And Then There Were Three
Title: And Then There Were Three
Author: thesinginggirl
Fandom: Being Human
Characters: George, Mitchell, Annie
Rating: U
Summary: Of course it would be George to be haunted.
A/N: I have not seen the pilot. Hence this is most probably highly inaccurate. In fact, I know it is, because I have seen the clipette recently released on the Being Human blog which apparently is quite a close remake. So here we are: what happened in my head when George and Mitchell first met their friendly resident ghost.
Why did it always happen to George?
He'd never been the popular kid at school; he was too clever for that. His mum and dad had split up when he'd been thirteen. Things had just been starting to turn around when he took the altogether disastrous decision to go on holiday to Scotland.
So why was he surprised the pattern was repeating itself?
The… the thing that happened to him made his life hell for a few months. He disappeared, letting his family and girlfriend think he was dead. Then the vampire attacks started. Things had just been starting to turn round: he'd met Mitchell, they'd found a house they could afford to rent, and they both had jobs in a place where Mitchell felt at home on the edge of life and death and George had a convenient room for… the thing.
And now they had an intruder banging around. Typical.
George and Mitchell stood together outside the spare room door, tensed and ready for confrontation. Mitchell wrapped his hand around the handle, but George held him back.
"What if they've got a gun?" he hissed.
Mitchell rolled his eyes. "Then I'll go first. Already dead, remember?"
"Oh. Yeah."
"Three, two, one-"
They burst in, Mitchell taking a defensive stance with his arms half extended and George crouching in a slightly pathetic manner in a position that could possibly be called hiding behind Mitchell. He wasn't, of course. He was blocking the door.
"What the…"
George's first reaction was to straighten up and relax. This remarkably un-threatening girl in the armchair couldn't harm him, surely. For goodness' sake, she was wearing those weird Ugg boots. Hardly the style of a master criminal. Then he remembered that she'd got in somehow, possibly with help, and dropped back into a crouch.
"Human yoyo," the girl muttered sarcastically, not moving from her position, curled up like a cat in the big, fluffy armchair.
Mitchell hadn't moved. "What are you doing here?" he asked, grimly.
Whatever reaction they were expecting, it wasn't the one they got.
The girl looked up at Mitchell, her eyes widening in-what was that? Surprise? Excitement? Fear? She shrank back into her chair, no, their chair, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees, but she didn't speak. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but no sound emerged.
"Uh, excuse me," George butted in. "Are you going to answer the question?"
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. "Can you see me?" she asked, apprehensive.
George rolled his eyes. "Well of course we can see you; you're right there!"
Abruptly, she sat bolt upright. "Oh my God, you can see me. And hear me. I mean, you can hear me, can't you? You're not just lip-reading or something?"
Mitchell's eyes closed for a moment, and he ran a hand through his eternally messy hair. "Yeah, we can hear you," he told her. Reassured her?
George looked from him to her in indignant confusion. "Why are you humouring her?" he demanded. "She's broken into our house!"
"No, she hasn't," Mitchell responded, at the same time as the girl stood, asking, "Your house?"
He ignored Mitchell. "Yes, our house. We're paying the rent, we live here, therefore, our house. Who the hell are you?"
Again, she seemed lost for words. Surely it was a simple enough question. Mitchell took pity on her and stepped in.
"She's a ghost."
There was a moment of silence when they both stared at Mitchell, incredulous.
"Oh, come on," George recovered. "Vampires I can understand. But dead people?"
Suddenly, they were alone again. George blinked, flabbergasted.
Mitchell threw his head back in exasperation. "Oh well done, George, now you've offended her."
"I what?"
But then she was back again, standing by the chair, looking intently at them. "Sorry, just a bit shocked, this is brilliant! I'm all over the place-literally. How do you know what I am?" she asked Mitchell excitedly. "Took me a whole day to work it out, and then a few weeks to work out that it wasn't normal. I mean, there must have been loads of people died in this house, right? Or more than one, anyway, but there's no one else here! Well, except the people renting the place, but they were all definitely alive; the eating and drinking kind of gives it away. God, I miss chocolate. But no one's seen me before, and it's been, oh, I don't know, a year? Ages, anyway. Maybe that's why! Maybe I've been here so long that I'm kind of moving back into the real world, or something!"
