s4_see | Number One With A Silver Bullet [6/?]

Title: Number One With A Silver Bullet
Rating: teen [language and sexual situations]
Characters: PC Andy, Jack, Ianto, Owen, Tosh, Gwen, George, Mitchell, Nina
Spoilers: TW s2/BH s1, inclusive
Advisories: crossover with Being Human
Disclaimer: somebody please stop me, no, seriously...

Summary: Torchwood Three is finally back up to full strength, although its new hires bring... unconventional skillsets.

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Mitchell still hadn't decided if starting to leave a laptop about where Annie could occupy herself with it during Torchwood's long workdays had been a stroke of genius or the worst mistake George could have made. "There was this bloke in the Wild West who was made into a pair of shoes after he died," the ghost said by way of greeting as he let himself in. "I mean, that's just bloody mental."

At least there weren't cups of cold tea cluttering every surface in sight anymore. "Revising for a pub quiz?"

"Toshiko signed me up for this... email, trivia... thing. Thinks I should be using my time to improve myself or something. George at Nina's?"

Mitchell nodded. Sometimes George managed to convince her to come round to theirs, after, but by and large he seemed content to be asked back to her den on occasion, territorial urges playing out against a very human backdrop of talks about where this relationship was going. He'd been listening to one most of the way back to Bristol. As usual. "Wouldn't expect him for breakfast."

Annie's gaze had gone back to her screen as something went bing, cosy with the machine in the incidental way of someone who'd never known a world without them. (Mitchell could remember the first time he'd seen an electric light, the poor boy from rural Connacht left blinking stupidly in the glare of the recruiting office until someone had managed to convince him that he had far more important worries that rainy afternoon.) "Just as well, 'cos you have a visitor."

From the way her eyebrow lifted, George's absence would be sparing him a round or two of oh my god please stop that bloody moaning before I go mental. Mitchell felt himself breaking into a feral grin as he went up the stairs. Yes, here was a bright spot that could make up for what amounted to a two-day shift, sitting primly on the end of his bed amidst the squalor but far too polite to hint at judgement of what a tip the room was, the pattern of the rumpled duvet faintly visible through her insubstantial outline. "Miss Derbyshire."

"Mister Mitchell." The barest suggestion of a touch cold even to him as the ghost offered him her hand in reflex of century-gone manners. Although Harriet Derbyshire was anything but a proper Edwardian lady, not after working for Torchwood. A proper lady wouldn't smile when he pulled off his shirt, wouldn't undo her own buttons, wouldn't lean in to whisper graphic imaginings in his ear as he lay back upon the bed... He knew by now that she had learnt much of her repertoire from Jack himself, when she'd been flesh and bone, a mind-warping prospect to think about too closely but the legacy of sweet and filthy words a most inventive torture when lovers were forbidden by circumstance to touch. Each other, at any rate. But granted eyes and ears and one's own ingenuity -- yes, it was more than enough for them to work with. More than enough.

Although he did miss curling up against human warmth after. Sometimes that was better than the sex that preceded it. Harriet had begun pinning her hair back up into its neat eternal twist. "Gerald says I'm perverse," she said. "Which, as you can imagine, when we've had Jack as our entertainment all this while..."

"Dunno, I'd say this is the healthiest relationship I've had in, oh, thirty years?"

She smiled. "I believe his concern is that properly speaking Torchwood should be studying a phenomenon such as vampirism, rather than... fraternising. But. I think we've gone quite beyond the usual scientific enquiries."

"Only question this begs is which of us is the necrophiliac." Mitchell lay back as she blew him a kiss and blinked away, trying not to think about how badly he wanted a fag. He'd been having a go at giving them up, because he'd quickly got tired of Ianto's pitying looks whenever he'd nip up to step out of the tourist office for a few minutes, and anyway lately it had been reminding him too much of Josie. Though he was starting to wonder if he'd simply started out with a fundamentally addictive personality, really. I can't go to rehab, I have Torchwood in the morning. And a standing date with the moon...