Disclaimer: I don't own Being Human, and I don't wish I did because it wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it is, and it would get cancelled when I made sure Damien Molony was in every scene!
So this is my second fic, and one I've been itching to write for months! I wrote the plot out a while ago, so as soon as I finished We Can Be Heroes, I jumped straight into this one! And ironically, it was tonight that the first clips of Series 5 were shown in a trailer for BBC Three. It looks amazing (of course!) so I'm now even more excited about it then I was. Only two months to go!
Anyway, back to the fic! Please review, I love hearing what you have to say and it's nice to know that people are reading what I write! It's set after the end of Series 4, so if you haven't seen it yet, it will contain spoilers. Enjoy! x
Chapter 1: Community Support
Bethan was well and truly fed up. As she paced the streets of Barry, the weather its usual miserable self, she was forced to assess her life again, as she did every week night at this time. It wasn't that she hated her job. Not quite anyway. Being a community support officer had seemed perfect for her when she'd started out, fresh from training and still optimistic. She liked working with people, had always thought she was good at conflict resolution, and wanted to make a difference to the community. She'd been naive then. Now she realised how mistaken she had been. Neighbourhood policing had turned out to be less of catching the bad guys and more about chasing after little shits on stolen mopeds, intervening in family warfare, and cleaning up after people who couldn't hold their drink.
It wasn't all about the day to day bleakness of the housing estates though. On Saturday nights, she got to leave her daily real life episode of "The Jeremy Kyle Show" for the bright lights of the town centre. Initially this hadn't seemed so bad. Until kicking out time that is. Then all hell broke loose. Fights, blood and puke everywhere. It wasn't exactly the job she had dreamed of.
Still, someone had to do it. To clean up the world so that it was all fresh and new in the morning. Some days she felt like she made a difference, that there were some good points to her job. Today was not one of those days.
Billy Jenks had been caught shoplifting again. A four-pack of beers and a sausage roll this time. And so, Bethan found herself checking all his usual glamorous haunts for the third time that week. She eventually found him sitting on a wall outside a charity shop, already half pissed.
"Oh look out, it's the fuzz!" He laughed mockingly. "Evening officer."
"Billy. Again? Really? I thought we talked about this the other day." She said softly, coming to sit on the wall with him. Billy had had a tough life. Dad long gone, Mum stuck deep in the depths of depression and alcoholism, it was no surprise he had gone off the rails.
"Yea well, there's nothing else to do round here. What you gonna do anyway, take me back to me mum? She won't give a shit anyway."
"I should arrest you. You fancy another night in the cells do you? Lucky for you, Mr Rogers at the shop has a soft spot for you and he wants me to drop all charges, so long as you go back and pay him for what you took tomorrow morning." Billy looked down, suddenly ashamed. When she'd first met him, he had been a regular face in the custody suite, only 14 but starting to get a bad reputation around the station. But for some reason, Bethan had found that he would talk to her, and gradually, he had started to sort himself out. He was one of the reasons she had stuck with the job. She had a purpose, even if it did seem a small one.
"Sorry." He mumbled.
"Yea, well save it for Mr Rogers. Now get off home. It's dark and bloody freezing, and I wouldn't be out here if I didn't have to be." She smiled at him and ruffled his hair. He jumped off the wall and started walking, hands in his pockets and hood up. "And don't let me see you here again tonight!" she called after him. She liked to think he had waved back, but in reality, his hand gesture, hidden by his long sleeves, had probably included a raised middle finger. She shook her head and sighed.
Getting up and setting off down the street again, she heard a groan from a nearby alleyway. Frowning, she went to investigate, expecting to find that the strange gurgling noises were kids messing about or someone who had had a heavy night out in town. It never failed to amaze her how drunk people managed to get even this early in the evening. Edging into the alleyway, she stayed quiet as her eyes adjusted to the dark away from the street lights. Hand on her baton, she crept forward and found the cause of the noises.
"Alright you two, pack it in. This isn't the place to be getting all hot and heavy. Just clear off and get a room." She flicked on her torch to reveal a woman lying on top of a man a good ten feet away. But as she moved closer, the colour drained from her face.
