Title: Wishing for it only makes it bleed
Fandom: Being Human
Pairing: Hal/Leo (unrequited)
Spoilers: General for series 4
Warnings: Swearing; racist abuse; masturbation; inadvertent auditory voyeurism (is that even a thing IDEK); attempted non-con; violence.
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Title borrowed from Tom Waits.
Feedback is love. 3
Summary: It's the morning after the night before, and maybe things look different in the cold light of day.
Leo flinches awake. It's daylight; his throat is raw from howling. A vampire is standing over him, and the wolf instinct launches him for the man's throat – but something yanks him back and he lands on his backside with a thud. There's a chain around his waist, fastening him to a cast iron radiator. The vampire smirks down at him, and Leo bristles at that, his chin jutting and his lips pulling back in a smile that's nothing but teeth.
"Are you going to bite?" There's amusement dancing behind the vampire's words and glinting in his eyes. With his crisp, white shirt, and every hair slicked into place, he looks every inch the man who strolled into the cellar all those deaths ago and pronounced the dog an excellent specimen. They're not in the cellar now, but Leo is still in chains. He gets to his feet, naked and dirty, and when the vampire looks him over with that same appraising eye, Leo refuses to cover himself. This is how God made him, and he's not ashamed.
"Where are we?" Leo demands.
"You don't remember?" The vampire – Hal: it's coming back now, the words they exchanged last night – simply shrugs. "Well, I don't suppose you would. You weren't exactly yourself when I brought you here."
"I do not think that either of us was himself last night." Leo doesn't want to give the vampire any further satisfaction, but the betrayal stings and it bleeds through into his voice. "All that fine talk about being kind, about wanting to be saved –"
Fury twists the vampire's face – he's close, far too close, and Leo jerks back as far as the chain will allow. Then the man's head drops.
Hal's voice is so soft that a human would struggle to hear: "I meant every word."
"So did I," Leo tells him. "So did I."
A jingle and a click, and the chain falls away under its own weight. This time, Hal takes the offered hand.
It turns out that they're in a safe house of sorts. It's spartan, but compared to his previous accommodation it feels like the Ritz. Leo soaks away the grime in an old zinc bath tub, and he emerges to find Hal rummaging through the wardrobe. Leo wants to get away – away from this place, from his pursuers. Away from this man. It doesn't feel right, going to ground with the enemy.
"Relax," Hal says. "None of the others know this place exists."
Hal laughs at his discomfort, but it rings as false as it did in the cellar, and when Hal passes him a bundle of clothes the vampire's hands are shaking. Hal unbuttons his shirt while Leo fastens his.
"What are you doing?" Leo asks.
"This is where you get your chance for revenge," Hal tells him.
There's a cut on Hal's cheek, and a slowly swelling bruise: that big vampire must have landed a punch before Hal staked him. The wolf is still close to the surface, and the vampire's blood is sweet in Leo's nostrils. Maybe they're not so different, after all. Leo needs all of his understanding in the days that follow, as Hal falls apart in front of his eyes. He imagines that this is what he looks like at full moon – shedding his humanity, piece by piece, until there's nothing left but rage and hunger – but with the vampire it takes days.
Leo starts by chaining Hal to a chair, but that doesn't last long. Hal manages to tip it over and comes close to breaking free, and after that Leo secures him to the bed. Leo smashes the chair anyway, and whittles one of the legs into a point. He doesn't enjoy playing jailer, not one little bit.
"Let me go, you fucking nigger," Hal spits. "You're the one who belongs in chains."
The man must be flagging: his earlier cruelties had a sharper edge. But, sharp or blunt, there's nowhere Leo can go that's out of earshot, and the place is starting to feel like another sort of cage. He reminds himself that, this time, he chose to lock himself inside.
The sweat pours off Hal, gluing the trousers and the vest to the straining contours of his body.
"I've seen you looking," he whispers when Leo checks the tightness of the chains. "Imagine the things we could do if you let me go. I can give you a few suggestions."
This is worse than the threats and the taunts; worse still, Hal almost seems to mean it, and the invitation in his smile looks sincere. Leo clamps a hand over the vampire's mouth: he won't dare bite.
