Aching Steps Towards Survival [5/5] - Being Human - Annie/George/Mitchell
Part Four
v. Annie
George didn't leave the hospital too much while Mitchell was recovering, but Annie had a need for decent food, showers, and to avoid feeling like a third wheel while they were patching themselves up.
She also, incidently, had a need for thinking space of her own.
And a need to see her mum. That one was very, very important.
Her mum's house still smelled exactly the way that it always had. Annie felt that it should have been filled with dust by now, a relic of a time gone by, even if it hadn't been that long at all since she'd last been here. No time at all, in fact.
"Oh, Annie," her mum said in a long, rushing sigh after Annie told her the whole story, all the details about Owen that no one could ever have expected. As she had said it, it had scratched at her throat as if he was trying to take a few extra scraps of pain with him on the way out. "What can I do?"
The tone in her mum's voice suggested that there was probably a very good reason that she didn't have access to guns in this country. Annie had never thought of her mum as a violent person, not for a second - but maybe a situation like this was the one thing that could push her over the edge. Nothing infuriated a mama bear like a cub in danger.
"It was just a little slap," she muttered, feeling ridiculous as she said it. "That's not even what I came over here to talk about, actually."
It seemed strange, somehow, that leaving Owen didn't even feel like the biggest news in her handbasket. He felt so small. So insignificant, like he might melt away from her memories if she crossed her fingers and wished hard enough. There was a future opening now. It had only been a couple of days and she still had missed calls from him on her cell phone - and already he was so far away from her. She didn't know what that said about her, about him, about them and all they had shared. She thought that her heart should have been breaking by now.
Sitting on the couch with her, her mum looked nothing but concerned.
"It's George. Y'know, I told you about him?"
"Your boss?"
"Yeah, well, sort of. I don't know. He's moving to London."
Her mum's face crumpled in sympathy and she reached for Annie's knee, squeezing it. "You'll find another job," she promised.
"That's not, um. That's not it. The thing is that he kind of asked me to come with him. And I'm not sure if that's still on the table or not, because with Mitchell and everything it's all really up in the air right now, but if it is, if they want me to come, I think maybe I'd be up for it. A new start, you know?"
"Oh, Annie," her mum said again, still unhappy from the sound of it - but Annie gave a smile that was uncertain and lopsided. The thought of the future scared her as much as it excited her. "This doesn't sound like a good idea."
"Nothing's decided for certain yet," she clarified, to stop her mum from thinking that she was going to disappear in a wild puff of smoke. "George has a whole thing going on with Mitchell, and Mitchell's in hospital, and I think there's got to be a lot of sorting out stuff before anything happens. I mean, I hope so. I hope Mitchell's coming with us."
The three of them starting anew in London, putting this entire mess behind them and pretending that they could be new, and clean, and free from it all. Probably a pipe-dream, but it was one that she had to hold onto.
"I have to meet them," her mum said, with a stern nod. "Before you go anywhere with them, before you even think about it, I need to check them out."
Annie smiled and said, "The second Mitchell's well enough we'll be right over."
She hadn't told her mum about the drugs - there were a few things that mums just didn't need to know - and she didn't plan on doing so. It wasn't relevent to the three of them, not really. Sounded worse than it was, if you didn't know him yet.
And her mum would know him. Annie could see the future: the pair of them were it.
*
It took a long time before Mitchell was anywhere near healthy enough to come home; he went into a clinic. Annie got the feeling that it was expensive, off the NHS, and that George was footing the bill. She didn't bring it up when they went to visit him during the assigned hours.
Dressed in a grey pair of sweatpants, Mitchell still looked healthier than she'd seen him in quite a while. He was slouched in his seat, arms across his chest, and his eyes had more life in them than desperation. It was an improvement; a start.
He kept watching George, his eyes unable to stay away, as if letting George out of his field of vision for too long might make him go away for good. "The food's good," Mitchell said. "Better than I expected, anyway."
"Good. That's good," Annie said, nodding intensely. "It's hard enough being in a place like this without the food being gross too, I bet. Like aeroplanes, right? You go up in the air and there are crying babies and cramped space and everything and then they serve you food that doesn't look like food at all."
Mitchell's gaze settled on her and he smiled, something slow and affectionate. She smiled right back at him. "Exactly," he said, "This isn't the RyanAir of rehab clinics."
"Nothing but the best for you," Annie agreed - and no one mentioned who was funding it. The dynamics between the three of them were still too fragile without anyone taking the time to push and prod and stamp their feet. They could sort it all out later.
George cleared his throat. "We've been house-hunting," he said. "Annie and I. There are a few nice places just outside of London. I think you'd like them."
"There's even a garden in some of them," Annie said gleefully. "George wants to grow vegetables."
"Maybe," George amended, apparently over his fit of excitement at the sight of a ready-planted vegetable plot in the back garden of one of the properties. "We'll have to see how it goes."
"But it sounds good, doesn't it?" Annie said. George and Mitchell glanced at each other as if they were having an entire conversation with just their eyes, the kind of thing that she couldn't listen in on. Too much subtext. "The three of us living together? I mean, I've never lived with anyone other than my mum and you-know-who, but still... I think I'll be a great flat-mate. I'm going to make white sauce."
