Been watching season 1 of Being Human and while watching the episode where Sally sees Josh change I came up with this. This is my take. Hope you like it.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
He didn't know why he was thinking about Sally, or death, or the one time a month he became something other. He'd only seen her a few times in the two weeks since she'd apologized for her complete and utter ignorance. He had tried time and time again to get her to understand his particular predicament, but being the slightly vapid, young woman she was, she never really grasped his point. Admittedly, he should have been fine that he proved his point, as unintentional as it was. He should have felt validated by her foolishness, but he didn't. He felt guilty.
She was dead and even if she wasn't subjected to monthly torture, she still had feelings and he saw on a daily basis how deep those feelings ran. The trembling house, glass breaking, the flickering lights. He saw how alone she was. Robbed of her life. Denied the liveliness he caught in her eyes on occasion.
He sat at the kitchen table slurping his morning coffee when she phased in perching herself on the counter beside the sink.
"Hey, Josh, whatcha doin'? Why so glum?"
"Oh, uh, nothing. Just thinking."
"About the full moon?" She radiated pity and sympathy for his curse.
"Yeah. I mean, no, kind of." Josh calmed himself. "And about you." He faced her wearing the same or maybe even more miserable expression.
Sally didn't know what to say. She didn't know what he was thinking and replying or trying to make small talk until he decided to speak his mind had the potential to make her look stupid, which she did enough in front of Josh as it was. He wasn't the type to dismiss ignorance or let it slide. He made sure she knew where her shortcomings were. Even with those big, brown, doe eyes, she knew there was a wolf underneath, even if he didn't.
She sat in silence waiting for him to continue, if he would.
They didn't hit it off like she and Aidan. Aidan had, in a manner of speaking, embraced her. He immediately took her under his wing, offering her the help she didn't know she needed. Even wrangled Josh into helping her, in spite of his indifference to her plight. Aidan was primed for accepting her. His days among the living numbered over two centuries; he was the biggest baddest thing out there, a ghost couldn't harm him nor could it disrupt his way of life. She wasn't an inconvenience to him. To him, she was a troubled soul who hadn't gotten her door and needed the help because the longer she was stuck like this, the better her chances of losing her mind and becoming a malevolent spirit. In turn, he'd become her friend without the awkward you're a ghost this is weird thing Josh did.
Josh.
But she got it. He was human much longer than he had been a supernatural being, or, as he liked to refer to them, monsters. He was the person to inform her of that. He was also the one who told her she needed to move on from Danny, her murderer. Although, his way of doing it wasn't exactly the sensitive approach. But Sally knew that was just Josh. Neurotic, uptight, slightly judgmental, a borderline hypocrite. However, she couldn't refute that he was often right.
He had never been more right in referring to her as a monster. And to the nth degree, she was a monster, haunting a house, her fiancé, her naïve best friend. She was a monster despite not wanting to be labeled as one.
In all her months as a ghost, she hadn't felt more like one than when she'd tore into Josh for being a coward and blowing his situation out of proportion. Sure, she had it bad. Hello, she was dead, but she never considered what Josh was going through. That night of the full moon, when she watched him change, she learned differently. She finally understood the anxiety and insane caution. Just because he still had life flowing through his physical veins didn't make his monstrosity any less than hers. She also hated that it took her childlike wonder to realize it.
Josh cleared his throat drawing Sally from her thoughts. He didn't speak right away. He did open and close his mouth with his lips taking the form of words he wasn't sure he could say. He always had a hard time formulating the thoughts in his mind into actual coherent statements. He ran his hand through his hair mussing it up then scratched the back of his neck before clutching the sides of his neck with his hands. He was at a loss. He took a sip of his coffee tossed Sally a nervous smirk quirking his eyebrows.
Taking a deep breath, he expelled it over several seconds. He was finally ready to say what he thought he needed to.
"I think worse is relative."
Sally opened her mouth to interject and he held up a hand to stop her. "You don't get to find love. Not anymore, didn't really have the real thing when you were alive, which I'm so sorry for. You deserved better. You don't get to feel, or touch. You'll never experience intimacy and all the small things that make it up. You don't get the worry that I do because you have the opportunity to have something so close to real with someone as normal as Nora. You don't get to live. You are living, but not living and I didn't think about that. Is it comparable? I don't know, but we shouldn't be comparing."
"But Josh-" she popped up in the chair adjacent to him.
He hushed her. She was a ditz, but a very apologetic ditz with a big heart. "You were down and upset. I understand. I should have understood better then."
"Thank you."
He smiled relieved. "No problem."
He couldn't touch her and truthfully he had never wanted to. Too enraptured in his own pity party and monitoring the crazy and bizarre surrounding Aidan. If he didn't, the vampire would get into trouble, which he did anyway. He didn't have the time for Sally's ghost's problems because he and Aidan were dealing with life and death evils. He needed to contain himself, keep humans at a distance, and Aidan needed watching. Since Rebecca, he'd been on edge slipping up making mistakes, killing people, feeding live. Josh didn't have time for a ghost who wasn't smart enough to realize she was dead and her life was over.
He'd trade with her in an instant. To be free of his curse without worry of hurting anyone. He had thought death would have been better than the fractured fragments of a life he lived. That was before further observation and inspection and stepping outside of himself. Not to mention experiencing her troubled soul. Taking her current erratic moods in consideration caused him to think twice on the matter. One minute she was this bubbly little thing, all full up happiness brimming over, then out of nowhere she was a brooding, drenched, scorned woman crushed by her fiancé's betrayal and her plight as a spirit.
He often thought if he could pass on, find his door, maybe then, death would be more agreeable than what he had now. But what if death wasn't the end? What if he had to watch everyone go on living their lives with no idea he was there in the wind not living his own life. Present but just a figment.
He hadn't thought about that before; therefore, he had never felt the need to comfort the specter or reassure her that he was there for her. That was different after.
After she'd shown more humanity in her death than most living he knew possessed. Now as he eyed her hands balled up resting on the table, he wished to all he believed in that his immortal flesh wouldn't pass through her incorporeal being. Josh wanted, for the first time since meeting her, to let her know that just like Aidan he was there for her and understood her troubles without trivializing them as he had so many times. She was dead. Sometimes it didn't get much worse than that, and for once, he acknowledged it.
He didn't know if his words would help, but they were all he had. He could reach for her hand and grab the air where they were, which would only remind her of her inadequacy, or he could give her something she could hold onto without actual use of her hands.
"Sally."
"Yeah, Josh."
"I know how things between us have been in the past…I just want you to know you can count on me. If you need me, I'll be here."
The sun shined in her smile as she nodded her head and her eyes glossed over with tears. She had so much to say, when didn't she, but the only thing she could manage through her muted tears was a soft "thank you."
nakala