"If you don't stop talking like that, I will gag you." Finally, Leo gets to have the last word.
At some point during the full moon, Hal stocked the cupboards with bread and milk and tea. A supply of tinned food, too, and Leo wonders just how long Hal is expecting this to go on.
"Please, Leo," the other man whines. "I can't stand this any more."
Hal said that he'd been many men, and Leo's met a few of them by now. But he thinks this might just be the worst: a man Hal's age sobbing and begging like a child. Then Hal babbles out a confession – and another, and another – a litany of his sins, and Leo realises that there are still new depths to plumb. But it doesn't last forever, despite the way it sometimes feels, and when Leo unchains Hal for the last time the vampire squeezes his shoulder with a shaking hand, and offers him a weak smile. Leo stops carrying the stake in his pocket, but he leaves it on the mantelpiece in easy reach.
After that, it's both better and worse. Hal has his bad days, the days when he blows his cigarette smoke in Leo's face and calls him 'dog'. When he hurls his cup across the kitchen in an explosion of china and scalding tea. Leo sighs, and spends the next half hour coaxing and bullying him into cleaning up the mess. The walls are closing in but they daren't leave, not yet.
They play poker for matchsticks to pass the time. Leo presses Hal for stories – the places he's travelled, the things he's seen – but he soon learns that the past is dangerous ground. They bicker and get under each other's feet, two grown men unaccustomed to sharing their space, and the atmosphere thickens with more than just Hal's cigarettes.
There's just the one bedroom, so they take it in turns to sleep on the sofa. Sometimes at night Leo hears it – the stifled moans, the frantic slide of flesh against flesh – and he wishes that werewolves didn't have such sensitive ears. Maybe it's what Hal indulges in instead of the blood; maybe it's what distracts him from the hunger. Leo pulls the pillow over his head and tries counting sheep.
Hal has his good days, too, and they're far more frequent now. He loses at cards, and if he isn't exactly happy about it then at least he doesn't bare his fangs. And when Leo burns the toast, Hal's knuckles whiten around his cup, but he sits and finishes his tea. Leo smiles, because he knows what it's costing the man.
"Well then," Leo says, "what is your plan?"
"Plan?" Hal echoes, and Leo won't deny that his heart sinks.
"You're the man with the safe house, with all of this." The suitcase standing ready in the corner; the car keys on the hook by the door. "Surely you must have a plan."
"Your ordinary life." Hal still doesn't like to look him in the eye. "I thought that was what you wanted."
"It has to be what we both want," Leo tells him, because that's the only way that this is going to work. Hal smiles, but Leo can see the tightness around his mouth. "What is it?" he asks.
Hal just shakes his head. "That barber's shop," he says. "I can think of worse things."
It's all decided, but Hal's still uncertain: what if he relapses when he's faced with temptation? Then Hal stalls for time: he needs to buy petrol, and maybe they should wait until tomorrow, make an early start. But Leo's sick of the smog, and he wants to breathe clean sea air.
"Pack," he growls, and half an hour later they're locking the door behind them. Hal has a case in each hand; Leo has nothing except the clothes on his back – and even those are borrowed – but he grins as they climb into the car. He could have hidden the stake inside his jacket, but he chooses to leave it behind. Someone needs to make a gesture, and Hal doesn't have the best track record.
Hal drives as fast and as far as he can, and they don't stop until they hit the coast. They reach Southend just as the sun is setting, and when Leo winds down the window the car floods with the tang of salt. They check into a little hotel just off the promenade, quiet, clean, and cheap. Good enough for now, even if Hal doesn't seem too thrilled by the prospect.
When Leo goes to collect the other man for dinner, there's no answer to his knock. And no light showing beneath the door. God knows what Leo must look like to the staff – a wild-eyed lunatic, dressed in clothes a size too small, babbling some story about a sick friend – and they probably just hand him the pass key to stop him making more of a scene.
Hal isn't in his room. He hasn't even unpacked, although his cases are on the bed and that's enough to make Leo hope he hasn't run at the first opportunity. That he's not to blame for pushing the vampire out into the world before he's ready.
"It isn't what you're thinking," Hal says when he returns. Which isn't an explanation, but Leo doesn't press when the other man pulls a wad of bank notes from his pocket, and pays their bill for the next two weeks.
