Being Human: Being Cruel Was Such A Cool Thing To Do [Hal/Cutler]
Title: “Being Cruel Was Such a Cool Thing to Do”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: post-Series 4 finale [SPOILERS]
Summary: Hal undergoes rehab. Tom helps. An old friend - not so much. [Hal/Cutler]
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Lullabies quoted in the text belong to their original authors. Title from “Teary Eyes and Bloody Lips” by Moonface.
A/N: I refuse to believe that a certain thing that happened in the finale actually happened. We didn’t see the actual dust, did we? Hence, this fix-it fic.
BEING CRUEL WAS SUCH A COOL THING TO DO
It’s all in the music, you see. The swelling of volume, the fluid transition from one part of the composition to another, the melody, the rhythm. If you turn it up loud enough, it can replace your heartbeat - or give you the illusion of having one.
Hal listens to it with his eyes shut, the same piece every day. In it, his salvation lies. It grounds him, and if he listens close enough, he can almost hear Leo’s husky breathing in the other room. He can almost hear Pearl humming a popular tune to herself. He can almost feel the monster in him shift lazily in its troubled, yet unbroken sleep. It’s all part of his imaginary comfort zone, which he withdraws into when things get too rough.
Music has been known to express the entire range of human emotions solely in a varying arrangement of the same notes. Hal never thought it could transmit hunger so adequately.
Every day at Honolulu Heights is the same. He spends it tied to a chair, meditating, cursing, burning up from the inside because the beast in him knows it deserves more. He deserves more. It’s a common delusion with vampires.
The first thing Hal catches is the smell. Burnt flesh. He is half-willing to bet Tom isn’t making human burgers in the kitchen right now, so the smell is not just an unwelcome novelty. It’s an intrusion.
He cracks his eyes open and sees a thing standing before him. Not a single spot on its skin has been spared by fire. Hal is pretty sure it’s an elaborate hallucination until the creature turns the music off. He doesn’t know where the certainty comes from, but if it were a hallucination, the music would remain. It gives a certain zest to hellish visions such as this.
The burnt thing stares at him, and see, now Hal knows it has to be a trick because these eyes don’t belong on this nightmarish charred visage. He knows the owner of these eyes. He was told he’d died.
“Where is she?” the visitor asks in a wheezy voice. Hal knows that voice too. “Where is that ghost bitch?”
Hal would have laughed but he doesn’t trust himself to open his mouth wide enough.
“Out,” he says in a clipped tone. “I don’t think you want to be seeing her right now. She’s still resentful about you killing her.”
“Not your ghost bitch!” Cutler snarls. It’s strange to label this meat with a name, but it has Cutler’s slightly hysterical undertones and his light eyes. The eyes that used to reflect emotions like a mirror. “Annie. She did this to me. She took my history away from me!”
Hal tilts his head back, feeling sickness rising in him. Back when he was less broken, he might have appreciated the artful joke of Cutler’s situation. Alex said he had burned because he had got into the apartment uninvited. So true to his character.
“You should have just done it,” Hal spits. “But you had to say something. Every villain appears to be compelled to perpetuate a momentous event by uttering a moving soliloquy. Did I teach you to talk, Nick, or did I teach you to act?”
For a moment he feels so much like his old self that he begins to squirm in his chair, subconsciously looking for a way to remove the restraints. He cannot stand the sorry sight of Cutler. He might as well put him out of his misery.
“Don’t call me Nick!” Cutler snaps. “Like we’re friends.”
Hal opens his eyes wider. Cutler is standing very close to him, reeking of mortality that is struggling to catch up with him.
“How?” Hal croaks. “Annie staked you.”
He cannot really tell, but he thinks Cutler is trying to smirk.
“Missed the heart, though, didn’t she? Everyone was so busy. To kill the baby or not to kill the baby.” He shrugs. It must be painful. “Your girlfriend left to find you, I presume, and Annie was preoccupied with the War Child. I suppose they just thought I got swept under the rug quietly or something.” His voice rises to a high-pitched shriek. He goes quiet all of a sudden, and it’s unsettling. Cutler was never the type to make long pauses, not unless he was afraid - and as long as Hal knew him, it was Hal himself Cutler was afraid of for the most part. “In retrospect,” he mutters dejectedly, “it would have been a better alternative.”
He looks at Hal like he is about to add something, which is frankly unbearable. Cutler has always been a bit of a blabbermouth, his mind overclocked most of the time and his speech trying to catch up with the flight of his thought with mixed success.
This time, however, he appears to change his mind. He shuffles back to the stereo-system and turns the music on. It hammers at Hal like a hailstorm, louder and more powerful than he needs it to be.
“Cutler,” he calls out, intending to ask him to do something about it, but what comes out instead is: “Are you alive?” He has to make sure. He has to.
He cannot hear the answer over the stormy sound of the symphony and he fails to see Cutler leave. He is half-out of it by the time the others make it home and he doesn’t breathe a word of Cutler’s visit to them.
* * *
“Release me, you stupid, filthy spawn of a whore!” Hal shouted, struggling to break the bonds. “Untie me this instant, you brainless cunt! Your blood tasted like bile! How I wish I could have ripped your body apart with my own hands!”
Tom poked his head through the door, looking alarmed as if he fully expected Alex to talk back. She obviously wanted to. Even in the heat of a fit, Hal admired her restraint.
“How is he?” Tom asked.
“Oh, you know. I should make a list. He’s starting to repeat himself.” Alex flashed both of them a chipper smile. “He’s pretty tame today.”
Hal growled at that and launched another furious harangue. Tom knitted his eyebrows, doing that annoying face thing that made him look like a puppy, and socked Hal on the back of the head. Hal choked on the obscenities and slowly looked up at Alex. She didn’t seem cross or even particularly irritated, but he felt a twinge of guilt nonetheless.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Again.”
She gave a jerky shrug. “‘S all right. Except I’d really appreciate it if you stopped calling my Mum a whore. How would you like it if someone talked like that about your Mum?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Hal said evenly. “My mother was a whore.”
* * *
Cutler sidles in the next time both Alex and Tom are gone. They did not want to be, but Alex is fixated on finding her body and Hal cannot deny her that, not after how she got separated from it in the first place, and Tom has to work. Surprisingly, Hal sort of misses the restaurant. There is always something to do there.
Cutler positions himself on one of the stools Alex likes to occupy and fixes Hal with a stare. His skin is no longer the colour of raw meat, and while he is still quite a gruelling sight, his face is beginning to obtain its recognizable features again.
