Leader Of The Pack [2/2]
Rating: Teen [language and sexual situations]
Advisories: contains dark themes including: character death [referenced] and brief reference to suicide
Spoilers: set after Being Human series 2 and Torchwood: Children of Earth
<
"You slept with him again?" Mitchell looked as if he couldn't even decide whether this was funny or flat-out ridiculous.
"I only went over there to thank him for the book, I didn't... I, I had a... moment."
"Hopefully a bit more than a moment," Annie muttered.
George struggled to steady himself. "It's not what you, I can't, do, this, anymore, and I... I've told him that."
"After you slept with him again."
"Thank you for being your usual supportive self, Mitchell. Look, I can't get involved with him -- I can't get involved with anyone. Christ, I can't even tell him why. Better that he thinks, oh, god, I don't even know what he thinks."
"He thinks you're a wanker," Annie suggested. "No, this guy really likes you, George, why are you being such a muppet about it?"
"Because I don't want anyone else to get hurt, all right?"
"And dumping him is a good way to achieve that. No, sorry, stringing him along and then dumping him."
"I mean... hurt. Like... Like Nina." George took a breath, trying not to let it slip out into the gasp it wanted to be. "Right, you've made me say it, are we all happy now?"
"Nina made her choices," Mitchell said. "We all did, it's just... human nature, George. The things we need don't always make sense, or even work out well with other things we need, we just... try to balance it, as best we can."
"The love of my life walked out on me, and then I got her personal effects back in a biscuit-tin. And you're blaming me for not wanting to jump head-first into something again with some bloke I barely know?"
"Is this really even about Nina, or is this about him being a bloke?" Annie said. "'Cos if you're about to descend into some spiral of guilt about that on top of everything, I'm not going to be responsible to clearing up after you."
"I can imagine what my mother would have to say about it would make the turning into a wolf parts sound like a reasonable career choice, yeah."
"George, you like him. Get over yourself."
"Oh, what, now it's I like him? I do not need a, a yenta, Annie. I can make my life into utter shit perfectly well on my own."
"And he says that he doesn't know Hebrew."
"All right, first of all, that's Yiddish, actually, and stop changing the subject. We came here to be anonymous, to lose ourselves in a crowd. Now, I accept that there's a certain minimal level of interaction with our neighbours that's reasonable to keep from looking too suspicious, but dating a policeman, that's... well, it's bloody suicide, is what it is. No, the sensible thing was to break it off before he got any more involved. With me, with... us, with..."
"You know, if you weren't trying to convince yourself about this you could have stopped talking maybe five minutes ago," Mitchell observed mildly.
"Just... stay out of this, the both of you. We cannot afford to let anyone that far into our lives and that is that." George crossed his arms across his chest and tried to stare down the twin looks of fiver gives that ten minutes from his housemates. "And so long as we seem to be having a house-meeting, can I point out that Mitchell's still not been doing any of the shopping?"
***
George had left him a list. George had left him a very detailed list, just short of drawing out little maps of where everything was to be found in their new market, and now Mitchell found himself staring into a dairy case in panicked despair of finding the exact canisters of yoghurt that the paper specified. But he wasn't going to be one of these sad bastards on the mobile back to a partner, asking did they still buy the same brand of cornflakes as every week --
He turned to look down the other end of the display, wondering if there was some obscure classification scheme of the double-cream and other specialty dairy-like items that he was somehow missing, and George's copper from number eleven was reaching out for a litre of milk, glancing towards Mitchell as he felt himself startle. "Oh, hullo, Mitchell, I... erm. Hullo." And an odd hesitation here, as if he were calculating how much of what story the housemate might have heard by now; "Haven't seen George round much, I hope he's all right?"
Question without a proper answer, that. "Yeah, he's, well, he's George."
A fretful little nod from Andy here, somewhere between relief and a horribly British reluctance to admit to having such an emotional response. "Starting to feel like I'd scared off a stray dog."
"Yeah, that's... He's George, man. Weird as a fish wearing pants, but that's just him." Mitchell paused, and then decided to go ahead and plunge into it if only for the sake of not leaving someone with too wretched an impression of a friend; "Listen, he might have... said, stuff... He doesn't always see what's right in front of him, y'know?"
The wide-set eyes went all worried of a sudden, putting Mitchell somehow in mind of a puppy who was trying to figure out what the humans thought it had done wrong. "Have I, erm, put my foot in it here?"
"Hm?"
"Mean, you and George... You are just housemates, yeah?"
The irony that this constable with his own issues regarding the subject seemed to be the first person in a long while who'd not leapt straight to the conclusion of pairing him and George off struck Mitchell, then, and he had to put a hand to his mouth to keep from laughing aloud at the poor man. "Folie a deux, more like. Honestly, man, George is my best mate in all the world, and you are more than welcome to intrude on that as far as he wants to let you."
Andy pulled a face. "Don't know that I'd get much chance if he never comes back out of your house again. Reckon he's not... well, neither am I, well, didn't think I, erm, it was just... one of those things, aye?"
Mitchell decided that this might reasonably be parsed out into that I snogged him was a surprise to me as well, and shrugged. "If I started listing off all of the things George is repressing we'll be here till your milk's gone sour. Been good to see him thinking about not letting it get to him so much, y'know? -- Well, s'pose you might there, yeah."
"Yeah, well, get suspended for disobeying an unjust order, it sort of changes your perspective on a lot of the bollocks you've always been told," Andy said, with a hint of fire that made Mitchell wonder. "Thought for once I'd have a go just pleasing myself. Not what anyone would think about it."
Fair enough description of where George was at with it, if Mitchell had seen anything of the world in his bloody century. "Give him your best when I see him, he'll get himself sorted eventually," he offered.
A vague nod as if the constable had his doubts regarding the wisdom of this course. "Yeah, that'd be... And to your, erm, you've got another housemate now, haven't you?" Mitchell gave him a perplexed look. "Or maybe she's your, dunno, I keep seeing her coming out to your bins though, looks like she's moved in?"
Mitchell found his voice, somewhere in his left shoe: "You don't mean Annie."
Andy shrugged. "If that's her -- about so high, dark, seems to like grey? Bit of a looker," he added, as Mitchell felt himself gaping. "I mean if she's not moved in 'cos she's your, erm... Look, if she is your girlfriend I'm sorry, forget I said anything --"
"No, no, it's, ah, she's just our new housemate. Bit shy, just got out of a bad relationship -- wouldn't go trying to chat her up or anything just yet, let her settle herself a bit first..." Andy nodded, as if this was making any sort of sense, and voiced no objections as Mitchell began backing away from the dairy-case in a trail of mumbled excuses, probably just as happy to have the excuse for a polite conversation about mutual concerns behind them both.