The woman looked up at her, eyes black, chin dripping with blood and... fangs protruding where blunt teeth should have been. Bethan rubbed her eyes, thinking she was seeing things.
"What the..." she breathed, too stunned to form a proper sentence. The woman hissed at her like a livid cat, and Bethan stumbled backwards, half falling back towards the deserted street. The woman fixed her with a terrifying grin, her white fangs gleaming in stark contrast to the dark red blood that covered her mouth, nose and chin. Bethan knew she should do something, run or scream or pull out her baton, but she was frozen to the spot. They hadn't exactly covered this in her police training. She heard herself whimper as the woman reached her, eyes still black, and grinning inanely. Bethan could do nothing but stare helplessly. A movement over the woman's shoulder caught her eye.
"Oi blood sucker, meet Duncan." A man with a heavy northern accent said, catching the woman off guard. She turned and hissed at her attacker, but the man stabbed her with something pointy and wooden before she could react. She wheezed out a pained breath, her hands clutching her wounded chest before she dropped, turning to what Bethan could only describe as dust. She coughed, wafting away the foul smelling ashes that clung to the air around her. She stared at the pile of clothes at her feet, eyes wide, feeling faint.
"Are you alright?"
She snapped her gaze up to the man infront of her. She couldn't see his face properly in the darkness, but he sounded concerned. All she could do was open and close her mouth like a fish, unable to speak.
"Tom, come on, we should go." She heard another man's voice, clipped and very English, calling from the entrance to the alleyway.
"You're safe now." The northern man said to her before running to join his friend in the street.
"Thanks." She muttered as he disappeared. She bent over with her hands on her knees, trying to steady herself. She reached for her radio to call for backup, unsure of what to say. "Hotel Quebec, this is Whiskey Tango Foxtrot six nine, I need urgent assistance. There's been a murder."
"Officer Arthur. Bethan. Please, take the time off. What you witnessed was a harrowing incident that must have been hard to process. Take a week or so, get your head together, and you'll feel much better for it. I can promise you that."
"With all due respect Sir, I feel fine. And I didn't see anything harrowing, not really. I just discovered the body."
"And disturbed the suspect who then went on to threaten you before fleeing the scene."
"Yes, but I wasn't hurt. I'm fine, honestly." Bethan smiled, trying her best to convince her supervisor that she didn't need time away from work. The greying man sighed.
"Look Bethan. I want you to take the time off, and before you start on at me again," he held up a hand to stop her cutting in, "you'd be doing me a favour. If you have a mental breakdown or something on the job, that's going to be a lot of paperwork that I frankly don't have the time for. You're a brilliant officer, but you need to know when to stop and just relax. Take the time off, go on holiday, start a hobby, get pissed every day and immerse yourself in the joys of daytime TV. I don't care what you do, just as long as you're not here. Is that understood?" he smiled at her encouragingly, despite the blunt command.
"Yes Sir." She agreed reluctantly.
"Good. Now bugger off. You're off duty with immediate effect. Enjoy yourself." He said warmly, getting up to open the door for her. She left his office and went straight to the kit room to change.
The truth was, Bethan had been struggling to accept what had happened, not least because she had kept it to herself. When her colleagues had arrived at the alleyway the night before, she had said nothing of the woman's black eyes and fangs, or of the two men who had come to her aid. She wasn't sure it had been the right thing to do at first, but the more she thought about it, the more she agreed with her decision. They would never have believed her, and she would probably be getting sectioned right now rather than given compassionate leave. Besides, she wasn't entirely sure what it was she had seen. As for her rescuers, mentioning their involvement just hadn't seemed right. They might be implicated in the murder, and they had saved her life after all. Maybe. She still wasn't completely convinced she hadn't been the victim of an elaborate hoax.
Walking out of the police station she stood on the pavement for a few moments, wondering what to do. She couldn't go home. The solitary nights would be bad enough, and she didn't exactly relish the idea of resorting to the TV for company. All she could do was think about what had happened, and work was the only thing that came close to a distraction. She wondered if she might just be better off tackling this head on. That might be the only way to move past this.
