Fic: Labels (Being Human)

[keep_counting]

Title: Labels
Characters/Pairings: Annie/Mitchell
Rating: R
Warnings: Spoilers up to and including 2x03 Long Live the King. AU from the ending. Cursing, mentions of on-screen murder, sex
Genre: Angst/Hurt-comfort/Romance/Friendship
Word-count: 3,168
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this
Summary: And she would trade all of it, all of her new-found power and self-assurance, for a time when they were happy.

It is easy to divide her life into sections. There was the childhood and the growing up. There was Before Owen and With Owen.

Obviously, there was no After Owen. At least not in life.

Her after-life… well, she’d thought that was easy to label as well. Before George and Mitchell and now With George and Mitchell.

Annie thinks she needs new labels. More of them. More sections and under-sections. Like Before Nina, of course, but should that be Before George Met Nina or Before George Infected Nina? There ought to be a Before Lauren (aka Before Mitchell infected Lauren), because when he had done that, well… all Hell (see: Herrick) had really broken loose.

Then there should be a Before George Killed Herrick, but as that had happened as the same time of Nina’s infection, maybe that was the same as that one. And then there was the ones pertaining to her own lifeless existence. Before her Discovery of Owen’s Deceitfulness (she was rather proud of thinking up the name for that one). Before Gilbert. Before Being Visible Again. Before the Job. Before Saul. Before Hugh. After the Door. After Turning Invisible Again.

It has all become such a blur of occurrences and instances and she has half a mind to just crawl under the pillows like George has chosen to do (and now there needs to be a big glaring After Nina section as well), but she won’t allow herself to, because more than anything George needs a friend now and Mitchell certainly doesn’t seem like he is going to be it.

She hasn’t seen Mitchell in what seems like days, and that’s stupid because he lives here and she does see him, every day, but he’s not really there. It’s as if he is as dead as she used to be, way back Before George and Mitchell Moved In, and in that terrifying, horrible period when Owen had killed her and Owen wasn’t frightened and Owen was winning, winning, taking everything from her all over again.

It helps, focusing her attention on George. Getting him up and in gear, trying to fix them both through him and through Hugh, through other people’s happiness, because if the rest of the world is happy, surely they can’t be miserable too?

Of course, she can’t do that all the time. There’s the long lonely hours in the night, when Mitchell is still gone (and if he’s there, he’s still not really present) and George is asleep and she is still a ghost and only sometimes falls into half-lucid states, like a coma-patient just waking up. It’s not like she needs sleep, but she is also running out of books to read in the house and as she’d complained to George, there was simply no more tea left and roaming the streets outside just seems lonely and weird and…

At one point she finds herself in Mitchell’s room, one of the times when he is actually there, sleeping, and she isn’t being a creep watching him sleep, she really isn’t, but he’d made a noise, just as she was passing through, as if he wanted to cry out in pain or despair, but was just stopping himself short of doing it, and she couldn’t not go in.

He’s lying on his stomach, back bare where the covers have slipped down to his waist, arms folded underneath the pillow and curls falling over his face. She reaches out and brushes them gently away, and he sighs. Contently. Happily. Annie doesn’t think she’s ever made someone sigh like that before. Not ever.

She leaves his room quicker than the blink of an eye (and it’s pretty cool to be able to literally do that now) and spends the rest of the night in a tangled mess of confusion, because there obviously has to be something wrong with her, something deeply psychologically wrong, because there was Owen and there was Saul and now Mitchell, and he’s making her unbeating heart run a metaphorical marathon in her chest, making her cold skin tingle with want. And he’s doing it now, and there really has to be something wrong with her, because she keeps falling for guys with blood on their hands.

Yeah, she might as well admit it. There’s a danger to these men that attracts her, and it isn’t healthy and it isn’t safe, but she still thinks Mitchell is a better choice than all of the other lunatics: she’d like to think she can find the good in people, and she sees a lot of good in Mitchell.

He just doesn’t allow himself to see it.

So she says nothing and just watches as he withdraws further, as the expression on his face only lights up when he talks about this Lucy person or whatever from work, and she is so resentful that some new-comer can make him forget about all the pain and horror when she, one of his closest friends can’t.

It’s weird, she thinks, how in the start Mitchell had been the bridge, the gate-way between her and George, George who really didn’t like her, found her absurd and just plain annoying and now…

Well, she’d like to tell herself that now she’s the bridge, or the gum or the glue, holding their little group together, because now George needs and likes her and Nina needed and liked her (and she has to stop and tell herself that no, Nina didn’t leave because of her, it wasn’t her fault, it was Nina’s choice) and Mitchell…

Of course it isn’t true. She’s not a bridge or a gateway or anything damn useful. She’s the House Ghost, she’s almost like a pet or a good little servant, the faithful sidekick to the werewolf and the vampire, dashing of on adventures. They’re islands, three little pathetic islands, like the ones you see in newspaper cartoons, with nothing but a palm-tree and a man with a fishing-rod, except her guy doesn’t even have that, there’s not even a guy, just a palm-tree that might be her or might just be the sorry, straight-forward non-existence that she has stumbled into.

