Title: One Door Closes
Fandom: Being Human
Spoilers: 4x07 Making History
Warnings: Violence. Blood. Death. Angst. A funeral.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters (I wish!), or make any money writing this stuff.
Summary: Maker. Destroyer. Tormentor. Idol. There is no single word for what Hal is to him.
Nick Cutler dreams of honey blonde hair soaked with blood, of blue eyes staring forever. He wakes, and lies sweating at the prospect of what Hal will do if he finds out, but he just can't bear the thought of Rachel being put in the ground by strangers.
He puts on a black suit and his black tie, and he turns instinctively to adjust the knot in the mirror. He still forgets: old habits, and he's going to have to break them, to unpick all the threads that bind him to his former life. If he doesn't, Hal will sever them.
He walks away from their house for the last time. The sky's a heavy grey, and Cutler's almost glad: it seems fitting, somehow, proper funeral weather. Besides, the sunlight hurts his eyes.
The door of the chapel is oak, the handle pitted iron. It burns coldly against his skin, but he clenches his jaw and grips it tighter, and hurls himself across the threshold.
Saints and angels glare at him in a dazzle of stained glass; the vicar's words buzz and sting. Cutler lurches forwards. The flagstones sear his feet, and his head jerks up. Crosses: on the altar, the walls. The pain stabs like needles into his eyes, his flesh, piercing the dead lump of muscle in his chest.
Cutler turns his back on his wife's coffin, on the hired mourners. On the solitary figure smiling at him from the front row – and there's no point in trying to run, so he stands outside and waits for his punishment.
Hal stays for the rest of the service. He's taken everything from Cutler; it shouldn't be surprising that he's taking this, as well. When the Old One emerges – leisurely, unruffled – Cutler's seized by an urge to shout, to denounce him, to bring everyone running. Hal would kill him, of course, but at least it would all be over.
Then Hal laughs, and Cutler's mouth gapes mutely. Hal isn't finished with him yet, but he doesn't know what more he can possibly be expected to give.
"What do you want?" Hal asks him, and Cutler thinks that should be his line.
The woman's young and pretty. Blonde, too – and if she bears a resemblance to Cutler's dead wife, then it's undoubtedly intentional. Hal is not the forgiving type.
Fergus ties her up for him: it's an insult, an attempt to embarrass him in front of his maker. If things go wrong again, Fergus is going to laugh and leave him to it.
"We're taking bets on how long he'll keep you around," Fergus mutters in his ear. Cutler's been wondering the same thing himself.
He looks at Hal and it's like he's waiting for some sort of signal. But vampires don't ask for permission, so he avoids the woman's watery blue eyes and he loses himself in the sound of the blood surging beneath her skin.
Cutler bites down hard – too hard, because he doesn't just slice the artery, he tears out her whole damn throat. There's blood everywhere and he drinks frantically, trying to catch it all before it goes to waste. Far too quickly, she's nothing but a cooling corpse.
Cutler becomes aware that he's kneeling in a spreading, scarlet puddle. He's made an awful mess. He darts a glance in Hal's direction, wiping self-consciously at the stickiness on his face.
But Hal walks straight towards him, ignoring the way the carpet sucks wetly at his shoes. He takes Cutler by the arm and raises him up; Cutler smiles through his mask of blood.
"I think we're done here," Hal says.
"Wales?" The words tumble from Cutler's startled lips. "It's not enough that you kill me – you're making me go to bloody Wales?"
Cutler thinks he's gone too far, that he's annoyed his maker once too often. Then Dennis starts to laugh, and even Fergus joins in. They think he's joking – and maybe he is, at that. His life is something of a joke, these days: a very bad one.
Hal chuckles, too, and so Cutler lives to see another day. He's still not quite sure how he feels about that.
Hal isn't in the sweetest of moods. A persistent policeman with a superintendent for a father; Louis' disastrous handling of Robert Mercer's death. Loose ends, and suddenly everything's unravelling. This sort of thing is supposed to be Cutler's job, and he longs to prove his worth, to be the hero of the hour. But Hal has decreed that they're moving out to the sticks, and Hal's word is more than law.
Hal throws a farewell party: after all, it's only a temporary retreat, not a rout. They drink; they dance. They eat the band, and it truly feels like the end of an era.
One final dog fight: Cutler's never seen so much money in his life. Hal wins a fortune he doesn't need when Louis lasts a full two minutes in the cage.