"Just that?" Mitchell said, with a teasing glint in his eyes. Now that his attention was directed back at her she felt an old butterfly fluttering to life in her belly, the kind of thing that reminded her of how attractive both of her boys were. Sometimes, bogged down by all of the issues that surrounded them, she would forget.
"Yep, just white sauce, every single night. I've never made it before. It seems like a thing."
"A thing?"
"Yeah. Y'know, a thing that people should make when they're living together. It's a staple."
George was tense and tight-lipped beside her, but he managed a smile just for her. "I'll make something to go with the white sauce," he offered.
"And I'll happily eat whatever you make," Mitchell said, taking in both of them with a warm look in his eyes.
"Looks like we have our first meal together planned," Annie said.
"Yeah." Mitchell flicked his tongue across his lips and looked at them both, mischief shining through his pale skin. "It's a date."
Annie's stomach did a tiny flip and she wasn't sure what to say. Her ears buzzed. A date for the three of them. That was insane, wasn't it? It was stupid to worry about the mechanics of how this was going to work; it was stupid to think of it happening at all. It wasn't how relationships happened. Two's company; three's a crowd. No matter what, she was always going to be number three.
With the way that Mitchell was looking at her, it didn't exactly feel that way. She didn't have the long history that George and Mitchell had, but she was starting to understand that that was essential. They needed a clean slate, all of them. She could help to provide that.
"A date. Right." She smiled and twitched and then said, "This is all a bit mental, isn't it?"
"Don't blame me - blame George," Mitchell said, hiking his thumb towards his boyfriend. "He's the one that suggested it."
George spluttered in open indignation, yet there was really very little that he could do to argue against it. Annie reached out to grab onto his hand where it was resting on his knee. It made her feel daring, and all three of them stared at that one piece of contact, her small hand coating George's larger one.
"I can't wait 'til I'm out of here," Mitchell said, sounding almost dazed.
Annie looked up and saw the way that he was looking at them as if he wanted to devour the pair of them, and it made her stomach simmer in delight.
"There's some way to go yet," George reminded them primly.
"You're such a downer," Mitchell complained - but it was with such affection in his voice that it would be impossible to be offended by him. More than any hints of there being a strange future for the three of them together, Annie thought that the best thing was seeing the pair of them beginning to gel again; maybe George was slow to forgive, but slow didn't mean stationary. They'd get there, eventually.
Yet visiting hours couldn't last forever, and before long they were being shepherded out of the rec room. George stopped to allow Mitchell to kiss his mouth, something short but not necessarily chaste if the greedy slant of their mouths or the dazed look in George's eyes were clues to go by. Mitchell placed his hand on her waist after that, but aimed his mouth for her cheek - taking things slow, perhaps. Being careful not to freak her out.
They all had a long way to go, really.
Walking out of the clinic with George at her side, he offered his arm to her and she clung to his side - it made her feel like a Victorian lady, posh and rich. "He's doing well," she said.
"Seems that way," George agreed.
"And you two seem to be getting on very well again," she continued, reaching up to pat her fingertip against his lips - pretending that it didn't send a shiver down her spine to touch him there. "It's nice. I like seeing you happy."
"This is happy, is it?" George muttered. He seemed to enjoy wallowing in his own sense of melancholy.
"For you, yeah." Annie nudged his ribs with the back of her hand. "I think you were even smiling earlier, believe it or not."
"Impossible. I don't smile." The grin on his face rather suggested otherwise, and as they walked through the car park towards the bus stop Annie rested her head on his shoulder, hiding from the world with him for just a little while longer.
*
She had a small ton of missed calls and a barrowful of texts, all from one source: Owen. She knew she had to get back to him. Not back together with him, but they'd been together for so long - and he had been her world for all that time, her whole world. They deserved something more than a silent parting. They deserved a chat.
She arranged to meet him in a coffee shop near enough to the town centre, and before she left George checked and double-checked her bag to make sure that she had her cell phone to hand: "If there's any trouble, you call me," he warned. "Right away."
It was sweet, in its own way, to have George offer to come and throw his weight around if necessary. Annie doubted if he'd ever thrown a punch in his life; in a physical fight, she'd probably be better off than he was.
Besides, she wasn't scared. Not in public. Owen knew how to behave himself when there were public eyes upon them and people who could intervene. To the outside, he was the beautiful, sweet man that she had fallen in love with - the man who she thought she would always love, if she was honest with herself. It was only once you had settled into his life and made yourself comfortable in all the nooks and crannies that the other side emerged, the side that scared and saddened her.
At the coffee table, he looked as harmless as he had when they had first met; it felt as if they had come such a long way since then. She fussed with her hair for a last moment before she headed over to join him. They had a window seat, with a view of the crowds filtering back and forth on the street outside. They were all so busy; to them, this had no relevance, their private little drama.
"Hey," she said, because first words didn't come easily.
Owen's mouth twitched, and for a moment she loved him all over again. "Hi," he said. They both paused - Annie didn't speak, not because she had nothing to say but because she had no idea how she ought to say it. Owen cleared his throat. "I heard you're leaving town."
She didn't need to ask who he'd heard that from. Their social group was a right gossipy lot. "Yeah," she said, more awkward than she thought she needed to be. "There's - Well, some friends of mine are moving down."