"Better than doing nothing." She muttered to herself, putting her hood up against the steady rain and making her way down the street. Decision made, she headed back towards the alleyway, desperate for answers she knew she was unlikely to find.
"Hal, can you come out here please? I need some help." Tom called hopefully from behind the counter at the cafe.
"I'm busy." Came the vampire's reply. Tom sighed and got on with serving the line of customers waiting for him to take their orders.
As soon as the midday rush was over he made his way to the kitchen, where he found Hal busily cleaning the ceiling.
"Hal." The vampire looked down at him, startled by the sudden noise. He smiled and stepped down from the crate he had been standing on. "You can't keep hiding in here mate, I need you out there, even if it's just when it gets busy. I can't carry on working on my own over lunch, people are starting to complain." He grumbled.
"But Tom..." Hal started, his face falling.
"You won't kill anyone, and if you do start looking like you're going to snap, I'll stop you. And don't do that face. You know it makes me feel guilty, but it's not going to work. You need to get back into the world mate. You can't hide forever."
"I can try." Hal answered quietly.
"You don't need to. It's been weeks since you came back to work, and all you've done is stay in here and clean until all the customers have gone. If you disinfect the walls any more the grouting's going to start falling off the tiles. You need to push yourself, otherwise you'll never feel confident."
"Push myself? And what if I push myself over the counter and onto someone's neck, hmm? You won't be saying that then."
"But you won't!" Tom groaned. "This is all in your head. You've got your routines going again, and you've got me here to stop you, just incase anything happens." The bell over the door rang, signalling the arrival of a customer. "There's no time like the present." He smiled.
"No, Tom, I..."
"Yes you can mate. Now go on. I'll be watching. Just keep calm and don't panic. You'll be fine."
"Yes, but will they?" he muttered testily. He reluctantly made his way through the beaded curtain into the cafe, and was confronted with his worst nightmare. Standing at the counter, waiting patiently to be served, was a girl. And not just any girl. A wet girl. She had taken off her sodden coat to reveal an equally wet t-shirt which clung in all the right places. Hal mentally chastised himself. Not the right places, the wrong places he thought, averting his eyes. It had always been harder for him with women. He turned to look at Tom with panic stricken eyes, but the werewolf ignored him, smiling encouragingly. "What can I get you?" he mumbled, swallowing hard as he caught her scent.
"Just a tea please. Sorry, I'm dripping everywhere. I got caught out in the rain. By choice. It's a long story." She said, shaking her head and fumbling with her purse.
"That's fifty pence please."
"Thanks." She looked up and smiled at him politely, passing him the money, but as she picked up the tea she frowned and hesitated.
"That's an interesting accent." She said, fiddling with her damp hair distractedly. Hal panicked. He knew flirting when he saw it. Not again he thought.
"Look, I don't want to give you the wrong impression..." he must have been staring just a little too intently, because suddenly Tom was beside him.
"Are you alright mate?" he asked brightly, smiling at the girl to stop her from thinking that anything was wrong. She almost dropped her tea.
"It is you!" she gasped, backing away a few paces. Hal and Tom looked at each other confusedly.
"Sorry?" Hal frowned.
"You helped me last night. That woman. You... you killed her." She stared at Tom.
"Oh. That." He said gingerly. Hal scowled at him for confirming their involvement.
"What was she? Who are you? Why were you there?" she asked, shaking her head dazedly.
"Um." Hal shrugged as Tom looked at him questioningly, seeming to want confirmation that he should tell her the truth. The werewolf turned back to the girl and smiled timidly. He held his hand out for her to shake. "I'm Tom, and this is Hal."
"Bethan." She took his hand and shook it tentatively.
"Nice to meet you Bethan. You might want to sit down."
(I just wanted to mention, if you didn't notice it the first time, have another look at Bethan's call sign (the phonetic alphabet code she uses) when she calls for backup. Yes, it is intentional - it seemed appropriate given the circumstances. Please review and tell me what you think! x)