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George's head hurt. That was the first thing that he noticed, not that there would have been much escaping it really. Naked, naked where? Light, too much light, what's this on my -- oh, I'm in a bed, where the hell... who's moved my bloody walls?
Right, the new place, Mitchell's housewarming party. You got pissed. You're having a perfectly normal disorientated morning after getting normally pissed, for once.
If normal included the part where the walls were in the wrong places because this wasn't his own bed. And the original claimant... was still here. Also, from the feel of things, naked. Perfectly normal disorientated morning, yeah. Why don't we go ahead and assume the worst right now.
My, the lump sprawling beside him was... large. With the beginnings of a bald spot peeking up from the gingerish curls sharing the pillow...
You got pissed and now you're in bed with a naked bloke.
At least the naked bloke appeared to be alive, if the soft snores were any indication. Though exotically violent sex-murders would be more in Mitchell's line to worry over, recalling oneself in a stranger's bed, but George never discounted his own potential for cock-ups. He'd consider anything short of bleeding-out a positive here.
Still. Naked bloke. Objectively speaking, would I say that this is any stranger than waking up in the central reservation of the M4? Discuss and show your work...
A hand came up from out of the bedding to rub across the stranger's nose. Well, there's running away before he wakes up gone straight out the window without me. Bloodshot eyes cracked open to squint at George: "Erm. Hullo?"
And the worst of it is, he's probably a bloody neighbour. "Ah... Morning?" George hazarded. "Sorry, erm... hell of a party, I, ah..."
About George's age but a wide guileless face that made him look much younger. "Oh, ah -- Andy. Across the road? Sorry, I... we must have been pissed."
Condoms in the bin -- several condoms in the bin -- well, that was one worry softened, if not strictly addressed. "We're at yours, then?"
Andy sat up, scrubbing a hand across bleary eyes. "Got to talking at your mate's piss-up, came round here to get away from the music. Reckon we brought a bottle with?"
Fuzzy recollections suggested that it had been several. And that the reason that George couldn't see his trousers anywhere was that they were downstairs hung up on a lamp. Andy had left off pinching the bridge of his nose to regard the clothes that were strewn about with a look of concentrated bafflement. Try a half-eaten sheep some morning.
His pants were close enough within range to make a grab for them, furtively fumbling under the duvet as his host bundled into the blue dressing-gown on the bedpost. "I, erm, my housemates are going to be wondering where I, ah..."
"Oh, yeah, right, ah..." Andy flushed a shirt out of the wreckage and tossed it to George. "See you, erm, 'round, then. You know."
Not the most elegant of morning-after escapes, George considered as he slunk out of the bedroom past a carefully averted gaze, but it did have the advantage he wasn't either covered in blood or looking for someone's unguarded washing to nick. Andy's house looked to be the exact mirror of his own across the way, just one more rented terrace on a side of the city that had seen its day; he made his unsteady way down the confoundingly reversed stairs and (after a quick detour into the front room, yes, that was where his trousers had spent the evening) carefully checked the street outside for nosy early-rising pensioners before making a dash for it. There's an introduction to the neighbours could have gone better. Croeso i sodding Gymru.
The only touch that could possibly have improved upon this image of a dissolute housemate after a particularly successful booze-up would have been a pair of grubby bunny slippers. "Where'd you slip off to last night?" Mitchell asked as George pushed the front door shut behind himself.
"Erm, I, I was getting a headache, one of the neighbours invited me to come round theirs where it was quieter?"
"That is a face," Annie remarked too cheerfully from the sofa. "What've you been up to over there all night then? Not fell asleep in front of the footie, I don't think?"
"Must you always jump straight to the sordid conclusions about my personal affairs? I mean, really, Annie --"
"That is a face," Mitchell said, scratching his stubbly chin with a thoughtful air. "Must really have hit it off with someone at the party. Who do you think would have been his type?"
This wasn't going to end well. Might as well just cut straight to it: "Ah, the bloke from number eleven, actually."
It wasn't often that George managed to steal a march on his housemates, especially Mitchell. He supposed he should be savouring the moment. "Get out," Annie said. "What, the copper? We were wondering where he'd got off to, he was fit."
"Who is 'we', Annie? No one there last night could even see you. Don't tell me the two of you have been sat up all bloody night gossiping."
"All right, then, we won't tell you." Mitchell did look as if he'd been waiting up, come to that. "You on for some breakfast, or did she -- he, sorry -- Erm. You're saying you really spent the night with --?"
George wondered if ducking into the kitchen to find himself a cuppa and some paracetamol would be interpreted as an attempt to evade the question. "I do get to have a life that doesn't include you, Mitchell. All right, so, erm, this... it doesn't usually mean this. But if I should decide on occasion that it does... then it does."
Mitchell shrugged. "Right, no, yeah, not any of my business, sure. And it's good to see you're getting to know the neighbours. Biblically."
"Don't tease him, Mitchell. We were worried about you, is all. Not your night to stay out, wasn't really like you to disappear like that."
George sagged against the door at his back. "Thank you, Annie, can I please just go lie down with this head now without having to imagine that the two of you are down here giving marks out of ten to my social life?" She gave him a backing-off-now gesture, hands up in capitulation, and he retreated up the stairs, trying as he went to reconstruct where the previous evening had taken such a turn to the not-like-him:
Not a language he's studied, or given much thought to before he found himself in this new city, but there's something charming about the stream of hissing fricatives the copper is rattling off for him, unfamiliar digraphs from militantly bilingual signage made sudden vivid flesh with the bright-eyed enthusiasm of just a bit too much drink. Too pissed by now even to sit up straight, slumping into one another on a threadbare sofa like they've been mates for years. Pissed enough that Andy is almost making sense, by this point.
George has been contributing to this tipsy confusion of tongues as well, trotting out polyglot scraps until Andy's giggling into his shoulder at the effect. And pushes upright at one bit, nodding, eyes gone warm: "Remember a bit of French from school, aye. Etre, avoir... Baiser?"
Matching word to action when he doesn't pull away, reaching to tip George's chin up and... And George lets him, for too long a moment, lets him break it off, in fact, before recalling himself to stammer, "Erm, I, I've just... lost someone, I..."
The boyish face crumples, slinking past disappointed embarrassment to settle on the awkward realisation that it might not have been the sort of no he'd been expecting. "Right, so, erm, that's... Fancy just a shag then?"
The offer is so absurd that George catches himself considering it. "Erm, I, I should really..."
But.
It's been... and despite all of it that hadn't ended... and he's pissed.
Monumentally pissed.
"Oh, why the hell not?"
...Yeah. Pretty much right round there, it would have been. George stretched out on his bed and pulled a pillow over his head to block out the light. Bloody agony-aunts downstairs were still going on about his big night out, he could hear the distant murmuring. Probably all but had him married off from this, if it wasn't they were working out a safe way to have him sectioned. But he had recces through the woods to sort, the full moon was coming up... no, no room in the planner for private language lessons.
