climb the wall to make the sun rise in time, but the night had already begun.
Title: Causality
Fandom: Being Human
Pairing(s): George/Mitchell
Warnings: Swearing, some violent content. Hops about in time a bit.
Summary: Causality. Noun. The principle of, or relationship between, cause and effect.
A/N: strangeumbrella is an actual life-saver, seriously. I’ve been writing this on and off for about a week, and would never have finished it if it weren’t for her.
It happened like this: George was naked.
George was naked, and covered with mud, and it was raining. And every centimetre of him ached, like he’d been gone over very thoroughly with a cricket bat, and there wasn’t a scratch on him. Mind you, there was quite a lot of blood. None of it was his.
But anyway, it happened like one minute it was raining, and then it wasn’t. George was out of the rain. The rain was no longer on George.
When he looked up, mostly to see why he was no longer involved in a water/heat transaction with the elements, Mitchell was standing over him - only, at the time, he didn’t know who Mitchell was or what it meant that Mitchell had arrived into his life. So: someone was there. Someone was holding an umbrella, and wearing a lot of black, and this someone had stopped it raining.
These were the things George was thinking.
"Get up," said Someone. "If you can. Get up, and come with me."
"I’m naked," said George.
"I noticed," they replied. "You’re also a werewolf. Why did you think the 'naked' thing was more important?"
"I," said George, but then he couldn’t think of anything else to say. In fact, he couldn’t think of anything to the extent where it seemed easier to simply do what the man said; it felt rude, after all, to just stay still and not do anything at all. And standing up, it emerged, was difficult, but not beyond his capabilities.
"I'm Mitchell," said Mitchell, and then, "You’re shaking."
The grip on George’s arm was like a vice, and the pads of Mitchell’s fingers felt cold, and there was a fox two foot away from them without a head. These were the things George was thinking.
He said, "I’m George."
Mitchell took George back to his car, wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and handed him a thermos. ("Don’t look at me like that. It’s tea: drink it.")
George cannot actually remember much about this point in his life, something he assumes has a little bit to do with the shock and a little bit to do with the stage two hypothermia, although Mitchell's since assured him that his own behaviour equalled that of a gentlemen from a nineteenth century novel - in fact, he occasionally retells the story of their meeting whenever he wants George to cover one of his shifts.
By the time George could once again touch his thumb and little finger together, and isn’t it amazing how you miss the simple muscle functions when they’re gone, they were pulling into a hospital car park.
"Oh God," said George. "Um, I’m okay - it isn’t my blood. I think I killed a fox."
"You did," Mitchell said.
These were the first words they had spoken to each other the entire way there. Then they got out of the car.
Incidentally, George had never been snuck into a hospital bathroom before, and kind of wishes he could remember more about it, because it sounds like the sort of thing that would probably make for quite a funny story. The next thing he can really recall, though, is perching on the side of a bath, with this fluorescent bulb flickering overhead and Mitchell bending over him.
Mitchell said, "Hey, you were right: it isn’t your blood." But he still dipped the corner of the blanket in cold water and washed it off himself.
George finds it odd, now, that he can barely remember the car journey at all, but is able to recall every second of Mitchell’s hand on the side of his face, Mitchell’s breath on his skin, Mitchell’s cold fingertips. Mitchell’s eyes, dark, almost black. But then, George hadn’t been touched with any degree of gentleness since before he became a Marked Man, and for some reason it made him think of the last night he and Julia made love, before he went away. Her waving him off the next morning, wearing purple, saying, Call me, call me when you get there okay? And to think - he’d been worried about flying.
"That’s better," Mitchell said when he was done.
George said, "Thank you."
He wondered when it was going to be a good time to mention that he needed glasses and he'd left them somewhere, or that they didn’t know each other, or that he had, in fact, spent the previous night running round in a forest, mauling things, and Mitchell appeared to have forgotten that. In fact, he was right in the midst of this thought process when Mitchell said, "I’m a vampire, by the way."
Just out with it, just like that, as if he’d been saying, 'I’m a bit peckish, you know' or 'actually, mate, have you noticed you’re still naked?' George blinked. It seemed the most sensible course of action.
And despite everything, you know, he thought it was a joke. It felt like one: somehow it had never occurred to him that other things, things other than werewolves, would be just as real as they themselves had turned out to be. He let out this nervous little laugh, like 'ha HA', something he hadn’t done since...well, for a very long time.
There was a pause. Mitchell leaned back a bit, studying him.
"I have to say," he murmured. "You’re taking it much better than I thought you would."
"Ha HA?" said George.
-+-
"I’m sorry about your girlfriend," Mitchell says, and even though he’s talking at normal volume, it’s like he’s whispering in George’s ear. "I mean that. Bad things, good people, etcetera."
"Thanks," says George. "Sorry about your immortal soul."
Mitchell’s laugh makes him sound like a normal person; it makes George feel like one.
-+-
When they finally get a flat together, it's as if it was always going to happen, like George has been just waiting for this since the day they met; he's missed the way inevitability makes him feel. He was a smart child, then a smart teenager, and the certainty of his future in those days (exams, university, career, success, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum) had felt simultaneously comforting and stifling - then one day he went from that, from all that certainty, to nothing. From everything, to nothing. And of course, he also lost his faith, which was terrifying: waking up one day to feel like he himself, not some faceless god, was the centre of his own universe - and what did that mean if he didn’t even like himself very much? What did it all count for then?
So he likes the feeling that some things are still beyond his control: that there might be something out there.
And the normality, he’s missed that, too.
To be honest, half the time it does feel a little bit like he’s play-acting a version of himself from before the curse; cleaning, worrying about cushions, being overly concerned by people wearing shoes indoors. George isn’t certain whether he actually cares about these things, or just wants to believe he still does, because he associates them so much with being normal, and human, and not turning into a werewolf every now and then. George longs more than anything to believe, as fervently as he used to, that these silly fripperies are still important - but it doesn’t feel true. Maybe they never were.
Mitchell’s couch - the couch Mitchell made such a fuss over them having - is comfortable, and sturdy, and a good place to be. The weight of Mitchell’s feet on his thighs is already familiar: like Annie’s voice; like their corner of the pub; like Mitchell’s cold fingertips, and dark eyes, and how Normal he sounds when he laughs. There’s nothing really wrong with play-acting, George thinks, as long as it isn’t just for him - except, perhaps he has to make his own normality now.
And maybe that’s okay.
-+-
They’ve been living in the house for about two months when George hears it, and up to that point (Julia excepted) everything had been going pretty much okay. He’s mopping an empty hospital corridor at the time - not everyone’s idea of a great Friday night, but work’s work - and fiddling with the Shuffle function on his iPod; the noise is like something being knocked over, and is so obviously nothing that his thumb hovers over the pause button for a good ten seconds before he finally presses. He thinks: should probably check it isn’t a patient. He thinks: won’t take two minutes. He thinks: it’ll be nothing.
