Summary: Mitchell and Annie and George and the beginning of Series 1.
Disclaimer: Being Human is not mine in the slightest and in fact it's terrifying to write any plot that overlaps this close with canon. I'm freaking out.
Author's Note: I decided maintaining a respectable GPA wasn't as important to me as growing a pair and not being a cowardly writer. So behold, chapter eight, brought to you by Earl Grey and Imagine Dragons.
The Energy it Must Take Him
Mitchell has met people like Annie before. Their eyes take you in, like an embrace, and they have a filter for all your best qualities, so sometimes your faults don't make it through. For that, Mitchell is grateful, because she exudes this unblemished happiness that he doesn't want to burn down. At first, he doesn't even have the heart to tell her how much he hates tea, but eventually he admits in his most apologetic voice that honestly if it's no trouble he'd prefer black coffee it's just that tea makes him feel ill but if it's a bother don't give it a second thought it's nothing to do with you really you make a terrific breakfast blend.
Somehow she doesn't take any insult, just breaks into a smile free of judgment, and from then on he's usually got at least three mugs of coffee that he can choose from among the tea.
They find themselves as such now, seated around a coffee table covered with hot drinks and deep in a conversation which left the television behind half an hour ago.
"Well it's not fair, is it, now you've seen me change! What do I get from you?" George rants.
"You see me every day, what do you want me to do, suck your blood?" Mitchell waggles his eyebrows mockingly.
"Very funny. I'm serious, can't you turn into a bat or something?"
"Never tried."
"Mitchell, come on!" Annie says playfully. "What about your fangs, can we have a look at them, then?"
"My fangs? You don't want-I mean, no, it hurts and it'll just make me ... remember things," he finishes lamely. Familiar faces flit behind his eyelids, faces wrought with pain and terror and soaked in sweat and blood. Mitchell rubs his eyes and groans. "You're right, okay. But ask me something else. Ask me whatever you want to know. Just no questions about killing."
"What! I thought you said you-you've killed people?" Annie says. "How many?!"
"What the fuck does 'no questions about killing' mean to you?" he snaps, and instantly regrets leaving that stunned look on her face, but he's afraid to open his mouth again.
"Wow, touchy, are we?" George scolds. "Fine, then, tell us about your family. Any brothers or sisters?"
All the air leaves Mitchell's lungs and he thinks briefly that he should have set more ground rules. No questions about wars, no questions about killing, no questions about lovers, no questions about killing lovers, and to the ends of the earth and back no questions about family.
He's afraid that if he thinks about them, his parents and brother and sisters, something inside him will rip open and stain them black. He's afraid that if he tries to thinks about them just once, everything good he has left will pour out between his fingers where he can't hold it anymore. He doesn't want to lose them or break them beyond repair, so he keeps them locked up and safe from his head.
Mitchell's eyes glaze over and George can actually see something behind them shatter. He covers his tracks hastily. "No, of course, I'm sure they're-that was daft of me. Sorry, Mitchell? I'm sorry."
The sound of his name drags his head above the surface and he looks between his friends, lips working around silent words and tongue running over his teeth.
Annie stutters, "Tell us something-tell us why..."
"Your name!" George finishes triumphantly.
"Yes! Good, your-why do you go by your last name, anyway?" Annie asks with obviously forced cheer.
"There are a lot of Johns," he grates. Herrick goes by his last name. Fuck, apparently his only ground rule is "no questions, period."
"Yeah, that's, you're right about that," George says quickly. He swallows thickly, glances at Annie, and launches into a story about three Johns with whom he attended secondary school and who earned the nicknames Football John, Guitar John, and Wanker John.
Mitchell stares into his coffee and focuses intensely on George's rambling.
Mitchell takes great pleasure in serving as eye candy for nurses while he's on the clock. His list of "cons" might heavily outweigh his list of "pros", but he knows he's at least nice to look at. And, as he spends most of his time with George, he can't help but feel he (and his arse) do his friend a favor by attracting extra attention. When a woman is bold enough to strike up conversation, he smiles to keep them interested and lets George do the talking.