“Does it work?” he asks, sounding more like himself, too.
Hal rocks back and forth as hard as the ropes allow. The pain is physical. No, it’s not working, it’s not going to work, please, he just needs a drop, one drop, one mouthful…
“You look better,” he says.
“You look worse,” Cutler counters.
He slides off the stool and kneels beside Hal, his fingers hovering over Hal’s forearm, hesitant to touch. Hal stiffens. He forces himself to look at Cutler’s face, those melted patches of skin that will smooth and heal the more blood he drinks, and feels a cold, nasty feeling uncoil inside him.
“If you want me to feel guilty,” he murmurs, “I do. But get in a line.”
“What use do I have for your guilt?” Cutler sounds almost scandalized. He rises jerkily, digs his fingers into Hal’s shoulders and snaps: “You weren’t even there!”
He gives Hal a rough shake and disappears like a bad dream, leaving Hal to wonder if he has gone completely mad after all.
* * *
Tom loosened the ropes around his hands for a short spell and gave him a few sheets of paper. “To do your folding thing,” he explained. Hal raised his hands and looked at them, as if checking to see whether they were real.
“‘S weird, innit?” Tom said, dropping himself on the sofa. He had to repeat that before Hal looked up, blinking away the sickening daze that coloured everything blood red.
“What?”
“Here. Without Eve.” Tom tugged at the front of his shirt absent-mindedly. Hal thought he might need a new rota now that all the Eve chores were irrelevant. “Annie, too. It was bad enough with Nina and George, ya know, but-.”
“It’s dusty here,” Hal interrupted him quickly. He dropped the Kawasaki rose that he couldn’t remember folding and rubbed his hands together. The joints of his fingers ached as if he had held them in cold water for too long. “I could- And the refrigerator needs-.”
“I’ve a better idea,” said Tom.
He was obviously reluctant to let Hal out completely. Not that Hal blamed him. Not that Hal even truly encouraged him. So far Tom was doing great as his restraining factor, almost as unyielding as Leo had been.
Tom vanished into the anteroom and brought out a musical instrument, much to Hal’s surprise. He gave Hal a timid smile and placed it carefully on Hal’s knees.
“What is that?” Hal asked, dumbstruck.
“A lute,” declared Tom proudly. When Hal didn’t go into raptures over it, the expression of naïve satisfaction on Tom’s face wavered. “You, uh… play that, righ’? I don’t know nothin’ about this stuff, but I seen pictures.”
“Where did you get it?” An origami lotus fell on the floor. Hal made them blindly, without minding the process, without letting the routine take its hold. They fell like wasteful victims of paper vandalism.
Tom snuffed noisily and rubbed the back of his head, suddenly looking guilty. “I may or may not have nicked it.”
“You stole it?”
“No! Yeah. Maybe.” Hal fixed him with a glare, waiting for him to stop acting like a walking pop quiz and explain. He felt too old and battered to protest stealing per se, but they had to be careful. The last thing they needed was attention. “There’s this old house down the road,” Tom gabbled. “It’s mostly empty, ya know. I killed a vampire near it once. Went in to explore, ‘cause I was curious. There was so much stuff and no one seemed to be usin’ it. I went back there today and there’s still no one there, so I took it. I figure, if they ever come back, I’ll give it back. But you could play for now.”
“You broke into someone’s house,” Hal repeated, befuddled, “to get me a lute?” Tom would never cease to surprise him. “Which this is not, by the way. It’s a mandolin.”
Tom’s lips formed a disappointed “Oh.” Of course he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Hal shook his head. It felt like kicking a puppy.
“It’s perfectly fine,” he hastened to say. “I’ll manage.” He stroked the strings gently, too gently to elicit a sound, and smiled. Tom’s face brightened instantly. “Just don’t break into any more houses, empty or not.”
* * *
The sinkers are back on. Hal doesn’t trust himself to move around the house free, let alone go outside, so it’s back to the comfy chair with multiple restraints. He feels them sink into his skin, enmesh him on the inside. You leave them in place long enough, and they become a part of you. This is what he wants.
The floor is littered with paper flowers: white lilies, pink rose bowls, multi-coloured harebells. There are animals too: spiders, elephants, classic cranes allegedly fit for wish-making. Hal catches himself thinking that he could have made them for Eve, he could have taught Eve to make them. It is strange to know that she is not here but the vampire race is not extinct.
“Hal!” Cutler calls from the street. “Hal! Let your hair down!” He giggles and says irritably: “Oh, for the love of-! Ask me in!”
It is a very bad idea, but for all Hal knows, Cutler, in this new, unhinged state of his, might stand there all day, yelling and attracting attention.
“Why do you even require an invitation?” Hal asks when Cutler hobbles inside, looking almost like his normal self. “You’ve been here before.”
Maybe Hal is supposed to know these things, but it’s not every day one finds a vampire insane enough to break into someone’s house uninvited. Hal’s unfocused gaze drifts towards the mandolin sitting on the sofa. Thank heavens Tom is not a vampire.
“See, that’s the hilarious part,” Cutler says. “The cooked me and the proper me, we don’t seem to be interchangeable. So when I tried to come in today… Let’s just say I don’t fancy a repeat performance, not even for your sake.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” as soon as I was sure you were real, “I don’t want you here. You have to leave me alone.”
Cutler twirls an origami rose between his fingers pensively. “Why? Because of your rehab? We both know it’s not going to work.”
“Then it’s in your best interest to stay away from me. You know what I am when I’m-.”
“The last remaining Old One, I imagine,” Cutler says with a harsh smile. Funny, that. “Look what I have.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and takes out a small plastic bottle filled with thick, red liquid. Hal shudders. No. Not this. Not now. Cutler grins gleefully. “Prepackaged lunch. Like we’re at school.”
He comes closer and slowly unscrews the cap. The smell of blood fills Hal’s nostrils. Nick used to drink from bottles and cups, too traumatized by his transformation to open a vein. Hal had to force him to do it, rub his nose in his misgivings in cruel attempts to forge a real vampire out of him. Funny how it has all gone full circle.
“Do you know what the blackest day of my life was?” Cutler says conversationally. “There were three actually. First, you killed my wife. That hurt, you know. But you took the pain away. You cured me. But then you vanished. I waited and waited and waited - and you never returned.”
“Cutler, please.”
Nick leans into him so close that Hal can count what few scars remain on his skin. It looks paper-thin, taut over the bony faceplate; the eyes are the only living thing on it, full of rage and hurt and childish resentment.