Bugger the buggering shopping, anyway.
***
Mitchell had managed to forget the flour, and the kitchen-roll, and George's yoghurt, but at least he'd got back into the house without breaking too many of the eggs. "Right, so, was this your way of trying to get out of ever being sent to do the shopping again?" George asked, holding up what had once been a perfectly serviceable loaf of bakery bread before it had gone into the boot ahead of all the tins. Or possibly been trodden on, it was difficult to say.
Mitchell made a vague gesture that could have encompassed anything from I had to run out of the supermarket before I ate the lady on the till to pirates grabbed me from in front of the biscuits and made me their chief. "Yeah, was, erm, got sort of... Yeah." And a pause, possibly to paste together his alibi -- "Ran into your mate from number eleven down the shops."
"Oh. Oh, god. Tell me you didn't say anything to him, Mitchell --"
Mitchell wasn't very good at innocent looks. "Might have mentioned you'd been thinking about him."
"Oh, god."
"Thing is, George..." George wasn't sure he liked the way Mitchell's attempt at a grin seemed to have piled up into one corner of his mouth. "I think the two of you are going to need to talk."
"I really do not want to get into --"
"I mean, talk." All traces of levity gone now. "Sit down for a man-to-man. Or a... wolf-to-wolf."
It took several moments for what Mitchell had said to penetrate. "No, no, no, you are not saying that..."
"He can see Annie now, George. It's usually a pretty bad sign."
"And we're just assuming this is anything to do with me?" Just because the two of us have been shagging like wild animals --
"Well, yeah, maybe he's mates with half the local werewolf underground or something, but I think I'd go with the simplest explanation, yeah?"
"Is there really a werewolf underground?" Annie asked. "-- Hold on, though, guys, he's not been anywhere near you during your time of the month. Has he?"
George felt his ears blazing up like a bonfire. "The nearest would have been, erm, in the, ah, the shower." Mitchell raised an eyebrow. "But it can't, that was well after, I mean..." And he stopped, and gulped in air, finding it did nothing to steady him; "You should have let me top myself, Mitchell. If the wolf bleeds through even when I think I'm back to myself -- when I can still see without my glasses, and pick out Mrs Sahota's curry from three streets away, if I..."
If he'd thought that was the older-and-wiser look, he'd mistaken how Mitchell was pulling his punches. "You were born in '81," the vampire said, weight of too many years suddenly in dark eyes. "You don't even remember why everything's condoms, and sharps-bins, and being careful what you're mopping up off the floor in a hospital. So don't you even go giving me any grief about thinking you know what it's like to have to wonder about every fucking move you make. Listen, you'll have plenty of time to freak out about this later, but right now you've got some thinking to do, yeah? Moon's coming along, gonna need a plan here."
"Oh, my god, we have been here six weeks and I've already turned the bloke next door into a werewolf. This is exactly what I was..." George dropped into one of the chairs at the table, burying his face in his hands. "I've done it again, I've let someone think I'm fit to be let out amongst normal people and this is what he gets for it, I can't... I can't do this, anymore, Mitchell, I..."
Mitchell was giving him a look that said he was nearing the boundary where a justifiable wobbly would wear out its welcome. "At least give him some idea what's gone on, George. Even if it's to tell him he needs to put in for a transfer to some village up the valleys or something. Don't you wish you'd had some clue what to expect?"
"He already thinks I'm mental, what is telling him the truth going to look like? That is if he doesn't just assume I'm trying to pick it up with him again the moment he opens the door --"
"Relax, George, it's not like you'd be asking him out on a date," Annie pointed out. "And after all you've already got that awkward should we have sex part out of the way up-front in your relationship."
"We do not have a relationship! He is simply a neighbour of ours who, who I happen to have turned into a werewolf. By... having sex with him which is entirely beside the point, but that doesn't mean we're, we're just acquaintances. Honestly, Annie."
"Don't leave him to do this alone, George."
"I wasn't going to just abandon..." Too late he recalled how Annie had been the one to pick up the slack for him the last time he'd done exactly that. "But what can I do for him that would possibly help? It's not as if I know what I'm doing with any of this even now."
"This is easier on us vampires, we know when we've recruited someone. We can think about how we're going to pick up the pieces." Mitchell sighed. "You'd think werewolves would be the pack animals. Herrick may not have been the best influence in the world, but... he understood, things. You could give this guy that much of a start."
"All I want," George said, "is to have a life where people aren't getting hurt because they know me. Is that really too much to ask?"
Mitchell sat in the chair beside his, arm across the back in a loose-limbed posture of resignation. "Asking the wrong guy, mate."
"You're lonely," Annie said, resting a chill hand on his shoulder. "You've only the two of us to really talk to, so, someone reaches out, and... you reach back. But now he's going to need you. You, George."
If someone... If Tully... if someone had been there, if he had been there for... George sighed, bowing his head in surrender to the idea. "All right. I'll talk to him. But it is not a bloody date."
***
The trouble was, the constable was still working irregular shifts that didn't seem to have much overlap with either his or Mitchell's schedules, and he was running out of nights. George found himself resorting to behaviour that felt frankly stalkerish before at last Annie's observations of number eleven tipped him to the PC's preparations to leave for work just in time to arrange a casual-seeming meeting over the bicycle padlocked to Andy's front fence. "Oi, Andy, I, erm, I was wondering, are you... busy, tomorrow night?"
Andy looked up from fumbling with his keys to regard George suspiciously. "Mitchell having another party?"
"Erm, no, no, I... I was just wondering if you were busy, is all."
The suspicion shaded into the beginnings of shyness, now, a grin playing round the corners of that cheeky mouth; "Oh, you meant... Erm. S'pose 'M not, as such. Thought you said you needed time."
"It's... bloody complicated. Meet me round the Anchor about half six?"
"Yeah, might do." Andy finished wrestling the chain free of the breezeblocks and gave George another shy smile before throwing a long leg over the saddle of the bicycle and shoving off down the road. George stood watching him go until the curve of the street blocked the view, then turned to trudge back into his own house.
And pulled a face as Annie started to open her mouth; "It's a bloody date."
***
"A werewolf," Andy said.