There's even one male doctor who goes out of his way to ask Mitchell to restock his patient's towels; whose eyes always stray while they talk; who never hesitates to lay a friendly hand on Mitchell's elbow or shoulder or the curve of his back. Mitchell doesn't mind. When they actually strike up conversation, he likes to count how many times he can distract the doctor by licking his lips. He turns it into a game to distract himself from his appetite and his lust.
It makes George fret. Everything makes George fret, but he feels more obligated than usual to share these particular frets with Mitchell. I think this is actually sexual harassment. We all had to go through the seminar.
Mitchell laughs it off and doesn't have the heart to tell him just what a high tolerance he has for harassment.
The first time he sees Herrick at the hospital, Mitchell slips and knocks over a bucket of brown mop-water. He regains his balance, but not without splashing all over himself and cursing loud enough to wake the whole ward. George covers for him promptly and conspicuously. When Mitchell rights himself and looks back up, Herrick has gone.
His knees and his stomach feel weak. The dirty water still dribbles weakly across the floor and under a few empty beds. George's arm appears around his shoulders. Mitchell glares and shrugs him away. "Why is it so loud?" he mumbles.
George leans in to study his face. "It's not ... there isn't ... Let's get you to the gents, yeah? You look like you're about to lose your lunch."
Mitchell always thought it was a stereotype or a cliche to hold a friend's hair back while he hurls. Something no one actually had the time or courtesy to do. Then, when he thinks about it, George is a pretty cliche bloke.
After five minutes of emptying his stomach and five minutes of catching his breath, he pulls himself to unsteady feet out of the stall and leans a hip against the windowsill to regain his composure.
"Who was that?" George asks, guarding the door with his arms crossed.
"What?" Mitchell says dumbly while he casts about in his mind for an answer. "...Vampire. Just a vampire."
"Right, 'just.' That's why I had to keep the sick out of your hair while you were bent over the toilet. That's why you can't breathe properly and I can see you shaking from here," George bites. He crosses the room and lays a hand on Mitchell's lower back. His frown deepens when Mitchell stiffens at the touch.
"I'm not-I can breathe fine!" He swats George's hand away. His tries to smile, but only manages a weak curl of the lip. "You're such an old nag."
George looks him up and down, but doesn't relinquish his post between Mitchell and the door. "Okay," he concedes. "Is it someone I ought to be afraid of, then?"
"Well yeah, 'vampire', remember?"
"... I'll admit, you are without a doubt the scariest flatmate I've ever had." They watch each other for a moment, one gaze hard and one soft. "Seriously, can't you give me something? What if he shows up at our bloody doorstep?"
Mitchell snorts and looks at his feet. "Fine. His name's Herrick. He's the one who ... bit me."
George gasps audibly and his voice squeaks in protest. "That's the one-he-why haven't you just staked him to next Sunday?!"
Mitchell gapes. "I-that's not how it works. We're friends, or ... It's complicated."
"Oh. I guess. So, for vampires, what?" George stammers, "Was he like, your mentor, sort of?"
Mitchell bends over the closest sink. "That would be a pretty inappropriate student-teacher relationship," he mutters darkly.
"What?"
"Nothing, it's-yeah, he took me in and taught me everything about-"
Killing? Sex? Fine wine? That's all there really is to being a vampire.
Mitchell scrubs his face. "We worked together for a long time," he finishes. "But he's a git. And he doesn't agree with my new diet."
It's not new, strictly speaking, but if Mitchell thinks about how long it's been, he might begin to think about making up for lost time.
The night Becca dies (the night Becca gets murdered in cold blood) Mitchell can't even heave himself off the floor of the front room. He tries more than once, and he knows his friends want to help him, but sure as he's too weak to do it himself, he's also too cowardly to accept their kindness.
Mitchell spends the night there on the floor. He doesn't bother pulling himself onto the couch for fear of becoming too comfortable. Every time his eyelids droop he digs his fingernails into his thigh, and every time he starts to nod he lights another cigarette.