“You will listen!” Nick spits. “You owe me that much. Now, where was I? The third day. That is curious. The day you chose to leave me for a dog. Again! Thanks to you, my entire life has been one - shall we use an Internet-based term? - epic fail, el-oh-el. So no, I’m not going anywhere.”
He pulls away, looking tired. Somewhere in this speech, there is a simple, earnest admission: I have nowhere else to go. Hal doesn’t want this to become his problem, but in retrospect, it has never been anyone else’s. Not even Cutler’s.
Cutler regains his composure quickly and turns his attention back to the flower he is still holding. He regards it with something akin to curiosity, then he upends the bottle and lets the paper get drenched in blood. Hal struggles in his restraints, a sharp realization of what is going to happen shooting through him. Cutler nods, more to himself than to Hal, and fixes the dripping flower in the breast pocket of Hal’s shirt, just slightly out of reach.
“Have a free sample,” he says and winks before leaving in a bouncy, trickster-like gait.
Hal goes completely still, his eyes wide open in horror. Blood trickles down his shirt. The flower is getting soggy. Hal inclines his head ever so slightly, still terrified to look at it directly. His nostrils flare. His fingers go rigid. He cranes out his neck, and his teeth chatter. It’s a spur-of-moment action; he is too overwhelmed by the heady scent to control himself.
He flexes his jaws, trying to reach the flower. His mouth waters; saliva froths on his lips. His neck is bent under such an unnatural angle that a human wouldn’t be able to breathe like this, but Hal is far from being human, which he is proving by reaching out despairingly for the clot of blood and paper like a child would reach for a sweet. Cutler has played the part of the tempting stranger handing out those sweets to unsuspecting children quite well.
Hal snaps his head up and growls in helpless frustration. He twists and turns as much as his restraints let him and tries to catch the flower with his tongue and his mouth and his teeth, and by the time he succeeds, the paper is crisp and dry, holding very little taste. Hal sucks it into his mouth, soaking it in his saliva, and swallows forcibly. The vague aftertaste burns his palate.
Later that day Alex spots dry drops of blood on his clothes. He tells her it is his. He tells her he has bitten through his lip and spat off some blood and please stop asking questions, you meddlesome imbecile! He apologizes a second later. She dismisses the insult with a shrug, but he can tell that it’s hard on her. One of these days she will probably teleport him all the way to Botswana and dump him there, and he will have deserved it.
* * *
Tom flopped on the sofa and - oh, the nerve!
“Are you going to watch television?” Hal asked, outraged.
“Well, yeah. Thought it might distract ya.”
“I don’t need to be distracted,” Hal pointed out. “I need to focus. This is not on my rota.”
“You don’t have one yet. An’ I was gonna watch something cultural ‘cause Allison said I should work on my mental and spiritual development.” All that came out in a rather frightful word jumble. “Or we could watch that antiquities show and you could comment on how they’re getting stuff wrong ‘cause you’re older than most of those things.”
Tom flashed him an innocent smile and turned the bloody zombie box on. Hal grunted. Best mates. Of course. It had to come with a price.
He did his best to filter the noise and attempted to focus on something, but the only something he could think of was Cutler, his cruel trick with the flower and the fact that he was still free to come into the house whenever he wanted - and this time, not without Hal’s allowance. It was stupid, thoughtless and potentially harmful to all of them.
“Fuck.”
“Wha’s that?”
Hal gritted his teeth. Nothing, he told Tom, it was nothing. Nothing he could actually talk about.
Tom picked up the remote. The television screen went dark, the silence becoming louder than the noise for a brief moment. Hal blinked a few times, swallowing a few disparaging comments already poised on the tip of his tongue.
“You could start building up those dominos again,” Tom suggested, giving him a quick once-over.
Hal nodded, tension draining away. “Yes, please.” The thought of those little pieces brought back the memory of him, Leo and Pearl in their private family fortress, locked away from the world for fifty-five years. “Will you tell me about George and Nina?” he asked before he could stop himself. It seemed important.
Tom stared at him, not even bothering to conceal his astonishment. Slowly, his face brightened. He nodded eagerly and darted off to get the dominos from Hal’s room. Hal pondered warily what he was asking for. He never knew those people, but Tom did. Tom held them dear. There were things Tom needed to know about Hal, if only out of precaution, but this, this was camaraderie. This was deliberate familiarization, laying a path for Tom to become the next Leo - to grow old and die and leave Hal alone all over again.
When Tom came down and started talking about how brilliant they had been, Hal didn’t have the heart to stop him - or himself.
* * *
His teeth feel useless. He bites at his lower lip, chews on it frantically, struggling to drive away the hunger that fills him up, seeps into every cell of his body, drips from his fangs like snake venom. A lullaby ghosts at the back of his neck, coming out in warm, ragged gasps of would-be breath.
Bye, baby bunting.
Daddy’s gone a-hunting,
Gone to get a rabbit skin
To wrap his baby bunting in.
A hand rests on his shoulder. Hal blinks drowsily. Cutler’s face comes into view, dangerously close, the final words of the song still pouring out of his mouth. He drowns them in a forceful touch of his lips to Hal’s, and Hal answers, caught off guard and too weakened to protest. He bites at Cutler’s mouth needily, and the whimpering noise Cutler makes goes straight through him. It’s the flavour of the old days, retribution and nostalgia, the indirect betrayal of everything that Leo stood for, everything that Hal chose for himself, with a sharp metallic tang underneath. Hal knows that sensation all too well.
He flinches, breaking the kiss off, and hisses: “Get away from me, you taste like blood!”
“You need to stop treating me like I’m a petty nuisance,” Cutler says. Much to Hal’s horror, he begins to remove the restraints.
A single thought pulses in Hal’s mind: if he is alone in the house, unrestrained, there is nothing left to stop him from going out and- All the while, Cutler continues to look like he is doing him a favour.
“There,” he drawls. “All better.”
The ghostly relish of blood grows painfully strong in Hal’s mouth. He stands up and turns to look at the window. There is a street behind it, and he could paint it all red. He thinks of bathing his tongue in their blood - because really, what other purpose do they have, these nauseating protozoa, just a step up from roaches, and only because his race needs them to survive!
Rage flares up in him. He glares at Cutler and wishes he’d ripped his guts out when he still could. He should never have recruited this slimy little piece of shit.
He wraps his fingers around Cutler’s throat, catching him unawares, and slams him against the wall. He digs his fingers deeper, a part of him wondering dimly if he could snap Cutler’s neck and maybe even tear his head off. Cutler stares at him, wide-eyed and damaged beyond repair. It infuriates Hal even further.