This accidental date had turned out to be a good thing, George thought; a few pints down and they were both of a mind to believe any number of absurd things about the other. Even maybe Andy's claim that he'd once helped to fight back an army of aliens that were trying to force their way into the downtown police headquarters. Wasn't on the face of it any more unbelievable than George's life story. "I know what this sounds like," he said.
"Well, 's Cardiff, innit. Spooky-bollocks central distribution. Why wouldn't the fit new bloke across the road turn out to be a werewolf?" Andy took another pull at his latest pint. "Marks for imagination though, you think when a shag comes back 'round and says they need to talk it's going to be some sort of STI conversation. Bloody herpes or something."
He could see where lycanthropy wouldn't usually have been on that list. "I suppose it sort of is, isn't it. You're taking this better than I would have expected."
Andy blinked, as if he hadn't thought to consider the question before now. "Well, not as if there's anything to be done for it, is there. Mean, werewolves, you can't just go in for a jab for that." A second, more owlish blink, as if it were also now occurring to him to recount the empties on their table. "You'd have thought being put on review for the last time I said bollocks to the rules would have taught me more than that sometimes it's still worth it."
"No, it's..." George paused, struck by Andy's expression; "You really do, sort of... fancy me?"
Andy snorted. "Thought you'd have noticed by now. Come back to mine, put the case to you again?"
George looked at his watch; "Erm, we don't really have... it's getting on to moonrise. We should... we should go, but..."
The copper's brows drew down into a slightly unfocused scowl. "You mean you've been talking about tonight."
"Erm, yeah. Sorry?"
"This is the part where we end up out in the woods and I'm having to explain a YouTube video to my mates down station in the morning, isn't it. 'M not, I just... Y'know?"
George thought he sort of did, at that. "Come on. I know a spot."
***
"Knew this was a setup." Andy still seemed to be retaining an open mind about this increasingly outlandish excursion, quite possibly due to those last two pints of Brains, but as George halted in the little clearing a glimmer of wariness appeared to be burning through the fog of alcohol. "We get our kit off and your mate Mitchell jumps out from behind a tree with the camera."
"Mitchell's not really big on cameras," George replied absently, thoughts on the sliver of sky visible between the trees; he'd chosen this grove for other reasons, chief amongst them the fact that so far it was the furthest spot from a road he'd been able to work out from a satellite view, but it also afforded a fair angle to the general direction of moonrise. They had time yet, too much time, really, when the smalltalk was all but guaranteed to be... awkward. George dropped his bag on the ground and bent to rummage into it for the last item that they would need to make a proper evening of this. "Erm, we do need to have our kit off, though."
"S'pose it wouldn't be a proper windup without it," Andy agreed with a look that suggested he might almost have been disappointed to find it otherwise, and gamely began to unbutton his shirt.
"Hold on, first I need to..."
Andy regarded the object that George had pulled from his holdall with the frown of a man who was suddenly trying to tot up rounds well after the fact. "That's... a chicken on a string," he said. "Mitchell is about to leap out from behind a tree, isn't he --"
George had a sudden mental image of how this would look on film, grainy underexposed vid of two nude men with trussed-up raw poultry -- It's all right, Mum, we're not gay, we're just Satanists. "No, it's, we... It's to distract the wolf. Erm, wolves. I -- we, drag it in a circle round the clearing to give the wolf a scent to follow. If I'm lucky, it keeps him busy till the moon sets again."
"And if not?"
To mask his complete and utter lack of an answer to this George let out the chicken on its string and began laying out a rough trail through the bracken, rather smaller a compass than he'd usually draw for himself but with Andy following along at his elbow it seemed best to get through this quickly before he -- before either of them lost nerve and bolted. When it seemed that he'd come round again to the start George smacked the chicken against several treetrunks at about his shoulder-height for good measure before he returned to the clearing and slung the remains of the carcass up into a tree, string wrapping round a branch up out of easy reach. He was reasonably certain that the wolf couldn't climb up after it -- with luck they wouldn't roam very far at all, too distracted by a tantalising engineering problem beyond a monster's reduced capacity to reason through. "Right, now we get our kit off," George announced, hoping a show of confidence might go some way towards carrying them both through the next few hours.
He suspected that the only reason that Andy had stuck with this farce to this point was that by now he was desperately curious to see just how far George meant to take the gag. But the constable was moving readily enough to strip down as he saw his companion's clothes coming off, perhaps thinking through whatever haze of the lager remained that at least he might still get a shag and a risque tale for whichever of his mates he might trust with the particulars of his private life out of this whatever came. Two pairs of trainers made for a snug fit within the holdall, but George persevered until he could do up the zip, then wound up and pitched the bag out past the protective circle of chicken-scent. "And it's safe to just do this right out in the open?" Andy said, looking after it.
"I had a cage set up at our last place, but we had to leave in a bit of a hurry. Sort of... making do, until things are better settled. We're well enough out of the way here, I... I came here last month. Seemed to work out all right then."
Or at least no one had reported any pets or pensioners gone missing that he'd seen in the locals, and he did make a point of checking the next few days after, even... distracted as he'd been, last month. George started to cover himself with his hands as Andy turned back to face him, then let them fall, recognising the absurdity of the gesture when the only eyes present had already done far more than see. "You really don't look Jewish," Andy remarked, and then gave a hiccoughing little laugh. "Don't look like a werewolf either, I suppose."
George had given up trying to judge anything by appearances, himself. Eerie, how every detail stood out in these ticks of frozen clarity, the rich scent of damp Welsh earth, the fading light, the little mole on the other man's cheek. The hairy chest fit for a proper werewolf. "What do we do now?" Andy asked after another few moments had gone by in a fretful silence. "Mean, after we turn into, erm, werewolves."
He clearly meant if, and was too polite, and still a bit too far from sober, to think of a way to challenge George on the underlying premise. "I don't actually know," George admitted. "I've never really... done this with anyone, before. Might kill each other, but that's sort of the best-case scenario."
A look of full-on scepticism here: "You haven't thought this through."
"It was, just... The last time I changed someone, I wasn't there for her. I wanted... Well, I don't suppose that there is a way to do this right. But... I didn't want anyone else to have to go through that alone, if there was something that I..."
Andy raised a hand to touch George's cheek, and he realised he was weeping. "You really do think something's about to happen to us."
"You think I'm a nutter," George said. "Fair enough. Sometimes I wonder if I am. But I do know that this... this is all too real. I wish it wasn't, but... And now I've dragged you into it as well."