So George leans the mop against a wall and says, "Hello?" And two or three other Georges greet him back - hello, hello, hello. It’s silent.
Only, just then, just at the moment when he’s getting ready to go back to work and forget the whole thing, he hears something else. A scream. A scream that cuts off.
The full moon’s in less than a week, so every inch of him’s racing with adrenalin and endorphins and old magic, and he’s moving before he even really knows what’s happening. His footsteps are light. He isn’t wearing his glasses, because he doesn’t need them, and even though he doesn’t really have time to think about what he’s going to find, it still takes him by surprise.
It’s Neeru, from...A&E? Radiology? He can’t quite recall, but they’ve spoken once or twice and always get on well enough; George notes, with dull surprise, that she is being pressed against the wall by a woman who appears to be kissing her neck. He thinks: well. He thinks: I should leave, quietly.
But then he notices the expression on her face. It’s sort of like there isn’t one. Like she’s unconscious. Then, just as he’s thinking that, several things happen so quickly that he can’t quite process them: first, there’s a dull thump from just around the corner, that he dully recognises as his mop falling over. The noise of it makes the girl with her back to him flinch away, turn round, and as she does so Neeru slumps heavily to the floor - George is still considering the implications of all this when he recognises her, the other girl. It’s Lauren: the girl who died a few months back. The girl who died.
He doesn’t scream, but it’s a close-run thing.
With her mouth open like that, poised, he can see Neeru’s blood stark against the white enamel of Lauren’s teeth. His stomach flips over. Neeru isn’t moving. And he can see the crazed expression in Lauren’s eyes, even the tension in her muscles like she’s about to spring - like she’s about to spring at him. There’s a sound like hissing before George’s reflexes take over, and he doesn’t have to think about anything for a little while.
-+-
When his brain gets going again, George is already halfway home, and as far as he’s aware he’s managed to out-run her: high heels, he thinks, thank god. He doesn’t know what would happen, as far as being a werewolf goes, if he were also bitten by a vampire; he doesn’t really want to find out, either.
There’s a horrible, nauseous feeling in his very core, that he realises has less to do with Neeru being dead (although, oh god, that’s horrible enough) than it has to do with Mitchell: qith the fact that that, drinking blood and sinking your teeth into people’s necks and so on, that that is what Mitchell does. Somehow, though George has always known this, it had never seemed so horrifyingly real before tonight.
Mitchell is his friend. But Mitchell kills people, too.
And Lauren, her 'heart attack'. And Mitchell, sitting in the empty tub in the bathroom that’s always out of order, wearing his scrubs, saying, "Did you know her?" And Mitchell, changing the subject. And the look on his face when he stood in front of the memorial. George has an IQ of 156, he remembers things, sometimes his brain stores away stuff that’s important before he’s even realised it’s important and he thinks maybe he’s going to be sick.
His keys are in his bag, in his locker, at the hospital, so now he’s pounding on his own front door like an idiot, like a fucking idiot, waiting for one of his housemates to let him in, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do, doesn’t know what he’ll say when he sees him, and and and
And the door swings open. And it’s Annie.
She says, "George! Be quiet, will you, it’s the middle of the night, if the neighbours complain-" And then she says, "Oh my god, what’s happened?"
George doesn’t answer. Can’t speak. He shakes his head, and then he’s dodged her, and he’s taking the steps up to their flat two at a time.
When he gets there he finds Mitchell already awake, stood in the living room, looking puzzled and a little disgruntled. There’s a second where George wants to do this: grab hold of Mitchell, and not let go of him until the world’s gone back to normal (or whatever passes for normal nowadays). And there’s another second where he thinks he’d maybe like to hit Mitchell very, very hard.
And yet, the running, the fear, the shock, the rush; it’s all happened too quickly and it’s too much and the strength’s gone out of him. There’s a half-minute or so where he just sort of stands there, breathing and dark-eyed, while Mitchell moves towards him looking concerned. George is so stunned by everything that he doesn’t move a muscle when Mitchell slips a hand to the back of his neck and tries catching his eye, saying, "George? George?"
When George realises what’s happening, he flinches away from the contact before he can consider how much he wants someone to touch him. Mitchell looks even more worried, now, and he can sense Annie’s nervousness emanating from the doorway behind him - there’s a part of him that wants to ask her to leave, because if he’s leaping to conclusions... If he’s wrong... But how can he be?
"Mitchell," he says, and his voice is very quiet; the tension in the room seems to be taking up all of the space where oxygen used to be. He says, "Mitchell, did you kill Lauren Drake?"
Annie says, "Who’s Lauren Drake?" There’s a nervous laugh in her voice that reminds George of his own, and it sounds like normality, but Mitchell’s gone incredibly still and the damage is already done. He looks like a photograph someone’s taken, a photograph of how the real Mitchell looked before George said what he said - one hand up in a placatory gesture like people use on children, and feral animals. George absently wonders which group he’d fit into better.
Mitchell says, "Not...technically."
It’s all George really needs to hear.
For the umpteenth time tonight, his body takes over, a spring of muscle and coiled tension set neatly loose upon Mitchell, which is to say that George hits him very, very hard in the face. He doesn’t say anything else. Annie’s shouting (at both of them, he thinks, although it’s difficult to tell), but he doesn’t answer. He just leaves.
-+-
George doesn’t go too far from the flat, because honestly there’s a pretty big part of him that wants Mitchell to catch him up, so they can have it out and get the whole thing over with. He’s always hated arguments, spent his school years avoiding them like the plague, and especially loathes dragging these things out for longer than they need to last; on the other hand, he doesn’t really have any clue what will happen when Mitchell finds him. If Mitchell finds him. If he even bothers to look.
George is trying not to wonder about whether or not anyone’s found Neeru’s body, yet, when he meets the evening’s second worrying noise: it must be about four in the morning, and it’s mostly quiet, so when he hears the steady click of heels behind him, he already knows who it is.
He wheels around and, of course, it’s Lauren. Oh, shit.
"Woah woah woah woah," cries George, more for something to say than anything, and then he’s backing away and she’s following, like some kind of bizarre dance. God, he really wishes he weren’t so terrified of turning his back; every muscle in his body’s screaming at him to run.
"Steady, mongrel," says Lauren, and it’s her voice and her face and her grin but it isn’t her.
"There’s no need to do this."
"Need?" Her lipstick is smudged, and her eyes are cruel. "I think you’ll find that, these days, I do what I like."
