In And Around Bristol, This Whole Past Week

[chosehumanity]

1.



Annie was spending rather a lot of time with Gilbert. Having gotten almost no details about it, this made Mitchell intensely curious: so curious that by the time she got home again after being out on the weekend, he and George clustered by the window to see if they could get an eyefull of anything as she came home. Unfortunately, they hadn't planned it well - the sudden realization that Annie was in fact very close to finding them peeking in on her had caused them to pile quickly on the sofa in as innocent a fashion as they possibly could (and being George and Mitchell, that meant they had to fumble their way through an accidental cuddle and steal each other's accessories before getting it right).

Mitchell scraped his throat. "And where have you been, young lady?" he asked. She gave him a funny look, and affirmed she'd been out with Gilbert: which he had already known.

"He took me out to the cemetary," she explained.

"Wow, he sure knows how to show a girl a good time," Mitchell scoffed, but she didn't take him up on the bait. It had been nice, she said, and it had gotten her thinking. Somehow, that assertion made Mitchell's stomach drop several feet.

"There's clearly some unfinished business, something that I didn't do in my life, something unresolved," she explained. "And when I figure it out, I can move on."

The tap creaked unexpectedly, badly, like something was attempting to worm itself up through it and possibly explode all over the kitchen in misery; Mitchell suddenly felt a keen sense of sympathy for it, and maybe even understanding. He felt roughly the same. "So what are you going to do?" George asked in his stead. "You don't know, do you?"

"No, but I'm pretty sure that it'll involve some highlighter pens and a pad of paper," she said, sounding far too cheerful for someone plotting their own demise, and bounced out of the living room, pleased with herself. Mitchell needed some air-- maybe a pint, or something--

"What's that face?" George asked, interrupting his thinking. (He experienced a strange sense of deja-vu about a conversation he'd had with Kate, but brushed it aside)

"This is just my face," he said, cautiously, hoping against all hope that George would just drop it.

Of course he didn't, though. "I think that's a good thing, don't you?"

And of course George thought so. "There's no knowing what she might uncover," Mitchell said, flatly. "Why do you think I've never mentioned anything to her?" Had to keep the household safe: that was his job.

But George's face was disappointed, and he just sighed and said, "I think you've grown attached to her, and it's clouding your judgement," being completely unfair on the turmoil in Mitchell's guts and the knowledge what something like this could do to a ghost, and leave only empty spaces behind.

(But then he was interrupted, because Gilbert had arrived, and really Mitchell had just introduced him to Annie to make her life a little easier. "What are you crazy kids going to do today?" he asked, trying to stay positive, and she smiled back at him and responded, "Um, you know, just hang out, have fun," and he eyed her and said, "This is fun?"

And then Gilbert ruined the whole point of the conversation by sighing pointedly and drawling, "Fun is such a bourgeois concept," like the 80s child he really was.)

2.



He met George's Nina-from-work by accident. Which was ironic, because it wasn't as if George had stopped talking about her for more than five minutes as of late.

He met Nina-from-work outside the hospital where George worked, right before he'd intended to pop 'round and see how George was doing. She was sitting outside smoking a cigarette, like a problem he could easily solve, nothing like Annie or Lauren.

So he sat down, and asked to borrow her lighter. After he'd lit his cigarette, he examined the thing: it had the shape of a curvy stripper on the side. He raised his eyebrows. "Is that an ironic, post-feminist fashion statement?"

She nicked it back with a glare. "No, it's the only one they had left at the off-license," she growled. She had fight in her - that was good. It might be just what George needed.

"So what's the deal with you and George?" Nina-from-work asked, finally. "Half the time I see you, you're together. It's like you're attached at the hip."

Mitchell shrugged one shoulder casually, and took a drag off his cigarette. "Are you checking me out or him?" he asked, "Because I know he worries about me getting sexually harassed on the street."

She snorted, and shook her head, and told him he wasn't her type - but obviously George was. Mitchell did the friend thing, the only thing he could do, really, and invited her over to have dinner with George tonight, the night before the full moon.

George, as it turned out, wasn't too pleased with that. "I did it because you like her," Mitchell explained, over his loud protestations, "And for some bizarre reason she likes you. Maybe she has a thing about hairy backs."

And George spluttered, and pointed out that nothing could happen because it was too dangerous, and fine, but it would just be dinner between colleagues, and he didn't have anything to eat, and-- but Mitchell knew he'd won when George started scribbling risotto ingredients on the nearest piece of paper.

"But we need to set ground rules about guests," George warned.

"Like what?"

"Like don't kill them!"

Mitchell let that one pass right over him, and grinned, and sighed, and said, "Such a bourgeois concept," and left George to flail his way through.

3.



Mitchell woke up and went downstairs and there she was sitting, Annie, shivering a little with her arms wrapped around herself. He gave her one look and knew what had happened - at least the basics. Something. She'd found something out, and he didn't need her to whisper, "At least now I know," before he'd hugged her to himself on the sofa.

The whole story came out in bits and pieces: of Owen, her fiance, kind by day and so angry by night. She'd repressed it, anything to do with it, and now it was out, an old keepsake found, Gilbert's help driving her to crack the bubble she'd erected around her memories. She told about being shouted at, and shaken, and called slut and cheap and whore and finally she told him about that night, the night Owen had found a thong in her dresser and had grabbed her and screamed, manhandled until they were by the stairs-- and then he'd pushed.

(He could fill in the rest; there was still a small tile down by the foot of the stairs, cracked into a perfect star under the force of impact)

"I had sex with Nina last night, and it was bloody marvelous!" yelled George, incongruous to a fault, humping the air in the most inappropriate way he could think of. Mitchell snatched him by the neck and hissed at him, five little words about Annie and killed and Owen.