Regardless of how fit this constable might be.
They let George alone about it, though, which surprised him, and then made him suspicious. Not as if the housemates didn't all have their separate reasons to walk on eggshells round the subject of each other's intimate associations, but lately he was beginning to feel distinctly humoured. Again. It was almost a relief when Annie finally cracked and made a remark about his relations with the immediate neighbours that he could shoot down with a clear conscience and feel as if something had been resolved on the subject. All right, she might not have used that precise wording, 'relations', but it was the principle. And where his life had come to the point that getting drunk and sleeping around might appear to be the improved state of affairs, never mind with whom --
Not really the moment to go over that now, though, not in the middle of having to switch from thinking about breakfast to planning out the week's shop already, with the tea-canister stubbornly empty again and an IOU in Mitchell's handwriting sitting in the place of George's recollection of half a loaf of bread. The kitchen did smell of badly burnt toast, come to that. He made a last rummage through the cupboards for anything else that they might now be inconveniently lacking, and settled himself down with the Welsh dictionary that had mysteriously appeared beside the telephone one afternoon (he suspected Annie must have put Mitchell up to buying it) to add a gloss to his shopping list.
He'd got as far as dyn a drowyd yn flaidd in a first casual thumb-through, and left off with a vague feeling that one of his other languages might fall out if he made a serious go. But it couldn't hurt to pick up the odd bit of vocab here and there. Could it? Even with these words all spiky with too many w's and y's stirring up the memory of hyperventilating in a quaint teashop after that debacle at the Eden Project, so upset he'd tried to order in Cornish and nearly sprained his tongue (how fluidly this sister-language had fallen from Andy's lips) --
Right. Focus. Chicken, string, wet-wipes. Cyw, llinyn... bugger. Well, it hardly mattered, really, it wasn't as if he meant to start compounding the wretchedness of his love-poetry by attempting to compose full sentences. Just the bloody list of the bloody shopping. Which, truth be told, would be a good errand out of the way for the week and halfway to having his first full moon here sorted as well; stop by the library on the way, yeah, print out some maps of the wooded areas round here from a connection no one would be tracing... I am getting paranoid, Mitchell's right. Still. Couldn't be too careful, in their situation. Bad enough the bloody postman had to know where they were. Best get the shop done quickly and quietly, yes. And hope he didn't run into the constable in Asda, he didn't think he could face learning what flavour of crisps the man preferred, never mind having to explain the contents of his own basket...
Mitchell had not been awake since first light with one ear cocked for the sound of the front door. He hadn't. And he certainly hadn't leapt straight up once he'd heard it, nor had he rushed headlong down the stairs. George was a big wolf, he could take of himself, even in a strange new city, even if he was still half off his head for what they'd left behind them at the best of moments. No, Mitchell had got up calmly, at an appropriate interval that would preserve both their supernatural dignities, and sauntered down to check George was in safe now the moon was down again. Call it... forty-five seconds. Just to check he was in safe.
Except their stray hadn't come home alone; the copper from number eleven had him sat on the sofa, crouching before him to touch a wet kitchen-towel to George's split lip. "Did you make out anything that could identify them?"
"Dunno, they were just... hoodies, could have been anyone."
Annie sidled up to Mitchell: "He caught George coming in, now the copper thinks he's been mugged."
Mitchell hadn't thought, what George must look to an outsider sometimes after a night out that went past most definitions of rough. George drew back at some murmured enquiry; "-- No, god, no, they were just some bloody chavs after my wallet. There wasn't much in it anyway --"
Annie's mouth had drawn into a wibbly line. "I think Andy's worried George might have been... you know. More than just a bit duffed-up."
Mitchell didn't know, and then he did. "Jesus, Annie."
"He's a copper, Mitchell. It's his job to assume the worst. And I think he's worried about George?" she added with the beginnings of a happier smile.
Yeah, that might have been a bit more than a strictly professional interest that this constable had been displaying in the way that he dabbed so gently at the scratches that George had collected in the night. Now Andy was coaxing him up onto shaky-looking legs, how much of that a put-on for the audience and how much the genuine exhaustion after the change Mitchell couldn't guess at. But George seemed happy enough to lean on a strong arm and be led up the stairs to have a proper lie-down.
...And the PC didn't come back down again. A detail that Mitchell only twigged to once he'd been sat at the kitchen table long enough that there were two extra mugs of tea cooling at empty places, and his half-drunk by now. "Huh," Mitchell said, glancing up at the silent ceiling. "Someone's making himself indispensable."
"I dunno, it's kind of... sweet? I think seeing a nice steady guy like a copper would be good for George," Annie added, shrugging as if they were discussing a seaside hol for an invalid. "Finally get him out of one of his wardrobes."
George would make a list for that, Mitchell thought: to do for Thurs., question sexuality, item one, establish I still have one and try to remember where I might have left it. (cupboard w/the jam?) "Be a... big step for him," he said.
"You're a little freaked out by all of this," Annie observed. "Is it the thought of George suddenly deciding he's not so bloody straight as all that after all, or that he didn't let on before now to you?"
Mitchell had occasionally wondered if George wasn't... trying a bit too hard, with his girlfriends, but given the rest of the issues the poor bastard was wrestling with that had never seemed like the first one to bring up over a round down the pub. "No, I'm not... jealous, or anything, it's, I'm... Surprised he's thinking about opening up to anybody, I suppose. Copper must be an amazing shag or something."
"Oi, don't be rude about George's boyfriend, you." Annie sat in the chair opposite him, curling her hands round the abandoned mug. "George's copper boyfriend. So what about you, Mitchell, have you ever fancied a bloke?"
"Annie," he said, astonished.
"I mean, hundred and seventeen years, tell me you've never even considered it in all that time. Bet you've had a few offers in your day."
He'd been raised in Connemara a good Catholic boy, Mass in the Latin twice a week and a family to get to starting once the Sasanach won their bally war. But. A hundred and seventeen years was a long time not to think about the whys and wherefores. "Well, this one time, I... kind of woke up with David Bowie."
Her face, Jesus. "You're having me on now."
"No, I told you, I move and shake. Well, he wasn't David Bowie then, I only worked that out after he'd got famous. Ran into him again maybe ten, fifteen years later, we ended up doing so much coke that I threw up."
"You are making this up."
"Seriously! Haven't you ever wondered why I can't look at his trousers in that one film without falling about laughing?"
"Nobody can, Mitchell. David Bowie? Seriously?"
He knew what they were both doing, yeah, this retreat into trivia to spare them thinking about dancing around in the middle ground between cheering on and forbidding, when they already knew that neither was the right answer for George. (Maybe there wasn't one, for George. Even if it meant letting him go all isolated and weird again. Though weird was always kind of inescapable.) "You know he's not our fucking project, Annie," he said once she had been sat lapsed back into silence awaiting his reply for a hair too long.
She gave him a face that said he hadn't been fooling anyone with his pretences of ironic detachment lately either. "What have I got that's better to do than looking after you two idiots? Might need somebody to drag me back from hell again, you know."
