A House with a Mural, Wales, Monday

[chosehumanity]

The mural stretched along the entirety of one living room wall. There were palm trees on it, a beach, some sea, a nice blue sky.

It was not exactly Michelangelo.

Still, it had a certain... something.

The real estate agent blabbing away in the background took away some of the ambiance, but Mitchell wasn't interested in her at all. Until...

"So it's the three of you, is it?"

He looked up. "A friend will be joining us later," he said.

"That's..." George attempted, then immediately gave up on it, his pointed finger still sticking overeagerly, a bit sheepishly up in the air. "That's..." He turned towards the real estate agent. "...it's not definite..."

"No, no," Mitchell said. "She should be here pretty soon."

What was George thinking? That they weren't getting Annie back?

"I don't know what's taking her so long..."

Nina responded kindly by flipping him the bird. The real estate agent kept rattling on regardless. "Do whatever you want, as long as you pay the rent I don't care," she said. "We've been trying to shift this place for months, nobody's takin' it, I reckon it's haunted."

Haunted?

Mitchell looked up.

George looked up.

Nina looked up.

"No, it's not," they said in unison.

George cleared his throat. "We're... really, really excited, us. It was the, um... it was the basement gym."

"Oh yeah," Nina said, grinning, and quickly veered on up. The werewolves had been looking for a place that had space to transform in for some time. Running around the countryside got tiring, especially with Nina and George both needing to mark a territory for their wolves to run around in that didn't intersect the other's.

"She's... she's excited," George added. "Can we take a look?"

"Sure," the real estate agent said, taking her folder back off the bar. "If you're interested in disappointment." She strolled out past the bar and into the hallway. Nina slipped past the bar on one end, George on the other.

Mind, George mostly did it so he could pause halfway, ring the bell sitting on the bar, and go, "Basil?"

Mitchell wasn't so interested in that kind of joking around, honestly. He sighed and sank down on a stool, turning on the TV. It wasn't much at first: some 'checking back with' the families of the victims of that attack half a year ago now, the one Daisy had almost dragged him into.

And then the screen started to flicker.

"Mitchell? Mitchell!"

Shit.

Mitchell scrambled back to his feet. "Annie!" he called. "Are you okay?!"

She was in a cage - who the hell would have the gall to put Annie in a cage?! - her fingers clinging desperately to the bars. He reached out for her, placing his hand back against the television.

"This is the waiting room," she whispered. "We wait, until... they know where they want us to go."

"Have they told you where?" Mitchell asked quietly.

"They built a special room," she whispered. There were audible tears there, little chokey noises in her voice, and Mitchell wanted to hurt something. Get her out of there. Anything. "Just for me. They're going to lock the door and they're going to burn the key."

His heart stopped. "What's that mean?"

"It's Hell, Mitchell," she said, shoving up against the bars. "They're going to take me to Hell--"

"Annie!" Mitchell called, pressing his other hand against the telly as well. Her image was starting to break up. "Annie, I'm coming to get you! Stay strong!"

Flicker. Flicker.

Gone.

And... a real estate agent giving him a really funny look, Nina and George coming up in her wake.

"...Right," she said. "Er. I just got off the phone with my boss, had a little pow-wow, just... say the word and we'll strip up the floor, put in some new furniture, make it look all catalogue-y."

George shot Mitchell a mildly curious look. "Er, that sounds great," he said. "How long will that take?"

The real estate agent shrugged. "About two weeks?" she offered. "We've got some Polish fellows, peasant stock, very--"

"Okay, no," George interrupted her. "No, we want to move in now."

"Really?" She blinked.

Nina sank down at the sofa and smiled. Pleasantly. "Please," she said.

"Mitchell?" George implored.

Yeah, whatever. Mitchell banged his hands on the TV to get the picture back. "Yeah, whatever."

Half an hour later, Mitchell was sending out distracted change-of-address text messages, and the place was, for all intents and purposes, theirs.

[[ open, chiefly for one, but also for any phone calls and so on. taken from Being Human 3x01. ]]

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[bitten_notshy]

Jack had been mostly joking about turning up on Mitchell's doorstep when he talked to Kate, but several days later he hadn't come up with a better idea. He'd finally conceded the following list of things:

1. He was not allowed to just "forget" to talk to Mitchell, let alone to George or Nina -- appealing as feeding his denial that way might be.
2. He could not explain it over the phone without sounding like he was joking or being intentionally cruel.
3. A letter would be an even worse idea.
4. Bristol in another universe was a perfectly reasonable side trip to take between Fandom and 1902 Moscow.

Then it turned out Mitchell wasn't in Bristol, and Jack was grateful he'd claimed his phone in time to get the text with his new address. He sent a reply --good to know, am back + was on way to see you -- and was at Mitchell's new front door within a few hours.

He drew a deep breath and knocked. He'd halfway expected the hairs on his neck to stand up or la bete to otherwise express alarm about this house -- but no, so far everything was quite normal.

[chosehumanity]

"Mitchell?" Nina called. She was in the kitchen, starting on dinner, but naturally her two roommates were selectively deaf. "Someone's at the door! Stop messing about with the telly and get it!"

Mitchell dropped his hands away from the device in question. It hadn't shown him Annie again since this morning, and, okay. "Fine, I'll get it," he called, slipping into the hallway.

