The Trick to Being Human
Chapter One
A werewolf, a ghost, and a vampire all walk into a bar. But if they don't tell anyone what they are, would they be treated any differently?
"You need to say something to him," Kurt bristled as he followed Mercedes into the kitchen.
Settled at the table Tina looked over the newspaper at her roommates, almost able to recite the argument word by word to herself.
"Why me?" Mercedes snapped, "You're the only one who's bothered!"
"He doesn't even drink coffee, he just keeps making it and leaving it all over the place," Kurt argued, "I can't even make coffee for myself because there are no cups to be used!"
"Tell Artie, not me," Mercedes snapped opening the cabinet in an effort to end the conversation, but Kurt wasn't to be dissuaded. The closer it came to the full moon the less likely he was to back down coupled with more erratic behavior.
"You brought him here! We didn't need another roommate, particularly a freeloader. He can't even get a job because of his condition!"
"Mercedes just has the habit of picking up strays." Tina remarked dryly ignoring the stern look Kurt shot at her. "Besides we don't have any more coffee. It was your turn to go to the store."
"My turn?" Kurt retorted his voice growing louder, "It's supposed to be your turn!"
"It's too sunny out."
Kurt turned to Mercedes who was looking very intently between two unlabeled bottles.
"I can't help the fact that she's nocturnal," Mercedes replied as she opened a bottle, and reared her head back was the odor that come from it.
"You go out in the daylight," Kurt protested his teeth on edge, "you don't even sparkle-"
Tina lowered the paper, her eyes darkening over to pupiless black that made him gulp and tugged at his scarf.
Mercedes not so discretely snorted, hastily turning it into a cough as Kurt swung his head in her direction.
"Fine," he slumped dramatically into his chair, crossing his legs in disgust, "I'll go."
"Go tonight, we're out of-"
Kurt leapt up out of his chair, upsetting the table. Tina picked up her cup before it could topple to the floor. "Tonight is a full moon! You can't possibly-"
"I know," Mercedes turned away from the counter forcing a smile, a sign that she had forgotten once again. "You'll be at work won't you?"
"Speaking of which," Tina said glancing at her watch as Kurt scowled, "the sun's starting to set. We need to get going."
"Just be careful," Mercedes said as she looked over at them, "and don't eat anything or anyone."
Tina thought for a moment the caution was directed at Kurt, but he had already disappeared through the doorway.
"I'm on the wagon," Tina replied but Mercedes fixed her with a hard stare.
She met the gaze for a moment until Mercedes looked away.
"Don't forget to buy some milk while you're out!"
It was the beginning of a bad joke, a werewolf, a vampire, a ghost renting a house together. It was from a plan, the each in their own independent means had found the notice for the house, and arrived roughly at the same time , too stubborn to yield to the others. Kurt came look for asylum, from his condition and most likely from his past as well. Tina was looking for a drastic change as she broke away from the coven. Mercedes as , well a somewhat, practicing Wiccan she game hunting monsters looking for ghosts but finding herself with more than she bargained for. And as for Artie he showed himself to them not long after they arrived. The little mysteries of the household, cups of coffee on the table, the newspaper brought in every morning, the curtain drawn open even after they were closed the night before, solved with his appearance.
It shouldn't have worked, they putting off chores and tried to pass errands on to the next person, but oddly enough it did. They had their spats, and Kurt wasn't above making a snide comment when she put blue streaks in her hair, but the house that was so empty for so long was starting to feel like home. Though there were nights like tonight she was worried it might not.
"I work for an hour," Kurt said as they rode up in the elevator, as he adjusted the ill-fitting scrubs in the reflective surface, "and I'll say something came up, and sneak into the old psych ward."
"You're running out of relatives to kill off," Tina said bemused leaning against the elevator walls, staring in interest at his reflection. "If Lopez stopped lusting over the plucky intern, she'll catch on sooner or later. They don't call her CTB for nothing. And don't forget Sylvester, I think she's on to us."
Kurt laughed, put it was hollow sticking in his throat. While he grew brasher the closer the full moon came, he also grew frightened. Kurt kept his clothes folded and pressed exactly, and welcomed disarray into his life as much as a twister, even if disarray came right on time once every 29 days.