It was a fair point. They none of them could do this on their own, not and come out remotely whole after, fragile shards of Mitchell's own humanity whispering that George needed this, needed someone outside of this house, this life. For however long he could manage that this time. "I just hope --" And Mitchell caught himself, laughing: "Well, I was gonna say, 'I just hope George knows what he's doing', but I think we've fairly well established that one as a lost cause. Just... hope it goes less badly for him, maybe."
"George deserves a sodding break. Think we've all earned one." And then she added, raising a thoughtful eyebrow: "And it doesn't hurt his copper's not bad to look at."
"Now we're getting to it," Mitchell said, amused despite the gravity of the situation. "You just want another good-looking bloke coming around to stare at."
"I've decided to spend my eternity collecting them like they're going out of style," Annie agreed, giving his forearm a tingling squeeze.
"Good to have goals, man."
In the doorway of the bath George lets him help with the shirt, hissing as some muscle the wolf's pulled complains. "Bruise there in a bit," Andy says, touching a scrape across his ribs. "Don't think you're badly hurt, though."
"I've had worse," George says, and it's true, if the copper wouldn't be thinking of the same sorts of kickings. "I think I'll be all right from here, Officer --"
"It's just Andy," hint of shyness to the grin, "Been off-duty for an hour now. Looking after you on my own time, aye?"
Looking after, yeah. Looking after on the same side of the closing door, now, more clothes than just George's coming off as the steam begins rising --
George stirred from an uneasy doze and found himself nose-to-curls with a ginger-furred chest, breathing in the faint scent-trails of unfamiliar aftershave overlaid with the wildberry scrub from his own bathroom. Not a dream, then, nor imagining now the warm firmness of another man's tackle nesting quiescent against his stomach. His own tried to rouse at the thought. No, no, no, we are not doing this.
Whatever this was, by now; had a policeman really, yes, that was the line of professional conduct left somewhere on the bath tiles with their trousers, George rather considered, wondering what part of Andy's training included getting him to make a taut face for the blood ground into his muzzle (don't tell him it's an animal's, must have hit my nose when I went down), scrubbing soap through his hair (found some right muck to lay you out in, they did)... Although as he thought on it George had been the one started them going at it proper, the constable enough taller that he'd had to stretch on feet still bruised from the evening of stumbling over rocks on bare pads for the kiss that tasted of iron; biting at willing lips as they hitched frantically together under the spray until George stood at last shivering and drained and let sturdier limbs hold him up, bowed forehead shaking against the damp skin of Andy's shoulder to the rumbling murmurs of shh, mae'n iawn, you're safe. It's all right.
He barely remembered being led from the bath, staggering, logy with fatigue and the unexpected relief of tension (get you into your bed, yeah?), settled tenderly into the simple comfort of crisp clean sheets and then of hairless skin against hairless skin (well, mostly) as Andy joined him. It all felt too natural to his hazed mind, something he'd get himself very used to at his peril.
Andy had only been dozing lightly himself, eyes coming open to check as George shifted against him; "All right, then?" George nodded, not trusting himself to produce an at all coherent response, and sat up to let him do the same. Andy squinted for the clock. "Bollocks, I wanted to get through my paperwork before I went on-shift again. Erm... Yeah?"
"Yeah," George agreed, not quite certain where this was leaving either of them. Waking up with a bloke after too many pints, that was one thing. Waking up with a bloke after a perfectly sober if somewhat emotional encounter in your own shower (and he wasn't ashamed to admit that there might have been weeping involved, which he desperately hoped the copper had thought a natural reaction to the purported assault rather than anything like the wolf's surprise at being cared for after), well, this was getting a bit... yeah.
Maybe they could draw straws to decide which of them was going to chew his own leg off.
The instinct to sneak out was almost overpowering. George found himself struggling against the urge to creep down the stairs behind Andy, telling himself that it was as much his house as well and who he might choose to invite up for... well... it still wasn't anyone's lookout but his own. And after all the only reason Mitchell generally didn't bring anyone back to his wasn't concern for his housemates' feelings so much as the fact that moving house had somehow only rendered the front bedroom even more of a tip than its predecessor on Windsor Terrace, bin-bags of worldly goods still sitting about in various states of rummaged-through a month on. (George had been unpacked in two hours, down to his share of the miscellaneous-toiletries carton that was still lurking in the bath waiting for Mitchell to finish with it.)
Checking for observers as they reached the foot, George was treated to the disquieting sight of Mitchell in his dressing-gown, trying to pretend that he was about making himself a cooked breakfast instead of hanging about at a strategic spot with good sightlines waiting to pounce upon the house's latest source of juicy gossip. "If I'd realised George was still entertaining I'd have put some trousers on," Mitchell said, eyeing the guest speculatively. George did his best to assemble a we will discuss this later look onto his face. It didn't work; "Saw you come in a while ago, what was any of that?"
Andy gave him a moment to step in, and then filled in the blank himself: "Says he went out for a run early this morning and some yobs tried for his wallet." George could see from Mitchell's face that the rubbish part of this story was the thought of him jogging. "We've been, erm, I was seeing he was all right, and all."
"Good to see an officer who likes to throw himself into providing that personalised community-policing touch." Oh, there were moments that George was very glad that Annie had gone back to having to complain about how normal people ignored the strange and unusual. Even so, Andy was looking at him oddly enough that he suspected he must be blushing.
Mitchell waved a spatula over his frying pan: "Enough of this for three if we put on some more toast, you...?"
"Could do," Andy said with a shrug, and seated himself at the table. "Think this is actually my tea at this point. I hate bloody night shifts."
George managed to steer the conversation clear of the rocky shoal marked so what were you about upstairs all that while despite Annie's best efforts to set him off with leading remarks that Andy thankfully couldn't hear, letting the constable ramble on about crime statistics for their new neighbourhood until even Mitchell's eyes were beginning to glaze over. "Wouldn't hurt to get a dog," came the conclusion as the last of the extra sausages landed on Mitchell's plate.
"Thought about it, but I worry about introducing it to George," Mitchell said with an angelic smile, and then tried not to pull too obvious a face as Annie pinched him.
Andy seemed hesitant as George showed him to the door, perhaps doing a mental inventory of whether he'd left his pants somewhere incriminating. "Right, see you, then -- You need to sort what they got from your wallet, aye? Erm... yeah. You're sure you don't think you can file a report?" George shook his head. "Well, then, erm... Be a bit more careful where you go for a run round here, eh? Ah... yeah."
And at last George had Andy all the way outside, making a few last awkward nods. But normal, that, perfectly normal; nothing to do with anything, just a familiarly British inability to make a clean departure. Nothing at all to do with him, or his choices in his personal life, or any other member of his household. Even if it did leave George wondering what the constable of the South Wales force would have said had he realised he was sat sharing scrambled eggs with a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf...
Annie let him get the door all the way closed behind Andy, at least. "He likes you."