Two weeks: that will take them through to the full moon, and Leo wants to be settled by then. He shouldn't really be in such a hurry. He could get on a bus or a train and go somewhere deserted. He's done it before: he used to sneak out of Mrs Llewellyn's boarding house and hike into the hills above the city. Before the vampires found him. But something inside him wants its own place, its own territory, and it just won't let the idea drop.
Leo's fraying around the edges. He's tired of lying awake at night, listening to the restless pacing from the room next door, or the furtive sounds of pleasure – and, by God, the man seems insatiable. Sometimes, Leo almost blushes when he has to face Hal across the breakfast table. Sometimes, he catches Hal's unguarded features, and there's so much hunger, so much need, that Leo has to look away. They're together too much, and it isn't healthy.
So Leo starts going out during the day, talking to the local barbers, to the letting agents. Hal stays behind, locked in his room and refusing to let even the maid – especially the maid – inside. It should be funny, the thought of the vampire trapped among the chintz and lace doilies, but Leo worries about leaving him unsupervised.
Leo finds the shop by accident – the owner left in a hurry, and has yet to formally relinquish the lease – and he's decided that it's perfect before he discovers it's already occupied. Pearl laughs, and cries, and clings to him, and the last thing that he needs is the responsibility for another lost soul. But Leo is the first person who's seen Pearl since she died, and when she looks at him with wide, tearful eyes he finds he just can't disappoint her.
Leo thinks it's a wonderful idea, just what he and Hal – what the three of them – need, but somehow he forgets to mention Pearl when he describes the flat to the other man.
"Buy the place," Hal tells him. He's in a cheerful mood this evening: it's Dickens lying open on the table, not Dostoyevski.
"I'll go to see the bank manager first thing in the morning."
"No. Buy it outright" – Hal hefts his briefcase onto the bed – "with this." There's a row of gold bars, wrapped in cloth, sitting in the bottom of the case.
"I do not want your charity," Leo snaps.
"A loan, nothing more." Hal at least has the good grace to sound embarrassed. "I'll even charge you interest, if that will make you happy."
That's as close as Hal is likely to come to an apology. It's been a good day, and Leo doesn't want to spoil things with a row. He closes the briefcase, so he doesn't have to look at the emblem that's stamped into the gold, and he decides that he won't mention Pearl just yet.
Of course, he can't put it off for long. "How would you feel about sharing with someone else?" he asks as Hal stands, expectant, outside the door to the barber's shop.
"I thought you said there were only two bedrooms."
"There are. But she won't be needing her own room." Something ugly flares on Hal's face and, for the first time in almost a month, Leo is afraid of him. "Pearl's a ghost," he blurts. "She won't be any trouble."
As it turns out, that's not quite true. But they manage. If Leo sometimes hears raised voices that fall silent when he walks into the room, then at least it happens less as time goes by. And if Pearl has a sharp tongue on her, then Hal can give as good as he gets. And if can't – well, patience is a virtue. As for the things that Hal says to Pearl when he gives up smoking: least said, soonest mended. But Hal only does it to help Leo's asthma, so he can't complain too much, and living together can bring out the worst in them, as well as the best.
She may be a ghost, but Pearl breathes life into their home. She breathes new life into Leo, too: he's young, to be sure, but, for the first time in what seems like forever, he actually feels it. Every time they go out – to a concert, the cinema, a dance – he feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders. He thinks that it's just the change of scenery, the chance to have a drink, to rejoin humanity.
Somehow, thirty years slip by, and by the time Leo realises that Pearl's the one, he's left it far too late. On his fiftieth birthday, Pearl drags him from his chair to dance, and he's out of breath before the tune has finished. He sinks back into his seat and he watches as Pearl makes Hal her next victim. They both look so young – not a grey hair, not a wrinkle – just the same as the day he met them.
The two men sit talking into the night. Pearl has waived the usual rules, and Hal produces a bottle of Napoleon brandy.
"Your good health," Hal says, and before Leo decide whether to read anything particular into that, they clink their glasses and drink the toast.
"I never was sure why you stayed," Leo says. He often used to worry, but old secrets can do no harm now.