“Again with the little boy lost look,” he intones tauntingly. “I remember it. You had it when the door of that jail cell closed behind you. You looked so frightened. What did you think I was going to do to you?”
He trails his finger down Cutler’s cheek and openly revels in fear that is coming off Cutler in waves. They have no secrets from each other.
Hal cups the back of Cutler’s neck and pulls him into another a kiss, more desperate and savage than the previous one. Cutler has recently fed. Hal craves the very essence of that consumed blood. He invades Cutler’s mouth greedily, ardently, wishing to claim every tiny molecule of blood that passed through it.
“I’m sorry, Nick,” he whispers. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but I am. I’m sorry I turned you into this. I’m sorry I killed your wife. I’m sorry I left you hanging. I’m sorry that your every undertaking failed.” His voice hardens. “Sorry you could never move on. Though maybe, just maybe - have you considered that? - maybe you’re a loser.” He drops the word like a guillotine blade, and the fight goes out of him. He releases Cutler and adds softly: “These things happen, Nick. They happen.”
Cutler purses his lips, looking so deceptively young. He reminds Hal of Tom. It is ridiculous. He should be content, he should be proud - but he is just scared. As scared of Hal as he always was. He pushes himself away from the wall and stalks towards the front door, wiry limbs and a stumbling gait.
“Go dry with me,” Hal says quietly.
Cutler laughs curtly. He turns around, and his eyes go wide as he realizes it was not a joke.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” Hal asks, already making a mental list of why this is the worst idea ever facts.
“You’ve already taken everything from me!” Cutler exclaims. Laughter bubbles in his throat, fighting its way out. “You want to take the only thing I’ve got left, too?”
Hal shuts his eyes and slides down the wall on the floor and listens to him leave. Inside him, the spring of anger and thirst is slowly uncoiling. He might just make it through the next five minutes. And the next ten. And the next fifteen until he doesn’t have to count down any longer.
* * *
“So tell me, Lord Harry,” Alex quipped, “and don’t deny it, Tom told me everything about your glorious past.” That was highly doubtful, but Hal kept his peace. For now. “Were you always such a doof?”
“I beg your pardon?” Calm. Just stay calm.
“Well, you know.” She shrugged and reached for the kettle.
“Obviously I don’t.” He twirled a domino piece in his fingers, replaying a dozen colourful ways of killing her in his mind. It was convenient since he couldn’t hurt her anymore.
“Feelin’ better then?” Tom asked by way of greeting. “So maybe you could come back to the chippy. It’s sorta dead there without you.” His gaze drifted towards the tea cups, and he knitted his eyebrows slightly. “What’s this?”
“Tea,” said Alex.
Something dangerous was about to come out of Tom’s mouth. Hal really would have preferred to be elsewhere.
“Annie always made tea.”
It might have come out a little harder than Tom had intended it to. Alex winced like she had touched something hot, before letting her face go blank.
“Fine.” She took a step back from the kettle and raised her hands, preparing for a dramatic storm-off. Hal was all in favour of letting her do it, but Tom’s conscience took over.
“Alex, that’s not what I meant!” he blurted out and made a pleading face at Hal, hoping for back-up.
“Alex, that’s not what he meant,” Hal echoed, dutifully.
She balled her fists, looking like she was about to explode in a long-winded speech about how unfair her current life was. Hal had heard almost as many of those speeches from her as the number of insults he had reimbursed her with.
“I didn’t even ask for this,” she said, her tone a great deal calmer than he would have guessed. “To be dead. To be stuck here in these girly clothes with you two!” Her voice rose to a screech. She drew in a sharp breath - and giggled. “In that order.”
Hal released a slow exhalation of relief. This was even more convoluted than Tom and Annie and him had been, but it was going to work. It had to.
“Good tea,” Tom said, taking a quick sip. “Good.”
Alex shook her head. It was only half past eight in the morning, and it was already shaping up to be quite an eventful day. Tom went on about the chippy and how he could really use some company there. Alex gushed about the mystery men who had taken her body and how Hal could finally grow a backbone and do his part in providing her the well-deserved eternal peace. Hal didn’t think she really wanted that. He didn’t think she was ready to cross over and quite frankly, he didn’t really want her to. She was loud and annoying and almost as bossy as Annie had been, but the three of them were going to make it work, if only for the next fifty years.
He looked at his hands. They were barely shaking.
“I’m not a doof,” he said with all the conviction of a five-hundred-year-old.
They looked at him quizzically. Alex laughed. Tom said: “Yeah, you are, mate. Sometimes,” and patted his shoulder gently.
* * *
He finds Cutler in one of the smaller warehouses on the outskirts of Barry. The vampire is lying huddled on the floor, staring blankly into space. Hal doesn’t know how long he has been doing that and he doesn’t really care. He should leave. Or better yet, he should run a stake through Cutler’s heart and do the job properly this time. It would put them both out of misery.
Instead, he lowers himself on the floor next to Cutler and says:
“There’s another one I used to like.”
He sings softly, the way Leo used to sing in his gentle, husky voice:
Call up your men,
Set them to work
Some to the plow,
Some to the fork.
“Your watchdog let you out?” Cutler interrupts him. He tries to sound disinterested and he almost succeeds.
“I feel better,” says Hal. It feels strange not to be lying about it.
Cutler turns his head to look at him. He still seems very pale, and a vague sheen of sweat covers his face, but he could go clean now without any lasting repercussions to his health if he wanted to.
“What do we have?” he asks quietly. “What else is there if we don’t have blood?”
“Work,” Hal replies. “Relationships. The little things. What do they have?”
Cutler lets out a humourless chuckle. He looks so young with his big, inquiring eyes and his soft, newly healed skin.
“We are not them. It was the first thing you taught me.” He looks at Hal like Hal has once again got all the answers. It is unfair to both of them. Hal gets up, and Cutler calls after him urgently: “I can’t do it!”
“It probably won’t kill you if you try,” Hal says, walking away. “It was the first thing Leo taught me.”
They are the only two vampires left in Barry. They will manage.
“So you’re saying I have to find Casper and the Hound of the Baskervilles to flatshare with?” Cutler shouts. Hal doesn’t have to look back to know that he is getting up from the floor, and that’s a start. “Is that it? Because that would be plagiarism. What do you want me to do next? Sparkle in the sun?”
Hal doesn’t stop walking until he is nearly running. What they both have to do is a very lonely thing. He hopes that Cutler understands. It is not running away. It is running towards.
