Being Human Fic: With Fangs (the turning into monsters remix) 1/2
Title: With Fangs (the turning into monsters remix) 1/2
Author: ms_smilla
Rating: PG-13, 15
Disclaimer: Not for profit, but for fun, these are not mine.
Warnings: Allusions to domestic violence, violence, bit of bad language, hopefully nothing too far removed from the TV series.
Summary: There’s no ghost in this house...
Author's notes: I guess this could best be described as a remix of ‘Cheerful Purity With Fangs’, by Stephy-Lou Clark-Weasley. This is not a comparative/competitive piece of writing; rather it was intended as a compliment.
~~
With Fangs (the turning into monsters remix)
~~
you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,
nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller
-Margaret Atwood, Is/Not
~~
The first time he meets her, George instinctively doesn’t like her. She’s too loud, too giggly. She smiles too much. Annie’s the worst cliché of a paediatric nurse possible.
He avoids her, just like he avoids Doctor Jeffrey in Endoscopy because he smells of bile, just like he avoids that blonde nurse up on B6, Nina. Nina, who ties him into awkward knots, who makes an embarrassing babble of his six fluent languages.
But it’s Annoying Annie from Paediatrics that gets him and Nina to make peace. It’s a week after his disastrous chat-up attempt and Nina has obviously followed through on her threat to make sure all the nurses know about his sexist, boorish attitude, because he’s been given all the shit jobs ever since.
He’s taking leaking stool samples to pathology when he bumps into Nina and Annie at the virology window. And Annie, loud and bubbly and undeterred by the faeces in George’s hands, goes out of her way to praise him to Nina, laying it on thick about how he helped with the small Italian boy who wriggled violently every time she tried to draw blood from him.
And whilst Annie natters on and on and on, he looks into Nina’s eyes, at the softness and confusion in them and he realises he hasn’t screwed it up completely.
And when Nina asks, he can tell her, without stuttering, where he learned to speak Italian.
~~
He kicks Mitchell out for the evening.
“George - it’s freezing!” He whines, “please, George, at least let me get my coat.”
And finally, after Mitchell’s stopped complaining and disappeared off down the pub, when he’s alone in their flat with the cookbooks neatly lined up, he can plan.
He’ll start with the aubergine and tomato antipasti, and then some whole dover sole, or maybe sea bass with rosemary?
Definitely the hazelnut truffle cake to finish. Or perhaps the chocolate almond cake?
God, his palms are sweaty and his stomach tight. All he can think of is Nina’s hazel eyes and the way she might lick cake off her cutlery. How beautiful, how gorgeous, how delicious she is; and how incapable, incompetent and unholy he is. What kind of animal is he turning into? He can barely read the ingredients list.
His handwriting is shaky as he makes a note of what he needs from the shop. He blames Mitchell for asking her over, he blames Annie for playing mediator. He doesn’t want to do this.
If he calls her now, if he says he’s ill- he puts the pencil down, flexes his fingers and walks out of the kitchen to the phone.
Mitchell’s put a post-it note on the receiver. It reads: Don’t.
~~
Nina’s warm next to him. Her hair tickles his chin. Her mouth is different when she’s asleep; it’s softer, fuller, less pursed. Her eyes flit beneath her eyelids while she sleeps.
It’s everything he hoped for and more.
~~
It’s Christmas, and he and Nina are at a party, together, when he spots Annie across the room and thinks that he might owe her a drink for getting him back into Nina’s good books.
He walks over to find out what she’d like. She’s laughing loudly at a joke someone’s told her and she reaches out to steady herself against their arm. When George gets closer, he can see its Mitchell.
Mitchell’s looking at Annie with delight, and when he looks up and sees George his smile widens. “George!” he calls, “George, have you met-”
“Hello!” Annie grins, interrupting Mitchell, her eyes bright, “I see you and the lovely Ms Pickering are coming along nicely.” She waggles her eyebrows at him, and George can tell she’s tipsy.
Mitchell grins at Annie, “They are,” he tells her, “George has been cooking for her.”
“And Nina’s been wearing all her best underwear.” She clamps her hand over her mouth as soon as she says it, her eyes wide; Mitchell tips his head back and roars with laughter. George feels the tips of his ears burning. He knows he must be blushing.