"Actually-"
"Or maybe it's something to do with you-are either of you dying? Cos I've been thinking about this, and that would make sense, wouldn't it, if I was supposed to help you die or something-Oh, I probably shouldn't have said that, should I? Never mind now, no point crying over spilt milk. Sorry about that, by the way, I was actually making tea, but you just got in and I got shocked, so I came up here; you know I'm getting quite good at controlling where I end up now, though I haven't really left the house much; I feel at home here, you know? Well, it was my home, until I fell down the stairs. Can you believe that? I couldn't-who falls down the stairs? Me, obviously! Apparently it was dark and we hadn't properly unpacked yet-that's me and my fiancé, Owen. It was horrible when they had the wake here: he was so upset, and I was crying because I was right there and he couldn't see me! How come my own fiancé couldn't see me but you can?"
"I'm a vampire."
"I mean, surely he has the right to-what?"
From talking at a hundred miles an hour with a bright sunny grin on her face and managing to paralyse George's eardrums, she was suddenly terrified. Slowly, she started backing away.
"No, no, I won't hurt you! I don't kill, I don't drink blood," Mitchell hastened to add. "Couldn't hurt you anyway, what with you being a ghost. And he's a werewolf, but he's only dangerous at the full moon."
"Mitchell!"
"What? You should accept it!"
"You're a werewolf? And a vampire?"
Mitchell nodded, slowly. "That's why we can see you. I've met ghosts before, a couple here in Bristol, actually, that's how I guessed. Didn't know werewolves could see them, actually, I thought you had to be dead. Learn something new every day."
"You mean… you're dead?"
He smiled at her. "You and me both."
"You died when you became a vampire?"
He nodded.
There was something in that exchange that George didn't understand. There was an undercurrent of shared suffering, a recognition of something familiar in the other, something that George didn't, and shouldn't, understand.
"Right, now that that's settled, would you mind getting the hell out of our home?" he suggested.
"What?" said the girl, shocked again.
"You heard me," George asserted.
"George, no," Mitchell protested.
"No what? We've paid a deposit on this place!"
"But I've got nowhere else to go!" protested the ghost. "This is my home!"
"Er, was your home."
"George, shut up a minute, will you?" Mitchell intervened. "Now, why don't we all go downstairs and have a civilised conversation?"
"Don't patronise me, Mitchell," George warned, at the same time as the girl snapped, "Fine."
She vanished. Mitchell barely reacted, but George jumped, and then cursed. With a sigh, he followed his housemate downstairs, and was greeted by the sight of the ghost girl filling the kettle.
"What are you doing now?" he whined.
She looked at him as if he were an imbecile. "Making tea, of course. All the best conversations happen over tea."
It was Mitchell's turn to look confused. "You can't drink it," he pointed out.
She shrugged and flicked the kettle on. "So?"
"Good point," conceded Mitchell. "So, I'm Mitchell and he's George, and you are?"
"Annie," she chirped.
"Right, good start," said Mitchell.
"Possibly because he"-this punctuated with a sharp look at George-"hasn't said anything."
"Oi!"
"Okay, can we all remember the civilised conversation over tea we were supposed to be having?" Mitchell suggested.
George spluttered. "This is ridiculous."
"You're a werewolf, he's a vampire and I'm a ghost, and a conversation over tea is ridiculous?"
She had a point.
"Why do you believe that we're… well, not normal?" George asked.
The girl-Annie-bit her lip, considering the question. "Dunno," she decided.
The kettle squealed, and she pulled two mugs from a cupboard.
"I swear that's not where we put the mugs," Mitchell commented.
"It's not," Annie informed him. "You put them in the wrong cupboard."
"Right…"
"How can it be the wrong cupboard?" George demanded. "We chose it."
"I've lived here for longer than you," she argued, now retrieving teabags from an equally unfamiliar cupboard. "Mugs in that cupboard, plates in that one, general kitchen paraphernalia over there and cleaning materials under the sink."