The elevator dinged as it hit the floor.
"I'll see you in the morning."
Tina waved at Kurt as he disappeared down the hall, to the cabinet where he would stock supplies before he made his grand disappearance.
Heading towards the nurses' station to gather charts to do inventory on the ward's closet, she watched as Lopez leaned a bit too closely as she read the charts Brittany held. The blonde as usual didn't think much of it, as she continued to read aloud the status of the pediatric patients under her care. Tina let her eyes slide pass them as she surveyed the TV monitor, only watching with interest as the door closed.
No, she narrowed her eyes at the sight. Open on its own.
Forgetting the charts, she purposely made her way through the hallway, heading towards the ICU. She saw the door propped open and caught sight of the figure bent over the patient.
"Step away from the bed," Tina said as she closed the door behind her. "Your bedside manner stinks."
Jesse looked up as he reached over for the tubes and wires for the patient's chart.
"Nice to see you too, it's been what, a decade? Haven't changed a bit."
"The Hospital's off limits," Tina said firmly as Jesse flipped through the charts.
"You don't say," he said, reading off the chart, "Principal Figgins. Apparently investing in anti-embolism stockings makes you rich, who knew. Type B- minus, though a bit high on the cholesterol" Jesse dropped the chart and playfully pulled at the tube revealing the unconscious man's neck, "not a personal favorite but I don't mind a little junk food now and then."
Tina started at his words, "Don't you dare."
Jesse looked up with a small smile playing on his lips, his fangs prominent challenging her. "And you're going to stop me? Look at you, you're shaking." Tina hid her hands behind her, "you stopped feeding haven't you?" He laughed, "Do you really think you're better for it? All you're doing is going against your nature, our nature. We are vampires, we feed on blood, it's how we survive."
Tina watched his hands dance on Figgins's vein resting on the jugular where the main pulse pumped the body's life blood. She could almost hear the thud of the heartbeat, the promise of life and vitality that she heard sometimes in the darkness of the night.
"It's wrong," she said shaking herself, "It's murder."
"Murder?" Jesse dropped his hands, moving around the bed to face Tina, faking shock. "Of humans? Aren't you to talk? The stories I heard about you from the others. '49 in Tokyo, Vietnam, and that rave at UCLA. Not to mention our little-"
"I don't care," Tina interpreted as she stared straight in Jesse's smirking face, "you're not recruiting people under my watch."
"But homeless people are so old hat."
He lurched for the bed, and Tina grabbed him in time shoving him onto the wall hard enough to rattle the machines nearby.
"You listen to me," she said feeling her fangs slip over lips, "The hospital is off-limits," she twisted his wrist when he opened his mouth to protest. "Do you want me to remind you why Asian vampires are the most viscous?"
She let go, and Jesse straightened his jacket. "I'm scared." He taunted but made no move to go back to the bed. "Just remember Tina, there are systems in place. We aren't cruel as you suddenly think we are, we'll welcome you back if change your mind. And we'll be here for you even when your pet humans turn your backs on you."
Tina watched as he left the room, and then proceeded to follow him out the best she could without being too conspicuous.
She couldn't do much once he left the hospital, she couldn't stop him from cornering drunks or homeless people on benches and turning them, but she could stop it here. She could keep a bit of normality in just one more place.
26 minutes left
Tina was in the middle of inventory when she heard the tell tale patter of feet of her more frequent visitor.
"I'm about to get off, how about we grab a cup of coffee?"
Mike Chang may have been have been the top percent of his graduating class, but he wasn't too sharp about more mundane things. He had asked her out in a variety of unimaginative ways for the entirety of the past six months she had been working here. From dim sum, to coffee, to bumping into her in the store, if Tina hadn't been undead for a quite a few decades now, she would have been worried about being stalked. Instead she was mildly annoyed. When she told Mercedes they should try interacting with humans she wasn't too sure she meant dating them. There was a number of challenges other than the fact "Asian" often popped up in her conversations with Mike.
"I'm a bit busy actually," she said turning away from the chart.
Mike kept smiling though and Tina wondered at the great depths that human could be so daft. She avoided his eyes with little problem, but she could hear the soft pulse of his blood and her hands shook minutely.
