(Untitled)

[provenhumanity]

It seemed like it had been so long since George was in a good mood that he'd almost forgotten what it felt like. For over a month now, it seemed as though there had always been a cloud over him, weighing him down with guilt. Of course none of it was his fault; no one could really be blamed for the way the island brought people and took them away,

Comments

[chasinghumanity]

Maybe George could be in a good mood, but Mitchell wasn't. He wasn't in a bad mood, mind, but the grass was decidedly less greener on Mitchell's side. Annie had moved out; he kept getting strange vibes off Nina (Well, stranger than average); he kept worrying Sookie would find more trouble; and the newspaper still weighed on his mind. He didn't walk around with a thundercloud over his head. He kept a slight smile on his face and his worries to himself, as always. But looking at George, bustling about cheerfully, only reminded him of things he couldn't have

[provenhumanity]

"I don't know, Vincent? Patrick? Those are both saints, right?" George replied, after a moment of thought. He wiped his hands on a kitchen towel as he sat down.

"Sorry, but Catholic saints aren't really my area of expertise, believe it or not."

[chasinghumanity]

"There's several Vincents and Patrick banished snakes, wasn't a demon himself," Mitchell replied, off-hand, his attention still fully absorbed by the paper and the chip making its way to his mouth.

"I'll believe it, only 'cause I've seen your menorah. But I think this is Milton stuff. You went to uni." He paused to swallow his food and lift up a cup of coffee. "Come on, George. Be smart." That was something one could do on command, right?

[provenhumanity]

"Okay, let me have a look," George replied with a sigh as he reached over the turn the paper round and get a proper look at the puzzle. Maybe he wasn't really up on his saints, but he was generally good with these.

"Endmost, I think. They're being more general."

[chasinghumanity]

Mitchell didn't like that answer, but when he tugged the paper back to himself, he couldn't figure out anything better. Granted, he spent all of two seconds thinking about it.

"I hate when they try to be clever," he muttered, letting the paper drop so he could scribble in the answer. "A straightforward puzzle is still a puzzle."

[provenhumanity]

"So they should make puzzles less clever just so don't have think abstractly every once in a while. That's fair," George replied, looking skeptically across the table at Mitchell.

[chasinghumanity]

"I think so," Mitchell replied. He kept his tone inching towards aloof as he leaned back in his chair. When you've been proven an idiot, sometimes it was best to just run with it.

"I'm the paying public, after all. Or would be, if we were still home. I should get what I want from a paper."

[provenhumanity]

"You never know," George replied, "That could be the reason you're getting all the clever ones, because you don't have to pay for them. But I don't think I can really pretend to understand the motives of a sentient bookshelf."

[chasinghumanity]

"I think I'm getting all the clever ones because the island's taking the piss," Mitchell said, a little too sharply for the context. He sighed and reached for his coffee cup.

"How's Nina?" he asked. Polite inquiry, but also he genuinely cared, and was genuinely a bit scared of asking the woman himself.

[provenhumanity]

The island was always taking the piss. Saying that was almost like saying that the sky was blue or that Sunday came before Monday. Though... on the island, that wasn't necessarily the case all the time.

"She's good," George replied, a ridiculous oversimplification of their entire situation. But thinking about it all in simple terms worked for right now. Thinking about things in simple terms meant he could put the rest of it all away to deal with later.

"Things- it's all still a bit awkward, I suppose, but we're over halfway there now. She's healthy, the baby's healthy, so I can't ask for much else, really."

Except, for him to have been there for the rest of it all and to have had some sort of say in it.

[chasinghumanity]

"Yeah, all you can ask for," Mitchell echoed with a barely there smile.

That and to have been there at conception. Or for an arrival that fucked less with your already established relationship. But if George was okay, or pretended to be okay, or was mostly okay with that, Mitchell wouldn't fight it.

"You sorted out names?" he asked. "Or a crib, even?"

[provenhumanity]

"No, but- but there's still time, right? Barring any more sudden island strangeness, there's months yet," George replied. Though, the very idea that the island could suddenly do something like that, move them all ahead months or something, was enough that it made him more than a bit nervous.

It wasn't outside of the realm of possibility that the island could manage it.

[chasinghumanity]

"Plenty of time," Mitchell agreed. The thought that the island might tamper with the timing of this didn't even cross his mind. "But I always thought that was one of those things parents fret over for ages. Gotta argue about it for four months at least before you narrow it down to six terrible options, then change your mind's at the last minute to something reasonable."

[justsookie]

There were times when a new interest would suddenly pop up and overtake Mitchell's life for a time. Sookie was starting to see that. He was capable of acting on a whim, of working up excitement within himself for something that Sookie herself would feel swept up by the sentiment. Try a new food, take a new trail (...admittedly, the second was rarer than the first). But lately, Mitchell's newest obsession didn't quite seem to fall in line with the others, fingers smudged with ink from newspapers he'd grabbed from the bookshelf to peruse on his own time. And the new activity had not only contrasted with the others, but it was longer-lasting at that, weeks' worth of papers strewn around wherever he went.

Eventually, it'd gotten to the point where a girl just had to try to get to the bottom of it all.

Leaning over the opposite side of the table, Sookie lowered herself to try to get a look at his eyes, a thick copy of the Bristol Evening Post tucked under her arm. "So," she greeted, softly interrupting his look of concentration. "Wouldn'

[chasinghumanity]

There might have been, for the briefest second, a flash of terror in Mitchell's eyes as Sookie sat down, akin to a rabbit caught in a snare. But that faded with a blink and a casual lift of his shoulders into a dismissive shrug.

"Puzzle books have the answer in the back," he replied as he lifted up his coffee cup for a sip. "Do you really trust me not to cheat?" The cup paused at Mitchell's lips. "You know what I mean."

[justsookie]

"Could hand the answer key over to me," Sookie suggested with a soft grin, brushing some hair out of her line of sight, tucking blonde strands behind her ear. "You don't trust yourself, then you find people to help you keep from temptation. Feels like a line that I've been feedin' Jason all our lives." Idly, she smoothed out her own paper. She hadn't been consciously looking for an issue from his hometown (if anything, she would've preferred to find something from Bon Temps), but sometimes the bookshelf acted in very deliberate ways. George had learned of his own father's death through the shelf's offerings, even. So Sookie wondered if it meant something.

Or if she was just overthinking way too much.

"And if we're not talking about puzzles, well. You spend a year on an island with women that look like models walkin' at every turn, and you haven't even tried to let me go? I think that inspires confidence," she joked, leaning over to snag one of his fries.