"Come on, Annie, we've been over this --"
"No, did you see him? He didn't want to leave. He didn't want to leave you, George. Know what I think, I think this could really be the start of something, if you let it."
"I am not going to let it, can we please talk about something else now?"
Annie made a considering face. "Mitchell slept with David Bowie once."
George gave up. "And was this recently enough that we should be arsed to care?"
The ghost folded her arms across her chest and gave George A Look. "I am telling you, George, if you don't at least try to go after this I am going to haunt you for the rest of your life."
"I am failing to see how that is in any way a change from my present circumstances."
"Oh, you know what I mean. Mitchell, tell him he's being thick?"
"Yes, Mitchell, tell me how dragging yet another innocent bystander into my life would be the perfect way to make a fresh start of things here, I've been looking to justify my frustrated desires to raise up an army of exes who think I'm a dangerous lunatic. Have we all forgotten what's happened the last time I tried pretending I was normal enough to start seeing someone?"
But Mitchell was frowning: "I think, maybe... you should think about giving this a chance. No, seriously, man, you're a mess, you've been moping around since, since Nina --" George opened his mouth to protest that he'd been moping around long before that, thank you very much -- "You've been moping around since Nina and she wouldn't have wanted that for you, George, she'd have wanted you to be happy. To... get on with your life."
"I've already put us all through the hell of one rebound relationship, I'm not sure that there would be anything left of the south Welsh coast if I were to start trying to date the policeman next door. Who is a policeman, and did I mention that he's a man? And works for the police? Might I remind you that we haven't been having the best experiences with authority figures lately? What if his mates back at the station start asking him questions we can't answer? Or what if they... already know about people like us?"
"Nah, the Heddlu's clean, 's far as I've ever heard. Vampires have never really established themselves this side of the Severn, half the English ones are more fucking racist about Taffys than lycos. If your mate's on the take to anything it's only to look the other way about his landlord's parking tickets."
Annie raised a finger. "Hang on, though, Herrick recruited you and you're Irish, just being twats about it can't be enough to stop all the vampires in England from coming here."
"I never said prejudices made sense, did I? Just, trust me, if we're safe anywhere on this island, it's Cardiff. Let yourself go, man, have a thing with somebody if it'll keep you from going mental. More mental, I mean."
"I am not getting myself into any sort of a 'thing' with the bloody policeman next door! Even if that didn't sound like the setup from some rubbish porno. Now, if I may be excused from the rest of this futile discussion, I've just spent the night running about in the woods and I need to go and have a lie-down before I have to go to work? Thank you --"
It was going to be you could try starting off with this one by telling him about us next if they had their way, George didn't wonder, some bloody death-wish of the dead trying to make him company to their misery. Had enough misery of his own, thanks -- 'Cos denial's been working so fucking well for you, a little mental voice cut the thought off in a suspiciously lyrical accent. Well, pot and bloody kettle, to have his inner Mitchell start going on about the moral emotional high ground. Things he didn't need, like tax, or parvovirus, or Mitchell getting all older-and-wiser about modern relationships. Or his fucking ninety-nine-percent-of-full nose beating him over the head with phantom reminders of Andy's brief presence in his bed, until he gave up and threw the pillow onto the floor.
Mitchell had obviously fallen straight back into old patterns of selective blindness towards the supply levels in the cupboards. "I'll get it next time, I swear," he said as George hefted a double-armload of bags onto the kitchen table, and began to poke into the contents with an air of making-himself-useful that George thought rather disingenuous. "Just leave me a list --" Mitchell came out of the bag with a book, eyebrow raised. "'Teach yourself Welsh'?"
George relieved him of it in what he hoped was a cool and casual manner; "Yeah, I thought I might make a start on picking some of it up? Since you went to the trouble of finding a dictionary."
Mitchell shook his head. "Andy brought that round for you." George blinked at him. "Yeah, not long after you... Said you'd seemed so interested at the party. Reckon he doesn't get much of a good word from most Sasanach about it, but he thought you were different."
There had been days in George's life, many of them involving other small boys' deliberately obtuse questions about why he didn't look Pakistani, when the sheer exhaustion would have had him siding with a Celt against the rest of his countrymen even before he'd found a far more exotic reason to feel hard done by, but he supposed the mere fact of his accent would raise some ancient hackles here. "We got to talking about languages, is all. Should that be such a bloody surprise?"
"No, I mean, I think it's good you're taking an interest. Sometimes wish I had the Irish myself."
In a just world, George would have been able to distract the old vampire off onto stories of how he regretted failing to listen at his Gran's knee whilst he'd had the chance at picking up a living, dynamic tongue. But this was not a just world, and Mitchell grinned at him brightly as George went to put the leek into the fridge. "You could put some of that away," George suggested as Mitchell got into another of the bags and appropriated a packet of biscuits.
As he'd expected, Mitchell found a pretext to slope out of the kitchen, with the biscuits, leaving George to tidy the shopping away for himself albeit in relative peace. He slammed items into the cupboards in a bad-tempered fog, realising as he tried for the second time to put a box of dried pasta into the freezer that he was trying to second-guess whether Andy had meant the gesture of the dictionary as an overture to further interactions or simply a no-hard-feelings about the one they'd already had to that point. Well, being all over him in the shower was an answer to that, wasn't it. Ah, god. Nothing for it now but to go over and thank him before the pensioners started whispering amongst themselves about his manners, George supposed.
Andy answered the door in his dressing-gown, thicket of ginger peeping out of a V of blue terry. "Sorry, didn't mean to wake you, I..."
"No, 's all right, actually I'm just on my way to bed. Still filling in the night shifts. Wish they'd hurry and finish my review so I can get off the shit end of the rota."
George followed the invitational gesture to step inside. "Review, for...?"
With a series of yawns Andy showed him into the kitchen and went instinctively to fool about with the kettle. "Well, that, erm, with the drugs in the milk last autumn -- got a bit ugly, still waiting for them to decide I can be trusted not to start thinking for myself again."
George had missed most of that mysterious outbreak of mass hysteria, preoccupied with the heady rush of learning from the first other werewolf he'd ever met, but the constable's face said that of course a police officer would have been in the thick of trying to sort it. There had even been a bombing here in Cardiff, construction wounds still raw in the city's heart. He tried to picture the gormlessly affable Andy going off on his own initiative to a degree that warranted disciplinary action despite the extenuating circumstance and could only conjecture that it must have involved something on the order of getting found in bed with his superior's mother.
Andy was regarding him as if he expected an explanation for this intrusion into his routine might shortly be forthcoming. "Mitchell just now told me that you left us the dictionary. I, erm... diolch?"
That earned George a surprised smile. "That's a fair go, if it was bloody German. -- Or Hebrew, I suppose?"
George sighed. "Why does everyone assume..."
"Know what you mean, try walking round the Plas with Heddlu written on your back for the weird questions from tourists. Didn't even start learning it till I was ten. Gwen always says my accent's shite."