March 26-30, 2012
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: post-Series 4 finale [SPOILERS]
Summary: Hal undergoes rehab. Tom helps. An old friend - not so much. [Hal/Cutler]
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Lullabies quoted in the text belong to their original authors. Title from “Teary Eyes and Bloody Lips” by Moonface.
A/N: I refuse to believe that a certain thing that happened in the finale actually happened. We didn’t see the actual dust, did we? Hence, this fix-it fic.
BEING CRUEL WAS SUCH A COOL THING TO DO
It’s all in the music, you see. The swelling of volume, the fluid transition from one part of the composition to another, the melody, the rhythm. If you turn it up loud enough, it can replace your heartbeat - or give you the illusion of having one.
Hal listens to it with his eyes shut, the same piece every day. In it, his salvation lies. It grounds him, and if he listens close enough, he can almost hear Leo’s husky breathing in the other room. He can almost hear Pearl humming a popular tune to herself. He can almost feel the monster in him shift lazily in its troubled, yet unbroken sleep. It’s all part of his imaginary comfort zone, which he withdraws into when things get too rough.
Music has been known to express the entire range of human emotions solely in a varying arrangement of the same notes. Hal never thought it could transmit hunger so adequately.
Every day at Honolulu Heights is the same. He spends it tied to a chair, meditating, cursing, burning up from the inside because the beast in him knows it deserves more. He deserves more. It’s a common delusion with vampires.
The first thing Hal catches is the smell. Burnt flesh. He is half-willing to bet Tom isn’t making human burgers in the kitchen right now, so the smell is not just an unwelcome novelty. It’s an intrusion.
He cracks his eyes open and sees a thing standing before him. Not a single spot on its skin has been spared by fire. Hal is pretty sure it’s an elaborate hallucination until the creature turns the music off. He doesn’t know where the certainty comes from, but if it were a hallucination, the music would remain. It gives a certain zest to hellish visions such as this.
The burnt thing stares at him, and see, now Hal knows it has to be a trick because these eyes don’t belong on this nightmarish charred visage. He knows the owner of these eyes. He was told he’d died.
“Where is she?” the visitor asks in a wheezy voice. Hal knows that voice too. “Where is that ghost bitch?”
Hal would have laughed but he doesn’t trust himself to open his mouth wide enough.
“Out,” he says in a clipped tone. “I don’t think you want to be seeing her right now. She’s still resentful about you killing her.”
“Not your ghost bitch!” Cutler snarls. It’s strange to label this meat with a name, but it has Cutler’s slightly hysterical undertones and his light eyes. The eyes that used to reflect emotions like a mirror. “Annie. She did this to me. She took my history away from me!”
Hal tilts his head back, feeling sickness rising in him. Back when he was less broken, he might have appreciated the artful joke of Cutler’s situation. Alex said he had burned because he had got into the apartment uninvited. So true to his character.
“You should have just done it,” Hal spits. “But you had to say something. Every villain appears to be compelled to perpetuate a momentous event by uttering a moving soliloquy. Did I teach you to talk, Nick, or did I teach you to act?”
For a moment he feels so much like his old self that he begins to squirm in his chair, subconsciously looking for a way to remove the restraints. He cannot stand the sorry sight of Cutler. He might as well put him out of his misery.
“Don’t call me Nick!” Cutler snaps. “Like we’re friends.”
Hal opens his eyes wider. Cutler is standing very close to him, reeking of mortality that is struggling to catch up with him.
“How?” Hal croaks. “Annie staked you.”
He cannot really tell, but he thinks Cutler is trying to smirk.
“Missed the heart, though, didn’t she? Everyone was so busy. To kill the baby or not to kill the baby.” He shrugs. It must be painful. “Your girlfriend left to find you, I presume, and Annie was preoccupied with the War Child. I suppose they just thought I got swept under the rug quietly or something.” His voice rises to a high-pitched shriek. He goes quiet all of a sudden, and it’s unsettling. Cutler was never the type to make long pauses, not unless he was afraid - and as long as Hal knew him, it was Hal himself Cutler was afraid of for the most part. “In retrospect,” he mutters dejectedly, “it would have been a better alternative.”
He looks at Hal like he is about to add something, which is frankly unbearable. Cutler has always been a bit of a blabbermouth, his mind overclocked most of the time and his speech trying to catch up with the flight of his thought with mixed success.
This time, however, he appears to change his mind. He shuffles back to the stereo-system and turns the music on. It hammers at Hal like a hailstorm, louder and more powerful than he needs it to be.
“Cutler,” he calls out, intending to ask him to do something about it, but what comes out instead is: “Are you alive?” He has to make sure. He has to.
He cannot hear the answer over the stormy sound of the symphony and he fails to see Cutler leave. He is half-out of it by the time the others make it home and he doesn’t breathe a word of Cutler’s visit to them.
* * *
“Release me, you stupid, filthy spawn of a whore!” Hal shouted, struggling to break the bonds. “Untie me this instant, you brainless cunt! Your blood tasted like bile! How I wish I could have ripped your body apart with my own hands!”
Tom poked his head through the door, looking alarmed as if he fully expected Alex to talk back. She obviously wanted to. Even in the heat of a fit, Hal admired her restraint.
“How is he?” Tom asked.
“Oh, you know. I should make a list. He’s starting to repeat himself.” Alex flashed both of them a chipper smile. “He’s pretty tame today.”
Hal growled at that and launched another furious harangue. Tom knitted his eyebrows, doing that annoying face thing that made him look like a puppy, and socked Hal on the back of the head. Hal choked on the obscenities and slowly looked up at Alex. She didn’t seem cross or even particularly irritated, but he felt a twinge of guilt nonetheless.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Again.”
She gave a jerky shrug. “‘S all right. Except I’d really appreciate it if you stopped calling my Mum a whore. How would you like it if someone talked like that about your Mum?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Hal said evenly. “My mother was a whore.”
* * *
Cutler sidles in the next time both Alex and Tom are gone. They did not want to be, but Alex is fixated on finding her body and Hal cannot deny her that, not after how she got separated from it in the first place, and Tom has to work. Surprisingly, Hal sort of misses the restaurant. There is always something to do there.
Cutler positions himself on one of the stools Alex likes to occupy and fixes Hal with a stare. His skin is no longer the colour of raw meat, and while he is still quite a gruelling sight, his face is beginning to obtain its recognizable features again.
“Does it work?” he asks, sounding more like himself, too.