"George and Mitchell," he said, jaw flexing for a moment. She breathed through her nose and waited for him to relax. It didn't really happen. "I know. I heard. Are you serious?"
She bit the inside of her cheek and then nodded. "Yeah," she said, as if realising it for herself the first time. "I am."
"They're gay. You're not going to get to..." He trailed off and didn't bother to finish the sentence, as if the thought was too obscene for him to consider.
Annie smiled, a smile that was all her own, and looked down at her hands for a few moments. "It's not even about them. I mean, it is, but this with you - it's not. If that makes sense?" She didn't think that it made sense anywhere outside her own mind, but that was enough for her. "I need someone that's... I don't know. That is better to me. Someone that loves me as much as I love them, and who's supportive, and who is cute and sexy and funny. Funny, that's definitely important. And, y'know, complicated, but not in a mean way."
She gave a wistful sigh and knew that she could go on forever: didn't every single person have their own wish list?
Owen frowned and shook his head. "That's a fantasy. You know that, jesus. You'll never meet a man who has all that you're looking for. Just come home. I miss you."
She didn't know whether or not that was true: from a small distance now, she could see everything a little more clearly. She could see that Owen wasn't quite the angel that she so desperately wanted him to be, and that she had to let go of that image. He didn't fit. "I might not find one man with all that stuff," she agreed after taking a pause, "but I think, maybe, I've found two."
The words buzzed on the tip of her tongue after she said them - she wanted to laugh at her own daring, laugh because it was true, and laugh because it was too impossible to really be happening to her. Two men, both of them perfectly flawed, and if she wanted them then maybe they could be hers. She looked around at the coffee shop and was surprised to find that everyone was still sedentary: her revelation was so shattering that she thought a party or a fight should have burst out in her honour.
Owen scoffed and his eyes narrowed and she realised, dimly, that it didn't matter. "I loved you," she said, echoing the words throughout her body. Past tense. A world gone by. "But I'm starting to think that maybe I deserve something better. Y'know?"
The words stunned her as she said them, impressed with her own daring. She felt wise - she'd never felt that way before.
"You can't do this," Owen insisted. "You just - can't."
Her brow creased and she watched him from across the table, seeing a man whose world was slipping beyond his control. He didn't like it, agitated. He used to be her world; he seemed very small, now. "I've got to go," she said. She hadn't even ordered anything to drink yet, but she was coming to see that they had less to talk about than she had thought. Adrenaline ran through her veins, spurring her on, bringing heat to her cheeks. "I've got to go see my boyfriend. One of them."
She wanted to laugh after she said that, feeling like the most daring person on the planet, but she managed to restrain herself - for now.
She swept out of the cafe with a sad goodbye, but there was a bounce in her step: this didn't feel like an ending. Walking away from Owen, it just felt like she was walking towards something even better - a new phase in her life that would blow everything else away. She drew her cell phone out of her pocket and called George immediately, knowing that Mitchell didn't have his phone with him in the clinic.
"What is it? Are you okay? Should I come? I'm five minutes away," George said when he answered, panicked already from the sounds of things.
She kept smiling at the glittering thread of anxiety in his voice. "I'm fine - I just left."
"Already?"
"Yeah, already. There wasn't that much to say, really." She paused, walking without any real idea of where she was going. "I called you my 'boyfriend'. Is that weird?"
"A little bit, yeah," George agreed, but that didn't even make her self-conscious. She was fresh out of a bad relationship and now seemed to be dating a man who had identified as gay for most of his life - was 'dating' even the right word for it? She really had no idea. "I don't mind it, though. Means I should call you my girlfriend, right?"
"Right," she said, and it made her giggle, so she followed it up with, "Want to meet up for lunch? I'm starving."
"I'd love to," George said.
Ten minutes later they were eating together, and with George at her side Annie felt like the luckiest woman alive. The sun was shining and London was waiting for them and there was a whole world opening up for her, an entire land of opportunity. Today was a good day.
*
They spent the rest of the day together, hand in hand, while George giggled because he was supposed to be job-hunting. Lunch was good, and dinner was better, and they headed to a movie as well. Their first date, Annie thought. Moving in together, then kissing, then dating. They really were doing things in the wrong order.
"So. George," Annie said - and he gave her an alarmed look as they walked arm-in-arm through Bristol's streets. She couldn't really blame him for that. No good conversation started that seriously. "I was just thinking that maybe we should talk. About stuff."
"Uh-huh?"
"Y'know. Like, stuff." God, she was starting to sound like George, talking as if everyone else was a telepath. "About you being my gay boyfriend?"
"Ah. That. Yes." George looked down at the dry pavement as they walked, lit only by the bright street-lamps.
"It's going to be weird, right? You're not into girls."
George nodded; she pretended that she hadn't been hoping that he would tell her that he had been wrong the entire time and had now changed his mind about his sexual preference just because of her.
"I'm not," he agreed. "It's different with you."
Annie worried her bottom lip, trying to believe that this was going to be okay, that she wasn't going to make him unhappy. "How?"
"I'm interested in you," George said. "It doesn't make sense. You're gorgeous, but I've never wanted like this before. But you're gorgeous. You're sweet. And..."