"Just a bite, we dash down to the cafeteria if you like."
Tina brushed back her hair nervously, "I got –" as she looked up at him, she saw beyond his shoulder to see Kurt jumping up and down the hall in a rush, holding a tote bag, exactly five minutes too late past the time he should be in the old pysch ward.
Tina shoved the stacks of towels into Mike's arms. "If you could excuse me…"
She ran up to Kurt dragging him around the corner, "Are you supposed to be somewhere-"
"I know. They were doing construction down there."
"You know anywhere else?"
"I can't exactly do the change in Walmart can I?"
"No you can't!"
Mike had begun to creep down the hallway clutched the wrinkled towels to his chest. Tina took Kurt by the arm quickly making their way out.
22 minutes
"You have to go somewhere," she said going by the locker and grabbing her coat and keys, leaving behind her street clothes behind in her rush. "Don't you make back up plans for this, like your skin care regime?"
He took a few moments of his panic to shoot her a dirty look. Tina ignored him, as they made their way to the garage and into her car.
"You should have a backup though," Tina said as she revved the engine, speeding out nearly clipping a bicyclist.
"I'm kinda of new at this," Kurt said jittery as he glanced up at the sky then at his watch. "I haven't had decades-" his words clipped off a yelp.
Tina hit the break at the spotlight, as she turned to him. "Is it starting?"
Kurt held up her newly bought sweater gingerly. "What have I told you about thrift stores?"
Tina hit the gas hard enough not only the scare the nine lives out of the cat passing by but send Kurt rocking backwards into the seat.
At twelve minutes they pulled outside the fringe of the woods, Kurt jumped out the car grabbing his bag only to pause as a pack of teenagers ran into the woods with cheap wine and blankets.
Kurt leapt back in the car at eleven minutes, and Tina hit her head on the steering wheel at ten blowing the horn.
"Where are we going to go?" Tina moaned.
"I don't know, this wasn't supposed to happened, I didn't plan for this!"
"Wait. There is."
"No," Kurt said at once. "I can't do it at the house."
"You can't keep it separate like your clothes, Kurt! You can't keep these worlds separate anymore. And time's running out you have no other option."
Kurt fumed for a moment, until he sighed nodding in grim agreement. Tina spun the wheel heading a new direction, pressing the gas flat to the floor.
She added new scratches to her car but they made it back in one piece in the driveway, Kurt bolting out the car even before she even turned the engine off.
"What do you need?" she said as Kurt darted around the room shutting and drawing closed the windows, and moving the vases and pottery out.
"Shut the door, and move out anything you want saved. I don't know what it'll do otherwise."
Tina nodded, pulling out cds and albums from the bookshelf .
"What the hell are you guys doing back?" Mercedes asked from the door behind Kurt.
Crack.
"Isn't it his time of the month?" Artie asked curiously. "Don't you usually do this somewhere else?"
"My plans fell through, just get out the way and save what you want like that silly painting of yours-" he yelped dropping the vase in hands, clutched he stomach as fell to the floor.
"You really are going to do this here?" Artie asked with the careless concern of the deceased.
"Looks like there's no choice," Mercedes muttered as she pushed the coffee table and a stack of breakables into the hall.
"Get out here, you could get hurt," Tina said as Mercedes dashed to grab the TV.
"Mind you," Mercedes tapping the protective charm around her neck, "I know what I'm doing."
There wasn't time to roll her eyes, but she settled on trying not to be obvious by shooing Artie out.
"I never seen a werewolf transform before," he said pushing up his glasses up as he wheeled up to Kurt.
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"He can't hurt me-"
Tina was reaching for the handles of his chair, when Kurt suddenly looked up his pupils dilated and irises yellow.
"Argyle," Kurt hissed before lurching himself into Artie's direction, only to hit the wall instead rattling the bookshelf.
Crack.
Next to her Artie muttered, "That was a bit too close."
His words broke the tension in the room, and Mercedes whistled from the open doorway.
Without waiting for Artie to argue otherwise, Tina grabbed the handles of the wheelchair, and quickly backed them out the room into the cramped hallway, shutting the door to the living room and engulfing them all in the dark.