Hal rocks back and forth as hard as the ropes allow. The pain is physical. No, it’s not working, it’s not going to work, please, he just needs a drop, one drop, one mouthful…
“You look better,” he says.
“You look worse,” Cutler counters.
He slides off the stool and kneels beside Hal, his fingers hovering over Hal’s forearm, hesitant to touch. Hal stiffens. He forces himself to look at Cutler’s face, those melted patches of skin that will smooth and heal the more blood he drinks, and feels a cold, nasty feeling uncoil inside him.
“If you want me to feel guilty,” he murmurs, “I do. But get in a line.”
“What use do I have for your guilt?” Cutler sounds almost scandalized. He rises jerkily, digs his fingers into Hal’s shoulders and snaps: “You weren’t even there!”
He gives Hal a rough shake and disappears like a bad dream, leaving Hal to wonder if he has gone completely mad after all.
* * *
Tom loosened the ropes around his hands for a short spell and gave him a few sheets of paper. “To do your folding thing,” he explained. Hal raised his hands and looked at them, as if checking to see whether they were real.
“‘S weird, innit?” Tom said, dropping himself on the sofa. He had to repeat that before Hal looked up, blinking away the sickening daze that coloured everything blood red.
“What?”
“Here. Without Eve.” Tom tugged at the front of his shirt absent-mindedly. Hal thought he might need a new rota now that all the Eve chores were irrelevant. “Annie, too. It was bad enough with Nina and George, ya know, but-.”
“It’s dusty here,” Hal interrupted him quickly. He dropped the Kawasaki rose that he couldn’t remember folding and rubbed his hands together. The joints of his fingers ached as if he had held them in cold water for too long. “I could- And the refrigerator needs-.”
“I’ve a better idea,” said Tom.
He was obviously reluctant to let Hal out completely. Not that Hal blamed him. Not that Hal even truly encouraged him. So far Tom was doing great as his restraining factor, almost as unyielding as Leo had been.
Tom vanished into the anteroom and brought out a musical instrument, much to Hal’s surprise. He gave Hal a timid smile and placed it carefully on Hal’s knees.
“What is that?” Hal asked, dumbstruck.
“A lute,” declared Tom proudly. When Hal didn’t go into raptures over it, the expression of naïve satisfaction on Tom’s face wavered. “You, uh… play that, righ’? I don’t know nothin’ about this stuff, but I seen pictures.”
“Where did you get it?” An origami lotus fell on the floor. Hal made them blindly, without minding the process, without letting the routine take its hold. They fell like wasteful victims of paper vandalism.
Tom snuffed noisily and rubbed the back of his head, suddenly looking guilty. “I may or may not have nicked it.”
“You stole it?”
“No! Yeah. Maybe.” Hal fixed him with a glare, waiting for him to stop acting like a walking pop quiz and explain. He felt too old and battered to protest stealing per se, but they had to be careful. The last thing they needed was attention. “There’s this old house down the road,” Tom gabbled. “It’s mostly empty, ya know. I killed a vampire near it once. Went in to explore, ‘cause I was curious. There was so much stuff and no one seemed to be usin’ it. I went back there today and there’s still no one there, so I took it. I figure, if they ever come back, I’ll give it back. But you could play for now.”
“You broke into someone’s house,” Hal repeated, befuddled, “to get me a lute?” Tom would never cease to surprise him. “Which this is not, by the way. It’s a mandolin.”
Tom’s lips formed a disappointed “Oh.” Of course he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Hal shook his head. It felt like kicking a puppy.
“It’s perfectly fine,” he hastened to say. “I’ll manage.” He stroked the strings gently, too gently to elicit a sound, and smiled. Tom’s face brightened instantly. “Just don’t break into any more houses, empty or not.”
* * *
The sinkers are back on. Hal doesn’t trust himself to move around the house free, let alone go outside, so it’s back to the comfy chair with multiple restraints. He feels them sink into his skin, enmesh him on the inside. You leave them in place long enough, and they become a part of you. This is what he wants.
The floor is littered with paper flowers: white lilies, pink rose bowls, multi-coloured harebells. There are animals too: spiders, elephants, classic cranes allegedly fit for wish-making. Hal catches himself thinking that he could have made them for Eve, he could have taught Eve to make them. It is strange to know that she is not here but the vampire race is not extinct.
“Hal!” Cutler calls from the street. “Hal! Let your hair down!” He giggles and says irritably: “Oh, for the love of-! Ask me in!”
It is a very bad idea, but for all Hal knows, Cutler, in this new, unhinged state of his, might stand there all day, yelling and attracting attention.
“Why do you even require an invitation?” Hal asks when Cutler hobbles inside, looking almost like his normal self. “You’ve been here before.”
Maybe Hal is supposed to know these things, but it’s not every day one finds a vampire insane enough to break into someone’s house uninvited. Hal’s unfocused gaze drifts towards the mandolin sitting on the sofa. Thank heavens Tom is not a vampire.
“See, that’s the hilarious part,” Cutler says. “The cooked me and the proper me, we don’t seem to be interchangeable. So when I tried to come in today… Let’s just say I don’t fancy a repeat performance, not even for your sake.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” as soon as I was sure you were real, “I don’t want you here. You have to leave me alone.”
Cutler twirls an origami rose between his fingers pensively. “Why? Because of your rehab? We both know it’s not going to work.”
“Then it’s in your best interest to stay away from me. You know what I am when I’m-.”
“The last remaining Old One, I imagine,” Cutler says with a harsh smile. Funny, that. “Look what I have.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and takes out a small plastic bottle filled with thick, red liquid. Hal shudders. No. Not this. Not now. Cutler grins gleefully. “Prepackaged lunch. Like we’re at school.”
He comes closer and slowly unscrews the cap. The smell of blood fills Hal’s nostrils. Nick used to drink from bottles and cups, too traumatized by his transformation to open a vein. Hal had to force him to do it, rub his nose in his misgivings in cruel attempts to forge a real vampire out of him. Funny how it has all gone full circle.
“Do you know what the blackest day of my life was?” Cutler says conversationally. “There were three actually. First, you killed my wife. That hurt, you know. But you took the pain away. You cured me. But then you vanished. I waited and waited and waited - and you never returned.”
“Cutler, please.”
Nick leans into him so close that Hal can count what few scars remain on his skin. It looks paper-thin, taut over the bony faceplate; the eyes are the only living thing on it, full of rage and hurt and childish resentment.