When she makes a grab for him, he uses her imbalance to shove her, in an attempt at shoving her over, but her poise is impeccable; as if the air’s moving out of her way. As if the laws of gravity that apply to George don’t quite apply to vampires. He’s often wondered.
Unfortunately, she uses his moment of dumb surprise to kick him in the jaw, with a muscle strenth he wouldn’t have thought her capable of, and it feels not unlike George imagines it would feel to be shot. He loses his balance.
The pavement is cold.
Struggling for breath as much as words, and coherent thought as much as anything, he half-shouts, "Why are you doing this, Lauren? Why did you do that to Neeru? She’s your friend."
"Was my friend."
"Is your friend. Just because you’ve changed, that doesn’t mean you’re incapable of... of..."
Lauren says, "Love?" She spits the word out like it’s poision, like it’s rancid food, and she’s crouched in front of him, gripping his face as hard as if she were trying to squeeze all the thoughts from his head. "Well you’d know all about a vampire’s capability for love, wouldn’t you, George."
There’s a part of him that would quite like to say 'yes', but he’s a feeling it wouldn’t make a fantastic come-back. He needs to run. He can’t. The moonlight’s making her teeth look like ivory, which is very distracting, and George tries to keep his voice as level and as rational as possible when he says, "Listen to me, okay? It’d be stupid to, to bite me - because my blood, d’you understand, it’s already full of - I mean, who knows what it could do? What if it made me change, somehow? I don’t want to-"
He stops because she’s laughing. "A hound like you," she says. "As if I’d even bother."
The pain in George’s face is almost overpowering, and he thinks his nose might be bleeding, and her hand on his throat feels suddenly very tight. The moonlight's making whatever she’s got in her other hand look like pure silver, which is very distracting. It’s a knife, he realises, numbly; she’s holding a knife. Things appear to have taken a sudden and quite undeniable turn for the worse.
He careers backwards, kicks out blindly and tries to scramble away, but she clamps him to her with an arm around the back of his head - he hates that she’s stronger than him, not because she’s a girl, but because he’s a werewolf and it counts for nothing. With one hand clutching the back of his shirt, Lauren drives the blade into his stomach, then out, in one swift movement.
She stumbles to her feet, still laughing. She licks the blood from her fingertips. She backs out of his line of vision.
George is on the floor; the floor is cold; George is cold. These are the things he is thinking.
The pain, the shock, they are not the worst thing: the very worst thing, George thinks, is the look on Mitchell’s face when he finally arrives. It looks like grief.
-+-
George is very disappointed when he comes to and discovers that he is not in the hospital, like in films, but is actually in the back of an ambulance, which means the whole miserable fucking night isn’t over yet. Every speed bump feels like someone squeezing his insides, and he groans in what he vaguely hopes is a manly sort of a way.
There is a very cold hand holding his hand. He can hear Mitchell’s voice in his ear, breath warm on the side of his face, but can’t seem to make sense of anything he’s saying.
George is relieved, nonetheless, to realise he is still alive.
-+-
The next time he wakes up, the first thing George says is, "This is more like it." Unfortunately, someone appears to have replaced his throat with two sheets of sandpaper, so it comes out sounding like a sort of low growl.
It could be a scene from Holby City - with the light drifting in through a nearby window, the hospital room clinical and a little too bright, the drip, the starched sheets, the gown that will undoubtedly gape embarrassingly at the back when he stands up...and Mitchell. Mitchell, who is slumped forwards in a chair pulled up to the edge of the bed, head resting by one of George’s hands; he is asleep, back rising and falling almost imperceptibly.
Once, George said to him, "Why do you need to breathe if you’re a vampire?" Mitchell replied, "Yes, well, I can also eat garlic bread, and visit the Algarve without bursting into flames, if I wanted to. I’m not exactly Count Dracula material, am I?"
George coughs. The second thing he says after waking up is, "Mitchell."
Mitchell’s head snaps up straightaway, eyes struggling to focus - but once they have, he smiles. There is a bruise on his cheekbone, and George can’t quite get his head around the fact that he did that: hitting Mitchell, being angry at him, they all feel like such a long time ago, and George doesn’t feel angry anymore. Just tired. Mitchell seems to be wearing George’s Star of David chain.
"Have you been here this whole time?" he says.
Mitchell doesn’t answer. He stands up, and says, "Annie’s coming." Then he leans over and kisses George on the forehead.
George is expecting himself to laugh, but somehow it doesn’t seem funny - just warm, and necessary, and nice. George’s limbs are heavy. The bright light hurts his eyes.
By the time he realises he’s been falling asleep, and has fought himself out of it, Mitchell is already gone.
-+-
Later. It’s dark, and Annie is stood by the window, looking just slightly the wrong side of visible.
Throat still sore, George rasps, "Annie, are you fading?" And if he weren’t in a hospital bed, recovering from a life-threatening injury, he might have sung it to the tune of 'Smooth Criminal'. It feels like a missed opportunity.
She turns round, looking surprised, but her outline’s clearer from the second they make eye contact and it occurs to him that the fading is probably a sign of stress, which is bizarrely touching. They blink at each other. Then they both start speaking at the same time.
"Silly question, but how-"
"Where exactly has Mitchell-"
They stop. They laugh that oh-so-familiar nervous laugh. Annie smiles, and George remembers exactly how much he likes her, which brings with it the realisation that he needn’t feel worried or uncertain here - instantly, he feels warm to his fingertips with relief.
"You go first," says George.
She sits beside his bed - in what George thinks of, for a second, as Mitchell’s chair, until he mentally corrects himself. She sits in the visitor’s chair. Of course, Annie’s still wearing the clothes she died in, and George tries not to imagine spending an eternity in his hospital scrubs; them all sat down the pub, Mitchell having to drink three people’s drinks. He and Annie, they need time to regroup, and won’t be able to do it if George decides to spend this time catching up on his slightly delayed freak-out, so he thinks he should probably save all that for another day. Besides, the following conversation promises to be more Holby City than anything that has yet taken place, as Annie begins filling him in on everything he’s missed.
It transpires that the blade nicked several of George’s vital organs, but damaged nothing over-seriously, which George finds puzzling and impressive for all of half a second.
"She didn’t want to kill me," he realises, flatly.
"Mitchell doesn’t think so," Annie replies; she looks almost embarrassed. "Apparently his lot have a good sense of, you know, bodily organs, which I guess sense. Either way, Mitchell reckons that if she’d really wanted to do you in, she could have."
"Where is Mitchell?" George blurts out, voice strained, in spite of the fact that he made up his mind not to ask again - at least, not until he’d heard everything Annie wanted to tell him.
She looks away. "I don’t know."