"Isn't actually the strangest date I've ever been on," Andy offered with a wry grin. "This one time, in --"
And he paused, looking puzzled, and screwed up his lips in a grimace. As if... as if, suddenly, his teeth weren't feeling as if they fit into his mouth properly... "It's starting," George said, first intimation of cracking bone shivering up his spine. "I'm sorry --"
***
Of course, because this was Wales, the carcass George woke up cuddling was that of a sheep. Insert rude remark here. The wolf had made a proper go at it, not much left but wool and well-gnawed bones.
But then, the wolf had had help finishing it off, hadn't he. George leant up on an elbow to look behind himself at an innocent sleeping face smeared nose to chin with rusty gore. Well, they'd stayed close, that was... something. He wasn't sure he was quite ready to think about just what. "Erm... Andy?"
Andy stirred and murmured something about turning out the light, one arm going up to cover his eyes. A moment later he came out from beneath this shade to squint up at George in complete bewilderment. "...Bloody woods?"
"Yeah, erm... It's morning, we should be..."
With a groan Andy heaved himself up into a sitting position, more or less, blinking round at the trees as if certain of the bits that were beginning to come back seemed too suspiciously vivid to write off as a bad trip or a cruel prank. "I thought we, last night, did, erm, any of that really..." He trailed off, staring at the carcass. "That's a sheep."
"Actually, I think it was our tea," George said.
"...Right." Andy turned away and was sick, retching until there seemed to be nothing left to expel. Yes, George remembered that aspect of the earliest transformations all too well. "Suppose it's not likely that werewolves would just try to get a traffic-cone when they're pissed," he said once the fit had passed, wiping a hand across his mouth.
There would be water, if they hadn't run off too far from the bag. George stood up and started brushing ineffectually at the backs of his thighs. It looked as if they were still quite near the clearing; whether this meant the sheep had gone very wrong in the night or one or other of them had fetched it back here like a take-away George hesitated to guess.
The chicken was gone, splintered furrows gouged into the trunk of the tree. George wondered if this suggested a worrisome development in the wolf's abilities or the unnerving potential of having two about to work together on the problem. Or if Andy was simply as much taller as a werewolf as well. Some time in the night they had found George's bag and gone after it as thoroughly as the sheep, thin false leather no match for teeth and claws. He followed along a trail of mangled articles of clothing to a chewed-up trainer, bigger than his, and then the plastic water-bottles, several punctured by vicious fangs but one still intact. George gathered up what he could salvage and returned to offer the bottle.
With a mumbled cheers mate Andy rinsed out his mouth and spat, then again. He looked hung-over, which couldn't be helping anything. George felt battered, true, but it was a strangely satisfying sort of feeling, as if he'd resolved something within himself. Pushed past some physical barrier to a calm certainty that had always lain on the far side, that whatever came he could rely upon this body to meet it. He tried to stifle the creeping suspicion it had involved rolling about wrestling like puppies. Depressingly obvious that some of the filth they were both coated in was the evidence of what two werewolves might be about with each other if they decided that they rather got on; "Don't think we spent the night fighting," Andy remarked, scratching at his crotch.
"There were wet-wipes, but one of us seems to have eaten them," George said. "And the mobiles. We'll have to walk."
Andy gave him a look that said this was perhaps the cruelest indignity out of all of it, and levered himself to his feet with George's hand-up. "Bloody films never show the wolfman having to come home on the bus. Only in bloody Cardiff."
***
Mitchell met them at the door with a look of sober sympathy. "I could ring your work, tell them you're not feeling well enough to come in today."
Andy nodded shakily and rattled off a number. Annie dialled it as he spoke, handing the receiver off to Mitchell at the end -- "We haven't really met," she said at the look the constable was giving her. "Sorry, I'm Annie, I don't know if George has mentioned me? I'm a, well, I'm a ghost. You couldn't see me before because... most people can't."
To Andy's credit, he took this with a polite nod, only the slightest glaze of shock creeping into his eyes. "And this isn't about 'most people' now, yeah." Mitchell was spinning a tale to Andy's superior of neighbourly hospitality that had taken an unfortunate turn into food-poisoning. "What's his story then, bloody Martian or something?"
Mitchell covered the receiver with his hand. "Vampire."
"Ah." Andy started looking about as if he needed something soft to collapse onto. "Might have expected there'd be something like that in this somewhere."
"Why don't you two go upstairs and get cleaned up," Annie suggested.
By the time they'd got up to the bath Andy was shivering like a terrified animal, bone-deep shudders betraying the clear desire to tuck a tail between his legs. George put him into the shower and then got into it with him, trying to remember if wolves mated for life. "That was a month ago, wasn't it," Andy said as George started to scrub at the blood crusted down his chest. "When I was doing this for you. You weren't... you'd just come home. From this." George nodded, trying not to meet his eyes. And then, trace of gallows-humour sparking through: "Knew something was wrong with your story, there should have been more blood on your shirt."
Leave it to a copper to have noticed a detail like that, all the little incongruities that added up after the fact to the impossible, unreasonable truth. George sponged away the rest of the telltale rust from pale skin and decided it would be enough for just now, turning off the tap and leading him to the rear bedroom where they could huddle together under the duvet. "So, what happens now?" Andy asked presently, when the shaking fits seemed to have left him.
It was a reasonable question, one that George had been asking himself for three years now without answer. "Just... get on with it, really. Things will be different, but... it's still your life. Now that you... know..."
"Transfer to a K-9 unit maybe," Andy said, and started sniggering helplessly. "Bomb-sniffing bloody... Ah, god. Reckon I'm spooky enough for Torchwood now, aye?"
"Sorry, what's a Torchwood?"
Andy shrugged, as if he didn't want to admit that he wasn't sure himself. "Special-ops unit. Turn up at the unexplained cases to tell us plods not to talk shite about aliens. Sort of thing gets their attention, this is."
It seemed meant as a leading question. "Well, we've only been here the two full moons. It usually takes a bit longer than that for the neighbours to work out where to buy pitchforks."
Another half-formed laugh from Andy. "Was thinking about tipping Gwen on you myself, if you'd only been a mental. Bloke thinks he's a werewolf, she'd be all over that looking to know how it worked. Suppose I'll be needing to worry about her getting on to me now."
George wondered if this was closer to the truth of why the vampires had traditionally avoided drawing attention from west of the border. "Reckon we should be thinking about looking after each other with it, yeah," he said, and then, following the thought a bit further: "What would be the word for 'pack'?"
Andy tucked his head against George's scarred shoulder to hide a smile, as there came a soft knock at the bedroom door that would be Annie with two mugs of tea. "Dunno. You've still got my dictionary."