"And Gwen's, your..." George found himself hoping Andy didn't say sister, oddly relieved at the thought of a, not rival, precisely, nothing near that, but a distraction, maybe, something to let them both save face in this awkward --
But, "My old partner on the force," Andy was saying, and a nod to the photo of a very new baby stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a biscuit; "On to better things now, just started a family."
Without me, his face added. "Bit in love with her, were you."
Andy sighed. "Enough to let her go, I suppose."
At least Andy probably couldn't accuse her of going after someone taller, George reckoned. "I should, ah, let you get to..." Andy was still looking at him, edge of hesitation mixed with... "Bed. Ah."
Invitation.
"Oh, erm... Oh."
If you do like him, you'll leave.
Then why was he... and why was he... and how, in god's name, had this ended up stairs again, playful anatomy lesson of clustiau and gwefusau becoming breathier, more urgent as words he hadn't learnt came crystal-clear from the context of familiar fumblings, whatever good a cautious nature could do him now. The wolf in him responding to a throat bared in surrender? Or, at last, merely the animal nature within all humans, always seeking to strive towards that few precious seconds of the mindless oblivion of bodily release before having to slam back into an overburdened brain...
He thought Andy might have dropped off straight to sleep, after, but now with a murmur the pale eyelashes lifted partway back up, to give George a hazy smile. "Getting to be a thing, this is." Laying a hand over the scars on George's shoulder, faint crease appearing between his brows that the spacing lined up so perfectly with human fingers --
George sat up. "I'm not sure I can do this, I..."
The sleepy eyes came warily alert. "What, erm... Not how you'd be describing it, then?"
"No, it's... I'm not ready to, be, with, anyone, I don't know... I don't know if I'll ever feel ready again, to be honest. Oh, my god, I almost said it's not you it's me just there, didn't I, I'm sorry, I --"
"No, right, erm, whatever, you're... if you need time, yeah. See the front door's latched when you go out, aye?" Andy curled up with his back to George, burying himself in the pillow as if he considered the conversation closed. Or couldn't stand to watch George making good his escape. Fair enough, that. George would have had a hard time meeting his own eyes, right now.
"You slept with him again?" Mitchell looked as if he couldn't even decide whether this was funny or flat-out ridiculous.
"I only went over there to thank him for the book, I didn't... I, I had a... moment."
"Hopefully a bit more than a moment," Annie muttered.
George struggled to steady himself. "It's not what you, I can't, do, this, anymore, and I... I've told him that."
"After you slept with him again."
"Thank you for being your usual supportive self, Mitchell. Look, I can't get involved with him -- I can't get involved with anyone. Christ, I can't even tell him why. Better that he thinks, oh, god, I don't even know what he thinks."
"He thinks you're a wanker," Annie suggested. "No, this guy really likes you, George, why are you being such a muppet about it?"
"Because I don't want anyone else to get hurt, all right?"
"And dumping him is a good way to achieve that. No, sorry, stringing him along and then dumping him."
"I mean... hurt. Like... Like Nina." George took a breath, trying not to let it slip out into the gasp it wanted to be. "Right, you've made me say it, are we all happy now?"
"Nina made her choices," Mitchell said. "We all did, it's just... human nature, George. The things we need don't always make sense, or even work out well with other things we need, we just... try to balance it, as best we can."
"The love of my life walked out on me, and then I got her personal effects back in a biscuit-tin. And you're blaming me for not wanting to jump head-first into something again with some bloke I barely know?"
"Is this really even about Nina, or is this about him being a bloke?" Annie said. "'Cos if you're about to descend into some spiral of guilt about that on top of everything, I'm not going to be responsible to clearing up after you."
"I can imagine what my mother would have to say about it would make the turning into a wolf parts sound like a reasonable career choice, yeah."
"George, you like him. Get over yourself."
"Oh, what, now it's I like him? I do not need a, a yenta, Annie. I can make my life into utter shit perfectly well on my own."
"And he says that he doesn't know Hebrew."
"All right, first of all, that's Yiddish, actually, and stop changing the subject. We came here to be anonymous, to lose ourselves in a crowd. Now, I accept that there's a certain minimal level of interaction with our neighbours that's reasonable to keep from looking too suspicious, but dating a policeman, that's... well, it's bloody suicide, is what it is. No, the sensible thing was to break it off before he got any more involved. With me, with... us, with..."
"You know, if you weren't trying to convince yourself about this you could have stopped talking maybe five minutes ago," Mitchell observed mildly.
"Just... stay out of this, the both of you. We cannot afford to let anyone that far into our lives and that is that." George crossed his arms across his chest and tried to stare down the twin looks of fiver gives that ten minutes from his housemates. "And so long as we seem to be having a house-meeting, can I point out that Mitchell's still not been doing any of the shopping?"
George had left him a list. George had left him a very detailed list, just short of drawing out little maps of where everything was to be found in their new market, and now Mitchell found himself staring into a dairy case in panicked despair of finding the exact canisters of yoghurt that the paper specified. But he wasn't going to be one of these sad bastards on the mobile back to a partner, asking did they still buy the same brand of cornflakes as every week --
He turned to look down the other end of the display, wondering if there was some obscure classification scheme of the double-cream and other specialty dairy-like items that he was somehow missing, and George's copper from number eleven was reaching out for a litre of milk, glancing towards Mitchell as he felt himself startle. "Oh, hullo, Mitchell, I... erm. Hullo." And an odd hesitation here, as if he were calculating how much of what story the housemate might have heard by now; "Haven't seen George round much, I hope he's all right?"
Question without a proper answer, that. "Yeah, he's, well, he's George."
A fretful little nod from Andy here, somewhere between relief and a horribly British reluctance to admit to having such an emotional response. "Starting to feel like I'd scared off a stray dog."
"Yeah, that's... He's George, man. Weird as a fish wearing pants, but that's just him." Mitchell paused, and then decided to go ahead and plunge into it if only for the sake of not leaving someone with too wretched an impression of a friend; "Listen, he might have... said, stuff... He doesn't always see what's right in front of him, y'know?"
The wide-set eyes went all worried of a sudden, putting Mitchell somehow in mind of a puppy who was trying to figure out what the humans thought it had done wrong. "Have I, erm, put my foot in it here?"
"Hm?"
"Mean, you and George... You are just housemates, yeah?"
The irony that this constable with his own issues regarding the subject seemed to be the first person in a long while who'd not leapt straight to the conclusion of pairing him and George off struck Mitchell, then, and he had to put a hand to his mouth to keep from laughing aloud at the poor man. "Folie a deux, more like. Honestly, man, George is my best mate in all the world, and you are more than welcome to intrude on that as far as he wants to let you."
Andy pulled a face. "Don't know that I'd get much chance if he never comes back out of your house again. Reckon he's not... well, neither am I, well, didn't think I, erm, it was just... one of those things, aye?"