"Annie," George begins, tone weary, but her eyes flick back up again and meet his.
"I mean it," she says, "I don’t. He took it really badly, George, I’ve never seen him so upset. I mean, I’ve never really seen him so anything, you know what he’s like."
"Bit cold?"
"A bit," Annie agrees. Her voice sounds wobbly, like she’s on the verge of tears. "Look, he just said - he told me to keep an eye on you, be here when you woke up, and I wanted to be. I was scared someone might come back and finish you off or something, and Mitchell said that it’s, it’s nearly the full moon, and your body’s all full of weird stuff, so you might heal too quickly - he didn’t want you getting out of bed and scaring the nurses half to death. It was horrible to see him so shook-up, George, you’ve no idea. He thinks it’s his fault, I didn’t know what to do. He said some girl died who works here, I couldn’t stop thinking it might've been you, and then you just lay there all day like a bloody rag doll and even when they said it weren’t that serious, you looked so pale and everything, I really thought..."
She trails off, and covers her face with her hands. George wants to know how long he’s been asleep, and what’s happening about Neeru, and when Mitchell’s coming back, except none of that seems to matter right this second.
He says, "I’m really glad to see you, Annie. You know that? Come here."
Hugging Annie (haphazardly, and from a horizontal position) feels like trying to grab hold of cold air, albeit air that’s shaped like a person. But it also feels right. When she sits back in her chair, she looks a bit calmer, and she’s smiling.
"Hey," Annie says. "It’s just like Casualty, all this, isn’t it?"
And George laughs.
-+-
The next morning, George’s doctors pack him full of drugs, gather his things and send him unceremoniously on his way, talking about 'good vitals' and 'freeing up beds'; part of him’s relieved to be getting out, but the other part finds it difficult to believe that being stabbed is such a complete non-event. Still, the NHS, though. He can’t exactly claim to be massively shocked when, after all, they employ him.
It’s a bright, chill morning in the world outside the hosptial, and home's so close-by that he hasn’t bothered to ring Annie, but has decided instead to hobble back alone and surprise her. She could do with a few nice surprises, George thinks. Reflexively, his hand tightens and untightens its grip on the bag she brought in for him, and he’s about to set off when somebody says, "So, did they give you enough mind-altering painkillers to keep us busy for the weekend?"
George’s heart thumps almost painfully and, for lack of a witty retort, he nods. Mitchell says, "Cool."
He’s leaning against the wall nearby, smoking a cigarette, all covered up with the usual scarf/dark glasses combination (which makes him look a celebrity trying to exit the hospital discreetly, after a scandal, without being papped. He looks like the kind of person who’d say ‘papped’). George stands there studying him for only slightly too long, and doesn’t care how childish he sounds when he says, "Mitchell, where did you go?"
Mitchell takes his sunglasses off; behind them, his eyes are sad.
He says, "Fancy a walk, Marmaduke?"
Mitchell drives them out to a park that’s about ten minutes down the road from George’s old hostel - they sit on a picnic bench, on the table, with their legs on the seat, and it’s weird because there are a couple of families out and about with their kids. Because it’s a Sunday. Because lots of normal people had a perfectly normal weekend.
"You saved my life," says George, needing to say something, only it doesn’t sound like he imagined it would, doesn’t sound grateful at all. Instead, it sounds like a dull statement of fact.
"Yes," says Mitchell, "well, I wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t-"
"You don’t honestly blame yourself for this?" George demands, voice rising. In some ways, if you looked at everything simplified into cause and effect, he can see why someone would; but Mitchell should know as well as anybody that the world doesn’t work like that.
There’s no reply - Mitchell just shrugs, long fingers tapping out a rhythm on his knee.
"Listen," George continues, "Alright, you know, when I found out - when I found her, with Neeru...I was angry. I mean, we work in a hospital, it’s not like it was that or death, and doing things like that to people...it isn’t good. It isn’t right. But the look in her eye when she attacked me, Mitchell, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. And it made me realise what this, this thing, what it does to you - how difficult it must be. Because you can’t help what you are, can you?"
Mitchell turns his head to look George in the eye. Their faces are very close. George adds, "No one can."
"I really am trying," Mitchell says, and it’s almost a whisper. "It’s like it’s part of me, but not really - not a part of who I was. But it is what it is, and if someone asked you to just stop turning into a werewolf every month..."
"I couldn’t."
"No. No matter how much you wanted to."
George exhales. It’s like a staring contest where he doesn’t want to be the first one to look away, because it feels somehow as if doing that would mean admitting something about himself that he isn’t certain he’s ready to share. And he doesn’t even want to try explaining that train of thought to himself, yet.
But something about having all Mitchell’s attention on him feels intense, feels too much, so George turns his head away and stares at the goalposts on the empty football pitch.
"What was it like to be stabbed, then? Presumably an experience most people never get," Mitchell says, and his voice is too light, too deliberately casual.
George says, "Weird dreams. I only remember one of them properly, because it was so clear - I was stood at the end of this...it felt like a tunnel, in a way, but it looked like a sort of corridor. It was so long, and there was this door at the end. I felt as if I had to go through it, like there were all these people on the other side, but I couldn’t quite see them, and then I-"
He stops because Mitchell’s put a hand on his jaw, which surprises him into turning back round. Mitchell’s expression is slightly stunned, mouth a little open, and George can feel those dark eyes raking across his face, taking everything in.
"What?" he says. "What’s wrong?"
Somewhere overhead, in one of the tall trees, a bird is singing. Mitchell shakes his head, in that way of his that means he is considering something.
"Nothing," Mitchell says.
Then he tilts his head just so, and George wonders what he’s doing until Mitchell’s mouth is on his mouth, Mitchell’s fingers on his skin, Mitchell’s breath, Mitchell. It feels like when he was a kid, looking at his mum’s Magic Eye book; like, he’d look at the pictures for ages and keep trying to make sense of them, but nothing happened - then he’d just give up, and stop worrying about it, and suddenly the whole thing would fall into place. That’s how it feels.
It’s quite a chaste kiss, and when they pull apart (and George opens his eyes again - he hadn’t realised he’d shut them), he notices that he can feel Mitchell’s breath on his face, and that his hands are fisted in the front of Mitchell’s shirt.
"Right," says George, and his voice comes out an octave or so higher than usual; Mitchell chuckles in the quiet, under-his-breath way that makes it sound like a secret. George thinks he might be blushing, but dearly hopes he’s wrong. He adds, sounding slightly dazed, "I’ve never kissed a man before."
"You know, I’m also a vampire," says Mitchell. "Why did you think the ‘man’ thing was more important?"
George sighs resignedly, and presses their foreheads together, and the sound of his laughter floats up into the branches of the trees.