Advisories: contains dark themes including: character death [referenced] and brief reference to suicide
Spoilers: set after Being Human series 2 and Torchwood: Children of Earth
<
"You slept with him again?" Mitchell looked as if he couldn't even decide whether this was funny or flat-out ridiculous.
"I only went over there to thank him for the book, I didn't... I, I had a... moment."
"Hopefully a bit more than a moment," Annie muttered.
George struggled to steady himself. "It's not what you, I can't, do, this, anymore, and I... I've told him that."
"After you slept with him again."
"Thank you for being your usual supportive self, Mitchell. Look, I can't get involved with him -- I can't get involved with anyone. Christ, I can't even tell him why. Better that he thinks, oh, god, I don't even know what he thinks."
"He thinks you're a wanker," Annie suggested. "No, this guy really likes you, George, why are you being such a muppet about it?"
"Because I don't want anyone else to get hurt, all right?"
"And dumping him is a good way to achieve that. No, sorry, stringing him along and then dumping him."
"I mean... hurt. Like... Like Nina." George took a breath, trying not to let it slip out into the gasp it wanted to be. "Right, you've made me say it, are we all happy now?"
"Nina made her choices," Mitchell said. "We all did, it's just... human nature, George. The things we need don't always make sense, or even work out well with other things we need, we just... try to balance it, as best we can."
"The love of my life walked out on me, and then I got her personal effects back in a biscuit-tin. And you're blaming me for not wanting to jump head-first into something again with some bloke I barely know?"
"Is this really even about Nina, or is this about him being a bloke?" Annie said. "'Cos if you're about to descend into some spiral of guilt about that on top of everything, I'm not going to be responsible to clearing up after you."
"I can imagine what my mother would have to say about it would make the turning into a wolf parts sound like a reasonable career choice, yeah."
"George, you like him. Get over yourself."
"Oh, what, now it's I like him? I do not need a, a yenta, Annie. I can make my life into utter shit perfectly well on my own."
"And he says that he doesn't know Hebrew."
"All right, first of all, that's Yiddish, actually, and stop changing the subject. We came here to be anonymous, to lose ourselves in a crowd. Now, I accept that there's a certain minimal level of interaction with our neighbours that's reasonable to keep from looking too suspicious, but dating a policeman, that's... well, it's bloody suicide, is what it is. No, the sensible thing was to break it off before he got any more involved. With me, with... us, with..."
"You know, if you weren't trying to convince yourself about this you could have stopped talking maybe five minutes ago," Mitchell observed mildly.
"Just... stay out of this, the both of you. We cannot afford to let anyone that far into our lives and that is that." George crossed his arms across his chest and tried to stare down the twin looks of fiver gives that ten minutes from his housemates. "And so long as we seem to be having a house-meeting, can I point out that Mitchell's still not been doing any of the shopping?"
***
George had left him a list. George had left him a very detailed list, just short of drawing out little maps of where everything was to be found in their new market, and now Mitchell found himself staring into a dairy case in panicked despair of finding the exact canisters of yoghurt that the paper specified. But he wasn't going to be one of these sad bastards on the mobile back to a partner, asking did they still buy the same brand of cornflakes as every week --
He turned to look down the other end of the display, wondering if there was some obscure classification scheme of the double-cream and other specialty dairy-like items that he was somehow missing, and George's copper from number eleven was reaching out for a litre of milk, glancing towards Mitchell as he felt himself startle. "Oh, hullo, Mitchell, I... erm. Hullo." And an odd hesitation here, as if he were calculating how much of what story the housemate might have heard by now; "Haven't seen George round much, I hope he's all right?"
Question without a proper answer, that. "Yeah, he's, well, he's George."
A fretful little nod from Andy here, somewhere between relief and a horribly British reluctance to admit to having such an emotional response. "Starting to feel like I'd scared off a stray dog."
"Yeah, that's... He's George, man. Weird as a fish wearing pants, but that's just him." Mitchell paused, and then decided to go ahead and plunge into it if only for the sake of not leaving someone with too wretched an impression of a friend; "Listen, he might have... said, stuff... He doesn't always see what's right in front of him, y'know?"
The wide-set eyes went all worried of a sudden, putting Mitchell somehow in mind of a puppy who was trying to figure out what the humans thought it had done wrong. "Have I, erm, put my foot in it here?"
"Hm?"
"Mean, you and George... You are just housemates, yeah?"
The irony that this constable with his own issues regarding the subject seemed to be the first person in a long while who'd not leapt straight to the conclusion of pairing him and George off struck Mitchell, then, and he had to put a hand to his mouth to keep from laughing aloud at the poor man. "Folie a deux, more like. Honestly, man, George is my best mate in all the world, and you are more than welcome to intrude on that as far as he wants to let you."
Andy pulled a face. "Don't know that I'd get much chance if he never comes back out of your house again. Reckon he's not... well, neither am I, well, didn't think I, erm, it was just... one of those things, aye?"
Mitchell decided that this might reasonably be parsed out into that I snogged him was a surprise to me as well, and shrugged. "If I started listing off all of the things George is repressing we'll be here till your milk's gone sour. Been good to see him thinking about not letting it get to him so much, y'know? -- Well, s'pose you might there, yeah."
"Yeah, well, get suspended for disobeying an unjust order, it sort of changes your perspective on a lot of the bollocks you've always been told," Andy said, with a hint of fire that made Mitchell wonder. "Thought for once I'd have a go just pleasing myself. Not what anyone would think about it."
Fair enough description of where George was at with it, if Mitchell had seen anything of the world in his bloody century. "Give him your best when I see him, he'll get himself sorted eventually," he offered.
A vague nod as if the constable had his doubts regarding the wisdom of this course. "Yeah, that'd be... And to your, erm, you've got another housemate now, haven't you?" Mitchell gave him a perplexed look. "Or maybe she's your, dunno, I keep seeing her coming out to your bins though, looks like she's moved in?"
Mitchell found his voice, somewhere in his left shoe: "You don't mean Annie."
Andy shrugged. "If that's her -- about so high, dark, seems to like grey? Bit of a looker," he added, as Mitchell felt himself gaping. "I mean if she's not moved in 'cos she's your, erm... Look, if she is your girlfriend I'm sorry, forget I said anything --"
"No, no, it's, ah, she's just our new housemate. Bit shy, just got out of a bad relationship -- wouldn't go trying to chat her up or anything just yet, let her settle herself a bit first..." Andy nodded, as if this was making any sort of sense, and voiced no objections as Mitchell began backing away from the dairy-case in a trail of mumbled excuses, probably just as happy to have the excuse for a polite conversation about mutual concerns behind them both.
