71 Serendipity, Friday Afternoonish

[chosehumanity]

Mitchell was planning on heading back up to Bristol sometime ... soon. If he was entirely truthful, he wasn't looking forward to his trips quite as much as he used to. The tension in the house had been racking up lately, and Ivan's warnings still rang heavily in his mind.

So: procrastination. Namely by hanging in front of the telly with a bag of crisps (occasionally using the machine in question for target practice if someone really annoying was on). He had a Portalocity subscription, after all. He could miss a portal if he wanted to.

Yep.

Ah, Friday afternoons.

[[ for his partner in DAMMIT. ]]

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[chosehumanity]

"We'll get to it," Mitchell assured her. "Grab a seat." He slipped into the kitchen to get a few more bags of crisps and maybe some left-over cake from the back of the fridge.

[vanillajello]

And Kate moved to conquer her fair share of the sofa. That was atalent that never seemed to leave her, taking up more space than a girl size ought to be able to.

Absently, she rubbed one of her eyes. They were already red so it didn't matter.

[chosehumanity]

Mitchell padded back into the room, assortment of crisp bags and half a cake made of... some kind of fruit, whatever George had been into at the time of making, and set it down on the end table.

Then he collapsed on the sofa, taking up less space in comparison. He could use his general thinness to his advantage, if need be. He picked up the remote and turned the channel to something appropriately braindead, some reality show, and dimmed the sound. "Hey."

[vanillajello]

"I was watching that," Kate complained jokingly (if a little weakly) when he turned the volume down. Then she glanced over at him. "Hey yourself."

[chosehumanity]

A hundred and twenty years, and he had absolutely no idea how to talk to teenage girls about their break-ups. Mitchell thought of Annie and plowed on. "So what happened?"

[vanillajello]

In Mitchell's defence, there were teenage girls that were probably a lot more easy to talk to.

Kate shruggged a shoulder again. "We had a massive fight."

[chosehumanity]

"Usually the start of the dumping process," he replied. "What about?" Because really he could punch Bod. Arguably. ...Okay, he'd rather avoid the punching.

[vanillajello]

"Things I've been doing that he didn't like," she said, and oh look, there was that evasive streak again. She fiddled with the hem of her shirt. "It was... pretty horrific."

[chosehumanity]

Yeah, Mitchell had picked up enough from her last time they were in Bristol to know what she was talking about, and he couldn't really blame Bod.

But he wasn't here to look after Bod right now; he had to lend his big brother services to Kate. "C'mere," he said, after a brief pause, extending his arm for a half-hug.

[vanillajello]

Kate hesitated briefly, then leaned in. It wasn't like she hadn't already blown her cover if she'd been wanting to play unaffected and totally okay.

"Everything sucks ass," she muttered.

[chosehumanity]

"Life's got a habit of it," Mitchell agreed, "But it'll start looking up again. It's just right now that sucks massive amounts of arse."

[vanillajello]

"It's just so fucking unfair," Kate said, making a face he coudn't see. "I mean, we just had our six month anniversary and everything."

[chosehumanity]

"Bad timing," Mitchell agreed. He was fairly certain his job at this point wasn't to say anything particularly complex just yet. She could talk.

[vanillajello]

And oh, could she ever talk, once she got going.

"Right? And now he thinks I'm-- that I'm a total skank, or something." A pause. "Well, he says he thinks I'm a liar and a cheater, but what he really thinks is that I'm a slut. I don't know, I guess I should be happy to be rid of someone who'll turn his back on me that easily."

[chosehumanity]

He nodded in all the right places - it sounded like the thing to do.

"Maybe he was just... in shock," Mitchell tried, finally. "And you're definitely nowhere near a slut."

[vanillajello]

"Thank you, but I did know that." She tried for dry, but that thank you came out far too sincere. "And he was being an ass."

And he'd looked so damn hurt, for a while. So devastated, and it still made her chest feel tight as hard as she tried to fight the feeling.

"He even gave me my necklace back."

[chosehumanity]

"Must've hurt," he said, quietly.

[vanillajello]

That was far too obvious to even warrant a direct response.

"I gave him all his stuff back," she said instead, subdued. "Everything I could find."

[chosehumanity]

"Well, I hope for his sake he didn't leave anything short and pointy behind," Mitchell said, giving her shoulder a little squeeze.

[vanillajello]

Kate snorted, though it was quiet. "What, afraid I'm gonna get all stabby?"

[chosehumanity]

"Well, you never know," he returned. "A woman scorned, and all that."

[vanillajello]

"Yeah well, I don't even wanna see him," she sighed, resting her head against his shoulder. "So that'd make stabbing him a little hard."

[chosehumanity]

"You can come back to Bristol for a while, if you'd like," Mitchell volunteered. "I was about to pack up."

[vanillajello]

"Oh?" She sounded way more hopeful at that prospect than she would've liked to. "I'm not really feeling Fandom right now, and it's too early to go to Kansas for Christmas."

[chosehumanity]

"I can't say it's the most cheery place at the moment," Mitchell said, pulling a face. "George is being a bit of a cunt, and the snow's not helping." To put it mildly. "But you know you're welcome."