.
Fandom: Being Human
Pairing(s): George/Mitchell
Warnings: Swearing, some violent content. Hops about in time a bit.
Summary: Causality. Noun. The principle of, or relationship between, cause and effect.
A/N: strangeumbrella is an actual life-saver, seriously. I’ve been writing this on and off for about a week, and would never have finished it if it weren’t for her.
It happened like this: George was naked.
George was naked, and covered with mud, and it was raining. And every centimetre of him ached, like he’d been gone over very thoroughly with a cricket bat, and there wasn’t a scratch on him. Mind you, there was quite a lot of blood. None of it was his.
But anyway, it happened like one minute it was raining, and then it wasn’t. George was out of the rain. The rain was no longer on George.
When he looked up, mostly to see why he was no longer involved in a water/heat transaction with the elements, Mitchell was standing over him - only, at the time, he didn’t know who Mitchell was or what it meant that Mitchell had arrived into his life. So: someone was there. Someone was holding an umbrella, and wearing a lot of black, and this someone had stopped it raining.
These were the things George was thinking.
"Get up," said Someone. "If you can. Get up, and come with me."
"I’m naked," said George.
"I noticed," they replied. "You’re also a werewolf. Why did you think the 'naked' thing was more important?"
"I," said George, but then he couldn’t think of anything else to say. In fact, he couldn’t think of anything to the extent where it seemed easier to simply do what the man said; it felt rude, after all, to just stay still and not do anything at all. And standing up, it emerged, was difficult, but not beyond his capabilities.
"I'm Mitchell," said Mitchell, and then, "You’re shaking."
The grip on George’s arm was like a vice, and the pads of Mitchell’s fingers felt cold, and there was a fox two foot away from them without a head. These were the things George was thinking.
He said, "I’m George."
Mitchell took George back to his car, wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and handed him a thermos. ("Don’t look at me like that. It’s tea: drink it.")
George cannot actually remember much about this point in his life, something he assumes has a little bit to do with the shock and a little bit to do with the stage two hypothermia, although Mitchell's since assured him that his own behaviour equalled that of a gentlemen from a nineteenth century novel - in fact, he occasionally retells the story of their meeting whenever he wants George to cover one of his shifts.
By the time George could once again touch his thumb and little finger together, and isn’t it amazing how you miss the simple muscle functions when they’re gone, they were pulling into a hospital car park.
"Oh God," said George. "Um, I’m okay - it isn’t my blood. I think I killed a fox."
"You did," Mitchell said.
These were the first words they had spoken to each other the entire way there. Then they got out of the car.
Incidentally, George had never been snuck into a hospital bathroom before, and kind of wishes he could remember more about it, because it sounds like the sort of thing that would probably make for quite a funny story. The next thing he can really recall, though, is perching on the side of a bath, with this fluorescent bulb flickering overhead and Mitchell bending over him.
Mitchell said, "Hey, you were right: it isn’t your blood." But he still dipped the corner of the blanket in cold water and washed it off himself.
George finds it odd, now, that he can barely remember the car journey at all, but is able to recall every second of Mitchell’s hand on the side of his face, Mitchell’s breath on his skin, Mitchell’s cold fingertips. Mitchell’s eyes, dark, almost black. But then, George hadn’t been touched with any degree of gentleness since before he became a Marked Man, and for some reason it made him think of the last night he and Julia made love, before he went away. Her waving him off the next morning, wearing purple, saying, Call me, call me when you get there okay? And to think - he’d been worried about flying.
"That’s better," Mitchell said when he was done.
George said, "Thank you."
He wondered when it was going to be a good time to mention that he needed glasses and he'd left them somewhere, or that they didn’t know each other, or that he had, in fact, spent the previous night running round in a forest, mauling things, and Mitchell appeared to have forgotten that. In fact, he was right in the midst of this thought process when Mitchell said, "I’m a vampire, by the way."
Just out with it, just like that, as if he’d been saying, 'I’m a bit peckish, you know' or 'actually, mate, have you noticed you’re still naked?' George blinked. It seemed the most sensible course of action.
And despite everything, you know, he thought it was a joke. It felt like one: somehow it had never occurred to him that other things, things other than werewolves, would be just as real as they themselves had turned out to be. He let out this nervous little laugh, like 'ha HA', something he hadn’t done since...well, for a very long time.
There was a pause. Mitchell leaned back a bit, studying him.
"I have to say," he murmured. "You’re taking it much better than I thought you would."
"Ha HA?" said George.
-+-
"I’m sorry about your girlfriend," Mitchell says, and even though he’s talking at normal volume, it’s like he’s whispering in George’s ear. "I mean that. Bad things, good people, etcetera."
"Thanks," says George. "Sorry about your immortal soul."
Mitchell’s laugh makes him sound like a normal person; it makes George feel like one.
-+-
When they finally get a flat together, it's as if it was always going to happen, like George has been just waiting for this since the day they met; he's missed the way inevitability makes him feel. He was a smart child, then a smart teenager, and the certainty of his future in those days (exams, university, career, success, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum) had felt simultaneously comforting and stifling - then one day he went from that, from all that certainty, to nothing. From everything, to nothing. And of course, he also lost his faith, which was terrifying: waking up one day to feel like he himself, not some faceless god, was the centre of his own universe - and what did that mean if he didn’t even like himself very much? What did it all count for then?
So he likes the feeling that some things are still beyond his control: that there might be something out there.
And the normality, he’s missed that, too.
To be honest, half the time it does feel a little bit like he’s play-acting a version of himself from before the curse; cleaning, worrying about cushions, being overly concerned by people wearing shoes indoors. George isn’t certain whether he actually cares about these things, or just wants to believe he still does, because he associates them so much with being normal, and human, and not turning into a werewolf every now and then. George longs more than anything to believe, as fervently as he used to, that these silly fripperies are still important - but it doesn’t feel true. Maybe they never were.
Mitchell’s couch - the couch Mitchell made such a fuss over them having - is comfortable, and sturdy, and a good place to be. The weight of Mitchell’s feet on his thighs is already familiar: like Annie’s voice; like their corner of the pub; like Mitchell’s cold fingertips, and dark eyes, and how Normal he sounds when he laughs. There’s nothing really wrong with play-acting, George thinks, as long as it isn’t just for him - except, perhaps he has to make his own normality now.
And maybe that’s okay.
-+-
They’ve been living in the house for about two months when George hears it, and up to that point (Julia excepted) everything had been going pretty much okay. He’s mopping an empty hospital corridor at the time - not everyone’s idea of a great Friday night, but work’s work - and fiddling with the Shuffle function on his iPod; the noise is like something being knocked over, and is so obviously nothing that his thumb hovers over the pause button for a good ten seconds before he finally presses. He thinks: should probably check it isn’t a patient. He thinks: won’t take two minutes. He thinks: it’ll be nothing.