She placed her hand over his arm and squeezed for a moment, enough to say, I'm here, it's okay. His confusion was floating through the air, so thick she felt like she was breathing it in. "I just don't want you thinking that you have to go along with this or anything. There's no pressure."
"I'm the one that suggested it, remember?" George paused and frowned. "I think, anyway."
Annie nodded. She wasn't actually sure either: it felt as if they'd been like this from the very beginning, that they were always supposed to be melded together in this way. "Maybe it'll all make more sense when Mitchell can join us again."
He had another couple of weeks to go as an in-patient, and then the doctors were hopeful that they could see how things went as an out-patient, visiting clinics and support groups. The road to recovery was a tough one, and this time Annie was walking it with the pair of them. She could only hope that the extra support might be exactly what Mitchell needed.
One street later, as they were waiting to cross the road at a set of traffic lights, George took a deep breath and asked, "Do you want to sleep in my bed tonight?"
His eyes were wide with shock as if he had just accidentally punched a shark, and the sight of it made Annie reach onto her tiptoes in order to press a kiss against his cheek. "I'd love to."
"Just sleep, I mean. There's no rush. I'm not trying to pressure you into - into going too fast. You just saw Owen today."
"My bed seems really empty these days," Annie confessed. She was used to sleeping with Owen's heavy presence against her back, his breath filtering against her neck.
George's head dipped so that he could hide his face before he admitted, "Yeah. Mine too."
She didn't feel quite so alone any more - and she didn't feel half as broken.
The lights changed and they crossed the road together, their conversation shifting until they were both comfortable and settled once more.
That night, she curled like a cat in George's bed, clinging to him and sapping his warmth. With her heart buzzing it was impossible to sleep at first, too excited to function, but the ease with which George settled down and breathed into sleep helped her to relax as well. George slept like an overgrown puppy, limbs floppy and out of control.
One thing was for certain: when they got to London, the three of them would need a bigger bed.
*
When Mitchell got out of rehab, he pretended that everything was the same. It was a little bit like her first day at work had been: jolly and fresh and daring.
There was a darkness there, though, a starved and hungry look in his eyes. Sometimes he would sit in their living room without saying a word, eyes staring at the television without seeing a thing. Often, Annie would find George sitting there with him, holding Mitchell so that he could rest his head on his shoulder, holding onto him as if he could physically chase the aching thoughts from his mind. When she found them like that, Annie would leave them to it: there was history there, miles of it, and she didn't feel like she could intervene. Not yet.
Yet they made her as involved as possible, and a week after Mitchell had come home - spending his days in the clinic and his nights curled between the pair of them - they had a proper date, with an Italian restaurant and candles and everything.
"Your replacement is rubbish," George said to Mitchell, frowning in displeasure. "He keeps making my tea wrong."
"I said I'd do it," Annie pointed out, before she turned to Mitchell to say, "He's going mad. Really. I think it's withdrawal."
It made Mitchell grin, something that wasn't nearly common enough these days, and George's face coloured, pinking right up to the tips of his ears. "I'm glad," Mitchell said. "If the new guy was better than me, I'd have to be worried."
Beneath the table, Mitchell clung onto a hand each as they waited for their food to arrive. Their chatter flowed easily and Annie felt far more comfortable at this table than she could ever have imagined doing. When she arrived at their office to work as a secretary, she had really never imagined that it was possible for the three of them to end up here.
They made it home eventually, warm on food and high only on each others' presence - and there was a message on their answer machine.
"Mitchell. It's Lauren. Thought I'd call to see how the white knighting is going for you. Having fun?" She laughed, and as they stood gathered around the phone in their hallway the sound seemed to crunch with tension. "We're going partying tomorrow night, starting at the funeral parlour - 9 o'clock. You're invited too." With a sunshine-mad giggle, she said goodbye and hung up the phone. End of Message.
For a moment, no one moved. No one said anything.
George broke the silence - he always did. "Mitchell..."
Without saying anything back, Mitchell stepped forward and pressed a button on the machine.
Message Deleted.
"I'm not going back there," Mitchell insisted, staring down at the phone. "That's over. Over."
That night in bed he rested between them, with George stroking soft lines on his bare arm and with Annie playing with his hair. His eyes were closed but he wasn't sleeping, and over his body George caught her eyes. There was such worry and pain painted on his face that Annie wished she knew how to wash it all away. She wished she had the ability to save both of them.
Yet all she could do was snuggle close against the heat of Mitchell's body, hemming him in with as much care as she could, while they thought of the future together: of London and escaping far from their darker lives here, starting afresh with only each other for company. She could forget about Owen and Mitchell could leave his drug connections behind - and George, if he wanted, could start again with his family.
"We're going to be okay," she said, as if she had only just realised it: the knowledge was new, surprising, and refreshing. "We really are."
George's hand moved to cover hers, and Mitchell snuggled tighter together. "Better than fine," George said. "We're going to be brilliant."
Mitchell sighed and his breath puffed against her face, sharp like toothpaste. "Are we done self-congratulating?" he mumbled. "I'm sleepy."
"You're grumpy," George amended, dipping his head afterwards to press his lips against the bare curve of Mitchell's shoulder.
"That too," Mitchell agreed.
Annie smiled and watched as her boys circled further towards sleep.