In the cold pre-dawn that follows, they load their suitcases into the car and Cutler stares out of the back window as they drive away. He's leaving it all behind, everything he knows.
He doesn't want to go to Wales; he doesn't want Hal to go without him.
It's raining the first night that Hal holds court in Cardiff. Just his luck – Cutler turns up the collar of his new dinner jacket while Hal is whisked inside beneath an umbrella.
When Hal walks into the room, the crowd fall to their knees. Hal smiles and nods, and gestures for them to stand: for tonight, he's the velvet glove not the iron fist.
There are canapés, and crystal decanters full of blood, and it's all terribly polite. Everyone wants to shake Hal's hand; everyone laughs at his jokes. Everyone tries to pull Hal into their little circle, to take him away from Cutler.
But Hal throws an arm around Cutler's shoulders and introduces him to the mayor. Cutler is at his maker's side, where he's supposed to be, and just for a moment it's almost perfect. Then Hal smiles – that awful, false smile that's just a flash of teeth – and when Cutler looks into Hal's eyes, they're cold.
"Mingle," Hal hisses, so he does.
Vampires, Cutler learns, are fond of telling stories. Past glories; cherished exploits. It reminds him of those tedious Law Society dinners, and how he struggled to stay awake once the port starting making the rounds.
As if summoned by the thought, a local magistrate collars him. Eighty-three and the man doesn't look a day over thirty, but he's only youthful on the outside. Like all the rest of them, he wants to reminisce.
"Did you hear about the time that Ivan ...?" the man begins, but Cutler's tired of listening to things that happened before he was born.
"I don't want to hear about other people's history," he snaps.
He finds Hal in conversation with the dog-catcher who used to supply the local fights.
"What do you want?" Hal asks, but all Cutler knows is that he wants something more.
"I'm going to make history," he says.
But he still doesn't know what that means, and Hal's not telling.
It seems that Wales is a bad influence, because even Fergus starts telling stories.
"So there he is, in this monastery. Budapest, wasn't it?"
Hal nods. They're making a night of it: a couple of girls, a few bottles of wine.
"And they have him trapped in this cell. Crucifixes everywhere, so he can't get out."
One of the girls moans – clearly not quite as dead as they'd thought. Fergus nudges her with one naked foot. No movement, not even another groan: not dead, but not far off.
"Now I've gone and lost my thread. Anyway, it's your story – why don't you tell it, Hal?"
"When you're doing such a fine job?"
Fergus doesn't hear the mockery behind Hal's words, or maybe he simply doesn't care. A blunt instrument, that one. Cutler has no idea why Hal surrounds himself with these people. At least Fergus has the sense to let Hal take over the narrative.
Cutler closes his eyes and listens to Hal's voice. His head is a muddle. Maybe it's the wine – he's never been much of a drinker, except where blood is concerned – but he has the strangest notion that he's another story that Hal is telling. He wants to ask how it's going to end.
There's a longing buried so deep inside him that it makes his teeth ache. It's not for blood. Hal offers him the girl – one last drink before she's cold and stale – and quirks an eyebrow when he declines.
"What do you want?" Hal asks.
But, tonight, Cutler isn't even sure he understands the question.
The boy punches and kicks. The little shit even tries to bite, until Cutler grabs him by the throat and pins him against the shiny new metalwork of the cage. Cutler rips the boy's collar open, and eyes the throbbing vein.
Hal won't like this. But Cutler's been so busy lately, getting everything ready for the fights. He hasn't had a fresh kill in far too long, and the boy's heart is pounding an invitation against his ribs.
The blood pumps, rich and vital, down his throat; he lets the corpse sag to the floor.
"We could have saved him for the opening night," Hal says.
Cutler whirls. Hal advances, slow and deliberate, and Cutler should placate him, should trot out his excuses: he caught the boy snooping, and he would have been trouble.
But the blood is hot in his veins, and Cutler grabs Hal by the shoulders and drags the man's mouth to his. He devours Hal as hungrily as he did the boy.
Cutler pulls back for air – a foolish reflex, but he hasn't kissed anyone since he stopped breathing. Then it hits him, the magnitude of what he's done, and – oh god, it's going to be him in that cage, come the full moon.
"What do you want, Cutler?" Hal asks.
Cutler blinks. There's a smile on Hal's face – it's bright and sharp, and there's nothing nice about it, but this time it isn't fake.
"This," Cutler answers, and he pushes the eager length of his body against Hal's. "This is what I want."