Mitchell decided that this might reasonably be parsed out into that I snogged him was a surprise to me as well, and shrugged. "If I started listing off all of the things George is repressing we'll be here till your milk's gone sour. Been good to see him thinking about not letting it get to him so much, y'know? -- Well, s'pose you might there, yeah."
"Yeah, well, get suspended for disobeying an unjust order, it sort of changes your perspective on a lot of the bollocks you've always been told," Andy said, with a hint of fire that made Mitchell wonder. "Thought for once I'd have a go just pleasing myself. Not what anyone would think about it."
Fair enough description of where George was at with it, if Mitchell had seen anything of the world in his bloody century. "Give him your best when I see him, he'll get himself sorted eventually," he offered.
A vague nod as if the constable had his doubts regarding the wisdom of this course. "Yeah, that'd be... And to your, erm, you've got another housemate now, haven't you?" Mitchell gave him a perplexed look. "Or maybe she's your, dunno, I keep seeing her coming out to your bins though, looks like she's moved in?"
Mitchell found his voice, somewhere in his left shoe: "You don't mean Annie."
Andy shrugged. "If that's her -- about so high, dark, seems to like grey? Bit of a looker," he added, as Mitchell felt himself gaping. "I mean if she's not moved in 'cos she's your, erm... Look, if she is your girlfriend I'm sorry, forget I said anything --"
"No, no, it's, ah, she's just our new housemate. Bit shy, just got out of a bad relationship -- wouldn't go trying to chat her up or anything just yet, let her settle herself a bit first..." Andy nodded, as if this was making any sort of sense, and voiced no objections as Mitchell began backing away from the dairy-case in a trail of mumbled excuses, probably just as happy to have the excuse for a polite conversation about mutual concerns behind them both.
Bugger the buggering shopping, anyway.
Mitchell had managed to forget the flour, and the kitchen-roll, and George's yoghurt, but at least he'd got back into the house without breaking too many of the eggs. "Right, so, was this your way of trying to get out of ever being sent to do the shopping again?" George asked, holding up what had once been a perfectly serviceable loaf of bakery bread before it had gone into the boot ahead of all the tins. Or possibly been trodden on, it was difficult to say.
Mitchell made a vague gesture that could have encompassed anything from I had to run out of the supermarket before I ate the lady on the till to pirates grabbed me from in front of the biscuits and made me their chief. "Yeah, was, erm, got sort of... Yeah." And a pause, possibly to paste together his alibi -- "Ran into your mate from number eleven down the shops."
"Oh. Oh, god. Tell me you didn't say anything to him, Mitchell --"
Mitchell wasn't very good at innocent looks. "Might have mentioned you'd been thinking about him."
"Oh, god."
"Thing is, George..." George wasn't sure he liked the way Mitchell's attempt at a grin seemed to have piled up into one corner of his mouth. "I think the two of you are going to need to talk."
"I really do not want to get into --"
"I mean, talk." All traces of levity gone now. "Sit down for a man-to-man. Or a... wolf-to-wolf."
It took several moments for what Mitchell had said to penetrate. "No, no, no, you are not saying that..."
"He can see Annie now, George. It's usually a pretty bad sign."
"And we're just assuming this is anything to do with me?" Just because the two of us have been shagging like wild animals --
"Well, yeah, maybe he's mates with half the local werewolf underground or something, but I think I'd go with the simplest explanation, yeah?"
"Is there really a werewolf underground?" Annie asked. "-- Hold on, though, guys, he's not been anywhere near you during your time of the month. Has he?"
George felt his ears blazing up like a bonfire. "The nearest would have been, erm, in the, ah, the shower." Mitchell raised an eyebrow. "But it can't, that was well after, I mean..." And he stopped, and gulped in air, finding it did nothing to steady him; "You should have let me top myself, Mitchell. If the wolf bleeds through even when I think I'm back to myself -- when I can still see without my glasses, and pick out Mrs Sahota's curry from three streets away, if I..."
If he'd thought that was the older-and-wiser look, he'd mistaken how Mitchell was pulling his punches. "You were born in '81," the vampire said, weight of too many years suddenly in dark eyes. "You don't even remember why everything's condoms, and sharps-bins, and being careful what you're mopping up off the floor in a hospital. So don't you even go giving me any grief about thinking you know what it's like to have to wonder about every fucking move you make. Listen, you'll have plenty of time to freak out about this later, but right now you've got some thinking to do, yeah? Moon's coming along, gonna need a plan here."
"Oh, my god, we have been here six weeks and I've already turned the bloke next door into a werewolf. This is exactly what I was..." George dropped into one of the chairs at the table, burying his face in his hands. "I've done it again, I've let someone think I'm fit to be let out amongst normal people and this is what he gets for it, I can't... I can't do this, anymore, Mitchell, I..."
Mitchell was giving him a look that said he was nearing the boundary where a justifiable wobbly would wear out its welcome. "At least give him some idea what's gone on, George. Even if it's to tell him he needs to put in for a transfer to some village up the valleys or something. Don't you wish you'd had some clue what to expect?"
"He already thinks I'm mental, what is telling him the truth going to look like? That is if he doesn't just assume I'm trying to pick it up with him again the moment he opens the door --"
"Relax, George, it's not like you'd be asking him out on a date," Annie pointed out. "And after all you've already got that awkward should we have sex part out of the way up-front in your relationship."
"We do not have a relationship! He is simply a neighbour of ours who, who I happen to have turned into a werewolf. By... having sex with him which is entirely beside the point, but that doesn't mean we're, we're just acquaintances. Honestly, Annie."
"Don't leave him to do this alone, George."
"I wasn't going to just abandon..." Too late he recalled how Annie had been the one to pick up the slack for him the last time he'd done exactly that. "But what can I do for him that would possibly help? It's not as if I know what I'm doing with any of this even now."
"This is easier on us vampires, we know when we've recruited someone. We can think about how we're going to pick up the pieces." Mitchell sighed. "You'd think werewolves would be the pack animals. Herrick may not have been the best influence in the world, but... he understood, things. You could give this guy that much of a start."
"All I want," George said, "is to have a life where people aren't getting hurt because they know me. Is that really too much to ask?"
Mitchell sat in the chair beside his, arm across the back in a loose-limbed posture of resignation. "Asking the wrong guy, mate."
"You're lonely," Annie said, resting a chill hand on his shoulder. "You've only the two of us to really talk to, so, someone reaches out, and... you reach back. But now he's going to need you. You, George."
If someone... If Tully... if someone had been there, if he had been there for... George sighed, bowing his head in surrender to the idea. "All right. I'll talk to him. But it is not a bloody date."
The trouble was, the constable was still working irregular shifts that didn't seem to have much overlap with either his or Mitchell's schedules, and he was running out of nights. George found himself resorting to behaviour that felt frankly stalkerish before at last Annie's observations of number eleven tipped him to the PC's preparations to leave for work just in time to arrange a casual-seeming meeting over the bicycle padlocked to Andy's front fence. "Oi, Andy, I, erm, I was wondering, are you... busy, tomorrow night?"