Bugger the buggering shopping, anyway.
***
Mitchell had managed to forget the flour, and the kitchen-roll, and George's yoghurt, but at least he'd got back into the house without breaking too many of the eggs. "Right, so, was this your way of trying to get out of ever being sent to do the shopping again?" George asked, holding up what had once been a perfectly serviceable loaf of bakery bread before it had gone into the boot ahead of all the tins. Or possibly been trodden on, it was difficult to say.
Mitchell made a vague gesture that could have encompassed anything from I had to run out of the supermarket before I ate the lady on the till to pirates grabbed me from in front of the biscuits and made me their chief. "Yeah, was, erm, got sort of... Yeah." And a pause, possibly to paste together his alibi -- "Ran into your mate from number eleven down the shops."
"Oh. Oh, god. Tell me you didn't say anything to him, Mitchell --"
Mitchell wasn't very good at innocent looks. "Might have mentioned you'd been thinking about him."
"Oh, god."
"Thing is, George..." George wasn't sure he liked the way Mitchell's attempt at a grin seemed to have piled up into one corner of his mouth. "I think the two of you are going to need to talk."
"I really do not want to get into --"
"I mean, talk." All traces of levity gone now. "Sit down for a man-to-man. Or a... wolf-to-wolf."
It took several moments for what Mitchell had said to penetrate. "No, no, no, you are not saying that..."
"He can see Annie now, George. It's usually a pretty bad sign."
"And we're just assuming this is anything to do with me?" Just because the two of us have been shagging like wild animals --
"Well, yeah, maybe he's mates with half the local werewolf underground or something, but I think I'd go with the simplest explanation, yeah?"
"Is there really a werewolf underground?" Annie asked. "-- Hold on, though, guys, he's not been anywhere near you during your time of the month. Has he?"
George felt his ears blazing up like a bonfire. "The nearest would have been, erm, in the, ah, the shower." Mitchell raised an eyebrow. "But it can't, that was well after, I mean..." And he stopped, and gulped in air, finding it did nothing to steady him; "You should have let me top myself, Mitchell. If the wolf bleeds through even when I think I'm back to myself -- when I can still see without my glasses, and pick out Mrs Sahota's curry from three streets away, if I..."
If he'd thought that was the older-and-wiser look, he'd mistaken how Mitchell was pulling his punches. "You were born in '81," the vampire said, weight of too many years suddenly in dark eyes. "You don't even remember why everything's condoms, and sharps-bins, and being careful what you're mopping up off the floor in a hospital. So don't you even go giving me any grief about thinking you know what it's like to have to wonder about every fucking move you make. Listen, you'll have plenty of time to freak out about this later, but right now you've got some thinking to do, yeah? Moon's coming along, gonna need a plan here."
"Oh, my god, we have been here six weeks and I've already turned the bloke next door into a werewolf. This is exactly what I was..." George dropped into one of the chairs at the table, burying his face in his hands. "I've done it again, I've let someone think I'm fit to be let out amongst normal people and this is what he gets for it, I can't... I can't do this, anymore, Mitchell, I..."
Mitchell was giving him a look that said he was nearing the boundary where a justifiable wobbly would wear out its welcome. "At least give him some idea what's gone on, George. Even if it's to tell him he needs to put in for a transfer to some village up the valleys or something. Don't you wish you'd had some clue what to expect?"
"He already thinks I'm mental, what is telling him the truth going to look like? That is if he doesn't just assume I'm trying to pick it up with him again the moment he opens the door --"
"Relax, George, it's not like you'd be asking him out on a date," Annie pointed out. "And after all you've already got that awkward should we have sex part out of the way up-front in your relationship."
"We do not have a relationship! He is simply a neighbour of ours who, who I happen to have turned into a werewolf. By... having sex with him which is entirely beside the point, but that doesn't mean we're, we're just acquaintances. Honestly, Annie."
"Don't leave him to do this alone, George."
"I wasn't going to just abandon..." Too late he recalled how Annie had been the one to pick up the slack for him the last time he'd done exactly that. "But what can I do for him that would possibly help? It's not as if I know what I'm doing with any of this even now."
"This is easier on us vampires, we know when we've recruited someone. We can think about how we're going to pick up the pieces." Mitchell sighed. "You'd think werewolves would be the pack animals. Herrick may not have been the best influence in the world, but... he understood, things. You could give this guy that much of a start."
"All I want," George said, "is to have a life where people aren't getting hurt because they know me. Is that really too much to ask?"
Mitchell sat in the chair beside his, arm across the back in a loose-limbed posture of resignation. "Asking the wrong guy, mate."
"You're lonely," Annie said, resting a chill hand on his shoulder. "You've only the two of us to really talk to, so, someone reaches out, and... you reach back. But now he's going to need you. You, George."
If someone... If Tully... if someone had been there, if he had been there for... George sighed, bowing his head in surrender to the idea. "All right. I'll talk to him. But it is not a bloody date."
***
The trouble was, the constable was still working irregular shifts that didn't seem to have much overlap with either his or Mitchell's schedules, and he was running out of nights. George found himself resorting to behaviour that felt frankly stalkerish before at last Annie's observations of number eleven tipped him to the PC's preparations to leave for work just in time to arrange a casual-seeming meeting over the bicycle padlocked to Andy's front fence. "Oi, Andy, I, erm, I was wondering, are you... busy, tomorrow night?"
Andy looked up from fumbling with his keys to regard George suspiciously. "Mitchell having another party?"
"Erm, no, no, I... I was just wondering if you were busy, is all."
The suspicion shaded into the beginnings of shyness, now, a grin playing round the corners of that cheeky mouth; "Oh, you meant... Erm. S'pose 'M not, as such. Thought you said you needed time."
"It's... bloody complicated. Meet me round the Anchor about half six?"
"Yeah, might do." Andy finished wrestling the chain free of the breezeblocks and gave George another shy smile before throwing a long leg over the saddle of the bicycle and shoving off down the road. George stood watching him go until the curve of the street blocked the view, then turned to trudge back into his own house.
And pulled a face as Annie started to open her mouth; "It's a bloody date."
***
"A werewolf," Andy said.