Because George might need her and appreciate her now (and she needs and appreciates him too), but Mitchell doesn’t. Mitchell…

She doesn’t know Mitchell anymore and she’s starting to wonder if she ever did. If maybe the Mitchell she thought she knew – the Mitchell that was George’s best friend, the Mitchell who had looked at her like she was wonderful that first moment she’d appeared, the Mitchell who had always stood up for her no matter what – had always been a fake, a mask he’d slipped on to hide the…

To hide the monster.

And there is only so much she can take. Only so much she can comfort and only so much meddling she can do and only so much tea she can make.

It doesn’t help when George gets that phone-call from Nina and he’s sitting and sobbing in the kitchen. She knows to leave him alone then, both because she’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to weep like that in front of anyone else and also because she has no idea what to do, what to say. She can’t make this better: no-one but Nina can make this better, and Nina has decided not to. If she wasn’t so damn loyal to everyone who hadn’t killed or physically assaulted her, Annie would hate the other woman for hurting George like this. But she can’t, because this is no-one’s fault, not really, except for maybe Herrick’s or Owen’s or Saul’s (she’s blaming everything on them these days, it’s easier, so much easier).

She’s still sitting upstairs, hiding away in Mitchell’s bedroom, because he isn’t supposed to come home, he hasn’t been home in what feels like years, and then suddenly he is and she is going to leave, she really is, but she hears the conversation, hears the argument between her two boys and stays put.

She’s still there when Mitchell comes up, and for a moment he looks surprised, almost shaken, but then he just nods and moves as if to leave…

“It’s your room,” she says, and her voice sounds almost broken, broken for George and broken for her and broken for the blood on Mitchell’s hands – he hasn’t washed them quite properly enough to rinse it all away.

“You can use it. I don’t want to disturb. You seem upset,” he says. He sounds elegant and caring and dammit if he isn’t all she’s ever wanted, with those sleek curls and the stubble and the dark eyes. If he’d just let her run her fingers through his hair, just once, or maybe press her lips against his because last time had been weird and surprising, but only because she didn’t know what she wanted, was still hung-up on Owen and everything else and…

“I am upset. But I didn’t think you would care.” It slips right out: she really hadn’t meant it to, hadn’t meant to voice her deepest darkest thoughts, but there it is, the knowledge that he is so wrapped up in his own glee-full little murder spree or secret vampire club or whatever the hell it is to even think about George, whose girlfriend he’d just infected and then lost, to think about her and the fact that she’d been assaulted, attacked like that again and had now reverted, had now become a proper ghost again. Oh, and the forces of Hell or Heaven or Purgatory or whatever was also after her ass. It was all just a little bit too much.

It was apparently all just a little bit too much for him as well.

“And what the fuck do you mean by that?” he asks, voice sharp and eyes going darker. She imagines she sees a hint of fang behind that curved mouth and she suddenly feels so warm, hot all over – she’s a ghost. She’s supposed to be all cold.

“Just that you don’t care about anything anymore!” she shouts, secretly, guiltily happy to get a response because she hasn’t seen him this emotional since goddamn Hustle Time and she hates that he can get wound-up over a TV-show when he can’t for her, when he won’t even look at her anymore. “You’re just swaggering around with your new vampire-buddies and you don’t care about George and you don’t care about me.”

“Annie, you have no idea what is going on,” he mutters darkly, almost too low for her to hear. “What I’m doing… I’m doing it for us. For you and for George and for me. Even for Nina and all the others like us.”

“What, you’re killing for us?” she hisses, because that one still stings: that one is the real reason she gets why Nina left. Why Nina couldn’t tolerate being with them anymore, despite loving George so much. Because Annie was killed, by a psychotic murderer and sometimes…

Sometimes she genuinely hates Mitchell. For being so casual about all of this. For being a murderer.

Most of all though, she hates him for not caring about her. For choosing Lauren and Lucy and all those other tarts over her. For choosing to go frolicking with a bunch of vampires, instead of sitting with her, hell, even sitting with George, enjoying the evening and not missing Hustle Time and not freaking out about it.

Because everything is so wrong and she would trade all of it, all of her powers and her new-found, secret love, for a time when they were all still happy.

He swallows audibly, clearly trying to get himself under control. “Annie…” he starts, and stops, like the words won’t come out. “I am… I know this is hard for you to understand, hard for you to accept, but… if I don’t do this, horrible things will happen, Annie. We won’t be safe anymore: we will be hunted, wherever we go. And not just by vampires anymore. By everyone.”

“But this isn’t right,” she protest, feebly now, because the fight is going out of her, mainly because of the way he’s looking at her, all piercing eyes and… and fondness. It’s just fondness. She’s his friend and he cares and she won’t allow herself to think more of it for the moment. Not in front of him, where she might lose herself.

“I know,” he repeats, and he sounds steadfast now, sure. Certain. “I know. But I don’t care. As long as you’re safe.”