So George leans the mop against a wall and says, "Hello?" And two or three other Georges greet him back - hello, hello, hello. It’s silent.
Only, just then, just at the moment when he’s getting ready to go back to work and forget the whole thing, he hears something else. A scream. A scream that cuts off.
The full moon’s in less than a week, so every inch of him’s racing with adrenalin and endorphins and old magic, and he’s moving before he even really knows what’s happening. His footsteps are light. He isn’t wearing his glasses, because he doesn’t need them, and even though he doesn’t really have time to think about what he’s going to find, it still takes him by surprise.
It’s Neeru, from...A&E? Radiology? He can’t quite recall, but they’ve spoken once or twice and always get on well enough; George notes, with dull surprise, that she is being pressed against the wall by a woman who appears to be kissing her neck. He thinks: well. He thinks: I should leave, quietly.
But then he notices the expression on her face. It’s sort of like there isn’t one. Like she’s unconscious. Then, just as he’s thinking that, several things happen so quickly that he can’t quite process them: first, there’s a dull thump from just around the corner, that he dully recognises as his mop falling over. The noise of it makes the girl with her back to him flinch away, turn round, and as she does so Neeru slumps heavily to the floor - George is still considering the implications of all this when he recognises her, the other girl. It’s Lauren: the girl who died a few months back. The girl who died.
He doesn’t scream, but it’s a close-run thing.
With her mouth open like that, poised, he can see Neeru’s blood stark against the white enamel of Lauren’s teeth. His stomach flips over. Neeru isn’t moving. And he can see the crazed expression in Lauren’s eyes, even the tension in her muscles like she’s about to spring - like she’s about to spring at him. There’s a sound like hissing before George’s reflexes take over, and he doesn’t have to think about anything for a little while.
-+-
When his brain gets going again, George is already halfway home, and as far as he’s aware he’s managed to out-run her: high heels, he thinks, thank god. He doesn’t know what would happen, as far as being a werewolf goes, if he were also bitten by a vampire; he doesn’t really want to find out, either.
There’s a horrible, nauseous feeling in his very core, that he realises has less to do with Neeru being dead (although, oh god, that’s horrible enough) than it has to do with Mitchell: qith the fact that that, drinking blood and sinking your teeth into people’s necks and so on, that that is what Mitchell does. Somehow, though George has always known this, it had never seemed so horrifyingly real before tonight.
Mitchell is his friend. But Mitchell kills people, too.
And Lauren, her 'heart attack'. And Mitchell, sitting in the empty tub in the bathroom that’s always out of order, wearing his scrubs, saying, "Did you know her?" And Mitchell, changing the subject. And the look on his face when he stood in front of the memorial. George has an IQ of 156, he remembers things, sometimes his brain stores away stuff that’s important before he’s even realised it’s important and he thinks maybe he’s going to be sick.
His keys are in his bag, in his locker, at the hospital, so now he’s pounding on his own front door like an idiot, like a fucking idiot, waiting for one of his housemates to let him in, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do, doesn’t know what he’ll say when he sees him, and and and
And the door swings open. And it’s Annie.
She says, "George! Be quiet, will you, it’s the middle of the night, if the neighbours complain-" And then she says, "Oh my god, what’s happened?"
George doesn’t answer. Can’t speak. He shakes his head, and then he’s dodged her, and he’s taking the steps up to their flat two at a time.
When he gets there he finds Mitchell already awake, stood in the living room, looking puzzled and a little disgruntled. There’s a second where George wants to do this: grab hold of Mitchell, and not let go of him until the world’s gone back to normal (or whatever passes for normal nowadays). And there’s another second where he thinks he’d maybe like to hit Mitchell very, very hard.
And yet, the running, the fear, the shock, the rush; it’s all happened too quickly and it’s too much and the strength’s gone out of him. There’s a half-minute or so where he just sort of stands there, breathing and dark-eyed, while Mitchell moves towards him looking concerned. George is so stunned by everything that he doesn’t move a muscle when Mitchell slips a hand to the back of his neck and tries catching his eye, saying, "George? George?"
When George realises what’s happening, he flinches away from the contact before he can consider how much he wants someone to touch him. Mitchell looks even more worried, now, and he can sense Annie’s nervousness emanating from the doorway behind him - there’s a part of him that wants to ask her to leave, because if he’s leaping to conclusions... If he’s wrong... But how can he be?
"Mitchell," he says, and his voice is very quiet; the tension in the room seems to be taking up all of the space where oxygen used to be. He says, "Mitchell, did you kill Lauren Drake?"
Annie says, "Who’s Lauren Drake?" There’s a nervous laugh in her voice that reminds George of his own, and it sounds like normality, but Mitchell’s gone incredibly still and the damage is already done. He looks like a photograph someone’s taken, a photograph of how the real Mitchell looked before George said what he said - one hand up in a placatory gesture like people use on children, and feral animals. George absently wonders which group he’d fit into better.
Mitchell says, "Not...technically."
It’s all George really needs to hear.
For the umpteenth time tonight, his body takes over, a spring of muscle and coiled tension set neatly loose upon Mitchell, which is to say that George hits him very, very hard in the face. He doesn’t say anything else. Annie’s shouting (at both of them, he thinks, although it’s difficult to tell), but he doesn’t answer. He just leaves.
-+-
George doesn’t go too far from the flat, because honestly there’s a pretty big part of him that wants Mitchell to catch him up, so they can have it out and get the whole thing over with. He’s always hated arguments, spent his school years avoiding them like the plague, and especially loathes dragging these things out for longer than they need to last; on the other hand, he doesn’t really have any clue what will happen when Mitchell finds him. If Mitchell finds him. If he even bothers to look.
George is trying not to wonder about whether or not anyone’s found Neeru’s body, yet, when he meets the evening’s second worrying noise: it must be about four in the morning, and it’s mostly quiet, so when he hears the steady click of heels behind him, he already knows who it is.
He wheels around and, of course, it’s Lauren. Oh, shit.
"Woah woah woah woah," cries George, more for something to say than anything, and then he’s backing away and she’s following, like some kind of bizarre dance. God, he really wishes he weren’t so terrified of turning his back; every muscle in his body’s screaming at him to run.
"Steady, mongrel," says Lauren, and it’s her voice and her face and her grin but it isn’t her.
"There’s no need to do this."
"Need?" Her lipstick is smudged, and her eyes are cruel. "I think you’ll find that, these days, I do what I like."