This accidental date had turned out to be a good thing, George thought; a few pints down and they were both of a mind to believe any number of absurd things about the other. Even maybe Andy's claim that he'd once helped to fight back an army of aliens that were trying to force their way into the downtown police headquarters. Wasn't on the face of it any more unbelievable than George's life story. "I know what this sounds like," he said.
"Well, 's Cardiff, innit. Spooky-bollocks central distribution. Why wouldn't the fit new bloke across the road turn out to be a werewolf?" Andy took another pull at his latest pint. "Marks for imagination though, you think when a shag comes back 'round and says they need to talk it's going to be some sort of STI conversation. Bloody herpes or something."
He could see where lycanthropy wouldn't usually have been on that list. "I suppose it sort of is, isn't it. You're taking this better than I would have expected."
Andy blinked, as if he hadn't thought to consider the question before now. "Well, not as if there's anything to be done for it, is there. Mean, werewolves, you can't just go in for a jab for that." A second, more owlish blink, as if it were also now occurring to him to recount the empties on their table. "You'd have thought being put on review for the last time I said bollocks to the rules would have taught me more than that sometimes it's still worth it."
"No, it's..." George paused, struck by Andy's expression; "You really do, sort of... fancy me?"
Andy snorted. "Thought you'd have noticed by now. Come back to mine, put the case to you again?"
George looked at his watch; "Erm, we don't really have... it's getting on to moonrise. We should... we should go, but..."
The copper's brows drew down into a slightly unfocused scowl. "You mean you've been talking about tonight."
"Erm, yeah. Sorry?"
"This is the part where we end up out in the woods and I'm having to explain a YouTube video to my mates down station in the morning, isn't it. 'M not, I just... Y'know?"
George thought he sort of did, at that. "Come on. I know a spot."
***
"Knew this was a setup." Andy still seemed to be retaining an open mind about this increasingly outlandish excursion, quite possibly due to those last two pints of Brains, but as George halted in the little clearing a glimmer of wariness appeared to be burning through the fog of alcohol. "We get our kit off and your mate Mitchell jumps out from behind a tree with the camera."
"Mitchell's not really big on cameras," George replied absently, thoughts on the sliver of sky visible between the trees; he'd chosen this grove for other reasons, chief amongst them the fact that so far it was the furthest spot from a road he'd been able to work out from a satellite view, but it also afforded a fair angle to the general direction of moonrise. They had time yet, too much time, really, when the smalltalk was all but guaranteed to be... awkward. George dropped his bag on the ground and bent to rummage into it for the last item that they would need to make a proper evening of this. "Erm, we do need to have our kit off, though."
"S'pose it wouldn't be a proper windup without it," Andy agreed with a look that suggested he might almost have been disappointed to find it otherwise, and gamely began to unbutton his shirt.
"Hold on, first I need to..."
Andy regarded the object that George had pulled from his holdall with the frown of a man who was suddenly trying to tot up rounds well after the fact. "That's... a chicken on a string," he said. "Mitchell is about to leap out from behind a tree, isn't he --"
George had a sudden mental image of how this would look on film, grainy underexposed vid of two nude men with trussed-up raw poultry -- It's all right, Mum, we're not gay, we're just Satanists. "No, it's, we... It's to distract the wolf. Erm, wolves. I -- we, drag it in a circle round the clearing to give the wolf a scent to follow. If I'm lucky, it keeps him busy till the moon sets again."
"And if not?"
To mask his complete and utter lack of an answer to this George let out the chicken on its string and began laying out a rough trail through the bracken, rather smaller a compass than he'd usually draw for himself but with Andy following along at his elbow it seemed best to get through this quickly before he -- before either of them lost nerve and bolted. When it seemed that he'd come round again to the start George smacked the chicken against several treetrunks at about his shoulder-height for good measure before he returned to the clearing and slung the remains of the carcass up into a tree, string wrapping round a branch up out of easy reach. He was reasonably certain that the wolf couldn't climb up after it -- with luck they wouldn't roam very far at all, too distracted by a tantalising engineering problem beyond a monster's reduced capacity to reason through. "Right, now we get our kit off," George announced, hoping a show of confidence might go some way towards carrying them both through the next few hours.
He suspected that the only reason that Andy had stuck with this farce to this point was that by now he was desperately curious to see just how far George meant to take the gag. But the constable was moving readily enough to strip down as he saw his companion's clothes coming off, perhaps thinking through whatever haze of the lager remained that at least he might still get a shag and a risque tale for whichever of his mates he might trust with the particulars of his private life out of this whatever came. Two pairs of trainers made for a snug fit within the holdall, but George persevered until he could do up the zip, then wound up and pitched the bag out past the protective circle of chicken-scent. "And it's safe to just do this right out in the open?" Andy said, looking after it.
"I had a cage set up at our last place, but we had to leave in a bit of a hurry. Sort of... making do, until things are better settled. We're well enough out of the way here, I... I came here last month. Seemed to work out all right then."
Or at least no one had reported any pets or pensioners gone missing that he'd seen in the locals, and he did make a point of checking the next few days after, even... distracted as he'd been, last month. George started to cover himself with his hands as Andy turned back to face him, then let them fall, recognising the absurdity of the gesture when the only eyes present had already done far more than see. "You really don't look Jewish," Andy remarked, and then gave a hiccoughing little laugh. "Don't look like a werewolf either, I suppose."
George had given up trying to judge anything by appearances, himself. Eerie, how every detail stood out in these ticks of frozen clarity, the rich scent of damp Welsh earth, the fading light, the little mole on the other man's cheek. The hairy chest fit for a proper werewolf. "What do we do now?" Andy asked after another few moments had gone by in a fretful silence. "Mean, after we turn into, erm, werewolves."
He clearly meant if, and was too polite, and still a bit too far from sober, to think of a way to challenge George on the underlying premise. "I don't actually know," George admitted. "I've never really... done this with anyone, before. Might kill each other, but that's sort of the best-case scenario."
A look of full-on scepticism here: "You haven't thought this through."
"It was, just... The last time I changed someone, I wasn't there for her. I wanted... Well, I don't suppose that there is a way to do this right. But... I didn't want anyone else to have to go through that alone, if there was something that I..."
Andy raised a hand to touch George's cheek, and he realised he was weeping. "You really do think something's about to happen to us."
"You think I'm a nutter," George said. "Fair enough. Sometimes I wonder if I am. But I do know that this... this is all too real. I wish it wasn't, but... And now I've dragged you into it as well."