Her boys.
She really could get used to that.
.fin
v. Annie
George didn't leave the hospital too much while Mitchell was recovering, but Annie had a need for decent food, showers, and to avoid feeling like a third wheel while they were patching themselves up.
She also, incidently, had a need for thinking space of her own.
And a need to see her mum. That one was very, very important.
Her mum's house still smelled exactly the way that it always had. Annie felt that it should have been filled with dust by now, a relic of a time gone by, even if it hadn't been that long at all since she'd last been here. No time at all, in fact.
"Oh, Annie," her mum said in a long, rushing sigh after Annie told her the whole story, all the details about Owen that no one could ever have expected. As she had said it, it had scratched at her throat as if he was trying to take a few extra scraps of pain with him on the way out. "What can I do?"
The tone in her mum's voice suggested that there was probably a very good reason that she didn't have access to guns in this country. Annie had never thought of her mum as a violent person, not for a second - but maybe a situation like this was the one thing that could push her over the edge. Nothing infuriated a mama bear like a cub in danger.
"It was just a little slap," she muttered, feeling ridiculous as she said it. "That's not even what I came over here to talk about, actually."
It seemed strange, somehow, that leaving Owen didn't even feel like the biggest news in her handbasket. He felt so small. So insignificant, like he might melt away from her memories if she crossed her fingers and wished hard enough. There was a future opening now. It had only been a couple of days and she still had missed calls from him on her cell phone - and already he was so far away from her. She didn't know what that said about her, about him, about them and all they had shared. She thought that her heart should have been breaking by now.
Sitting on the couch with her, her mum looked nothing but concerned.
"It's George. Y'know, I told you about him?"
"Your boss?"
"Yeah, well, sort of. I don't know. He's moving to London."
Her mum's face crumpled in sympathy and she reached for Annie's knee, squeezing it. "You'll find another job," she promised.
"That's not, um. That's not it. The thing is that he kind of asked me to come with him. And I'm not sure if that's still on the table or not, because with Mitchell and everything it's all really up in the air right now, but if it is, if they want me to come, I think maybe I'd be up for it. A new start, you know?"
"Oh, Annie," her mum said again, still unhappy from the sound of it - but Annie gave a smile that was uncertain and lopsided. The thought of the future scared her as much as it excited her. "This doesn't sound like a good idea."
"Nothing's decided for certain yet," she clarified, to stop her mum from thinking that she was going to disappear in a wild puff of smoke. "George has a whole thing going on with Mitchell, and Mitchell's in hospital, and I think there's got to be a lot of sorting out stuff before anything happens. I mean, I hope so. I hope Mitchell's coming with us."
The three of them starting anew in London, putting this entire mess behind them and pretending that they could be new, and clean, and free from it all. Probably a pipe-dream, but it was one that she had to hold onto.
"I have to meet them," her mum said, with a stern nod. "Before you go anywhere with them, before you even think about it, I need to check them out."
Annie smiled and said, "The second Mitchell's well enough we'll be right over."
She hadn't told her mum about the drugs - there were a few things that mums just didn't need to know - and she didn't plan on doing so. It wasn't relevent to the three of them, not really. Sounded worse than it was, if you didn't know him yet.
And her mum would know him. Annie could see the future: the pair of them were it.
*
It took a long time before Mitchell was anywhere near healthy enough to come home; he went into a clinic. Annie got the feeling that it was expensive, off the NHS, and that George was footing the bill. She didn't bring it up when they went to visit him during the assigned hours.
Dressed in a grey pair of sweatpants, Mitchell still looked healthier than she'd seen him in quite a while. He was slouched in his seat, arms across his chest, and his eyes had more life in them than desperation. It was an improvement; a start.
He kept watching George, his eyes unable to stay away, as if letting George out of his field of vision for too long might make him go away for good. "The food's good," Mitchell said. "Better than I expected, anyway."
"Good. That's good," Annie said, nodding intensely. "It's hard enough being in a place like this without the food being gross too, I bet. Like aeroplanes, right? You go up in the air and there are crying babies and cramped space and everything and then they serve you food that doesn't look like food at all."
Mitchell's gaze settled on her and he smiled, something slow and affectionate. She smiled right back at him. "Exactly," he said, "This isn't the RyanAir of rehab clinics."
"Nothing but the best for you," Annie agreed - and no one mentioned who was funding it. The dynamics between the three of them were still too fragile without anyone taking the time to push and prod and stamp their feet. They could sort it all out later.
George cleared his throat. "We've been house-hunting," he said. "Annie and I. There are a few nice places just outside of London. I think you'd like them."
"There's even a garden in some of them," Annie said gleefully. "George wants to grow vegetables."
"Maybe," George amended, apparently over his fit of excitement at the sight of a ready-planted vegetable plot in the back garden of one of the properties. "We'll have to see how it goes."
"But it sounds good, doesn't it?" Annie said. George and Mitchell glanced at each other as if they were having an entire conversation with just their eyes, the kind of thing that she couldn't listen in on. Too much subtext. "The three of us living together? I mean, I've never lived with anyone other than my mum and you-know-who, but still... I think I'll be a great flat-mate. I'm going to make white sauce."
