Title: Cleaning up the Mess
Fandom: Being Human
Spoilers: All series 4
Warnings: References to blood drinking.
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC.
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Summary: Ficlet: A ghost and a vampire, and the fine art of letting things go.
"What the fuck is this?"
I grab the remote control off the arm of the sofa and turn the volume up, but it's difficult to lose yourself in Bach when there's a ghost shrieking at you across the room.
"I'm talking to you, Hal, so you can turn that off."
And now she's thudding towards me. I wish she'd died with something more ladylike on her feet – if she had to die, that is.
"I thought I'd hang your coat up in the cupboard – it's not like you're going to need it any time soon – and this fell out of the pocket."
She's shaking a fist in my general direction, and there's a flash of white between her fingers. She's clearly not going to shut up about – whatever it is – so I pick up the remote control again and press the pause button.
"Well? I'm waiting." I bet I can wait longer.
But the chair is sitting there, over by the window, the straps coiled ready on the seat, greasy with sweat and blood from where I tried to wrench myself free. So I smile, and if it doesn't fool either of us, then at least the gesture is accepted. Alex opens her fist.
Bugger. So that's what she's so worked up about. I must have stuffed it into my coat pocket at the time and then forgotten about it in all the – well, excitement is hardly the right word. I haven't worn my coat since that day: I haven't been allowed to leave the house. Haven't wanted to leave, not in my more lucid moments.
Alex holds it up: a pocket handkerchief – my handkerchief – the cotton crispy with rusty brown.
"It's blood isn't it?" Of course it is. Sour and stale and very, very dead, but it's making my nostrils twitch. "Are you going to tell me where it came from? And if you say you had a nosebleed, then I think I'm going to have to give you a bloody nose myself."
It's not as bad as she thinks. On second thoughts, it might actually be worse. I close my eyes and I'm back in that basement, down on all fours like an animal, lapping up cold, red jelly. And the look she gave me – was it horror, or pity, or simple disgust? – I'd have preferred her customary anger. I wipe at the remembered stickiness on my mouth, my chin, my nose.
"I had to clean myself up, remember?" That handkerchief was what I used. "It must have been in my coat all this time. But I'd forgotten about it, really I had."
"Oh god, this is mine, isn't it?"
Alex looks sick; she looks like she's about to hit me. She holds the handkerchief at arm's length, pinched between her thumb and forefinger, and I reach out to take it from her. She yanks it back.
"Surely you don't want it."
"Why, do you?" It's a fair question; I'm not sure I can answer. "It's my blood. I decide what happens to it."
She stares at the square of fabric, crumpling it between her fingers, and her eyes are dark and liquid.
"What does it taste like?"
It's barely a whisper: I could pretend I didn't hear. Alex doesn't want to know; I don't want to tell her. About the first time: not fresh but fresh enough, and I could almost taste the warmth in it, the life, a bitter electric jolt on my tongue. And the second: how I'd have licked the concrete clean, gulped it all down, gritty and wriggling, and I'd have savoured every drop. I don't want to think about it.
But she deserves to know, and I owe her that much. "I'd give anything – almost anything – to taste it again."
There, I've said it: let them strap me back into the chair if they must. They need to realise that the detox is only the beginning, that the hunger doesn't simply go away once I've sweated and shaken and screamed the blood out of my system. That the hunger doesn't go away.
"What are you going to do?"
"To throw this away."
Alex walks into the kitchen and I'm drawn along behind her, following the bloody handkerchief like a lure. I flinch as the thing flutters into the bin, and I want to snatch it out of the air, to root through the rotting food and rescue it. To suck the last traces of her life out of it.
"I don't need it any more, Hal." She challenges me with her stare. "Do you?"