"Isn't actually the strangest date I've ever been on," Andy offered with a wry grin. "This one time, in --"
And he paused, looking puzzled, and screwed up his lips in a grimace. As if... as if, suddenly, his teeth weren't feeling as if they fit into his mouth properly... "It's starting," George said, first intimation of cracking bone shivering up his spine. "I'm sorry --"
***
Of course, because this was Wales, the carcass George woke up cuddling was that of a sheep. Insert rude remark here. The wolf had made a proper go at it, not much left but wool and well-gnawed bones.
But then, the wolf had had help finishing it off, hadn't he. George leant up on an elbow to look behind himself at an innocent sleeping face smeared nose to chin with rusty gore. Well, they'd stayed close, that was... something. He wasn't sure he was quite ready to think about just what. "Erm... Andy?"
Andy stirred and murmured something about turning out the light, one arm going up to cover his eyes. A moment later he came out from beneath this shade to squint up at George in complete bewilderment. "...Bloody woods?"
"Yeah, erm... It's morning, we should be..."
With a groan Andy heaved himself up into a sitting position, more or less, blinking round at the trees as if certain of the bits that were beginning to come back seemed too suspiciously vivid to write off as a bad trip or a cruel prank. "I thought we, last night, did, erm, any of that really..." He trailed off, staring at the carcass. "That's a sheep."
"Actually, I think it was our tea," George said.
"...Right." Andy turned away and was sick, retching until there seemed to be nothing left to expel. Yes, George remembered that aspect of the earliest transformations all too well. "Suppose it's not likely that werewolves would just try to get a traffic-cone when they're pissed," he said once the fit had passed, wiping a hand across his mouth.
There would be water, if they hadn't run off too far from the bag. George stood up and started brushing ineffectually at the backs of his thighs. It looked as if they were still quite near the clearing; whether this meant the sheep had gone very wrong in the night or one or other of them had fetched it back here like a take-away George hesitated to guess.
The chicken was gone, splintered furrows gouged into the trunk of the tree. George wondered if this suggested a worrisome development in the wolf's abilities or the unnerving potential of having two about to work together on the problem. Or if Andy was simply as much taller as a werewolf as well. Some time in the night they had found George's bag and gone after it as thoroughly as the sheep, thin false leather no match for teeth and claws. He followed along a trail of mangled articles of clothing to a chewed-up trainer, bigger than his, and then the plastic water-bottles, several punctured by vicious fangs but one still intact. George gathered up what he could salvage and returned to offer the bottle.
With a mumbled cheers mate Andy rinsed out his mouth and spat, then again. He looked hung-over, which couldn't be helping anything. George felt battered, true, but it was a strangely satisfying sort of feeling, as if he'd resolved something within himself. Pushed past some physical barrier to a calm certainty that had always lain on the far side, that whatever came he could rely upon this body to meet it. He tried to stifle the creeping suspicion it had involved rolling about wrestling like puppies. Depressingly obvious that some of the filth they were both coated in was the evidence of what two werewolves might be about with each other if they decided that they rather got on; "Don't think we spent the night fighting," Andy remarked, scratching at his crotch.
"There were wet-wipes, but one of us seems to have eaten them," George said. "And the mobiles. We'll have to walk."
Andy gave him a look that said this was perhaps the cruelest indignity out of all of it, and levered himself to his feet with George's hand-up. "Bloody films never show the wolfman having to come home on the bus. Only in bloody Cardiff."
***
Mitchell met them at the door with a look of sober sympathy. "I could ring your work, tell them you're not feeling well enough to come in today."
Andy nodded shakily and rattled off a number. Annie dialled it as he spoke, handing the receiver off to Mitchell at the end -- "We haven't really met," she said at the look the constable was giving her. "Sorry, I'm Annie, I don't know if George has mentioned me? I'm a, well, I'm a ghost. You couldn't see me before because... most people can't."
To Andy's credit, he took this with a polite nod, only the slightest glaze of shock creeping into his eyes. "And this isn't about 'most people' now, yeah." Mitchell was spinning a tale to Andy's superior of neighbourly hospitality that had taken an unfortunate turn into food-poisoning. "What's his story then, bloody Martian or something?"
Mitchell covered the receiver with his hand. "Vampire."
"Ah." Andy started looking about as if he needed something soft to collapse onto. "Might have expected there'd be something like that in this somewhere."
"Why don't you two go upstairs and get cleaned up," Annie suggested.
By the time they'd got up to the bath Andy was shivering like a terrified animal, bone-deep shudders betraying the clear desire to tuck a tail between his legs. George put him into the shower and then got into it with him, trying to remember if wolves mated for life. "That was a month ago, wasn't it," Andy said as George started to scrub at the blood crusted down his chest. "When I was doing this for you. You weren't... you'd just come home. From this." George nodded, trying not to meet his eyes. And then, trace of gallows-humour sparking through: "Knew something was wrong with your story, there should have been more blood on your shirt."
Leave it to a copper to have noticed a detail like that, all the little incongruities that added up after the fact to the impossible, unreasonable truth. George sponged away the rest of the telltale rust from pale skin and decided it would be enough for just now, turning off the tap and leading him to the rear bedroom where they could huddle together under the duvet. "So, what happens now?" Andy asked presently, when the shaking fits seemed to have left him.
It was a reasonable question, one that George had been asking himself for three years now without answer. "Just... get on with it, really. Things will be different, but... it's still your life. Now that you... know..."
"Transfer to a K-9 unit maybe," Andy said, and started sniggering helplessly. "Bomb-sniffing bloody... Ah, god. Reckon I'm spooky enough for Torchwood now, aye?"
"Sorry, what's a Torchwood?"
Andy shrugged, as if he didn't want to admit that he wasn't sure himself. "Special-ops unit. Turn up at the unexplained cases to tell us plods not to talk shite about aliens. Sort of thing gets their attention, this is."
It seemed meant as a leading question. "Well, we've only been here the two full moons. It usually takes a bit longer than that for the neighbours to work out where to buy pitchforks."
Another half-formed laugh from Andy. "Was thinking about tipping Gwen on you myself, if you'd only been a mental. Bloke thinks he's a werewolf, she'd be all over that looking to know how it worked. Suppose I'll be needing to worry about her getting on to me now."
George wondered if this was closer to the truth of why the vampires had traditionally avoided drawing attention from west of the border. "Reckon we should be thinking about looking after each other with it, yeah," he said, and then, following the thought a bit further: "What would be the word for 'pack'?"
Andy tucked his head against George's scarred shoulder to hide a smile, as there came a soft knock at the bedroom door that would be Annie with two mugs of tea. "Dunno. You've still got my dictionary."