When she makes a grab for him, he uses her imbalance to shove her, in an attempt at shoving her over, but her poise is impeccable; as if the air’s moving out of her way. As if the laws of gravity that apply to George don’t quite apply to vampires. He’s often wondered.
Unfortunately, she uses his moment of dumb surprise to kick him in the jaw, with a muscle strenth he wouldn’t have thought her capable of, and it feels not unlike George imagines it would feel to be shot. He loses his balance.
The pavement is cold.
Struggling for breath as much as words, and coherent thought as much as anything, he half-shouts, "Why are you doing this, Lauren? Why did you do that to Neeru? She’s your friend."
"Was my friend."
"Is your friend. Just because you’ve changed, that doesn’t mean you’re incapable of... of..."
Lauren says, "Love?" She spits the word out like it’s poision, like it’s rancid food, and she’s crouched in front of him, gripping his face as hard as if she were trying to squeeze all the thoughts from his head. "Well you’d know all about a vampire’s capability for love, wouldn’t you, George."
There’s a part of him that would quite like to say 'yes', but he’s a feeling it wouldn’t make a fantastic come-back. He needs to run. He can’t. The moonlight’s making her teeth look like ivory, which is very distracting, and George tries to keep his voice as level and as rational as possible when he says, "Listen to me, okay? It’d be stupid to, to bite me - because my blood, d’you understand, it’s already full of - I mean, who knows what it could do? What if it made me change, somehow? I don’t want to-"
He stops because she’s laughing. "A hound like you," she says. "As if I’d even bother."
The pain in George’s face is almost overpowering, and he thinks his nose might be bleeding, and her hand on his throat feels suddenly very tight. The moonlight's making whatever she’s got in her other hand look like pure silver, which is very distracting. It’s a knife, he realises, numbly; she’s holding a knife. Things appear to have taken a sudden and quite undeniable turn for the worse.
He careers backwards, kicks out blindly and tries to scramble away, but she clamps him to her with an arm around the back of his head - he hates that she’s stronger than him, not because she’s a girl, but because he’s a werewolf and it counts for nothing. With one hand clutching the back of his shirt, Lauren drives the blade into his stomach, then out, in one swift movement.
She stumbles to her feet, still laughing. She licks the blood from her fingertips. She backs out of his line of vision.
George is on the floor; the floor is cold; George is cold. These are the things he is thinking.
The pain, the shock, they are not the worst thing: the very worst thing, George thinks, is the look on Mitchell’s face when he finally arrives. It looks like grief.
-+-
George is very disappointed when he comes to and discovers that he is not in the hospital, like in films, but is actually in the back of an ambulance, which means the whole miserable fucking night isn’t over yet. Every speed bump feels like someone squeezing his insides, and he groans in what he vaguely hopes is a manly sort of a way.
There is a very cold hand holding his hand. He can hear Mitchell’s voice in his ear, breath warm on the side of his face, but can’t seem to make sense of anything he’s saying.
George is relieved, nonetheless, to realise he is still alive.
-+-
The next time he wakes up, the first thing George says is, "This is more like it." Unfortunately, someone appears to have replaced his throat with two sheets of sandpaper, so it comes out sounding like a sort of low growl.
It could be a scene from Holby City - with the light drifting in through a nearby window, the hospital room clinical and a little too bright, the drip, the starched sheets, the gown that will undoubtedly gape embarrassingly at the back when he stands up...and Mitchell. Mitchell, who is slumped forwards in a chair pulled up to the edge of the bed, head resting by one of George’s hands; he is asleep, back rising and falling almost imperceptibly.
Once, George said to him, "Why do you need to breathe if you’re a vampire?" Mitchell replied, "Yes, well, I can also eat garlic bread, and visit the Algarve without bursting into flames, if I wanted to. I’m not exactly Count Dracula material, am I?"
George coughs. The second thing he says after waking up is, "Mitchell."
Mitchell’s head snaps up straightaway, eyes struggling to focus - but once they have, he smiles. There is a bruise on his cheekbone, and George can’t quite get his head around the fact that he did that: hitting Mitchell, being angry at him, they all feel like such a long time ago, and George doesn’t feel angry anymore. Just tired. Mitchell seems to be wearing George’s Star of David chain.
"Have you been here this whole time?" he says.
Mitchell doesn’t answer. He stands up, and says, "Annie’s coming." Then he leans over and kisses George on the forehead.
George is expecting himself to laugh, but somehow it doesn’t seem funny - just warm, and necessary, and nice. George’s limbs are heavy. The bright light hurts his eyes.
By the time he realises he’s been falling asleep, and has fought himself out of it, Mitchell is already gone.
-+-
Later. It’s dark, and Annie is stood by the window, looking just slightly the wrong side of visible.
Throat still sore, George rasps, "Annie, are you fading?" And if he weren’t in a hospital bed, recovering from a life-threatening injury, he might have sung it to the tune of 'Smooth Criminal'. It feels like a missed opportunity.
She turns round, looking surprised, but her outline’s clearer from the second they make eye contact and it occurs to him that the fading is probably a sign of stress, which is bizarrely touching. They blink at each other. Then they both start speaking at the same time.
"Silly question, but how-"
"Where exactly has Mitchell-"
They stop. They laugh that oh-so-familiar nervous laugh. Annie smiles, and George remembers exactly how much he likes her, which brings with it the realisation that he needn’t feel worried or uncertain here - instantly, he feels warm to his fingertips with relief.
"You go first," says George.
She sits beside his bed - in what George thinks of, for a second, as Mitchell’s chair, until he mentally corrects himself. She sits in the visitor’s chair. Of course, Annie’s still wearing the clothes she died in, and George tries not to imagine spending an eternity in his hospital scrubs; them all sat down the pub, Mitchell having to drink three people’s drinks. He and Annie, they need time to regroup, and won’t be able to do it if George decides to spend this time catching up on his slightly delayed freak-out, so he thinks he should probably save all that for another day. Besides, the following conversation promises to be more Holby City than anything that has yet taken place, as Annie begins filling him in on everything he’s missed.
It transpires that the blade nicked several of George’s vital organs, but damaged nothing over-seriously, which George finds puzzling and impressive for all of half a second.
"She didn’t want to kill me," he realises, flatly.
"Mitchell doesn’t think so," Annie replies; she looks almost embarrassed. "Apparently his lot have a good sense of, you know, bodily organs, which I guess sense. Either way, Mitchell reckons that if she’d really wanted to do you in, she could have."
"Where is Mitchell?" George blurts out, voice strained, in spite of the fact that he made up his mind not to ask again - at least, not until he’d heard everything Annie wanted to tell him.
She looks away. "I don’t know."
"Annie," George begins, tone weary, but her eyes flick back up again and meet his.
