chosehumanity | A Pink Corner House and Beyond, Bristol, This Week

So Monday went about like this:

Mitchell came home with a bag of shopping he'd picked up in Baltimore a few hours before to find a man standing in his living room. He blinked once, then said, "Hey," and promptly marched into the kitchen.

Probably one of George's, or a neighbour, or something. This wasn't some American drama where the doors were bolted day and night and people at the door got greeted with shotguns, after all.

"I'm with Annie," the man clarified, which was unusual, but eh.

Mitchell found Annie, George and Nina all lurking about the kitchen trying to get glimpses of the man, which was slightly more curious. "Who's the guy?" he asked, squinting at all of them.

"Oh!" Annie said, snapping out of it. "That's Saul! A guy from the pub." She seemed positively cheerful about it all. It just made Mitchell frown at her.

"Already bringing work home?" he said, fishing something out of the bag and stuffing it in the fridge.

"Nina thinks he's handsome," George contributed, scowling from the other end of the room. He sounded a bit like a whining teenager. Though Mitchell supposed that meant that whatever fraught tension had been going on between him and Nina had sort of evaporated.

Which was good.

"Annie will back me up on this," the diminutive blonde said, from her corner, which had to mark about the first thing she'd said to Mitchell in quite a while that hadn't radiated hostility. Also a good thing.

Annie beamed. "God, yeah."

...Right. Mitchell closed the fridge, and peered through the doorway. That guy? Really? He'd seen some lads in his time, but-- "He's not handsome," he said, getting back to the shopping.

It earned him a heartfelt "Ah, thank you!" from George's end of the kitchen. All right then. Tomatoes. Where was he supposed to put the tomatoes again--?

Nina groaned. "Why," she asked Annie, "Does this always happen when you tell a man another man is handsome?"

"Yeah," Annie snorted, "It is possible for two men to be handsome." There was a brief silence, and a flicker of a few assorted emotions on Annie's face until she realised her mistake, and hastened to add, "...Three men."

George pouted.

"Although he is really handsome," Nina sighed.

"Can we please talk about something else?" George complained, looking like he was about ready to bang his head up against a wall, or something.

Nina swung her eyes away from the window to focus on George. "Well, I'm a werewolf," she offered up, laconically.

George swallowed. "I guess he is fairly handsome," he squeaked.

But Nina ignored him, poking at the window sill.

"Yes, well, let's hope he's deaf as well," Annie muttered.

But that had almost sounded like Nina was finally trying to make some sense of this, instead of throwing all the blame around. Mitchell pulled a beer out of the fridge and leaned back against the wall, looking at her. "Nina...?" he prompted.

A silence fell, though it was more like someone preparing to take a breath, no cutting tension. That... that was good. "I don't know what happens now," she said, finally. "I don't know how I feel about this, or any of you or what you expect of me, or how you think I should react."

Mitchell popped the cap off his beer. He remembered that stage. Faintly, but he remembered it, and it made his heart lurch a little for her. "Well, no one helped us," he started, slowly. "Annie was here for a year before we moved in. George was alone for six months before I met him. And until then, I had no one in the world." At least, not like this. A little white twisting of the truth hadn't ever harmed anyone.

"It's going to be different for you," he promised. "Whatever happens next, there's four of us now. Six, if you count those meddling kids." He let himself smile at her.

He could've sworn he got tentative hope from her in return.

---

And then Friday happened, and it was all right.

It started with the door bell.

Mitchell opened up the door and found a short, stout lad in a messy engineering uniform - or whatever it was - standing in front of him. "Hey. Avon and Somerset Energy. We've had reports of a gas leak, so we're checking all the households."

Gas leak? Well, that spelled trouble. "Right," Mitchell replied, "D'you need to come in...?"

"Actually, we need to move everyone out, till it's safe," the guy said, smiling in that professional manner that was supposed to settle nerves.

...Wow. That was new. "You're kidding," Mitchell said, blinking.

"What's going on?" Annie interjected, popping in from behind him.

"Gas leak," Mitchell supplied, "Everyone's got to leave their houses."

"Where have they all gone?" George added, sticking his face out through the doorway as well.

The man jerked a thumb towards the street behind him. "Just around the corner," he said, "Should only take about ten minutes, but we need to keep the street clear."

It was a nice day, though. Sunny, for the time of the year. And, well, a ten-minute gas leak check wouldn't be too bad, would it? And they'd finally get to be out with the neighbours again...

He let that thought trail off, and glanced towards Annie, a smile splitting his face as the idea dawned on him. "You know," he said, "I bet those people are going to be really thirsty..."

They walked down the street together in the mild sunlight, bundled up but happy, with Annie balancing cups of tea and coffee as they walked. Up ahead, there was a whole throng of people milling about, but they seemed to be in good spirits, for all that.

The tea and coffee helped improve that.

"I've made teas and coffee, so I don't know if you're interested..."

"There's no biscuits, don't be scared!"

"Would you like some sugar with that...?"

"Do you want tea or coffee?"

Mitchell watched her go about it - even helped her, sometimes - and felt a strange, dawning sense of pride. They had gone through hell and back together, all of them, but here they were. Surrounded by people who, for the first time in a long while, did no longer seem like they held any resentment or fear.

An old lady even pulled him aside, and said, in that earnest old-lady way, "Sorry about all that trouble a few months ago. All those people shouting at you because they thought you'd touched that kiddie..."

Mitchell just smiled, and handed her a cup of tea. "Water under the bridge," he promised.

Annie buzzed past him, and he could hear more snatches of conversation-- "...tea in a crisis, that's what I say..." "...is it Earl Grey...?" --people talking, people relating to each other, people embracing Annie, and George, and Nina, and even him.

It was cold, and they were outside, but it was okay. They were a they. They were all just human, huddled together and facing the world with a brave face.

He smiled up, and let the sunlight fill him with strange, internal warmth. "My God..."