"Just five minutes," George sighed. "Could I just have five minutes with the biggest news?"



The tap stopped its creaking and its moaning like something had struck it and fixed it on the spot; "All that stuff about the pipes and the taps, this house is like a part of you," Mitchell marvelled, watching her face, wanting to keep close just to make sure.

George agreed, and extrapolated until Annie forced out a desperately-edged, "I find out the love of my life killed me, but it's OK, because at least now we can wash up!" He wanted to slip an arm around her again, keep her safe, but it didn't seem appropriate.

"But he wasn't, though," George murmured, his eyes softening with an empathy Mitchell hadn't realised he felt for the ghost.

"Yes, he was!" she shouted, near-hysterical, tears heavy in her eyes and in her voice, "I loved him! And he loved me! It-- it felt like he owned me." He felt something for her then, dead so young that she hadn't even had the time or the experience to find out the difference between affection and possession.

But George was there first, and said, with the wisdom of all of his nineteen years, "Nobody owns you, Annie. Nobody can."

Mitchell didn't have anything to add to that.


4.



Lauren, he ran into again and again. There was no avoiding her anymore, it seemed.

He was on his way to grab the portal home to Fandom, early so he'd be in time to make it to his class, when he ran into her again. She was pale, and shivering, and unhealthy in a way he recognised before she had to say it.

"I'm clean. I haven't had any blood," she choked out, "But I don't know how much longer I can last." He felt that twinge in his heart again, and this time it was so much harder to resist, especially as she whispered, "I need you to stop me from killing. I just-- know I'm going to kill tonight."

Over her shoulder, he could see the portal waiting, blazing into life just now. He could so easily walk away again, take that portal and drown himself in being a fun teacher, in joking and mockery and drawing people into his stories. He shut his eyes. "You can't. Listen to me, you've got to stop yourself."

"I killed my first boyfriend last week," she said, desperate and hurt and everything in between, "I didn't make him one of us, I just... drank, like it could bring back some of my innocence." Her back struck the wall closest to her, and she slid down to the ground, and Mitchell could tell his portal was getting smaller, weakening. "It's all I can think about, when I can kill again, when I can feed. It's this screaming pain, in my blood and nerves, right under my skin."

He swallowed, and shut his eyes, and felt the answering pain in his own skin, usually packed away under the hipster human facade.

"And it gets shorter and shorter, the time I feel good, after I've killed," she said, and turned her big eyes on him, and he found himself promising: okay, tonight, I'll be there for you, just be there.

He would be rather amazed at how normal he managed to sound when he called Chloe about his class, later; now he simply slit his wrist with the closest possible object, and let her feed off him, driving the edge back by a sixteenth millimeter of life.

5.



They met again in a hotel room that night, and fed off each other, and left bloody handprints all over the showers. Fangs out and biting, basking in the luke-warm euphoria of second-hand plasma, staining bodies and furniture and leaving long jagged red stripes and blotches all over their bodies as they moved together. He drove into her against the bathroom wall, hearing her choke and moan, their eyes a solid black with blood spattering everywhere.

It wasn't enough and it wouldn't be, he knew that, but it might carry her through the night; still, he told her again and again, she had to go cold turkey (and that struck him with the memory of when Carl had tied him to a chair and played piano all night while he screamed and begged for more blood, just one more bite, come on).

But that wasn't good enough, she couldn't, she said, and begged him to bring her bagged blood from the hospital, and he told her again and again that it was no use but she didn't listen.

6.



The bagged blood didn't work.

"There's something wrong with it," Lauren whimpered, spitting blood all over the bath, her face distorted with frustration and pain.

Mitchell pressed his head against the doorway, and sighed. "It's not fresh from the kill. There's not enough life left in it. It might numb the pain for a while, but that's all. Don't you think I'd have a fridge full if it worked?" He was almost envious-- no, actually, there was no almost about it-- of Jack's Sebastien, or even of Mina. It seemed so much easier for them, not easy, exactly, but manageable, nothing like this crawling underneath the skin.

"Let me drink from you again, then," Lauren panted out. But he couldn't keep this up, couldn't keep lying to her.

"You just need to stop," he murmured.

Abruptly, she crawled up to her feet. "You said you'd help me!" she shouted, "We had a deal!"

So much rage. So much hope for a quick fix. They should all be envious of these other vampires, for whom the thirst was just a biological hobble you could quench with any old substitute. "I am helping you," he said, and wished for Carl's quiet strength in this. Wondered how Carl had even managed with him.

"Or maybe I'll just help myself," Lauren spat. The emotion drained from her face. Now she just looked cold. "You know, I don't really see where this relationship is headed any more."

Oh, christ. "You can't do this on your own," Mitchell pointed out, but she shoved him aside, told him she wouldn't, and christ-- Just christ.

He went after her, but the cause was lost: he was left to watch as Seth ushered her back into a taxi with promises of real blood, a real kill, and he knew they'd lost it already. Lost all of it.

It was too much. It was too raw. He needed to go be someone else for a while.

He had Portalocity's number dialed before the Friday morning sun came up. Fuck.





[[ nfb, nfi, ooc-okay; taken entirely from Being Human 1x03 and modified. Warning: mentions of incredibly severe domestic abuse, sex, self-harm, bloodplay and a drug allegory. this series is not always for the faint of heart. Also hi, I'm back. ]]

Comments

[thatsamilkshake]

1. GILBERT FUN.
2. AWW NINA
3. DIAF OWEN DIAF
456. SIGH. LAUREN. SIGH.