"I mean it," she says, "I don’t. He took it really badly, George, I’ve never seen him so upset. I mean, I’ve never really seen him so anything, you know what he’s like."
"Bit cold?"
"A bit," Annie agrees. Her voice sounds wobbly, like she’s on the verge of tears. "Look, he just said - he told me to keep an eye on you, be here when you woke up, and I wanted to be. I was scared someone might come back and finish you off or something, and Mitchell said that it’s, it’s nearly the full moon, and your body’s all full of weird stuff, so you might heal too quickly - he didn’t want you getting out of bed and scaring the nurses half to death. It was horrible to see him so shook-up, George, you’ve no idea. He thinks it’s his fault, I didn’t know what to do. He said some girl died who works here, I couldn’t stop thinking it might've been you, and then you just lay there all day like a bloody rag doll and even when they said it weren’t that serious, you looked so pale and everything, I really thought..."
She trails off, and covers her face with her hands. George wants to know how long he’s been asleep, and what’s happening about Neeru, and when Mitchell’s coming back, except none of that seems to matter right this second.
He says, "I’m really glad to see you, Annie. You know that? Come here."
Hugging Annie (haphazardly, and from a horizontal position) feels like trying to grab hold of cold air, albeit air that’s shaped like a person. But it also feels right. When she sits back in her chair, she looks a bit calmer, and she’s smiling.
"Hey," Annie says. "It’s just like Casualty, all this, isn’t it?"
And George laughs.
-+-
The next morning, George’s doctors pack him full of drugs, gather his things and send him unceremoniously on his way, talking about 'good vitals' and 'freeing up beds'; part of him’s relieved to be getting out, but the other part finds it difficult to believe that being stabbed is such a complete non-event. Still, the NHS, though. He can’t exactly claim to be massively shocked when, after all, they employ him.
It’s a bright, chill morning in the world outside the hosptial, and home's so close-by that he hasn’t bothered to ring Annie, but has decided instead to hobble back alone and surprise her. She could do with a few nice surprises, George thinks. Reflexively, his hand tightens and untightens its grip on the bag she brought in for him, and he’s about to set off when somebody says, "So, did they give you enough mind-altering painkillers to keep us busy for the weekend?"
George’s heart thumps almost painfully and, for lack of a witty retort, he nods. Mitchell says, "Cool."
He’s leaning against the wall nearby, smoking a cigarette, all covered up with the usual scarf/dark glasses combination (which makes him look a celebrity trying to exit the hospital discreetly, after a scandal, without being papped. He looks like the kind of person who’d say ‘papped’). George stands there studying him for only slightly too long, and doesn’t care how childish he sounds when he says, "Mitchell, where did you go?"
Mitchell takes his sunglasses off; behind them, his eyes are sad.
He says, "Fancy a walk, Marmaduke?"
Mitchell drives them out to a park that’s about ten minutes down the road from George’s old hostel - they sit on a picnic bench, on the table, with their legs on the seat, and it’s weird because there are a couple of families out and about with their kids. Because it’s a Sunday. Because lots of normal people had a perfectly normal weekend.
"You saved my life," says George, needing to say something, only it doesn’t sound like he imagined it would, doesn’t sound grateful at all. Instead, it sounds like a dull statement of fact.
"Yes," says Mitchell, "well, I wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t-"
"You don’t honestly blame yourself for this?" George demands, voice rising. In some ways, if you looked at everything simplified into cause and effect, he can see why someone would; but Mitchell should know as well as anybody that the world doesn’t work like that.
There’s no reply - Mitchell just shrugs, long fingers tapping out a rhythm on his knee.
"Listen," George continues, "Alright, you know, when I found out - when I found her, with Neeru...I was angry. I mean, we work in a hospital, it’s not like it was that or death, and doing things like that to people...it isn’t good. It isn’t right. But the look in her eye when she attacked me, Mitchell, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. And it made me realise what this, this thing, what it does to you - how difficult it must be. Because you can’t help what you are, can you?"
Mitchell turns his head to look George in the eye. Their faces are very close. George adds, "No one can."
"I really am trying," Mitchell says, and it’s almost a whisper. "It’s like it’s part of me, but not really - not a part of who I was. But it is what it is, and if someone asked you to just stop turning into a werewolf every month..."
"I couldn’t."
"No. No matter how much you wanted to."
George exhales. It’s like a staring contest where he doesn’t want to be the first one to look away, because it feels somehow as if doing that would mean admitting something about himself that he isn’t certain he’s ready to share. And he doesn’t even want to try explaining that train of thought to himself, yet.
But something about having all Mitchell’s attention on him feels intense, feels too much, so George turns his head away and stares at the goalposts on the empty football pitch.
"What was it like to be stabbed, then? Presumably an experience most people never get," Mitchell says, and his voice is too light, too deliberately casual.
George says, "Weird dreams. I only remember one of them properly, because it was so clear - I was stood at the end of this...it felt like a tunnel, in a way, but it looked like a sort of corridor. It was so long, and there was this door at the end. I felt as if I had to go through it, like there were all these people on the other side, but I couldn’t quite see them, and then I-"
He stops because Mitchell’s put a hand on his jaw, which surprises him into turning back round. Mitchell’s expression is slightly stunned, mouth a little open, and George can feel those dark eyes raking across his face, taking everything in.
"What?" he says. "What’s wrong?"
Somewhere overhead, in one of the tall trees, a bird is singing. Mitchell shakes his head, in that way of his that means he is considering something.
"Nothing," Mitchell says.
Then he tilts his head just so, and George wonders what he’s doing until Mitchell’s mouth is on his mouth, Mitchell’s fingers on his skin, Mitchell’s breath, Mitchell. It feels like when he was a kid, looking at his mum’s Magic Eye book; like, he’d look at the pictures for ages and keep trying to make sense of them, but nothing happened - then he’d just give up, and stop worrying about it, and suddenly the whole thing would fall into place. That’s how it feels.
It’s quite a chaste kiss, and when they pull apart (and George opens his eyes again - he hadn’t realised he’d shut them), he notices that he can feel Mitchell’s breath on his face, and that his hands are fisted in the front of Mitchell’s shirt.
"Right," says George, and his voice comes out an octave or so higher than usual; Mitchell chuckles in the quiet, under-his-breath way that makes it sound like a secret. George thinks he might be blushing, but dearly hopes he’s wrong. He adds, sounding slightly dazed, "I’ve never kissed a man before."
"You know, I’m also a vampire," says Mitchell. "Why did you think the ‘man’ thing was more important?"
George sighs resignedly, and presses their foreheads together, and the sound of his laughter floats up into the branches of the trees.
.