“Oh God,” Annie gasps, “I’m so drunk, I can’t believe I said that, I’m so sorry!” She looks so upset, George could swear her eyes are filling up with tears.
She’s babbling apologies. “It’s fine,” he says, trying to put her at ease, “it’s really fine.” And it is, really, strangely fine. George feels warmed by her concern, by her gaucheness, by the fact that she’s been match-making without him realising.
“I think I need to go home.” She confesses, and begins glancing around the bar. Mitchell, strangely enough, looks slightly panicked about this.
“Stay for one more,” he begs her, glancing to George for support, “one more and then we’ll all get a taxi together.”
But she’s already picked up her coat and is putting it on, “No,” she says, “best not, I’ll find Owen and be off.” She reaches up to hug George, kissing him on the cheek and then turns, looking like Bambi on the ice, to hug Mitchell. George watches the way Mitchell’s hands clutch at her coat. She pulls away, patting at her hair. “Have a fab time!” she tells them, and then she’s off, weaving her way through the pub.
“Who’s Owen?” Mitchell asks, as soon as she’s out of sight.
~~
“I don’t like it, George,” Nina tells him, her voice quiet and clipped. “I look at you, and you look so frightened and it scares me.”
Her breath catches. Her hands ghost over his wrists. He can feel the secrets clawing at his throat. He wants to tell her, spit up the words like poison: ‘Nina, once a month I could kill everyone in the building. That’s why I disappear, that’s why I can barely bring myself to touch you, perfect, whole, human you’, but he can’t.
“When you’re ready, I will listen, George, I will.” She looks at him with her clear eyes. Determined. “But you need to tell me, soon.” He can smell her frustration as she leaves; like thyme.
His teeth are itching as he watches her go. His vision is blurry. He can feel the cold metal of the linen cage beneath his fingers. Every step he takes to the lift jars through his trainers to his jaw.
The lift pings as it arrives. He pushes the cage in, wincing as the gap between the corridor and the lift makes it rattle.
“Are you okay?” a quiet voice asks, “you don’t look good.”
It’s Annie, standing in the corner of the lift. She’s so shadowed he can barely see her face. His head hurts as he tries to look at her. “I’m fine,” he says.
“Don’t be silly,” she tells him, “you’re not. What’s going on?”
“Annie-” he snaps, she jumps, “don’t. Don’t ask. I can’t tell you.”
“Okay,” she says, “okay.” She purses her lips and crosses her arms. “Don’t buy her flowers.” She tells him.
“Sorry?” he asks.
“This thing, whatever it is,” Annie shrugs, “don’t buy Nina flowers or dinner or chocolate. She won’t trust them or you. And if you can’t tell her what it is, then give her a lie about it, a small one.” She looks at him, her eyes very dark. “A small lie she can hold onto. Something she can convince herself with.”
George looks at Annie, quiet and still in the corner of the lift. “Right,” he says, “thanks.”
~~
After that he doesn’t avoid her anymore. In fact, he sometimes walks all the way over to her ward to take his tea breaks with her.
Annie’s his sounding-board, his relationship confidant. Because she’s a woman she can tell him how Nina sees things, what Nina wants: flowers or space. But it’s more than that. She understands him in ways Mitchell doesn’t; she gets his need to plan out all the details, his need for order, the ebb and flow of his moods with the moon.
He doesn’t tell her everything.
Sometimes, on his rounds, George catches her and Mitchell together. They’ll be standing in a corridor or waiting for a lift, chatting away. And Mitchell’s eyes will be so bright, his face so animated that all those years of bloodlust and rage have fallen away and he’ll look twenty-two again.
There are some things George will never tell Mitchell.
When Annie reaches out for an empty mug her sleeves will sometimes slip up her arms. Bruises cover her skin; finger marks around her wrists. George once pressed his hands into their shadows, gently, looking at Annie’s face all the time. He’d whispered about counselling, about shelters, about the police but she wouldn’t listen. She tells him that he’s over-reacting and that it’s nothing.
He catches himself looking at the domestic violence posters for too long.