"Just that?" Mitchell said, with a teasing glint in his eyes. Now that his attention was directed back at her she felt an old butterfly fluttering to life in her belly, the kind of thing that reminded her of how attractive both of her boys were. Sometimes, bogged down by all of the issues that surrounded them, she would forget.
"Yep, just white sauce, every single night. I've never made it before. It seems like a thing."
"A thing?"
"Yeah. Y'know, a thing that people should make when they're living together. It's a staple."
George was tense and tight-lipped beside her, but he managed a smile just for her. "I'll make something to go with the white sauce," he offered.
"And I'll happily eat whatever you make," Mitchell said, taking in both of them with a warm look in his eyes.
"Looks like we have our first meal together planned," Annie said.
"Yeah." Mitchell flicked his tongue across his lips and looked at them both, mischief shining through his pale skin. "It's a date."
Annie's stomach did a tiny flip and she wasn't sure what to say. Her ears buzzed. A date for the three of them. That was insane, wasn't it? It was stupid to worry about the mechanics of how this was going to work; it was stupid to think of it happening at all. It wasn't how relationships happened. Two's company; three's a crowd. No matter what, she was always going to be number three.
With the way that Mitchell was looking at her, it didn't exactly feel that way. She didn't have the long history that George and Mitchell had, but she was starting to understand that that was essential. They needed a clean slate, all of them. She could help to provide that.
"A date. Right." She smiled and twitched and then said, "This is all a bit mental, isn't it?"
"Don't blame me - blame George," Mitchell said, hiking his thumb towards his boyfriend. "He's the one that suggested it."
George spluttered in open indignation, yet there was really very little that he could do to argue against it. Annie reached out to grab onto his hand where it was resting on his knee. It made her feel daring, and all three of them stared at that one piece of contact, her small hand coating George's larger one.
"I can't wait 'til I'm out of here," Mitchell said, sounding almost dazed.
Annie looked up and saw the way that he was looking at them as if he wanted to devour the pair of them, and it made her stomach simmer in delight.
"There's some way to go yet," George reminded them primly.
"You're such a downer," Mitchell complained - but it was with such affection in his voice that it would be impossible to be offended by him. More than any hints of there being a strange future for the three of them together, Annie thought that the best thing was seeing the pair of them beginning to gel again; maybe George was slow to forgive, but slow didn't mean stationary. They'd get there, eventually.
Yet visiting hours couldn't last forever, and before long they were being shepherded out of the rec room. George stopped to allow Mitchell to kiss his mouth, something short but not necessarily chaste if the greedy slant of their mouths or the dazed look in George's eyes were clues to go by. Mitchell placed his hand on her waist after that, but aimed his mouth for her cheek - taking things slow, perhaps. Being careful not to freak her out.
They all had a long way to go, really.
Walking out of the clinic with George at her side, he offered his arm to her and she clung to his side - it made her feel like a Victorian lady, posh and rich. "He's doing well," she said.
"Seems that way," George agreed.
"And you two seem to be getting on very well again," she continued, reaching up to pat her fingertip against his lips - pretending that it didn't send a shiver down her spine to touch him there. "It's nice. I like seeing you happy."
"This is happy, is it?" George muttered. He seemed to enjoy wallowing in his own sense of melancholy.
"For you, yeah." Annie nudged his ribs with the back of her hand. "I think you were even smiling earlier, believe it or not."
"Impossible. I don't smile." The grin on his face rather suggested otherwise, and as they walked through the car park towards the bus stop Annie rested her head on his shoulder, hiding from the world with him for just a little while longer.
*
She had a small ton of missed calls and a barrowful of texts, all from one source: Owen. She knew she had to get back to him. Not back together with him, but they'd been together for so long - and he had been her world for all that time, her whole world. They deserved something more than a silent parting. They deserved a chat.
She arranged to meet him in a coffee shop near enough to the town centre, and before she left George checked and double-checked her bag to make sure that she had her cell phone to hand: "If there's any trouble, you call me," he warned. "Right away."
It was sweet, in its own way, to have George offer to come and throw his weight around if necessary. Annie doubted if he'd ever thrown a punch in his life; in a physical fight, she'd probably be better off than he was.
Besides, she wasn't scared. Not in public. Owen knew how to behave himself when there were public eyes upon them and people who could intervene. To the outside, he was the beautiful, sweet man that she had fallen in love with - the man who she thought she would always love, if she was honest with herself. It was only once you had settled into his life and made yourself comfortable in all the nooks and crannies that the other side emerged, the side that scared and saddened her.
At the coffee table, he looked as harmless as he had when they had first met; it felt as if they had come such a long way since then. She fussed with her hair for a last moment before she headed over to join him. They had a window seat, with a view of the crowds filtering back and forth on the street outside. They were all so busy; to them, this had no relevance, their private little drama.
"Hey," she said, because first words didn't come easily.
Owen's mouth twitched, and for a moment she loved him all over again. "Hi," he said. They both paused - Annie didn't speak, not because she had nothing to say but because she had no idea how she ought to say it. Owen cleared his throat. "I heard you're leaving town."
She didn't need to ask who he'd heard that from. Their social group was a right gossipy lot. "Yeah," she said, more awkward than she thought she needed to be. "There's - Well, some friends of mine are moving down."