She takes two steps forward and falls into his arms, an almost involuntary action because no-one has ever… no-one has ever done that, has never morally compromised themselves just to keep her safe. And that doesn’t make it alright, it certainly doesn’t, but it makes it…

“Mitchell,” she whispers into his shoulder as his arms come to wrap around her waist. His arms are strong and she comes alive here, being held by him like this: he’s holding on so tightly that, had she needed it, she thinks she would have trouble breathing and even with her ghostly powers of teleportation she’s almost certain she can’t escape.

She shudders when she feels his lips pressed against the tip of her ear, and realizes too late that he’s saying something, murmuring it so inaudibly that she doesn’t have a chance of understanding, and she thinks maybe he means it to be like that, for her not to hear it. Even should she might want to.

His arms slide lower down her back as his lips trail from her ear to her jaw, over her cheek and finally landing on her lips. Her eyes flutter closed, because this, this right here is what has been roaming in her every waking dream for weeks, and now it’s pain and desire exploding behind her eyelids as he grips her hips tightly and bites down, not hard enough to injure, but hard enough to be assertive and without a doubt convey to her what is going to happen. Because, she realizes with a start, he needs this, has needed this, and he didn’t want to take it, not now when he’s so broken, but now she’s offered and he can’t resist anymore.

He had to have known, had to be aware that he needed only ask and she would have given him anything. But no, he’s been closed off for her sake, has bloodied and damaged himself almost beyond repair for her sake and so she can give him this, will do so gladly, if it means he will smile a little again, if it means she can keep him a little while longer.

He pulls away only long enough to whisper her name, one hand sliding up and down her side in a gentle caress, and she can’t help but moan a bit, because she’s been deprived of this for so long and has been dreaming of it for what seems like longer, and his eyes go impossibly darker as he reaches for the hem of her shirt, dragging it over her head and uplifted arms before stepping impossibly close to her again, as if he thinks the distance between them as unbearable as she does. She follows his example then, helping him out of his jacket and dark t-shirt and she knows that they’re both dead, that he generates little heat and she none, but she can feel it, like crashing waves pouring over her. If her skin was tingling before it is positively buzzing now, alight simply by being this close to him.

The rest of their clothes are gone in an even bigger hurry, and he whispers her name again, quietly, almost reverently – it seems as if her name is all he can say right now – and his arms wrap around her again and he lifts them both unto the bed.

“Mitchell…” she says, his name shaped like a question as he presses heated kisses to her face and neck and collarbone and lower, and she gasps and forgets what she wanted to say, but then he raises his head from where it’s trailing down her stomach, all attention to anything she might want to say. And it could be anything. It could be ‘please’ or ‘faster’ or maybe just a repeat of his name. It could be ‘stop’. She might tell him to stop.

And she knows he would.

She smiles and runs her fingers through his hair. “Thanks,” she says instead and the smile on his face seems fake, forced and practiced, but she knows she isn’t imagining the softness in his eyes.

He grips her thigh with one hand and presses a kiss just below her navel. “Anything for you,” he says, and she’s sure that he definitely didn’t mean for her to hear that, not when he said it like that, in that breathless and sad, so, so sad tone, and that’s too much for her, she needs him up close again, so she reaches down and pulls him up to her, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and kissing him as if her life depended on it. Of course, she has no life. But she thinks, if she had, she’d give it up all over again for him.

Maybe she said some of that out loud, because he grips her even tighter and thrusts inside her, pressing his forehead against her shoulder and she almost laughs at the absurdity of all of this, of her finding this with a vampire who has lived longer than even her, of feeling this complete and this alive when… when she should, in all reality, be nothing but dust in the ground. And she thinks, hopes a little, even, that Mitchell feels a bit like this too, because it has come to the point where she couldn’t imagine life – or unlife – without him, is in fact afraid to, and the thought makes her wrap her legs around his hip in an impossible attempt to bring them even closer, hold him even tighter.

He says her name again as he hits just the right spot and she shakes and shudders around him, coming down, not even completely aware when he follows. And then it’s over and he gently lifts out of her, pressing a kiss to her forehead, oddly chaste considering what they had just been doing.

For one terrible second she thinks he is going to get up and leave, but he simply lifts and manoeuvres her until she is scooting closer to the wall on the other side of the bed, making room for him to lie down beside her. At her look he simply lifts an eyebrow and smiles, a genuine one now, one arm lying under her head and the other thrown over her side, a reassuring weight.

“This is my bed,” he says as if in answer to the unvoiced question of abandonment and she smiles right back and promptly falls asleep, intertwined with him throughout the night.

Comments

[the-silverdoe.livejournal.com]

This was lovely! Great character introspection for Annie. She's not my favourite so I haven't given her this much thought, but I love the way you wrote her here. :) They would have fallen apart in S2 if she hadn't been there.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Thank-you dear! :) I was actually going to write this from Mitchell's POV at first, but then Annie's just seemed to fit better

[istne-pieklo.livejournal.com]

Beautiful story! A lovely insight into Annie's character and her dynamics with her boys, especially Mitchell. <3

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Thank-you :)

[pinigir.livejournal.com]

Loved it! Loved Annie's point of view and Mitchell being not so lost to her as she thought. :-)

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Thank-you! :D