~~
Luckily, when it happens it’s the week that Mitchell’s off on leave; forced to take time off before the end of the financial year.
“It’s fine,” she tells him, but George still feels like crying. Behind him he can hear Nina grinding her teeth. “Owen’s gone. For good.”
Annie’s lip is split and her eye is black. Whenever she smiles, she winces slightly. George feels cold every time she does. She’s opening letters and date-stamping them, her hands in constant motion. She’s been banished to the office, so she doesn’t scare the children.
“I’m going to take some time off,” she tells them, “get healed-up, get the house clear of all his stuff.”
“Do you need help?” Nina asks, but Annie shakes her head.
When Mitchell returns to work, Annie has taken leave. George doesn’t tell him why.
~~
They go out for drinks when she gets back. George is careful to check that her bruises have faded before he invites Mitchell.
He catches them behind the pub. He’d thought Mitchell was getting a round in and Annie was in the toilet, but here they are instead; Mitchell’s hands tangled in Annie’s hair, their foreheads pressed together, lips swollen, eyes closed.
He can’t help it. He coughs in surprise.
They jump apart quickly, and George almost laughs. Annie begins to smooth her hair and Mitchell alternates between glaring at George and gazing at Annie.
“So...” George says.
“Right!” Annie exclaims, “I’m off! See you tomorrow.” She glances back at Mitchell, apologetic, and George thinks Mitchell’s going to reach out and pull her back to him. Instead he watches her walk away, across the cobbles, and then turns to glare at George.
“You’re smitten.” George tells him.
“Smitten?” Mitchell scoffs, “What are you, George? Sixty?”
“Smitten.” He reaffirms.
~~
Annie doesn’t show up for work the next day. At first he thinks she’s late, overslept; he can’t find her for a cup of tea, and he can’t see her on the ward.
But at 11 o’clock, when he’s transferring a child from A&E over to the children’s hospital he can see the police over at the nurses station. They are talking to the paediatric ward sister. And she’s pale, listening to them, leaning most of her weight on the desk.
He walks over to them, looking at the way the high-vis patches on their coats reflect the strip-lights. “It’s Annie,” he says when they look at him, their faces professional and composed, “Isn’t it?”
~~
TBC
Author: ms_smilla
Rating: PG-13, 15
Disclaimer: Not for profit, but for fun, these are not mine.
Warnings: Allusions to domestic violence, violence, bit of bad language, hopefully nothing too far removed from the TV series.
Summary: There’s no ghost in this house...
Author's notes: I guess this could best be described as a remix of ‘Cheerful Purity With Fangs’, by Stephy-Lou Clark-Weasley. This is not a comparative/competitive piece of writing; rather it was intended as a compliment.
~~
With Fangs (the turning into monsters remix)
~~
you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,
nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller
-Margaret Atwood, Is/Not
~~
The first time he meets her, George instinctively doesn’t like her. She’s too loud, too giggly. She smiles too much. Annie’s the worst cliché of a paediatric nurse possible.
He avoids her, just like he avoids Doctor Jeffrey in Endoscopy because he smells of bile, just like he avoids that blonde nurse up on B6, Nina. Nina, who ties him into awkward knots, who makes an embarrassing babble of his six fluent languages.
But it’s Annoying Annie from Paediatrics that gets him and Nina to make peace. It’s a week after his disastrous chat-up attempt and Nina has obviously followed through on her threat to make sure all the nurses know about his sexist, boorish attitude, because he’s been given all the shit jobs ever since.
He’s taking leaking stool samples to pathology when he bumps into Nina and Annie at the virology window. And Annie, loud and bubbly and undeterred by the faeces in George’s hands, goes out of her way to praise him to Nina, laying it on thick about how he helped with the small Italian boy who wriggled violently every time she tried to draw blood from him.
And whilst Annie natters on and on and on, he looks into Nina’s eyes, at the softness and confusion in them and he realises he hasn’t screwed it up completely.
And when Nina asks, he can tell her, without stuttering, where he learned to speak Italian.
~~
He kicks Mitchell out for the evening.
“George - it’s freezing!” He whines, “please, George, at least let me get my coat.”
And finally, after Mitchell’s stopped complaining and disappeared off down the pub, when he’s alone in their flat with the cookbooks neatly lined up, he can plan.