He thinks about Annie, who doesn't bother with words because tea and coffee get the point across much better. He thinks about George, who guided him out of the hospital when he started crying and got them a cab and took one look at Mitchell's face after Herrick left and promptly wrapped an arm around his shoulders and held him tight for the duration of the ride home.
For one crystallizing moment in that cold, smoky room, preserved under a dawn sky with no sun or moon, Mitchell wants desperately to give a piece of himself back to all the people from whom he only ever takes.
More than a month later, Mitchell accidentally kisses Annie. Funny, that he has to be almost a hundred and twenty years old before his first accidental kiss. He'd never remotely thought about her that way before. She flirts with almost anyone who can see her, which he finds endearing. He feels like he can be the big brother he left behind in South Ireland.
Actually, Mitchell used to think about kissing George more often than he thought about kissing Annie. Those thoughts evaporated quickly, of course, and he preferred not to remember them.
But he can't even imagine Annie that way. How do you have a relationship with a ghost if you can't touch her, or push her against a wall and shove your tongue into her mouth, or wrap your limbs around her in bed, or feel her heartbeat against your throat?
Two days after Tully's departure, George finds Mitchell brooding on a corner of the couch with the television muted, trying not to think about the DVD tucked away upstairs, and definitely not thinking about the ones that came before it.
"You need to apologize to Annie," Mitchell says, shifting his eyes up to glower in that bird-of-prey way that could probably make a fully transformed werewolf think twice about taking another step.
George has to catch his breath before answering. "But ... I did! I did say I was sorry, to both of you! She seemed perfectly happy!"
"That Tully bloke bothered her, alright? Just give her a proper apology."
"What for?" George counters before raising his palms in surrender. "Wait-no, don't answer that. Please. Is there anything ... specific I should mention?"
"You're a prick," Mitchell growls.
George sighs. "Yes, that will probably come up. Look, it's not that big a deal. I'll find her at some point and sit her down-"
"It is a big deal."
"What is?"
Mitchell adopts a shrill, half-assed imitation of George's whiny accent. "'And I bet she loved every second of it!'"
"... Right. I definitely got a little carried away."
"She didn't love it."
"No, of course she wouldn't, I was being a stupid prat-"
"She did not like it. It was frightening and uncomfortable and makes you feel like rubbish."
George blinked. "I'm sorry, should I just talk to her now? Is this something she told you?"
"She didn't have to tell me."
George swallows and exhales into the awkward silence. He hears that sentence with a dozen different meanings, each making him more uneasy than the last. Mitchell zips up his sweater and hunches further into the couch, his eyes shadowed steel.
George clears his throat. "I want to apologize to you, too. You know, for-"
"Piss off."
Mitchell's looking at the television screen now, but George can tell his attention is somewhere else, somewhere black and distant. He takes a shaky breath. " ... Another time, then."
Lauren talks too much. It's like she has a vampire's beginner's manual eternally scribbling across her skull and she's incapable of keeping it to herself. It's like the same book Mitchell read a hundred years ago, but still in rough draft form, without the careful editing and footnotes and contributing authors he accumulated over the years. He tries to flip her ahead to the sobriety chapter but every time she talks he forgets important bits and every time she feeds from him the pages blur together in his mind.
Mitchell's cravings double the more time they spend together, but he forces them down with food and cigarettes and Hollyoaks and Carlings with George. Little things that relieve the knot of pressure in his chest.
Lauren can't cope with the addiction, he sees that. Watching her squirm and whine like an ignorant, indecent, depraved thing makes his lip curl with disgust and always, always the guilt. He can't judge her without judging himself.
On a weekly basis, Mitchell trashes his bedroom and gets hammered and has a good wank in the shower and won't admit these incidents often coincide with Herrick's visits to the hospital. He wishes he had a good excuse, like being a poltergeist, or that this selfish shit only happened every full moon.
xXx
Author's Note: Things I learned while writing this chapter: 1. There is a Wikia for tea. 2. Like George and Mitchell, I prefer lager to ale. 3. Every time I try to delete something, it comes back in some form or another. Not sure if that's good or bad.
Oh, and I might have accidentally metaphored more than necessary. I was playing around.
