Title: Dizzy Up The Girl
Author: obiwankatie
Characters: Mason/George
Genres: Romance/Angst
Rating: R
Warnings: Language? No spoilers, I don't think.
Summary: Growing up is hard enough, but growing up as a Grim Reaper is hellish. And being a new Reaper, George hasn't learned all the ropes and rules of dating while undead. People tend to date within their profession, and Reapers aren't much different.

Chapter Title: Broadway

You see you'd love to run home, but you know you ain't got one
Cause you're livin' in a world that you're best forgotten, around here
Goo Goo Dolls

Eternally eighteen – isn't that every woman's fantasy? Never to age or wrinkle or fade. I'm pretty sure that's why women are so obsessed with buying makeup, lotions and shit like that: some vain attempt to slow the progression of age, as if that could also possibly delay their inevitable death.

Of course, I'm not immortal. Well, ok, in a sense I can't be killed. I'm already dead. But sooner or later I'll be done being dead and just be… less on this earth and more on some other plane. Hopefully.

It's been three years since my sudden and unfortunate death. I haven't grown any taller, which I didn't expect whether I was alive or dead since my period hit when I was young, sufficiently halting the growth production gland to keep me at a proper short height. I haven't developed any more than I was when that toilet seat hit me. My hair hasn't even grown out that much, though I've debated getting it cut and trying something new.

Bottom line – I haven't changed at all. You can also add the fact that I was a virgin when I died, and I have yet to meet a charming young man whom I could spend the rest of my potentially long afterlife with. Maybe I have met him, but I sure as hell don't know. And the few guys that I've liked thus far in my afterlife have either died or been scared away. I should probably work on my people skills. I should work quickly if I want to get laid in the near future, at least.

Sex. Just thinking about it bothers me. I could always just find a random guy like Mason finds random girls. I guess I just harbor a bitter resentment for never having the chance to be utterly and completely disappointed with a roll in the hay with a member of the opposite sex while I was young and impressionable (and alive). Not that I'm morbid or pessimistic or anything. But I didn't have any luck in life, and death is just proving to be one suck-fest after the next.

I don't know why I'm feeling so horny recently. It's not as though any of the guys I'm around on a daily basis are sexually attractive. Rube's like my dad, and I've seen Mason in his torn up British short shorts. I still shiver thinking about that, and not in the good way. And the guys at my day job have succeeded at looking below average. I guess it's just the hormones.

I had to get a soul after getting off at Happy Time, so I stopped at 15th and Market, got A. Miller before he got hit by the SUV, and sent him on his way to the bright lights that formed a symphony. I guess he was into music. I don't really care. I'm hungry.

I walk into the house and find Daisy sitting on the sofa with Mason using the last of his minimally low will power to not seem completely and utterly desperate when he so obviously is. My hormonal desire upgrades to anger. Perhaps some jealousy is thrown in to the mix. Daisy always just sits there and ignores him, ignores the offerings of a guy wanting to spend the rest of whatever forever we've got with her and, instead, goes out for one-nighters and quick blow jobs, which I can't imagine getting any joy from giving out like popsicles. If I had a guy throwing himself at me like that, I can't imagine I'd just ignore it. Granted, Mason is a slob and drug addict, but he's got a little quirky charm and the accent is pretty adorable.

To keep from being angry around them, I take a round-about route to the kitchen to make something resembling food before heading up to my room and a possible book. I finally got into the Gregory McGuire books with their morbid twist on fairytales and children's stories.

There's the same variety of food in our pantry as their has been in the past year – Ramen noodles, a few cans of vegetables for variety and a box of cereal that I'm afraid to touch for fear of some sort of mold jumping onto me and using my dead skin as a new host.

So noodles it is.

A quick boil and scurry past the couple on the couch and I'm in the safety of my room, sipping on the hot broth of the chicken noodles and reading a book about the wicked witch of the west.

And when I say 'safety of my room' I really just mean the short silence of it, for my solitude is interrupted when Daisy clip-clops her way up the stairs, enters unannounced and begins her daily rant about how I brought Mason home a year ago and that he's now my responsibility since he's nothing more than a pathetic lost puppy who thinks he somehow lives here. "It's not like he has any brains to deduce that he has a home or could easily squat in some dead guy's place for a few weeks to at least give us a break from his annoying nature, but till he figures that out, you get to keep him entertained. He's followed me around nearly all day and I can't take it any more. I need to get out of this place." And as quickly as she entered the room she was gone, the front door opening and closing only seconds later.

Fantastic. Another night with the amazing fuck-up.

I put down the book and carry my bowl of dinner back downstairs. There's Mason, just sitting there on the sofa staring at the front door with a mix of longing and loss. Yup. A sad puppy.

"She's not coming back for a while, you know." I have to break the silence and get him to at least recognize my presence in the doorway.

