Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. I just wanted to see more of them before Toby Whithouse and the BBC put them back on TV.
Tom pulled the kitchen door shut behind him. The torrent of foul-mouthed abuse and horrifically violent threats screamed at his back subsided in volume, but it carried on for another long few seconds before Hal quietened down. There was a moment of silence, then the vampire called out, more softly. "Sorry."
"S'all right, mate." Tom called through the door, over his shoulder. A few weeks in to this new routine, he knew better than to go back in there now. Not unless he wanted to start him off again.
Alex was sitting on the kitchen counter, tapping her heels against the cabinet door. "So, he dinnae like his sandwich then?"
"Nah, I got all the crusts off this time. He looked happy enough with it. It was the tea. Too hot. Forgot the extra cold water, didn't I. My own fault, really." He showed her the mug of offending tea.
Alex looked at it, surprise widening her eyes. "He dinnae throw it at yez. That's progress I suppose."
"Too right!" agreed Tom enthusiastically. "He even had a sip and gave it right back to me before he kicked off."
"Great". Tom often missed sarcasm.
He tipped some of the tea down the sink, and ran the cold tap to top it up again. "There. Nearly halfway cold!"
"Can I have a look?"
"Ey?"
"At the tea?"
"Why d'you want ter look at it?"
"To... To check I know how tae do it when it's my round."
Tom would have questioned her interest . She did not have as much time as him for Hal's more demanding preferences, but maybe tea was just a thing with ghosts. "Alright." he said, holding it out to her.
Alex grinned, and fished around in a draw near her seat for something. She grabbed whatever it was and rentaghosted across the room next to Tom. She stuck a thermometer in the tea, and watched it intently. Tom noticed that it was the thermometer from Annie's first aid kit. It had last been used to check little Eve's temperature. He didn't say anything.
"What?" she said, registering that Tom was watching her. "I cannae feel how hot it is. Right, got it. Are ye sure this is how he likes it?"
"Well, I ain't never measured it properly, but yeah. This is about how I usually make it."
Alex pulled out the thermometer and wiped it on a tea towel, then double checked the result. She gave a small, satisfied smile, but didn't say anything.
"Better get this to him." Tom turned towards the door again, then suddenly remembered what was waiting for him in there. He steeled himself. "Better go now anyway. Else he'll only work himself up more."
"I'll give it to him. I can be in and out before he gets a chance to yell."
"Would yer?" he asked with noticeable relief. "Thanks very much, Alex."
He handed her the mug. She took it with mock ceremony, saluted him, vanished for a second then reappeared back in the kitchen.
"Thank you." called Hal from the living room.
"Not a problem!" Alex called back. "Right into his hand!" she said to Tom. "He looked too surprised to do anything. In and out, textbook!"
Tom grinned at her. "Brilliant. You really got the hang of that."
"I know, right!"
They sat in a mostly comfortable silence for a moment, enjoying their success. They weren't interrupted from next door, which proved their small triumph.
"Do ye know what temperature it is he likes his tea?" said Alex after a bit.
"Like I said, I ain't never measured properly. I just know it's nearly cold."
"Hmm. It is pretty lukewarm, yes." said Alex. "Actually, I've done a few checks on his tea, and it's always within a couple of degrees of thirty seven degrees C."
"Is it? Right, thirty seven degrees. Really?"
"Do yez get where I'm going with this?"
"No. No idea, sorry." Tom admitted.
Alex sighed. "Not tae worry. Just a bit of year nine biology coming in to be useful in a way I would not have expected." She resumed her seat on the counter, and went quiet. Then she said, looking at her feet, "You know when I came into the cafe, and I asked if he was on day release..."
Tom looked up at her, suddenly realising what she was asking. "Alex," he started.
"God, I'm nae blaming you!" she said. "I knew he was a bit... odd. But all you said was he was shy."
"He is shy."
"I know, I know." A moment.
"I'd never seen him like... Like that." he said, nodding his head towards the door.
"Really? I'm new to all this but I'd have thought anti-social behaviour kind of goes with the territory."
"You know that's not him really!"
"Well, prior to our epically bad first date, I'd have pegged him as more Count Von Count than Dracula if you'd have told me..." she paused. Tom looked at her blankly. "O-kay... I forgot, deprived childhood. But, you dinnae tell me."
Tom said nothing. "But, I did insist on that date." she sighed. "I'm sorry, Tom. It's just... I'm just going over all the what ifs. But it comes down to "Cutler was a prick.""
Tom's fists clenched at the mention of the name, and he shuddered. If Hal - and Alex - hadn't been there that night... He would owe Hal forever for that.
"He weren't a very nice man." he said carefully after a while. "Annie did good."
Alex looked at him, wondering how much he knew about Hal and Cutler's shared history. She hadn't told him. She'd also spared Tom the details of how badly Hal has fallen off the wagon - she had told him Hal had drank her blood, she didn't mention the festering, maggoty, gelatinous puddle she'd found him licking from the floor. She felt contaminated by the memory, somehow, as if that moment of disgusting intimacy between them was something she should be ashamed of.
No, Tom had not seen that side of him. In some ways, she knew Hal better than Tom.
In that unnervingly intuitive way, Tom picked up the gist of her thoughts. "I only known him a couple of months. He was so good and gentleman-like, I sometimes thought even McNair woulda liked him." He grinned at his joke, forgetting that unlike Annie, Alex had never met McNair. "And that's the man we're helping. Not the one who calls yer those 'orrible names and says he's going to hurt your dad. The one who hid from yer in the cafe and stopped me killin' all those people and makes little paper birds and that. We're going ter get him back."
"And yez sure that's the real Hal York?"
"Eh?"
"Hal York. Jesus, do you nae know his second name?"
It was clear from Tom's face that he didn't.
"Do you know how old he is?" she pressed.
"Oh, he's really old. He's an Old One."
"Yeah, but, he's five hundred years old."
That number did seem to register with Tom.
"Did you not know? He never mentioned anything a bit... historical?"
Tom looked down, and Alex was astonished to see the werewolf blush. "He says strange stuff all the time, but I never learned about the olden days before cars and cookers and that. Did he really say he was five hundred? I never asked him."
"How can we know who he really is if he's been around that long? My ex went backpacking to Thailand for a month and said he was a whole new person afterwards. How many people does that make him?" she said, nodding at the door. "And what kind of a name is Hal, anyway? How is that short for Henry? It nae makes any sense. Sounds like some kindae American name, 'cept probably naebody had even discovered America when he was a bairn..."
She ran out of steam as Tom remained quiet, letting her talk. He had overcome his surprise about Alex's revelations. They didn't change his view of Hal really.
"It don't matter who he was before or where 'e's come from. People can change. Just sometimes they need a bit of help, is all."
Listening over the rattling noise of his tied hands involuntarily shaking against the chair, Hal hoped Tom was right. He carefully lifted the mug of tea, leaning forward to meet it with his lips within the very limited distance he could move his arm. He sipped the warm, thin liquid. The only thing that was good about it was the temperature, as it had always been. That small similarity to what it was he really needed was exquisite torture.
Author's notes: Thanks for reading. I hope you liked it. I just had the idea about the reason behind Hal's odd tea preference, and I also wanted to write something between Alex and Tom. Reviews make my day!