“You will listen!” Nick spits. “You owe me that much. Now, where was I? The third day. That is curious. The day you chose to leave me for a dog. Again! Thanks to you, my entire life has been one - shall we use an Internet-based term? - epic fail, el-oh-el. So no, I’m not going anywhere.”
He pulls away, looking tired. Somewhere in this speech, there is a simple, earnest admission: I have nowhere else to go. Hal doesn’t want this to become his problem, but in retrospect, it has never been anyone else’s. Not even Cutler’s.
Cutler regains his composure quickly and turns his attention back to the flower he is still holding. He regards it with something akin to curiosity, then he upends the bottle and lets the paper get drenched in blood. Hal struggles in his restraints, a sharp realization of what is going to happen shooting through him. Cutler nods, more to himself than to Hal, and fixes the dripping flower in the breast pocket of Hal’s shirt, just slightly out of reach.
“Have a free sample,” he says and winks before leaving in a bouncy, trickster-like gait.
Hal goes completely still, his eyes wide open in horror. Blood trickles down his shirt. The flower is getting soggy. Hal inclines his head ever so slightly, still terrified to look at it directly. His nostrils flare. His fingers go rigid. He cranes out his neck, and his teeth chatter. It’s a spur-of-moment action; he is too overwhelmed by the heady scent to control himself.
He flexes his jaws, trying to reach the flower. His mouth waters; saliva froths on his lips. His neck is bent under such an unnatural angle that a human wouldn’t be able to breathe like this, but Hal is far from being human, which he is proving by reaching out despairingly for the clot of blood and paper like a child would reach for a sweet. Cutler has played the part of the tempting stranger handing out those sweets to unsuspecting children quite well.
Hal snaps his head up and growls in helpless frustration. He twists and turns as much as his restraints let him and tries to catch the flower with his tongue and his mouth and his teeth, and by the time he succeeds, the paper is crisp and dry, holding very little taste. Hal sucks it into his mouth, soaking it in his saliva, and swallows forcibly. The vague aftertaste burns his palate.
Later that day Alex spots dry drops of blood on his clothes. He tells her it is his. He tells her he has bitten through his lip and spat off some blood and please stop asking questions, you meddlesome imbecile! He apologizes a second later. She dismisses the insult with a shrug, but he can tell that it’s hard on her. One of these days she will probably teleport him all the way to Botswana and dump him there, and he will have deserved it.
* * *
Tom flopped on the sofa and - oh, the nerve!
“Are you going to watch television?” Hal asked, outraged.
“Well, yeah. Thought it might distract ya.”
“I don’t need to be distracted,” Hal pointed out. “I need to focus. This is not on my rota.”
“You don’t have one yet. An’ I was gonna watch something cultural ‘cause Allison said I should work on my mental and spiritual development.” All that came out in a rather frightful word jumble. “Or we could watch that antiquities show and you could comment on how they’re getting stuff wrong ‘cause you’re older than most of those things.”
Tom flashed him an innocent smile and turned the bloody zombie box on. Hal grunted. Best mates. Of course. It had to come with a price.
He did his best to filter the noise and attempted to focus on something, but the only something he could think of was Cutler, his cruel trick with the flower and the fact that he was still free to come into the house whenever he wanted - and this time, not without Hal’s allowance. It was stupid, thoughtless and potentially harmful to all of them.
“Fuck.”
“Wha’s that?”
Hal gritted his teeth. Nothing, he told Tom, it was nothing. Nothing he could actually talk about.
Tom picked up the remote. The television screen went dark, the silence becoming louder than the noise for a brief moment. Hal blinked a few times, swallowing a few disparaging comments already poised on the tip of his tongue.
“You could start building up those dominos again,” Tom suggested, giving him a quick once-over.
Hal nodded, tension draining away. “Yes, please.” The thought of those little pieces brought back the memory of him, Leo and Pearl in their private family fortress, locked away from the world for fifty-five years. “Will you tell me about George and Nina?” he asked before he could stop himself. It seemed important.
Tom stared at him, not even bothering to conceal his astonishment. Slowly, his face brightened. He nodded eagerly and darted off to get the dominos from Hal’s room. Hal pondered warily what he was asking for. He never knew those people, but Tom did. Tom held them dear. There were things Tom needed to know about Hal, if only out of precaution, but this, this was camaraderie. This was deliberate familiarization, laying a path for Tom to become the next Leo - to grow old and die and leave Hal alone all over again.
When Tom came down and started talking about how brilliant they had been, Hal didn’t have the heart to stop him - or himself.
* * *
His teeth feel useless. He bites at his lower lip, chews on it frantically, struggling to drive away the hunger that fills him up, seeps into every cell of his body, drips from his fangs like snake venom. A lullaby ghosts at the back of his neck, coming out in warm, ragged gasps of would-be breath.
Bye, baby bunting.
Daddy’s gone a-hunting,
Gone to get a rabbit skin
To wrap his baby bunting in.
A hand rests on his shoulder. Hal blinks drowsily. Cutler’s face comes into view, dangerously close, the final words of the song still pouring out of his mouth. He drowns them in a forceful touch of his lips to Hal’s, and Hal answers, caught off guard and too weakened to protest. He bites at Cutler’s mouth needily, and the whimpering noise Cutler makes goes straight through him. It’s the flavour of the old days, retribution and nostalgia, the indirect betrayal of everything that Leo stood for, everything that Hal chose for himself, with a sharp metallic tang underneath. Hal knows that sensation all too well.
He flinches, breaking the kiss off, and hisses: “Get away from me, you taste like blood!”
“You need to stop treating me like I’m a petty nuisance,” Cutler says. Much to Hal’s horror, he begins to remove the restraints.
A single thought pulses in Hal’s mind: if he is alone in the house, unrestrained, there is nothing left to stop him from going out and- All the while, Cutler continues to look like he is doing him a favour.
“There,” he drawls. “All better.”
The ghostly relish of blood grows painfully strong in Hal’s mouth. He stands up and turns to look at the window. There is a street behind it, and he could paint it all red. He thinks of bathing his tongue in their blood - because really, what other purpose do they have, these nauseating protozoa, just a step up from roaches, and only because his race needs them to survive!
Rage flares up in him. He glares at Cutler and wishes he’d ripped his guts out when he still could. He should never have recruited this slimy little piece of shit.
He wraps his fingers around Cutler’s throat, catching him unawares, and slams him against the wall. He digs his fingers deeper, a part of him wondering dimly if he could snap Cutler’s neck and maybe even tear his head off. Cutler stares at him, wide-eyed and damaged beyond repair. It infuriates Hal even further.