"I think if I think about it hard enough she will return. Maybe her heel will break and she'll be forced to return to the sanctuary of her house where she'll fall into my lap and admit she loves me and wants me as much as I want her." He finally looks up at me, a crooked smile on his face.

"When I said she wasn't coming back for a while, I meant that you should probably go, too. Perhaps find a place to live besides on our sofa." His response was a dumb stare with an equally dumb head tilt that screamed 'what the hell are you doing talking to me?'. Asshole.

So, new approach. "Mason, as much as you adore Daisy you have to give her space and an opportunity to actually miss you. Getting your own place would allow you that away time that you need in order to get her. Plus, she's a high class girl. Get a good enough place and fill it with expensive clothing and shoes and I'm sure she'll flock to you like flies on honey."

He leans forward at my statement, folding his hands together as though he's considering my idea.

And, what do you know; he stands up and takes my arm, walking out of the house with me. "Then if I'm needing a place to stay, you're gonna have to help me find it. I need the best of the best for Daisy."

That's when I stop helping and start running. "No. No, no way am I helping you actually nail her! I'm inspiration, that's all. I'm not helping you get laid or get a girl or anything like that."

"Hey, no need to be a cock blocker! You want me out just as bad as she does!"

I sigh, rolling my eyes and crossing my arms over my chest as I normally do when dealing with a situation that makes me wish was I watching paint dry. "I'm not… blocking your cock. I'm just not helping you find a place to put it in! I've never even gotten any, why should I help you get more?"

Ok, so maybe that was a little too much to tell to the poor little horny British man, and it was probably the most I've ever said about the subject to anyone, but suddenly his eyes changed from pleading to pity. "You've never got'n shagged?"

I think if I had to walk through Times Square naked in order to take back the words I just confessed I would. Instead, I turn around and walk back into my house. But Mason follows me like the man-dog breed that he is. Follows right on my heels suddenly confounded with my lack of a sex life over the past 3 undead years and prior 18 living ones.

"P'rhaps that explains your bitterness and anger towards everyone and everything that moves! Listen, Georgie, sex can completely change your life! You won't have to be so uptight and unpleasant all the time! We just need to find someone that you can do it with… I mean, I'd totally shag you, but I don't think Daisy would take to kindly to me being disloyal to her so close to home, ya know? Random girl on the street she ignores, but little Georgie she lives with? She'd never forgive me."

There he goes again, rambling and getting too involved in my afterlife once again. "Ah, yes, we wouldn't want Daisy, who's never going to show any interest for you no matter how much attention you shower her with, to be heartbroken because you had sex with poor little old me."

"Wait, you wanna shag me?"

Jesus.

"No, Mason. I don't want some pity fuck or some one night thing. I got pulled into the afterlife before I really had a chance to live and experience things. It's been three years since I became a reaper and I've realized that I never really coped with it all. The dying. The more living. I was still part kid when I died, so sex wasn't really big on the 'things to do before I die' list. But now I have died and I guess it jumped up a few notches, but I still have the childish fantasy that I could have an actual relationship with someone. So then I try it, and I'm told I can't have a relationship with the living. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Search the city for a reaper that sees a relationship between the two of us? Fall in love with a ghost that doesn't want to leave this world yet? I don't want a shag, Mason! I want love. I was denied it by my mom and dad near the end of my life, I can't find anyone to stay around and show it to me now, and I'm alone even when I live with Daisy. I want love, Mason. Not just sex."

He just kinda stared at me with his jaw hanging slightly open. I guess I surprised him. Hell, I surprised myself.

He didn't move for nearly a whole minute. So I did; I walked to my room and shut the door, thinking for the second time that night that I couldn't be interrupted from my silence by someone walking into my room that lacked a lock. I don't know when I became so senile to forget that all someone had to do was twist the knob to open the door. I guess I figure that no one would bother actually wanting to see or talk to me.

Then again, after what I just apparently admitted to myself and him all at once, I guess I'm a little too naïve to think he would just stand in the dining room all night with his jaw hanging open looking like an idiot. Four minutes later, after sitting down to my book, he was in my room and standing a little too close for comfort.

"What do you want, Mason?" I mutter, going back to mumbling indistinguishably.

"You're telling me you, the ever sour and unhappy George, are looking for love?"

I know that my stare can't actually burn a hole through someone, but right now I'm really hoping some new reaper power will develop in my brain so I can burn another hole into Mason's head. "Go away, Mason. Go find a place to live and stop bugging me. I'm done with my confessions for the night and you've got a girl to go snag."

I turn back to my book, but I can still feel his stare. It's like pity, only not. I guess you could say this is where he starts to see me as something more than 'toilet girl' or where the revelation came that I could possibly be a better catch than Daisy 'Blow Job' Adair. I don't know what's going through his mind, but he's tilting his head slightly to the side and looking at me like he always looks at Daisy. Like a wolf. Oh god. I've become his new prey.