"Oh great," George muttered. "A ghost with OCD."
"You're one to talk," Mitchell pointed out.
Annie sniggered as she dropped the teabags in and began pouring the boiling water. "I think I believe you're not normal because you believe I'm not normal. Though I'm probably the most normal, if you think about it. I mean, I'm still human, just dead and human."
"That's not fair," George put in. "I'm human for twenty eight days and twenty seven nights per moon cycle."
They both looked at Mitchell, who shrugged.
"What can I say? I'm a supernatural monster twenty four seven."
"Fair enough. Milk? Sugar?"
"Just a dash, and two."
George boggled at how quickly the conversation flipped from the nature of the supernatural to how one has their tea. "Loads and one, please."
She doled out the tea and stirred in a regimented manner, the spoon clinking rhythmically against the mug, before turning and proffering the mugs before realising she was holding them out to the wrong people and crossing her arms to correct herself.
George was careful not to touch her as he took his tea, but he noticed Mitchell didn't bother. What must it be like to touch a ghost? She was holding physical objects, so presumably she could touch physical people, too, but she surely didn't actually have a body, so how did that work?
"Shall we sit down?" Mitchell suggested with the easy charm that personified him.
"Sure," Annie smiled, responding as most women did when confronted with that charm.
Why was it that he could pull dead girls while George couldn't even get a live one?
They moved into the sitting room; George and Mitchell naturally took the couch, leaving Annie to take the chair. It looked rather like they were interviewing her.
"So, shall we get to the point?" George proposed. "You can't stay here."
"You try and make me leave," she said acidly. "I've haunted four couples out of this place."
"They weren't a vampire and a werewolf," he retorted in what he hoped was a threatening manner.
Annie's eyes widened, and she brightened. "Oh my God, are you a couple? Oh, that's so sweet!"
George spluttered and looked at Mitchell in alarm, but the latter just laughed.
"Nah, he's a bit… wolfish."
"Oh, very funny," said George, feeling rather set upon. "What is this, the Dead Society For Picking On Alive People?"
"Got closed down in the seventies," Mitchell informed him in all seriousness. "Mind you, it was only vampires back then."
"Wow, how old are you?" Annie asked, already distracted from the matter of George's sexuality, thank goodness.
"Total years, human years or vampire years?"
"Total."
"Hundred and thirteen April just gone."
"No."
"Yeah."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously, I thought we were talking about the tenancy of this house," George interrupted before Mitchell could show off anymore.
"Aw, come on, George," Mitchell cajoled. "We can't turn her out on the street."
He frowned. "Why not, exactly? It's not like living conditions are an issue."
"But I can't leave the house," she put in, looking nauseated at the very idea.
"Why not?" George demanded again, but it was Mitchell who answered.
"She's got a connection to this building. Destroy it and she drifts apart." He turned to Annie, who was understandably shaken by the news of her essential mortality. "You'll be able to leave the house, given time, when you've got enough confidence. And if you're here long enough, the house can be destroyed with no harm to you."
She exhaled, loudly.
George slapped his knees. "Brilliant! What kind of timescale are we talking?"
"Varies from person to person." He winked at Annie, unseen by George. "Couple of decades, maybe?"
Annie grinned. George groaned.
"Why are you so set on getting rid of her?" Mitchell asked.
George's jaw dropped in disbelief, before he realised that he wasn't quite sure. "Why are you so set on keeping her?" he recovered.
"I'm not a flea-ridden dog," Annie reminded them dryly. "And I'm not leaving."
"Good, then that's settled," ruled Mitchell.
George blinked. "Come again?"
"Two against one, working majority, therefore she stays."
George looked from one to the other in complete bewilderment as Annie flung herself at Mitchell.
"Thank you!" she squealed, hugging him over the arm of the couch.
Mitchell looked surprised for a moment before hugging her back, laughing slightly.
An irrational sense of exclusion surged in George. They obviously clicked, those two. Why else would the girl be so harsh towards him?
"The world has truly gone mad," he muttered.
He got up, ignored by his housemate, sorry, housemates, and headed off to his room. Why did it always happen to George?