He paused briefly by the door. He was smelling something funny...

Either way, the door opened, and Mitchell looked briefly puzzled. "Hey, Jack."

[bitten_notshy]

"Hey," Jack echoed, and shuffled his feet a bit nervously. His nostrils flared for a moment; Mitchell didn't smell quite like Sebastien, but it was close enough that Jack figured this was vampire.

Interesting.

"So, er ... you got a bigger place."

Small talk. He was brilliant.

"Can I come in?"

[chosehumanity]

"Yeah," Mitchell said, stepping aside. He was fixing Jack with a funny look, though.

Mitchell knew werewolf when he smelled it.

He had mixed feelings about this. To put it mildly.

[bitten_notshy]

Compared to Jack's feelings, mixed emotions were practically a party. He smiled apologetically and stepped in, giving the mural only the slightest askance look.

"Right, so ..." He closed his eyes. "Things did not go the way they were supposed to go in Paris. Seemed best to tell you in person. Is George around?"

He didn't quite know what werewolf smelled like yet. He had been a bit too busy fighting for his life to notice that about the beast.

[chosehumanity]

"Downstairs in the gym," Mitchell said, his words clipped. "What the fuck happened, Jack?"

He'd explain it all to George later if he had to. Right now he wanted answers.

[bitten_notshy]

That tone meant the long version could wait (and there went those hairs on the back of Jack's neck, as if they'd been cued).

"We didn't sleep for a week and decided hunting a monster with handguns was a wonderful idea," he said. "Essentially."

"It bit me." Though that part was probably unnecessary.

[chosehumanity]

"Christ," Mitchell muttered, his hand reaching up almost of its own volition to rub at his forehead.

Behind them, the door to the kitchen swung open. "Mitchell, have you offered him a drink yet--" Nina started. And then stopped, her nose wrinkling up as she identified the scent. "Jesus."

[bitten_notshy]

"Yeah," Jack said, involuntarily rising from his seat. Some of that was just manners, but some of it was Jack's discovery that Nina (or, more precisely, her smell) was more attractive than she'd ever seemed. Wolves, after all, were pack creatures.

He pushed the thought aside almost before he acknowledged it.

"Thanks, I don't really need anything." He fumbled for more words. "I ... had an accident. It's all right."

[chosehumanity]

"You didn't have an accident, you were attacked by a wolf," Nina snarled at him. (She wasn't angry at Jack, but at the situation? Most definitely, and her rage always tended to aim itself poorly.)

"Nina, will you please sit down," Mitchell muttered. Suddenly Jack's request to have George here seemed like a much better idea.

[bitten_notshy]

"It's not like I did it on purpose," Jack ... did not quite snarl back. He sat again, a fingers digging into the arms of his chair, and his tone was a bit calmer when he spoke again. "It's -- I'm doing my best with it, all right?"

He was not going to nitpick wolf vs. bound spirit of a wolf at this particular moment.

[chosehumanity]

"Who let that happen?" Nina snapped.

Mitchell got up and walked over towards her before this escalated. "Look, why don't you go help George out downstairs?"

"I'm cooking," she snarled.

Grand. This was all Mitchell needed, really. "Then please just look after dinner?" Please?

... On the upside, this had kind of taken the wind out of the sails of whatever anger Mitchell might have felt.

[bitten_notshy]

Jack had a sarcastic response on the tip of his tongue -- something about a thousand-year-old vampire and the most notorious sorceress of her time -- but he was reluctantly willing to follow Mitchell's lead. He stayed seated and did not shout.

"People who should have known better, but I'll tell you the whole story after we've eaten," he said. "It's not as if we can undo it."

[vanillajello]

Kate was on a break in Denver when she had the time to check her phone.

And unsurprisingly, she also had the time to raise an eyebrow at the text she'd received, and to call back. Seemed like as good a time as any to check in, anyway.

[chosehumanity]

Here, Kate, have a distracted, "Mitchell."

Not that that was anything new.

[vanillajello]

These days, she barely expected anything else.

"Hey. It's me."

[chosehumanity]

"Oh, hey, Kate," Mitchell said, smiling (despite the fact that it wasn't like she'd know). "How's the stewardessing business?"

[vanillajello]

"Flight attendant-y." Learn the proper words, Mitchell! "I'm in Denver. Just had a super grouchy old dude on my flight but other than that it's been good."

[chosehumanity]

"So nothing spectacular has blown up?" he asked. "You're doing fairly well then."

[vanillajello]

"So it would seem." She managed to sound lightly smug about it, too. But she felt it was deserved. "So, Wales, huh?"

[chosehumanity]

"Been here for a while," Mitchell said vaguely. "Thought we'd move house, since our previous one didn't really work out."

One day he was going to not say things like that. Probably.

[vanillajello]

Yeah, Kate didn't really believe in that happening.

"Uh huh," she said, a little dubious.

[chosehumanity]

"Anyway," Mitchell continued on doggedly, "We've got a mural now that's straight out of Hawaii."

[vanillajello]

"You'll have to send me pictures," Kate drawled, unimpressed at what she suspected was avoidance, but let it slide for now. "Why is there one, exactly?"

[chosehumanity]

"The house used to be a bed and breakfast," Mitchell said. "I guess the previous renters thought it'd add some kind of ambiance or something."

Totally avoidance.