He’ll start with the aubergine and tomato antipasti, and then some whole dover sole, or maybe sea bass with rosemary?
Definitely the hazelnut truffle cake to finish. Or perhaps the chocolate almond cake?
God, his palms are sweaty and his stomach tight. All he can think of is Nina’s hazel eyes and the way she might lick cake off her cutlery. How beautiful, how gorgeous, how delicious she is; and how incapable, incompetent and unholy he is. What kind of animal is he turning into? He can barely read the ingredients list.
His handwriting is shaky as he makes a note of what he needs from the shop. He blames Mitchell for asking her over, he blames Annie for playing mediator. He doesn’t want to do this.
If he calls her now, if he says he’s ill- he puts the pencil down, flexes his fingers and walks out of the kitchen to the phone.
Mitchell’s put a post-it note on the receiver. It reads: Don’t.
~~
Nina’s warm next to him. Her hair tickles his chin. Her mouth is different when she’s asleep; it’s softer, fuller, less pursed. Her eyes flit beneath her eyelids while she sleeps.
It’s everything he hoped for and more.
~~
It’s Christmas, and he and Nina are at a party, together, when he spots Annie across the room and thinks that he might owe her a drink for getting him back into Nina’s good books.
He walks over to find out what she’d like. She’s laughing loudly at a joke someone’s told her and she reaches out to steady herself against their arm. When George gets closer, he can see its Mitchell.
Mitchell’s looking at Annie with delight, and when he looks up and sees George his smile widens. “George!” he calls, “George, have you met-”
“Hello!” Annie grins, interrupting Mitchell, her eyes bright, “I see you and the lovely Ms Pickering are coming along nicely.” She waggles her eyebrows at him, and George can tell she’s tipsy.
Mitchell grins at Annie, “They are,” he tells her, “George has been cooking for her.”
“And Nina’s been wearing all her best underwear.” She clamps her hand over her mouth as soon as she says it, her eyes wide; Mitchell tips his head back and roars with laughter. George feels the tips of his ears burning. He knows he must be blushing.
“Oh God,” Annie gasps, “I’m so drunk, I can’t believe I said that, I’m so sorry!” She looks so upset, George could swear her eyes are filling up with tears.
She’s babbling apologies. “It’s fine,” he says, trying to put her at ease, “it’s really fine.” And it is, really, strangely fine. George feels warmed by her concern, by her gaucheness, by the fact that she’s been match-making without him realising.
“I think I need to go home.” She confesses, and begins glancing around the bar. Mitchell, strangely enough, looks slightly panicked about this.
“Stay for one more,” he begs her, glancing to George for support, “one more and then we’ll all get a taxi together.”
But she’s already picked up her coat and is putting it on, “No,” she says, “best not, I’ll find Owen and be off.” She reaches up to hug George, kissing him on the cheek and then turns, looking like Bambi on the ice, to hug Mitchell. George watches the way Mitchell’s hands clutch at her coat. She pulls away, patting at her hair. “Have a fab time!” she tells them, and then she’s off, weaving her way through the pub.
“Who’s Owen?” Mitchell asks, as soon as she’s out of sight.
~~
“I don’t like it, George,” Nina tells him, her voice quiet and clipped. “I look at you, and you look so frightened and it scares me.”
Her breath catches. Her hands ghost over his wrists. He can feel the secrets clawing at his throat. He wants to tell her, spit up the words like poison: ‘Nina, once a month I could kill everyone in the building. That’s why I disappear, that’s why I can barely bring myself to touch you, perfect, whole, human you’, but he can’t.
“When you’re ready, I will listen, George, I will.” She looks at him with her clear eyes. Determined. “But you need to tell me, soon.” He can smell her frustration as she leaves; like thyme.
His teeth are itching as he watches her go. His vision is blurry. He can feel the cold metal of the linen cage beneath his fingers. Every step he takes to the lift jars through his trainers to his jaw.
The lift pings as it arrives. He pushes the cage in, wincing as the gap between the corridor and the lift makes it rattle.
“Are you okay?” a quiet voice asks, “you don’t look good.”