Something heavy hit the door, and together she and Mercedes rammed the table up against the door.
The table jolted a bit as Kurt hit the door once more, but it didn't budge.
Tina was about to move to sit down when Mercedes suddenly exclaimed, "Why the hell you bring him back here!"
"There was no time. The psych ward was being renovated, and I thought-"
"You thought-"Mercedes interrupted, "what if I wasn't here, what if I had company over-
"You didn't-"
"I might have, you didn't even call!"
"There wasn't time," Artie interjected.
Mercedes looked in askance at him. "Do you always have to take her side?"
Artie's answer was lost in the sudden increase of shrieks from the other side of the room.
At the sound, Mercedes's face fell as she slumped on the floor wrapping her arms around her knees.
Guilt crept a bit into Tina as she watched her friend try to keep her composure, reminded once again that Mercedes was the most human of them all.
"It'll be alright," Tina said placing an arm around Mercedes's shoulders, "he's still Kurt even if he wants to rip out your throat."
"Which isn't different than usual," Artie quipped.
"It sounds so painful," Mercedes whispered, "it's like he's dying."
"Technically he is." Artie pushed up glasses as he added, "A werewolf's organs are much smaller than a human's so in order to do the change, his heart stops and he has liver and kidney failure concurrently, and he'll only stops screaming because his vocal chords are-"
Mercedes made a small noise, and Tina glared at Artie effectively causing the ghost to shut up.
"Everything will be fine in the morning." Tina said firmly.
They all flinched at the sound of glass breaking.
"I forgot the lamp," Mercedes muttered under her breath.
"I never liked it anyway." Tina replied as the noises turned into somewhat melodic howls.
"So," Artie asked conversationally, "I guess we're doing some remodeling huh?"
The next morning Kurt trudged slowly down the stairs, preparing to see the sight before him. He caught sight of the scratches on the floor, before he saw the ruin the living room was in.
Glancing from the ripped wallpaper to the torn light fixtures, his eyes fell to the piles of a splintered wood that once was the bookshelf.
"It did all this?" Kurt said quietly.
"Don't worry," Mercedes said briskly, "we managed to save what we wanted and salvage all the rest."
Tina tossed a blanket over the couch, "We have to make a trip to Ikea though," she looked at him darkly, "and you know how I feel about that."
Kurt slumped against the wall, the fragments of the night before flickering before his like shards of stain glass.
"What happened, did it do anything. Did it eat-"
"Who would be around to eat," Artie remarked earning himself a glare from Kurt.
"Nothing happened," Tina said soothingly, "the neighbors complained about the noise of course."
"And you didn't smash anything important." Artie added.
" 'It' didn't," Kurt corrected hastily.
"I was thinking," Mercedes interjected before Artie could reply, "We should probably make some house rules."
She went into the next room calling, "So everyone should be on the same page about things."
Tina faked a laugh as she sat on the edge of the couch, "we haven't any reason to, if you haven't notice our socials lives are pretty dead around here," she looked absently at Artie, "no offense."
"None taken," he said cheerfully, and she smiled.
"I talking about so that things like this can't happen again." Mercedes came back with a pen and paper. "First rule in order-"
Kurt rolled his eyes sitting down. He loved Mercedes to death, but sometimes he thought she tried harder then all of them to make things normal. Tina did it because she hated being noticed, and wanted to blend in even if it went against her nature. Artie did it because he was tired of being overlooked and ignored. He did it because he felt suffocated by a secret that while had little effect on others, could face a lot of prejudice if he announced it to the world. But Mercedes wanted desperately for things to be normal. Yes, she practiced witchcraft, and yes her protective charms did work, but she tried much harder than all of them make things normal around here, to pretend they really were just four young twenty something renting a house together.
But at the moment they were sitting inside the mess the wolf had just done, and making silly rules weren't going to change anything no matter how much they wished it could.
"If we're going in that direction," Kurt snapped, "we might as well invite humans over to this madhouse-"
"That's a good idea!"
The lack of sarcasm in Mercedes's voice was disturbing. But he didn't say anything, hoping she would forget trying to guilt him to going to the grocery store as they made up the stupid house rules.