“Again with the little boy lost look,” he intones tauntingly. “I remember it. You had it when the door of that jail cell closed behind you. You looked so frightened. What did you think I was going to do to you?”
He trails his finger down Cutler’s cheek and openly revels in fear that is coming off Cutler in waves. They have no secrets from each other.
Hal cups the back of Cutler’s neck and pulls him into another a kiss, more desperate and savage than the previous one. Cutler has recently fed. Hal craves the very essence of that consumed blood. He invades Cutler’s mouth greedily, ardently, wishing to claim every tiny molecule of blood that passed through it.
“I’m sorry, Nick,” he whispers. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but I am. I’m sorry I turned you into this. I’m sorry I killed your wife. I’m sorry I left you hanging. I’m sorry that your every undertaking failed.” His voice hardens. “Sorry you could never move on. Though maybe, just maybe - have you considered that? - maybe you’re a loser.” He drops the word like a guillotine blade, and the fight goes out of him. He releases Cutler and adds softly: “These things happen, Nick. They happen.”
Cutler purses his lips, looking so deceptively young. He reminds Hal of Tom. It is ridiculous. He should be content, he should be proud - but he is just scared. As scared of Hal as he always was. He pushes himself away from the wall and stalks towards the front door, wiry limbs and a stumbling gait.
“Go dry with me,” Hal says quietly.
Cutler laughs curtly. He turns around, and his eyes go wide as he realizes it was not a joke.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” Hal asks, already making a mental list of why this is the worst idea ever facts.
“You’ve already taken everything from me!” Cutler exclaims. Laughter bubbles in his throat, fighting its way out. “You want to take the only thing I’ve got left, too?”
Hal shuts his eyes and slides down the wall on the floor and listens to him leave. Inside him, the spring of anger and thirst is slowly uncoiling. He might just make it through the next five minutes. And the next ten. And the next fifteen until he doesn’t have to count down any longer.
* * *
“So tell me, Lord Harry,” Alex quipped, “and don’t deny it, Tom told me everything about your glorious past.” That was highly doubtful, but Hal kept his peace. For now. “Were you always such a doof?”
“I beg your pardon?” Calm. Just stay calm.
“Well, you know.” She shrugged and reached for the kettle.
“Obviously I don’t.” He twirled a domino piece in his fingers, replaying a dozen colourful ways of killing her in his mind. It was convenient since he couldn’t hurt her anymore.
“Feelin’ better then?” Tom asked by way of greeting. “So maybe you could come back to the chippy. It’s sorta dead there without you.” His gaze drifted towards the tea cups, and he knitted his eyebrows slightly. “What’s this?”
“Tea,” said Alex.
Something dangerous was about to come out of Tom’s mouth. Hal really would have preferred to be elsewhere.
“Annie always made tea.”
It might have come out a little harder than Tom had intended it to. Alex winced like she had touched something hot, before letting her face go blank.
“Fine.” She took a step back from the kettle and raised her hands, preparing for a dramatic storm-off. Hal was all in favour of letting her do it, but Tom’s conscience took over.
“Alex, that’s not what I meant!” he blurted out and made a pleading face at Hal, hoping for back-up.
“Alex, that’s not what he meant,” Hal echoed, dutifully.
She balled her fists, looking like she was about to explode in a long-winded speech about how unfair her current life was. Hal had heard almost as many of those speeches from her as the number of insults he had reimbursed her with.
“I didn’t even ask for this,” she said, her tone a great deal calmer than he would have guessed. “To be dead. To be stuck here in these girly clothes with you two!” Her voice rose to a screech. She drew in a sharp breath - and giggled. “In that order.”
Hal released a slow exhalation of relief. This was even more convoluted than Tom and Annie and him had been, but it was going to work. It had to.
“Good tea,” Tom said, taking a quick sip. “Good.”
Alex shook her head. It was only half past eight in the morning, and it was already shaping up to be quite an eventful day. Tom went on about the chippy and how he could really use some company there. Alex gushed about the mystery men who had taken her body and how Hal could finally grow a backbone and do his part in providing her the well-deserved eternal peace. Hal didn’t think she really wanted that. He didn’t think she was ready to cross over and quite frankly, he didn’t really want her to. She was loud and annoying and almost as bossy as Annie had been, but the three of them were going to make it work, if only for the next fifty years.
He looked at his hands. They were barely shaking.
“I’m not a doof,” he said with all the conviction of a five-hundred-year-old.
They looked at him quizzically. Alex laughed. Tom said: “Yeah, you are, mate. Sometimes,” and patted his shoulder gently.
* * *
He finds Cutler in one of the smaller warehouses on the outskirts of Barry. The vampire is lying huddled on the floor, staring blankly into space. Hal doesn’t know how long he has been doing that and he doesn’t really care. He should leave. Or better yet, he should run a stake through Cutler’s heart and do the job properly this time. It would put them both out of misery.
Instead, he lowers himself on the floor next to Cutler and says:
“There’s another one I used to like.”
He sings softly, the way Leo used to sing in his gentle, husky voice:
Call up your men,
Set them to work
Some to the plow,
Some to the fork.
“Your watchdog let you out?” Cutler interrupts him. He tries to sound disinterested and he almost succeeds.
“I feel better,” says Hal. It feels strange not to be lying about it.
Cutler turns his head to look at him. He still seems very pale, and a vague sheen of sweat covers his face, but he could go clean now without any lasting repercussions to his health if he wanted to.
“What do we have?” he asks quietly. “What else is there if we don’t have blood?”
“Work,” Hal replies. “Relationships. The little things. What do they have?”
Cutler lets out a humourless chuckle. He looks so young with his big, inquiring eyes and his soft, newly healed skin.
“We are not them. It was the first thing you taught me.” He looks at Hal like Hal has once again got all the answers. It is unfair to both of them. Hal gets up, and Cutler calls after him urgently: “I can’t do it!”
“It probably won’t kill you if you try,” Hal says, walking away. “It was the first thing Leo taught me.”
They are the only two vampires left in Barry. They will manage.
“So you’re saying I have to find Casper and the Hound of the Baskervilles to flatshare with?” Cutler shouts. Hal doesn’t have to look back to know that he is getting up from the floor, and that’s a start. “Is that it? Because that would be plagiarism. What do you want me to do next? Sparkle in the sun?”
Hal doesn’t stop walking until he is nearly running. What they both have to do is a very lonely thing. He hopes that Cutler understands. It is not running away. It is running towards.
March 26-30, 2012