Andy looked up from fumbling with his keys to regard George suspiciously. "Mitchell having another party?"
"Erm, no, no, I... I was just wondering if you were busy, is all."
The suspicion shaded into the beginnings of shyness, now, a grin playing round the corners of that cheeky mouth; "Oh, you meant... Erm. S'pose 'M not, as such. Thought you said you needed time."
"It's... bloody complicated. Meet me round the Anchor about half six?"
"Yeah, might do." Andy finished wrestling the chain free of the breezeblocks and gave George another shy smile before throwing a long leg over the saddle of the bicycle and shoving off down the road. George stood watching him go until the curve of the street blocked the view, then turned to trudge back into his own house.
And pulled a face as Annie started to open her mouth; "It's a bloody date."
"A werewolf," Andy said.
This accidental date had turned out to be a good thing, George thought; a few pints down and they were both of a mind to believe any number of absurd things about the other. Even maybe Andy's claim that he'd once helped to fight back an army of aliens that were trying to force their way into the downtown police headquarters. Wasn't on the face of it any more unbelievable than George's life story. "I know what this sounds like," he said.
"Well, 's Cardiff, innit. Spooky-bollocks central distribution. Why wouldn't the fit new bloke across the road turn out to be a werewolf?" Andy took another pull at his latest pint. "Marks for imagination though, you think when a shag comes back 'round and says they need to talk it's going to be some sort of STI conversation. Bloody herpes or something."
He could see where lycanthropy wouldn't usually have been on that list. "I suppose it sort of is, isn't it. You're taking this better than I would have expected."
Andy blinked, as if he hadn't thought to consider the question before now. "Well, not as if there's anything to be done for it, is there. Mean, werewolves, you can't just go in for a jab for that." A second, more owlish blink, as if it were also now occurring to him to recount the empties on their table. "You'd have thought being put on review for the last time I said bollocks to the rules would have taught me more than that sometimes it's still worth it."
"No, it's..." George paused, struck by Andy's expression; "You really do, sort of... fancy me?"
Andy snorted. "Thought you'd have noticed by now. Come back to mine, put the case to you again?"
George looked at his watch; "Erm, we don't really have... it's getting on to moonrise. We should... we should go, but..."
The copper's brows drew down into a slightly unfocused scowl. "You mean you've been talking about tonight."
"Erm, yeah. Sorry?"
"This is the part where we end up out in the woods and I'm having to explain a YouTube video to my mates down station in the morning, isn't it. 'M not, I just... Y'know?"
George thought he sort of did, at that. "Come on. I know a spot."
"Knew this was a setup." Andy still seemed to be retaining an open mind about this increasingly outlandish excursion, quite possibly due to those last two pints of Brains, but as George halted in the little clearing a glimmer of wariness appeared to be burning through the fog of alcohol. "We get our kit off and your mate Mitchell jumps out from behind a tree with the camera."
"Mitchell's not really big on cameras," George replied absently, thoughts on the sliver of sky visible between the trees; he'd chosen this grove for other reasons, chief amongst them the fact that so far it was the furthest spot from a road he'd been able to work out from a satellite view, but it also afforded a fair angle to the general direction of moonrise. They had time yet, too much time, really, when the smalltalk was all but guaranteed to be... awkward. George dropped his bag on the ground and bent to rummage into it for the last item that they would need to make a proper evening of this. "Erm, we do need to have our kit off, though."
"S'pose it wouldn't be a proper windup without it," Andy agreed with a look that suggested he might almost have been disappointed to find it otherwise, and gamely began to unbutton his shirt.
"Hold on, first I need to..."
Andy regarded the object that George had pulled from his holdall with the frown of a man who was suddenly trying to tot up rounds well after the fact. "That's... a chicken on a string," he said. "Mitchell is about to leap out from behind a tree, isn't he --"
George had a sudden mental image of how this would look on film, grainy underexposed vid of two nude men with trussed-up raw poultry -- It's all right, Mum, we're not gay, we're just Satanists. "No, it's, we... It's to distract the wolf. Erm, wolves. I -- we, drag it in a circle round the clearing to give the wolf a scent to follow. If I'm lucky, it keeps him busy till the moon sets again."
"And if not?"
To mask his complete and utter lack of an answer to this George let out the chicken on its string and began laying out a rough trail through the bracken, rather smaller a compass than he'd usually draw for himself but with Andy following along at his elbow it seemed best to get through this quickly before he -- before either of them lost nerve and bolted. When it seemed that he'd come round again to the start George smacked the chicken against several treetrunks at about his shoulder-height for good measure before he returned to the clearing and slung the remains of the carcass up into a tree, string wrapping round a branch up out of easy reach. He was reasonably certain that the wolf couldn't climb up after it -- with luck they wouldn't roam very far at all, too distracted by a tantalising engineering problem beyond a monster's reduced capacity to reason through. "Right, now we get our kit off," George announced, hoping a show of confidence might go some way towards carrying them both through the next few hours.
He suspected that the only reason that Andy had stuck with this farce to this point was that by now he was desperately curious to see just how far George meant to take the gag. But the constable was moving readily enough to strip down as he saw his companion's clothes coming off, perhaps thinking through whatever haze of the lager remained that at least he might still get a shag and a risque tale for whichever of his mates he might trust with the particulars of his private life out of this whatever came. Two pairs of trainers made for a snug fit within the holdall, but George persevered until he could do up the zip, then wound up and pitched the bag out past the protective circle of chicken-scent. "And it's safe to just do this right out in the open?" Andy said, looking after it.
"I had a cage set up at our last place, but we had to leave in a bit of a hurry. Sort of... making do, until things are better settled. We're well enough out of the way here, I... I came here last month. Seemed to work out all right then."
Or at least no one had reported any pets or pensioners gone missing that he'd seen in the locals, and he did make a point of checking the next few days after, even... distracted as he'd been, last month. George started to cover himself with his hands as Andy turned back to face him, then let them fall, recognising the absurdity of the gesture when the only eyes present had already done far more than see. "You really don't look Jewish," Andy remarked, and then gave a hiccoughing little laugh. "Don't look like a werewolf either, I suppose."
George had given up trying to judge anything by appearances, himself. Eerie, how every detail stood out in these ticks of frozen clarity, the rich scent of damp Welsh earth, the fading light, the little mole on the other man's cheek. The hairy chest fit for a proper werewolf. "What do we do now?" Andy asked after another few moments had gone by in a fretful silence. "Mean, after we turn into, erm, werewolves."
He clearly meant if, and was too polite, and still a bit too far from sober, to think of a way to challenge George on the underlying premise. "I don't actually know," George admitted. "I've never really... done this with anyone, before. Might kill each other, but that's sort of the best-case scenario."
A look of full-on scepticism here: "You haven't thought this through."
"It was, just... The last time I changed someone, I wasn't there for her. I wanted... Well, I don't suppose that there is a way to do this right. But... I didn't want anyone else to have to go through that alone, if there was something that I..."
