat against his shoulders, with mirror black eyes.
Bragi rages behind his eyelids, telling him to struggle, to pull away and get out of his bedroom, that this will not end well. But when Anders looks up at him he cannot quite recall the fear of dying, the fear of suffocating, of losing his ability to breathe. “Mitchell,” he says again and he cuts him off with a kiss.
This time his teeth feel filed sharp, painful and Anders gasps into his mouth as Mitchell grinds against him. He moans into his skin, nosing at the side of his neck and Bragi raises his voice like an adrenaline spike and just as he opens his mouth to tell him to stop, to sit back, to let him go, Mitchell splays his hand across his throat and squeezes.
Anders’ fists fly to his shoulders, pushing him back, bucking his legs in attempt to get him off. His voice his choked off, Bragi kept at bay by Mitchell’s bared teeth grin, feral and distant. He lets go for a fraction of a second, allowing his battered lungs to pull in gulps of air until his fingers are replaced with his teeth, tearing into his skin.
He opens his mouth but no sounds come out except a breathy gasp from his pain wretched lips because this is nothing like his wooden scrape along a pile of rubble, this is excruciating. Mitchell tears into his neck just enough to knick something, to pull at something deep which sends a torrent of blood down his side, warm and wet against his shoulder blades. And when he moves to drink, to run his tongue along the blood pooling at the hollow of his throat, Anders manages one last breathy command.
“Stop.”
Mitchell’s spine snaps upwards, moving him back off the bed, and his eyes turn gilded as Anders feels the familiar pull of blood loss as it tugs on his eyelids. “No,” he chokes, stepping back.
He watches Mitchell’s face crumple in grief, though he cannot hear the scream that tears itself from his perfect throat. Instead he smears blood like warpaint across his cheeks as he stumbles forward, falling to his knees. He presses his hand to the thrumming pulse of his torn artery and Anders wishes that he’d stop, that he would just let it go because the gentle sway of blood loss is far less painful.
“Oh god, oh god.” Mitchell repeats it over and over again and it becomes a mantra in Anders’ own head, the only thing he can think as the fever rush of shock takes over. Oh god, oh god, oh god. His vision falls to black with a smear of opal grey.
“Please not you too, please not again. Anders, no.”
He sounds distant, tunnelled and buried deep in the mossy grounds of the Irish moors. He sees sprawling grassland, miles and miles of overhang and absolute, deafening silence. Everything is still, without a single touch of wind, and Anders closes his eyes.