It’s Annie, standing in the corner of the lift. She’s so shadowed he can barely see her face. His head hurts as he tries to look at her. “I’m fine,” he says.
“Don’t be silly,” she tells him, “you’re not. What’s going on?”
“Annie-” he snaps, she jumps, “don’t. Don’t ask. I can’t tell you.”
“Okay,” she says, “okay.” She purses her lips and crosses her arms. “Don’t buy her flowers.” She tells him.
“Sorry?” he asks.
“This thing, whatever it is,” Annie shrugs, “don’t buy Nina flowers or dinner or chocolate. She won’t trust them or you. And if you can’t tell her what it is, then give her a lie about it, a small one.” She looks at him, her eyes very dark. “A small lie she can hold onto. Something she can convince herself with.”
George looks at Annie, quiet and still in the corner of the lift. “Right,” he says, “thanks.”
~~
After that he doesn’t avoid her anymore. In fact, he sometimes walks all the way over to her ward to take his tea breaks with her.
Annie’s his sounding-board, his relationship confidant. Because she’s a woman she can tell him how Nina sees things, what Nina wants: flowers or space. But it’s more than that. She understands him in ways Mitchell doesn’t; she gets his need to plan out all the details, his need for order, the ebb and flow of his moods with the moon.
He doesn’t tell her everything.
Sometimes, on his rounds, George catches her and Mitchell together. They’ll be standing in a corridor or waiting for a lift, chatting away. And Mitchell’s eyes will be so bright, his face so animated that all those years of bloodlust and rage have fallen away and he’ll look twenty-two again.
There are some things George will never tell Mitchell.
When Annie reaches out for an empty mug her sleeves will sometimes slip up her arms. Bruises cover her skin; finger marks around her wrists. George once pressed his hands into their shadows, gently, looking at Annie’s face all the time. He’d whispered about counselling, about shelters, about the police but she wouldn’t listen. She tells him that he’s over-reacting and that it’s nothing.
He catches himself looking at the domestic violence posters for too long.
~~
Luckily, when it happens it’s the week that Mitchell’s off on leave; forced to take time off before the end of the financial year.
“It’s fine,” she tells him, but George still feels like crying. Behind him he can hear Nina grinding her teeth. “Owen’s gone. For good.”
Annie’s lip is split and her eye is black. Whenever she smiles, she winces slightly. George feels cold every time she does. She’s opening letters and date-stamping them, her hands in constant motion. She’s been banished to the office, so she doesn’t scare the children.
“I’m going to take some time off,” she tells them, “get healed-up, get the house clear of all his stuff.”
“Do you need help?” Nina asks, but Annie shakes her head.
When Mitchell returns to work, Annie has taken leave. George doesn’t tell him why.
~~
They go out for drinks when she gets back. George is careful to check that her bruises have faded before he invites Mitchell.
He catches them behind the pub. He’d thought Mitchell was getting a round in and Annie was in the toilet, but here they are instead; Mitchell’s hands tangled in Annie’s hair, their foreheads pressed together, lips swollen, eyes closed.
He can’t help it. He coughs in surprise.
They jump apart quickly, and George almost laughs. Annie begins to smooth her hair and Mitchell alternates between glaring at George and gazing at Annie.
“So...” George says.
“Right!” Annie exclaims, “I’m off! See you tomorrow.” She glances back at Mitchell, apologetic, and George thinks Mitchell’s going to reach out and pull her back to him. Instead he watches her walk away, across the cobbles, and then turns to glare at George.
“You’re smitten.” George tells him.
“Smitten?” Mitchell scoffs, “What are you, George? Sixty?”
“Smitten.” He reaffirms.
~~
Annie doesn’t show up for work the next day. At first he thinks she’s late, overslept; he can’t find her for a cup of tea, and he can’t see her on the ward.
But at 11 o’clock, when he’s transferring a child from A&E over to the children’s hospital he can see the police over at the nurses station. They are talking to the paediatric ward sister. And she’s pale, listening to them, leaning most of her weight on the desk.
He walks over to them, looking at the way the high-vis patches on their coats reflect the strip-lights. “It’s Annie,” he says when they look at him, their faces professional and composed, “Isn’t it?”
~~
TBC