Andy raised a hand to touch George's cheek, and he realised he was weeping. "You really do think something's about to happen to us."
"You think I'm a nutter," George said. "Fair enough. Sometimes I wonder if I am. But I do know that this... this is all too real. I wish it wasn't, but... And now I've dragged you into it as well."
"Isn't actually the strangest date I've ever been on," Andy offered with a wry grin. "This one time, in --"
And he paused, looking puzzled, and screwed up his lips in a grimace. As if... as if, suddenly, his teeth weren't feeling as if they fit into his mouth properly... "It's starting," George said, first intimation of cracking bone shivering up his spine. "I'm sorry --"
Of course, because this was Wales, the carcass George woke up cuddling was that of a sheep. Insert rude remark here. The wolf had made a proper go at it, not much left but wool and well-gnawed bones.
But then, the wolf had had help finishing it off, hadn't he. George leant up on an elbow to look behind himself at an innocent sleeping face smeared nose to chin with rusty gore. Well, they'd stayed close, that was... something. He wasn't sure he was quite ready to think about just what. "Erm... Andy?"
Andy stirred and murmured something about turning out the light, one arm going up to cover his eyes. A moment later he came out from beneath this shade to squint up at George in complete bewilderment. "...Bloody woods?"
"Yeah, erm... It's morning, we should be..."
With a groan Andy heaved himself up into a sitting position, more or less, blinking round at the trees as if certain of the bits that were beginning to come back seemed too suspiciously vivid to write off as a bad trip or a cruel prank. "I thought we, last night, did, erm, any of that really..." He trailed off, staring at the carcass. "That's a sheep."
"Actually, I think it was our tea," George said.
"...Right." Andy turned away and was sick, retching until there seemed to be nothing left to expel. Yes, George remembered that aspect of the earliest transformations all too well. "Suppose it's not likely that werewolves would just try to get a traffic-cone when they're pissed," he said once the fit had passed, wiping a hand across his mouth.
There would be water, if they hadn't run off too far from the bag. George stood up and started brushing ineffectually at the backs of his thighs. It looked as if they were still quite near the clearing; whether this meant the sheep had gone very wrong in the night or one or other of them had fetched it back here like a take-away George hesitated to guess.
The chicken was gone, splintered furrows gouged into the trunk of the tree. George wondered if this suggested a worrisome development in the wolf's abilities or the unnerving potential of having two about to work together on the problem. Or if Andy was simply as much taller as a werewolf as well. Some time in the night they had found George's bag and gone after it as thoroughly as the sheep, thin false leather no match for teeth and claws. He followed along a trail of mangled articles of clothing to a chewed-up trainer, bigger than his, and then the plastic water-bottles, several punctured by vicious fangs but one still intact. George gathered up what he could salvage and returned to offer the bottle.
With a mumbled cheers mate Andy rinsed out his mouth and spat, then again. He looked hung-over, which couldn't be helping anything. George felt battered, true, but it was a strangely satisfying sort of feeling, as if he'd resolved something within himself. Pushed past some physical barrier to a calm certainty that had always lain on the far side, that whatever came he could rely upon this body to meet it. He tried to stifle the creeping suspicion it had involved rolling about wrestling like puppies. Depressingly obvious that some of the filth they were both coated in was the evidence of what two werewolves might be about with each other if they decided that they rather got on; "Don't think we spent the night fighting," Andy remarked, scratching at his crotch.
"There were wet-wipes, but one of us seems to have eaten them," George said. "And the mobiles. We'll have to walk."
Andy gave him a look that said this was perhaps the cruelest indignity out of all of it, and levered himself to his feet with George's hand-up. "Bloody films never show the wolfman having to come home on the bus. Only in bloody Cardiff."
Mitchell met them at the door with a look of sober sympathy. "I could ring your work, tell them you're not feeling well enough to come in today."
Andy nodded shakily and rattled off a number. Annie dialled it as he spoke, handing the receiver off to Mitchell at the end -- "We haven't really met," she said at the look the constable was giving her. "Sorry, I'm Annie, I don't know if George has mentioned me? I'm a, well, I'm a ghost. You couldn't see me before because... most people can't."
To Andy's credit, he took this with a polite nod, only the slightest glaze of shock creeping into his eyes. "And this isn't about 'most people' now, yeah." Mitchell was spinning a tale to Andy's superior of neighbourly hospitality that had taken an unfortunate turn into food-poisoning. "What's his story then, bloody Martian or something?"
Mitchell covered the receiver with his hand. "Vampire."
"Ah." Andy started looking about as if he needed something soft to collapse onto. "Might have expected there'd be something like that in this somewhere."
"Why don't you two go upstairs and get cleaned up," Annie suggested.
By the time they'd got up to the bath Andy was shivering like a terrified animal, bone-deep shudders betraying the clear desire to tuck a tail between his legs. George put him into the shower and then got into it with him, trying to remember if wolves mated for life. "That was a month ago, wasn't it," Andy said as George started to scrub at the blood crusted down his chest. "When I was doing this for you. You weren't... you'd just come home. From this." George nodded, trying not to meet his eyes. And then, trace of gallows-humour sparking through: "Knew something was wrong with your story, there should have been more blood on your shirt."
Leave it to a copper to have noticed a detail like that, all the little incongruities that added up after the fact to the impossible, unreasonable truth. George sponged away the rest of the telltale rust from pale skin and decided it would be enough for just now, turning off the tap and leading him to the rear bedroom where they could huddle together under the duvet. "So, what happens now?" Andy asked presently, when the shaking fits seemed to have left him.
It was a reasonable question, one that George had been asking himself for three years now without answer. "Just... get on with it, really. Things will be different, but... it's still your life. Now that you... know..."
"Transfer to a K-9 unit maybe," Andy said, and started sniggering helplessly. "Bomb-sniffing bloody... Ah, god. Reckon I'm spooky enough for Torchwood now, aye?"
"Sorry, what's a Torchwood?"
Andy shrugged, as if he didn't want to admit that he wasn't sure himself. "Special-ops unit. Turn up at the unexplained cases to tell us plods not to talk shite about aliens. Sort of thing gets their attention, this is."
It seemed meant as a leading question. "Well, we've only been here the two full moons. It usually takes a bit longer than that for the neighbours to work out where to buy pitchforks."
Another half-formed laugh from Andy. "Was thinking about tipping Gwen on you myself, if you'd only been a mental. Bloke thinks he's a werewolf, she'd be all over that looking to know how it worked. Suppose I'll be needing to worry about her getting on to me now."
George wondered if this was closer to the truth of why the vampires had traditionally avoided drawing attention from west of the border. "Reckon we should be thinking about looking after each other with it, yeah," he said, and then, following the thought a bit further: "What would be the word for 'pack'?"
Andy tucked his head against George's scarred shoulder to hide a smile, as there came a soft knock at the bedroom door that would be Annie with two mugs of tea. "Dunno. You've still got my dictionary."