"George and Mitchell," he said, jaw flexing for a moment. She breathed through her nose and waited for him to relax. It didn't really happen. "I know. I heard. Are you serious?"
She bit the inside of her cheek and then nodded. "Yeah," she said, as if realising it for herself the first time. "I am."
"They're gay. You're not going to get to..." He trailed off and didn't bother to finish the sentence, as if the thought was too obscene for him to consider.
Annie smiled, a smile that was all her own, and looked down at her hands for a few moments. "It's not even about them. I mean, it is, but this with you - it's not. If that makes sense?" She didn't think that it made sense anywhere outside her own mind, but that was enough for her. "I need someone that's... I don't know. That is better to me. Someone that loves me as much as I love them, and who's supportive, and who is cute and sexy and funny. Funny, that's definitely important. And, y'know, complicated, but not in a mean way."
She gave a wistful sigh and knew that she could go on forever: didn't every single person have their own wish list?
Owen frowned and shook his head. "That's a fantasy. You know that, jesus. You'll never meet a man who has all that you're looking for. Just come home. I miss you."
She didn't know whether or not that was true: from a small distance now, she could see everything a little more clearly. She could see that Owen wasn't quite the angel that she so desperately wanted him to be, and that she had to let go of that image. He didn't fit. "I might not find one man with all that stuff," she agreed after taking a pause, "but I think, maybe, I've found two."
The words buzzed on the tip of her tongue after she said them - she wanted to laugh at her own daring, laugh because it was true, and laugh because it was too impossible to really be happening to her. Two men, both of them perfectly flawed, and if she wanted them then maybe they could be hers. She looked around at the coffee shop and was surprised to find that everyone was still sedentary: her revelation was so shattering that she thought a party or a fight should have burst out in her honour.
Owen scoffed and his eyes narrowed and she realised, dimly, that it didn't matter. "I loved you," she said, echoing the words throughout her body. Past tense. A world gone by. "But I'm starting to think that maybe I deserve something better. Y'know?"
The words stunned her as she said them, impressed with her own daring. She felt wise - she'd never felt that way before.
"You can't do this," Owen insisted. "You just - can't."
Her brow creased and she watched him from across the table, seeing a man whose world was slipping beyond his control. He didn't like it, agitated. He used to be her world; he seemed very small, now. "I've got to go," she said. She hadn't even ordered anything to drink yet, but she was coming to see that they had less to talk about than she had thought. Adrenaline ran through her veins, spurring her on, bringing heat to her cheeks. "I've got to go see my boyfriend. One of them."
She wanted to laugh after she said that, feeling like the most daring person on the planet, but she managed to restrain herself - for now.
She swept out of the cafe with a sad goodbye, but there was a bounce in her step: this didn't feel like an ending. Walking away from Owen, it just felt like she was walking towards something even better - a new phase in her life that would blow everything else away. She drew her cell phone out of her pocket and called George immediately, knowing that Mitchell didn't have his phone with him in the clinic.
"What is it? Are you okay? Should I come? I'm five minutes away," George said when he answered, panicked already from the sounds of things.
She kept smiling at the glittering thread of anxiety in his voice. "I'm fine - I just left."
"Already?"
"Yeah, already. There wasn't that much to say, really." She paused, walking without any real idea of where she was going. "I called you my 'boyfriend'. Is that weird?"
"A little bit, yeah," George agreed, but that didn't even make her self-conscious. She was fresh out of a bad relationship and now seemed to be dating a man who had identified as gay for most of his life - was 'dating' even the right word for it? She really had no idea. "I don't mind it, though. Means I should call you my girlfriend, right?"
"Right," she said, and it made her giggle, so she followed it up with, "Want to meet up for lunch? I'm starving."
"I'd love to," George said.
Ten minutes later they were eating together, and with George at her side Annie felt like the luckiest woman alive. The sun was shining and London was waiting for them and there was a whole world opening up for her, an entire land of opportunity. Today was a good day.
*
They spent the rest of the day together, hand in hand, while George giggled because he was supposed to be job-hunting. Lunch was good, and dinner was better, and they headed to a movie as well. Their first date, Annie thought. Moving in together, then kissing, then dating. They really were doing things in the wrong order.
"So. George," Annie said - and he gave her an alarmed look as they walked arm-in-arm through Bristol's streets. She couldn't really blame him for that. No good conversation started that seriously. "I was just thinking that maybe we should talk. About stuff."
"Uh-huh?"
"Y'know. Like, stuff." God, she was starting to sound like George, talking as if everyone else was a telepath. "About you being my gay boyfriend?"
"Ah. That. Yes." George looked down at the dry pavement as they walked, lit only by the bright street-lamps.
"It's going to be weird, right? You're not into girls."
George nodded; she pretended that she hadn't been hoping that he would tell her that he had been wrong the entire time and had now changed his mind about his sexual preference just because of her.
"I'm not," he agreed. "It's different with you."
Annie worried her bottom lip, trying to believe that this was going to be okay, that she wasn't going to make him unhappy. "How?"
"I'm interested in you," George said. "It doesn't make sense. You're gorgeous, but I've never wanted like this before. But you're gorgeous. You're sweet. And..."