"I told you at the time."
Leo hesitates. "That's all there is to it?" he asks, but Hal is staring resolutely down at his hands.
"It's late," Hal says, and he knocks back the rest of his brandy. "If you'll excuse me, I think I'll turn in." His glass thumps onto the table with a little too much force.
Sometimes Leo thinks that if he lives to be a hundred he'll never quite understand his friend.
Times change, and if they don't quite change with them then they don't get left too far behind. Pearl scorns the fad for those new microwave ovens, but she gives in and lets Leo buy a colour television.
"Why are you watching a cartoon of a singing child?" Hal asks.
"It's just an advert," Leo tells him. The thing is bizarrely compelling, and he knows that that song is going to be stuck in his head. "It's for some new orange squash."
Hal grimaces, as though he's insulted by the very concept. Leo laughs, and the next time he goes shopping he picks up a bottle, just to see that look on his friend's face again.
"It's too orangey for crows," Hal warbles a couple of days later, blocking Leo's path along the hall. "It's just for me" – the vampire waves a hand vaguely in front of his chest – "and my dog." The hand brushes down Leo's chest.
Leo steps around him. He pauses in the doorway of the kitchen – it's not like Hal to be rude – and finds his friend propped against the wall, staring at him. There's a strange look contorting his features: grimace or grin, Leo can't quite make up his mind. He pulls the kitchen door shut behind him.
"Hal hasn't been drinking, has he?" he whispers to Pearl. She rolls her eyes, and maybe Leo's imagining it, after all.
"You know there aren't any spirits in the flat."
"Only you," Hal laughs, shoving open the door. "I can hear you, you know, talking about me behind my back." He turns on Pearl with a leer. "What do you say to him when you're alone?"
Pearl shoots a glance at Leo. "I'm not going to stand here and listen to this," she snaps. "Whatever it is, you two sort it out between yourselves."
"That's better," Hal says, when she's gone. "Just you and me."
For all that he looks drunk, there's a quiet menace in the way that Hal advances on him. It puts Leo in mind of a long-ago cellar, and remembered fear shudders down his spine. The small of his back jars against the worktop and there's nowhere left for him to go, but Hal keeps on coming, right into Leo's space, and then Hal's body is pressed up against his.
"Leo," Hal slurs, and there's sweat gleaming on the vampire's forehead, and in the stubble on his top lip.
"Hal, I don't know what you think you're doing but –"
Hal shifts forwards, letting his weight push them both against the cupboards, and Leo feels something stir against his thigh. He shoves at Hal's shoulders, but the vampire pins him in place.
"You can't tell me you've never thought about this," Hal murmurs in his ear, and there's no doubting the man's intention as he starts to rub against him.
"Please," Leo says, because this isn't Hal – none of this is Hal – and he struggles in earnest now. But he's got no leverage, and his muscles aren't as strong as they used to be, and he feels like his heart is going to thump its way right out of his chest. All he achieves is to bring a grin to Hal's face, and the vampire's hand closes bruisingly on his hip.
A flash of movement, a metallic clang, and Hal falls to his knees. Pearl stands there, a frying pan clutched in both hands and tears streaming down her face. Hal crumples the rest of the way to the floor. They find the chains, packed into a box on top of Hal's wardrobe, but they're rusty and Leo doesn't trust them. So they take the straps they use every moon and they tie Hal to his bed.
"Here we are again," Hal says when he wakes, and he's back to not meeting Leo's gaze.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Leo asks. But maybe he did know all along – those hungry looks, those speaking silences – and maybe he just hid from an unwanted truth.
"I didn't want to scare you off. And then …" And then they met Pearl – Leo met Pearl. "You don't love me." Hal's words come out flatly, but Leo can see the way his lip trembles, the too-rapid blinking of his eyes.
"I do care about you," Leo tells him, reaching out instinctively, "just not like that."
He pulls his hand back, wary of inflicting more pain. Hal squeezes his eyes closed and, whatever else the man might be, he's Leo's best friend. Leo rests his hand on Hal's shoulder.
"Is that going to be enough?" Leo asks.
Hal opens his eyes – they're bright, and not only with tears. "It always was," he says.