She placed her hand over his arm and squeezed for a moment, enough to say, I'm here, it's okay. His confusion was floating through the air, so thick she felt like she was breathing it in. "I just don't want you thinking that you have to go along with this or anything. There's no pressure."
"I'm the one that suggested it, remember?" George paused and frowned. "I think, anyway."
Annie nodded. She wasn't actually sure either: it felt as if they'd been like this from the very beginning, that they were always supposed to be melded together in this way. "Maybe it'll all make more sense when Mitchell can join us again."
He had another couple of weeks to go as an in-patient, and then the doctors were hopeful that they could see how things went as an out-patient, visiting clinics and support groups. The road to recovery was a tough one, and this time Annie was walking it with the pair of them. She could only hope that the extra support might be exactly what Mitchell needed.
One street later, as they were waiting to cross the road at a set of traffic lights, George took a deep breath and asked, "Do you want to sleep in my bed tonight?"
His eyes were wide with shock as if he had just accidentally punched a shark, and the sight of it made Annie reach onto her tiptoes in order to press a kiss against his cheek. "I'd love to."
"Just sleep, I mean. There's no rush. I'm not trying to pressure you into - into going too fast. You just saw Owen today."
"My bed seems really empty these days," Annie confessed. She was used to sleeping with Owen's heavy presence against her back, his breath filtering against her neck.
George's head dipped so that he could hide his face before he admitted, "Yeah. Mine too."
She didn't feel quite so alone any more - and she didn't feel half as broken.
The lights changed and they crossed the road together, their conversation shifting until they were both comfortable and settled once more.
That night, she curled like a cat in George's bed, clinging to him and sapping his warmth. With her heart buzzing it was impossible to sleep at first, too excited to function, but the ease with which George settled down and breathed into sleep helped her to relax as well. George slept like an overgrown puppy, limbs floppy and out of control.
One thing was for certain: when they got to London, the three of them would need a bigger bed.
*
When Mitchell got out of rehab, he pretended that everything was the same. It was a little bit like her first day at work had been: jolly and fresh and daring.
There was a darkness there, though, a starved and hungry look in his eyes. Sometimes he would sit in their living room without saying a word, eyes staring at the television without seeing a thing. Often, Annie would find George sitting there with him, holding Mitchell so that he could rest his head on his shoulder, holding onto him as if he could physically chase the aching thoughts from his mind. When she found them like that, Annie would leave them to it: there was history there, miles of it, and she didn't feel like she could intervene. Not yet.
Yet they made her as involved as possible, and a week after Mitchell had come home - spending his days in the clinic and his nights curled between the pair of them - they had a proper date, with an Italian restaurant and candles and everything.
"Your replacement is rubbish," George said to Mitchell, frowning in displeasure. "He keeps making my tea wrong."
"I said I'd do it," Annie pointed out, before she turned to Mitchell to say, "He's going mad. Really. I think it's withdrawal."
It made Mitchell grin, something that wasn't nearly common enough these days, and George's face coloured, pinking right up to the tips of his ears. "I'm glad," Mitchell said. "If the new guy was better than me, I'd have to be worried."
Beneath the table, Mitchell clung onto a hand each as they waited for their food to arrive. Their chatter flowed easily and Annie felt far more comfortable at this table than she could ever have imagined doing. When she arrived at their office to work as a secretary, she had really never imagined that it was possible for the three of them to end up here.
They made it home eventually, warm on food and high only on each others' presence - and there was a message on their answer machine.
"Mitchell. It's Lauren. Thought I'd call to see how the white knighting is going for you. Having fun?" She laughed, and as they stood gathered around the phone in their hallway the sound seemed to crunch with tension. "We're going partying tomorrow night, starting at the funeral parlour - 9 o'clock. You're invited too." With a sunshine-mad giggle, she said goodbye and hung up the phone. End of Message.
For a moment, no one moved. No one said anything.
George broke the silence - he always did. "Mitchell..."
Without saying anything back, Mitchell stepped forward and pressed a button on the machine.
Message Deleted.
"I'm not going back there," Mitchell insisted, staring down at the phone. "That's over. Over."
That night in bed he rested between them, with George stroking soft lines on his bare arm and with Annie playing with his hair. His eyes were closed but he wasn't sleeping, and over his body George caught her eyes. There was such worry and pain painted on his face that Annie wished she knew how to wash it all away. She wished she had the ability to save both of them.
Yet all she could do was snuggle close against the heat of Mitchell's body, hemming him in with as much care as she could, while they thought of the future together: of London and escaping far from their darker lives here, starting afresh with only each other for company. She could forget about Owen and Mitchell could leave his drug connections behind - and George, if he wanted, could start again with his family.
"We're going to be okay," she said, as if she had only just realised it: the knowledge was new, surprising, and refreshing. "We really are."
George's hand moved to cover hers, and Mitchell snuggled tighter together. "Better than fine," George said. "We're going to be brilliant."
Mitchell sighed and his breath puffed against her face, sharp like toothpaste. "Are we done self-congratulating?" he mumbled. "I'm sleepy."
"You're grumpy," George amended, dipping his head afterwards to press his lips against the bare curve of Mitchell's shoulder.
"That too," Mitchell agreed.
Annie smiled and watched as her boys circled further towards sleep.
Her boys.
She really could get used to that.
.fin